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Winter Tour to Tokyo I've wanted to go to Tokyo for a long time. I'm a sucker for big cities. I crave them like I crave good food. They energize me and make me feel like I'm getting the most out of life. I also love neon, and I've seen a lot of pictures of Tokyo that made me think of glowing futuristic cities. My brother, who's been to Japan twice, told me I should go to Osaka if I want neon. He said Tokyo isn't the glittering metropolis I hope it is. Maybe he went to different areas of Tokyo. Where I went was perfect. I'd found this tour on the internet and had originally planned on going on a summer tour since a visit to Mt. Fuji (unless I'm going to climb to the summit) sounded too 'touristy' to me. I'm more into adventure tours than sightseeing ones. But the longer I looked at the itinerary the more I realized I couldn't wait. I contacted Lydia (aka Seneschal, who drew "Hadrian's Lesson") and once she agreed, there was no turning back. Chris White (who wrote "Starr in Charge") signed on, too, so I knew it was going to be a blast. I hadn't been this excited for a trip in a long time. Feb 2-3 LAX to Narita
Lydia was on the tail end of a cold when she boarded the plane at LAX. She was screaming every hour or so because of the pressure changes in her ears. I've never been on a guided tour before and I wasn't sure if it would be too restrictive and no fun. My brother is one of those people who's a 'traveler' not a 'tourist' so he shuns tours like the plague. But I liked the itinerary planned for this trip so I thought I'd give it a go. I'm really glad I did. This trip was 100% stress free once we found the group at LAX (we were a bit worried before that point). But once we located Kaz, a really cute and funny Japanese tour guide who works out of LA, we were fine. Every step of the tour was smoothed out for us and we were never left stranded or unable to determine where or what to do next. Plus, the tour catered to a younger, hipper crowd. I LOVED it. We flew 12 hours to Narita airport. We flew Singapore Airlines and they had a really good inflight movie program. I watched four movies on the way over and didn't experience the antsy feeling I've had on previous intercontinental flights. At Narita, we found Chris, who'd flown in 2 hours before. Then we hopped on a bus and boy, was I excited! I wish even now I was back on that bus, about to start the tour again!!
Chris, being a brat on the bus to Tokyo.
The room Lydia and I shared, which was pretty big, considering we were in Tokyo. I was expecting something tiny like a room I had in Paris which was so narrow I had to put my luggage on the desk because it wouldn't fit in the room. And I have to say, I loved the bed. It was so comfortable. Then again, when we went to bed each night we slept like the dead out of sheer exhaustion. That might have had something to do with it. In the desk is a bible and a book of Buddha.
We declined.
So it seems like every time I travel to a foreign country I have to take a picture of the toilet. In this case, it's not a "ew, can you believe it?" This toilet was pretty cool because it had heated seats and a bidet and wash function. Granted, none of us tried any of the features, but it was still cool. There was a toilet I sat on in some mall and it was freakin' hot! But I'm always cold, so I was thinking that if I had such a toilet back home I'd sit on the toilet all day reading books. Or maybe I'd move my television in front of the bathroom so I could sit and watch. I guess it's probably a good thing I don't have a toilet like that.
Chris took this picture of a squat toilet. Lydia and I didn't have to use any of these during our stay, which was a pleasant relief. This is actually a pretty nice traditional toilet. Ones I've used before didn't offer toilet paper or have a trash can.
This is a super cool sink. On the upper right is a sensor that turns on the water. On the upper left is a sensor that dispenses soap. On the bottom is a sensor that blows hot air to dry your hands. Tokyo restrooms make me feel like the U.S. is in the dark ages.
The morning view from our room.
Harry Potter was playing in our hotel.
Feb 4th - Tokyo Tower, Meiji Shinto Shrine, Asakusa
Our first breakfast in the hotel. They had Western, Japanese and Chinese sections, but the choices were skimpy at all of them. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised since breakfast was included in the hotel room price. The girl with the glasses was Chris' roommate, Annette. She had purple hair and I thought it looked really cool so I'm going to do that to my hair before YaoiCon.
