“Just call the bank tomorrow, I’m telling you it won’t work here either”, this was the 10th kilometer, 5th ATM and Ivan just ran out of patience. I didn’t want to spend time dealing with money withdrawal problems so I wanted to handle everything the same night. “Ok whatever man, I’m going to bed”, declared Ivan. I said “ok, see you soon honey” trying to cheer him up with a gay joke, but he was way too tired to be amused so he muttered something gay back and headed up stairs.

The battle with my credit card company had begun.:”But I’m stranded here with absolutely no cash! What do you mean there is a general problem with all banks in Tokyo? You want to talk to my hotel clerk about a cash advance? You should get a translator because his English is not that good”  I put the poor guy on the phone and went outside to smoke a cigarette.

My German Friends

From the distance I could see 2 white guys walking towards the hotel, they were both around my age, 27, and looked distinctly  eastern European, at fist I thought they were polish. It was a very tall, big looking guy with a much shorter friend with blond hair. The tall guy looked like he’s into heavy metal , wearing old blue jeans and a black sleeveless shirt with a white dragon on the pocket. The blond guy had a very “peacock” like style, with a torn red Diesel shirt, spiked hair and some funky looking running shoes. “Well that’s an odd looking bunch” I thought to myself. As they passed in front of me I looked up at the tall guy and he gave me a friendly nod. I nodded back. The first seed of friendship had been planted…

The hotel clerk looked rather confused and kept apologizing and trying to explain that we need to wait for the manager. The whole “cash advance” didn’t sit quite right with him and quite honestly I would have thought it was a scam myself. I re-assured him that it’s not his fault and told him to forget about it.

At 4:00 am I opened my eyes. It was very dark but I could see Ivan sitting on the bed. I was so tired that I didn’t even realize I was in Japan sharing a room with Ivan, so naturally I freaked out. “What’s wrong with you man!! You freakin’ scared me! Why are you sitting on the bed like that?”. Instead of a reassuring: “No, it’s okey man I just woke up for a second” he started whispering in a mysterious voice

“Can you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“The mosquito biting…”

“I can’t feel nothing, just go to bed…”

http://lucifer-ous.deviantart.com/

I turned to the side and realized that I was actually feeling a dozen of bites all over my body. We turned on the lights and discovered that walls were covered with around 50 small Mosquitoes. We had left the window open for some fresh air and let in these sneaky blood suckers. Thing we noticed about Japanese mosquitoes  is that they don’t make as much noise as their North-American counterparts. They do not endlessly buzz around your ears, it’s almost as if they quietly land on the floor and sneak up the bed on foot, hence we started calling them Ninja Mosquitoes.

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