Meiji Shinto Shrine On this first day we met our Japanse tour guide, Okasan, a wonderfully fun and friendly woman whom I hope works on every JPT tour because I want her again. She appears to genuinely love her job and that made our trip that much more enjoyable. Our first stop was actually Tokyo Tower, so I'm doing this out of order but that doesn't matter much. Here we are at the Meiji Shinto Shrine.
These are sake barrels donated to the shrine.
Here I am at the big gate to the Meiji Shinto Shrine.
Before you enter the shrine you're supposed to cleanse your hands of impurity. But it was freezing that day and that water was probably like ice water. So we opted to skip this and enter the shrine as dirty, dirty Westerners.
Lydia and I inside an area that strongly resembled the Forbidden City in Beijing.
This is pretty cool. You buy a wooden plaque and write your wishes on it. Then you hang it around the tree for them to come true.
We were at the temple on an auspicious day. We saw not one wedding party, but two! Here's the first.
That same party in procession. Everyone was deathly silent as they walked past.
And here's the second wedding party. I really like that headress she's wearing.
You can barely make out a car in this structure. Some guy paid to have the monks bless his car, which is why it's parked here.
Tokyo Tower
A view from Tokyo Tower. That's a parking lot on the lower right and to its left is a cemetery.
You can see Mt. Fuji in the distance. There are a lot of architecturally interesting buildings.
Sorry, had to overexpose this to pull the image.
You look down through the floor. The Tokyo Tower is taller than the Eiffel Tower and yet weighs 60% of the Eiffel Tower due to new metal technology.
The Tokyo Tower mascot, aka Penis Head.
Here we are trying to figure out the Japanese directions in a picture booth. Fortunately Lydia regularly uses a tablet so she was able to navigate our way through the menu. It was pretty funny because the thing just started taking pictures and we kept trying to come up with new poses. It took a lot of pics, too, like 10 of them. When it came time to pick our favorite, we didn't know how to choose it so the machine chose the first one for us (turns out there was a stylus hanging off the side of the machine that we didn't notice until too late to change our selection). We were able to sign the pic at least.
And here's the result of our picture booth photo. Talk about a crappy quality photo. You should see the original. The image of Tokyo Tower in the background is totally pixelated and blurry. We spent so much time trying to figure out the picture booth that we didn't get an opportunity to go the second floor where the shopping was. There was a Ghibli store which we all wanted to hit, but we ended up being late for the bus, instead.
Asakusa Even though there's a temple here, our tour guide didn't really talk about it much. This visit was primarily so we could go shopping.
A really big lantern.
Octopus snacks. I think this is takoyaki?
We all took a picture of this but I can't remember what it is. I think it might be the Asakusa Kannon Temple since that was supposed to be around here, somewhere.
I take it back. I think this is the temple.
Taking a picture of the mystery temple.
A pair of goofballs on the street.
Me, shopping in the Nakamise shopping arcade, which is a long 'street' of vendor stalls selling goods and food. It didn't even occur to me until later if I should have asked the tour guides if this is an area where you bargain. I bet it was. I paid full price for everything.
Lydia took this. I think they're offerings.
Someone put knit clothing on this stature of a mother and her babies.
The Mad Knitter strikes again.
Roppongi Hills
View of Roppongi Hills, an upscale shopping area where we couldn't afford to buy anything. The tour participants unanimously agreed we spent way too much time here. I'd prefer to skip it all together and hit someplace like Shibuya, instead.
This is a statue of a giant spider that's like, I don't know, two stories tall. Lydia and Chris took this pic while I hid inside the mall. It was FREEZING, thanks to a biting wind. I can't even explain how miserably cold it was that night.
Our first sushi! This was a conveyor belt place. It was also the first place where we had to take off our shoes. And it was funny, because we learned later at the onsen that we all did it wrong. You're not supposed to let your feet touch the same ground where your shoes have been -- you step up out of your shoes onto the 'inside' surface (usually the next step up). But like a bunch of yokels we all shucked our shoes on the 'outside' floor and stood there with shoes in hand. Later, when we were leaving, we all stepped down onto the 'outside' floor again and pulled on our shoes. I was wondering why all the staff was staring at us. I was really bad about it. I balanced on one foot and tugged a shoe on with my hands and then repeated the process with my other foot. Dirty, dirty, dirty.
Here, we were sitting on the floor. Our feet fit into a depression beneath the table.
The sushi chef. The sushi here was fine, but not great. I was a little surprised by that, assuming Japanese sushi would be superior to what I've had in Vegas. I learned later it really depends on where you go.
This is interesting. It's a tea set. I thought the green was wasabi powder, so I dumped it into my soy sauce. Turns out it's green tea powder. You use that wooden scoop to add the powder to your mug. Then you put your mug under the faucet and push the bottom for hot water to come out.
This was in the gift shop and Lydia was convinced she had to have it. A forty dollar hairdryer? It's not that cool. But yeah, it is pretty strange.
She also found this Cafe Colon, which sounds interesting.
The three of us went to the top floor and had drinks in the lounge. The scene was amazing, although you can see only a fraction of it in this picture. It reminded me of Riki sitting atop the tower in Ai no Kusabi.
There was a walkway outside of the hotel lined with these blue spurting things.
Feb 5th - Mt. Fuji, Yunessun Onsen Mt. Fuji
Mt. Fuji behind Chris.
That paper on the window is the lyrics to the "Song of Mt. Fuji". We sang it on the way.
"Hi! My name is Tricia and I'll be your tour guide today!"
Chris and one of the other tour guys who decided to jump in and ruin her picture.
I like this. It's kinda cool.
The Three Musketeers, barred from ascending Mt. Fuji due to heavy snow fall. Oh, well.
So at the barrier preventing us from climbing Mt. Fuji was a guy selling grilled corn. Like a true yaoi fan, Chris had to buy an ear.
And so did Lydia. I bet they were picking corn out of their teeth for miles afterwards.
Basically a bus stop at the lake.
This was a pretty area.
It had these really fast moving pirate-like ships.
I was trying to think up some fun pose to do and I defaulted to this. After this brief stop it was off to the onsen.
Yunessun This onsen is billed as an amusement park. It has something like 20 different spas and pools. A few of them require you to be naked. Only one guy from our tour group did that one. The place is huge and is both indoors and out (regular swimming pools are inside, onsen are outside). When we arrived at the onsen, we were instructed to put our clothes into a locker and change into our suits with a coverup and a towel. Then we wandered around, trying to find the onsens. Once you find one you like you sling your coverup and towel over bushes and trees or any dry surface you can find. It ends up looking like a backyard swim party. Kinda sloppy, really. Previous to changing, we had lunch at a buffet that was okay, nothing special. It was included in the price so we ate it.
. This is the green tea onsen. This is the first one we entered, although we went into one that was surrounded by black rocks and had a small waterfall. This one in the picture was on a level above us and was half the size of the one we went into. The onsen smelled great and was as green as the picture. .But the temperature was only warm, not hot, and with the freezing temperature I wanted it to be much warmer. Still, it was an extremely interesting and relaxing experience. All the pools are set on different levels within the rocks, so it's a very natural setting with trees and bushes surrounding us. We could see a half frozen waterfall above us (it was that cold). Off to the side was a digital clock counting down a geyser that spewed gas.
We went into this red wine onsen next. Your arms and legs looked fuschia colored beneath the surface. I wonder if it would have discolored blonde hair? This onsen was slightly warmer so I liked it better. It had been torture running down from the green tea onsen to this one since they were several yards apart and down the stairs. The wind was super chilly.
Last, we went into this coffee onsen. This one was the hottest one yet and it smelled very strongly of coffee. I watched the guy put new coffee grounds into a big vat, presumably to freshen the water. The heat and the smell of this onsen kinda made me a little sick. It definitely wasn't something you could sit in for long. I wish I'd brought along a waterproof camera. I hadn't originally been very enthused about the onsen idea, but this amusement park was worth the trip and I would enjoy returning. There's a rose onsen and a dead sea salt one, but they were up a couple of levels and it's literally like climbing the side of a mountain (with steps) to reach them. If it hadn't been so cold we could have done it, so I'll try to visit this again in more temperate weather.
Because a travel report isn't complete without embarrassing photos.
Chris in her rented suit because she's a bad, bad girl and forgot hers on the bus.
Lydia helpfully pointed out that I have a grandma suit. It's actually a two-piece but you can't tell from this. Yeah, I guess it is sorta granny-like.
Here we are, smelling of onsen and with bad hair.
Udder jelly! Yum! After blowing money in the gift shop, we headed back to the hotel.
Signs for a shady pachinko shop next to Shinigawa Station. We saw other pachinko parlors in other regions and they were bright and cheerful, unlike this dark, smoky place.
I got this picture off before a worker told me no pictures. A pachinko parlor is like a version of Hell. It's so loud it is literally deafening. I have never been in an environment as loud as this (drag races don't count). And yet to my amazement no one was wearing ear protection. It's seriously unhealthy. The guy trying to explain how to play the game was yelling at us but we still couldn't hear him. What I got out of it is that those baskets on the floor behind the players are those players' balls that they've won. They signal for a worker to give them a basket from their stack when they run out of balls, or they have the worker take a basket full of balls from their machine and add it to their stack. All I could think about was tripping and sending a million ball bearings rolling across the floor. We left after about five minutes. We couldn't stand the noise.
Feb 6th - Harajuku, Ikebukuro, Akihabara Harajuku
I put this pic here but I can't remember where it's from. We'll just pretend it's a picture of Harajuku. I totally love Fruits, which is the funky Japanese style of dressing involving mismatched garmets and colors. I have one Fruits book and I was unable to find the magazine at any of the bookstores we visited. Harajuku is a major gathering place for fruitsy teenagers and those into loligoth, but they only gather on Sundays and of course we visited the area on a Monday. Bummer.
A crepes display. In addition to dessert crepes they had salmon and cream cheese crepes, hot dog crepes, arugula and prosciutto crepes and egg salad crepes.
Here's my banana, chocolate and nuts crepe. And that's not really a smile on my face. That's my pulling my lips back off my teeth and going 'meh'.
A costume shop we all stopped to take pictures of until the owner came out and told us no pictures.
Some cool loligoth wear. Very expensive. I was looking for Metamorphose but never saw it.
Here's our Japanese guide, Okasan, who was a fanastic guide. I loved her. Very friendly and funny. She's in front of a music store.
Checking out the platforms.
Funky stuff from that costume shop.
If this store doesn't give you a cavity, nothing will.
Right on! They had Daikon Radish Man. My favorite! Now we're off to Studio Gonzo.
Eventually you can no longer pose for pictures.
Chris echoes the feeling.
The Studio Gonzo Animation tour. After showing us previews of Samuirai 7, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Brave Story, they did a question and answer session. The guy on right is the Manager of Production or something, and next to him is the youngest producer in the company. I felt so bad. They went, "Does anyone have any questions?" And crickets started up. I could totally sympathize after my JF panel at YaoiCon so I asked a bunch of questions to make them feel wanted *sniff*. I found out that about 100 artists work on an episode. Episodes typically cost between $150k - $185k, to make, although their more elaborate series cost $200,000 an episode. Each takes about 3-4 months. After the Q&A they took us around the studio, which mostly consisted of rows and rows of cubicles. Most were empty because the majority of animators work the night shift. There wasn't much to see. I thought it was cool that they had four mega-sized copiers churning out reams and reams of copies.
The manager guy who came with us on our tour gave us the actual forms and envelopes the animators use to produce a scene. I asked the guy to autograph my envelope just for a momento and he was all freaked out, assuming we thought he was famous or something. We knew he was just a guy.
Schwag from Gonzo. We each got a goodie bag containing folders, tissue, and these really nice desk calendars that feature a different character or scene for every month. Pretty cool.
Ikebukuro
The entrance to NamjaTown, which is similar to a Japanese Chuckie Cheese, but way, way cooler. There were doors and passageways all over the place. It was easy to get lost but you always ended up in some cool themed area. They had a forested area, an area devoted to cream puffs (so sweet it was scary), an old West area, a Japanese festival area, an ice cream area, a sort of prison area, some kind of an animal area, and more that I didn't have time to explore.
This is either a fortune telling game -- there were a lot of fortune telling things in this place -- or a type of vending machine.
A carnival game with cats playing baseball.
A catcher game area.
A festival area.
This kid is listening to a creepy-sounding recorded voice behind the screens that's telling a scary story. It gave me the heebie jeebies because the recorded voice was a man's deep bass and it sounded like he was trying to coax the kid inside.
This mascot was funny. He grabbed our tourguide's flag and took off with it.
This is like a funky version of Name That Tune. If you recognize the song you push the buzzer on your frog or fish. If you hit the buzzer first, you get to stand up in front of everyone and karaoke the song.
The food section of Namjatown. One thing I noticed which I thought was interesting: when I'm in the U.S. and go to an ethnic restaurant, I always try to pick out the funkiest thing on the menu that I can find. I know that even if I don't like it, later I can go hit up a McDonald's or the supermarket and appease my hunger. When I'm in a foreign country, I try to eat the funky stuff for most of the trip, but near the end I'm actually starving. A lot of the stuff I may have eaten weren't appetizing or filling and yet there wasn't a McDonald's I could hit up afterwards like I would in the U.S. (technically they're everywhere but no one wants to eat at Micky D's when they're on vacation in another country). So at the end of a trip, I start leaning away from the funky stuff and start looking for foods that look more Western and which I've had before and know I like. My adventurous taste testing has reached its limit. So in a way, I'm more adventurous at home.
Isaac, one of our tour guides from DMP, hamming it up.
This guy was entertaining a little kid from within his food booth. All these food workers were really nice and shouting out, trying to bring people to their booths like they were on commission or something. I should hire them for YaoiCon.
This guy was so cute. He like, loved his job. He acted like selling dumplings was the best job in the world. I have to say, that's one thing about Japanese people that I really appreciate. Every worker was like a super worker. They were polite, friendly, helpful and treated you as if they owned the business and wanted to ensure your satisfaction. How many people in the U.S. work in fast food and act like they enjoy what they're doing? In Japan, everyone loves their job and it makes it really nice to do business with them.
Us, waiting for dumplings!
"You are now entering Ice Cream City. All of you prepare to be fat."
Gazillions of ice cream flavors in vending machines.
This guy's selling Turkish ice cream. He whips it up with a long paddle and then pulls it in the air like it's taffy. It can stretch about two feet without breaking. It's really weird. But it was milk flavored, so apparently it had no flavor.
Here's the same guy dipping the top of the cone in the chocolate fountain.
Do I dare? It looks like tar on a cone. It's Nero Gelato, and it gets its color from black sesame seeds, black rice, black pine nuts and any other black thing they could find. It was hideous looking.
Yes, I dared! This pic grosses me out because it looks like I'm filming a porn. The ice cream was super rich and buttery. It tasted like sweet cream. But it was so nasty looking that I couldn't eat more than a little of it because the color kept putting me off. It's the absolute worst date ice cream because it makes your lips, teeth and tongue pitch black.
Lydia must have been one of those children who showed you their half-eaten food to gross you out.
Here's another funky ice cream I bought. It's layered ice cream, sauce, and cornflakes, and then they slap a flan on top if it. I had another ice cream at the hotel, a "2 Corn Scoop" with a scoop of sakura flavored ice cream and chestnut ice cream. The sakura flavored one was good. Oh, and related to that, there's apparently a Sakura Cafe we could've gone to where you can eat sakura flowers and other foods flavored with the flower. After we left NamjaTown we crossed the street to what's becoming a yaoi section of Ikebukuro. They have Animate, a general anime store with manga, music, character goods and DVDs. Then there's Character Queen, which is a yaoi store. They sold drama CDs, a few doujinshi, novels, and BL games (where I bought 2 just for the hell of it). Damn do I wish I understood spoken Japanese so I could've bought a CD. And then across the street is Mandarake, which was the most disappointing to me because it carried yards and yards of doujinshis, but I'm not into djs. I couldn't think of a single fandom or pairing I'd be interested in looking up since I mostly read Harry Potter or slash fandoms. Okay, wait, I did look up FF8 but they had four or five djs of Seifer/Zell or Zell someone and I'm only into S/S. I think Lydia bought a Zell/Squall. Yes, we left the yaoi section and all I had to show for it were two BL games and a folder of 'Spiral', which I've never heard of but thought was cute. Like Chris, I began looking for pretty art, rather than pairings I recognized. Oh, and let me add that Rith, you owe Chris your right lung, because that woman hounded every bookstore clerk in the city looking for your damned books.
Akihabara
Akihabara, which is a big place for buying electronics. They had some super cool products, but the packaging and instructions are all in Japanese and they have Japanese power plugs. I saw so many PS2 games that made me whine with need (I don't have a modded PS2 and I don't plan to). And I saw a horror game for the PSP!!! I was so excited. I can't wait until it's released in the U.S. Even though PSPs are region free when it comes to games, this horror game had a lot of text so it would be frustrating to play if I couldn't read it. Prices were around the same as in the U.S., although something weird did happen to me. I saw Lumines for PSP. I was going to buy it off Ebay for $24, but held off in case it was cheaper in Japan. Well, I saw it on 'sale' for 7200 yen, and me, being the worst mathematician in the world, thought that was $7.20 (using a simple conversion rate of 100 yen = $1). Duh, it's $72! I bought it, then realized what an absolutely ridiculous, astronomically high price that is. So I returned it. Were they on crack? The most I'd ever seen it for was $29.99. So yeah, games aren't cheaper there at all.
Apparently this is a catcher game to win seals, but I thought these were humping puppies.
Another sucker, fishing into her wallet to try to win a plushie from a catcher game. See, these games look easy until you actually try one. Then you discover the claws aren't strong at all and barely close. So they can't pick up anything heavier than a sponge. The secret, we learned, is to use the claw to tip the toys over the edge into the prize hole. They had all sorts of funky prizes, too: cartons of cigarettes, pudding, iPods, pillows, slippers, pornographic dolls, Cup o Noodle, and music CDs. Who in the world would play these games to win pudding?
Success! I won! And it only took me six tries. Hee, I was so proud of myself, lol.
These are escalators on the side of a building.
A pretty bridge scene.
Our booty from Akihabara. I'm holding up that prize, Lydia's holding up screentones, and Chris is holding an art book.
So the tour guide, Okasan, held a quiz at the end of the tour, asking us questions about things she'd told us throughout the tour. Guess who won? Lydia! She won a bucket full of Japanese snacks. And Chris won a bonus gift of silver chopsticks for underguessing Okasan's age and correctly answering a difficult question that no one else got right. What good students! Me, I didn't bother filling out the quiz. I wasn't paying attention to anything.
Back at the hotel we had dinner in their Italian restaurant. Lydia and Chris seemed to like their choices. I had picked a pizza and it wasn't very good. Pizza in Japan is a very strange affair. They put everything on it: hard boiled eggs, hot dogs, fish, shellfish, chicken salad, etc. Don't let her expression fool you. That octopus salad was damn good and she ate every bite.
On our way back from using the computer in an annex of the hotel it snowed on us.
Feb 7th - Odaiba, Akihabara, Gotanda
Today was our free time day, so we decided to hit Odaiba, the futuristic city. We got a nice little group together which made it fun.
We figured out how to navigate the JR line with only one mistake and after that it was kinda fun. Seeing Tokyo is a breeze. Every station is on a tight loop so you can hit everything very easily.
On the way to Odaiba.
What a bunch of tourists we are.
Odaiba
Yakuza posing beneath the cat of Cats Livin'. We look like dorks, don't we?
Map of Fuji TV. Although everything's in Japanese. We were going to go to the observation deck for the best view but we found out they charge admission and since we're cheap we passed on it. It was just as well. It was really foggy that morning so the view wouldn't have been very good.
Fuji TV.
Walking across the river to Palette Town. They had some pretty cool architecture in Odaiba, which is a man-made island that's supposed to represent futuristic Tokyo. Unfortunately we didn't spend hardly any time there. I was really hoping to go to Joypolis, a gaming center. The entire trip I kept trying to find a DDR game but I never saw one. I did see that walking the dog game everyone always talks about. You pick a dog and then you walk on a treadmill to walk with him. Some girl was trying to figure it out so I didn't get a chance to use it.
Lydia under some weird sculpture thing just outside Palette Town.
Here's Palette Town, which holds Venus Fort, a shopping mall just like the Forum Shops at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. There were other things in this area, but we were short on time so we only hit Venus Fort.
Because every woman wants to look like Barbie!
My most expensive purchase and the first thing I'd bought for myself. Apparently LeSportsac is pretty popular in Tokyo. Before then I'd never known a single person in the U.S. who owned anything from them. But I had to buy this. It's just too cute. I later bought little keychains and clipped them on the sides (like that blue guy there although he came with the bag).
Lydia took this pic of costumes from Paradise Kiss, some anime I've never heard of. But the costumes are cool.
A pic from the food court in Venus Fort. The cook totally kept staring at us while we ate.
Here I am at the Ghibli store. Everyone was all excited about Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service, etc. Before this trip I'd never heard of any of them. I'm so clueless when it comes to anime.
Akihabara We decided to go back to Akihabara and hit Animate again and also some other stores.
Lydia loves her little glowing thingy. It was pretty cute.
Here's Lydia, trying to get something cool. The funniest thing I got out of one of these machines was a mini roll of toilet paper. The picture on the vending machine showed a toilet and a dollop of poo. I was actually hoping the toy was the plastic poo because what am I going to do with a roll of toilet paper the size of my thumb? Come to think of it, what would I do with mini plastic poo?
Look at all the vending machines! They look like washing machines. I thought initially that only tourists would be into these things but I saw lots of Japanese using them, too. I bought three capsules of girls for Rith, two of which are in suggestive poses.
Lydia thinks this is Alice in Wonderland, eating mushrooms. I bought it because I thought she was holding a dildo.
Sorry for the blurry photo. This girl's topless and bottomless and has her neck and wrists locked up in stocks. Can you imagine little kids buying these things? Anyone can get 'em.
The weirdest vending machine we found. I want to know what kid wants to win a partial human torso? Or a replica of the stomach? Lydia and I each tried this and we both ended up with a set of teeth.
We went to a Wal-mart like store and they had an entire aisle devoted to maid/loligoth dresses. In this store I bought this thing called hoka hoka, which are individually wrapped heating pads that are activated by oxygen. They're sticky, so you attach them to your clothes and they'll warm you up. I haven't tried them yet. I wonder why they don't have these in the US? Unless they're the same strenth as those healing pads?
Hi!
Gotanda
We went to Hello Kitty Karaoke. Seriously. If you become a member you get HK stationary and stuff. This was supposed to be our Last Night in Japan Celebration but few people wanted to do karaoke if we had to do it in a big group. So the guides got together and offered all of us the option of booking private rooms, so we all opted to do that. Our guide, Isaac, had mistakenly told us this was a karaoke place with black lights and themed rooms. It turned out to be a different location. This place wasn't so impressive. The three of us were given a room that looked like it used to be the coat room for the place. There was a booth facing a table and the TV and that was it. Actually, it reminds me of a large phone booth. But once the music started we were fine with it.
Karaoke does horrible, horrible things to people. Someone --I'm blaming Lydia -- picked "Killing Me Softly". Jesus, it sounded like someone was skinning cats. It was awful.
That book on the left is the book of songs. They had a million songs and yet not one Placebo song. I ended up picking Linkin Park and Avril Lavigne and oh, my god, I picked Pink. When did I turn into a mall rat? I was embarrassed. But if I'd been there by myself you'd better believe I'd be singing all Linkin Park songs.
What a scary, scary sight. I used the tambourine just for fun. Seriously. See that phone on the wall? That's how you order drinks and how they tell you your hour is up. The hour went pretty fast. We had fun because the music was so loud we couldn't hear how terrible we were. Again, we returned to the hotel to connect to the internet. Internet connection was extremely complicated. You were given cards with an ID and password and you had to configure your wireless with instructions that were six pages long. It was so dumb. But the alternative was worse: using the computers in the Yahoo cafe, which had Japanese keyboards. Oh, man, it took like, an entire minute to compose a sentence because I couldn't find the keys. No one could find the apostrophe and I finally found it above the 7. The underscore mark was by the space bar and the colon was a lower case button by the shift key. It was so time-consuming it wasn't worth the ease of connection. We also had to pack our stuff tonight because Chris and I were going to be leaving the hotel at 7:30 the next morning. Considering how much junk we had, I wasn't looking forward to packing the goods:
You'll notice I have multiples of several items. Those are things that went into the goody bags.
Not included in all this are a couple of T-shirts, a huge Death Note calendar, a portable hard drive, and all the books I ended up buying in Sapporo. I thought I'd been smart bringing one empty suitcase but I could have used more space because then I could have bought more! One guy in our group had two extra bags. The airline wanted to charge him $200 for each bag, so he managed to stuff three of his bags into one large box and ship that. Next time I'm in Japan I'm buying for me. I'd say 80% of what I bought this time around were gifts. But that was mostly due to the fact we didn't hit Shibuya and only briefly skated through Harajuku, both of which are cool/funky shopping districts. I wanted to buy a bunch of fruitsy clothes but I didn't see much at the places we went to.
Feb 7th - Sapporo Lydia and six others hadn't signed up for the Sapporo extension so they would be flying out this afternoon. It was sad to part with her and I know she wanted to come along. If I ever take this winter tour again, however, I'll pass on Sapporo and stay in Tokyo another couple of days. The festival is one of those things where if you've seen it once you're all set. We took the train to Narita Airport, which was a pain in the ass when you're dragging along a carry-on up and down steps. The flight was only an hour and a half I believe.
At Sapporo/Shin Chitose Airport. I had to get a pic with the huge ass fish, even though I looked like I'd been cleaning someone's kitchen for the last two hours.
Bullet train to Sapporo! This thing was awesome. Each seat had its only little hanger for putting up your jacket. And in the back of each seat was a power outlet so you could use your laptop.
Our first meal in Sapporo was in the food court of a Robinson's department store. But the food was actually pretty good. This is Nathan. He and his wife are newlyweds. They were very nice to hang out with. We tried to get cash from an ATM in this Robinson's but it was only in Japanese. We didn't risk it because that would be a nightmare if our cards got stuck.
Yay, Sapporo Snow Festival! This is the 57th year.
Here is the ice carving section of the festival, called the Susukino Site. It stretched for three blocks on both sides and contained approximately 100 sculptures. They were set up with lights, but we were in this area during the day so we didn't see them lit up. When it did become dark enough to see them I was too freakin' cold to want to linger. While we were looking at the ice carvings it began to lightly snow but it soon tapered off. And fortunately the wind didn't kick in too bad although there was still a breeze that you needed a scarf to fend off. This area of the city is apparently the largest amusement entertainment district north of Tokyo. I don't know what that means, exactly, but I did see a lot of pachinko parlors, so maybe that's it.
Hehe, read the sign.
An ice bar. Everything is served on the rocks, duh.
This whacky castle-thingy had fish frozen into it. Even a stingray.
Look! A shark and a crab were frozen into that castle. Crazy, huh?
These grills served crab claws and crab legs. I bought two crab claws but they were pretty dry. I don't think grilling them is a good cooking method.
Because a snow festival isn't complete unless you have a full-sized ice carving of a Rav-4.
This ice slide was cold! My ass was freezing afterwards. Poor Chris' feet were killing her so she returned to the hotel while the rest of us continued on to the festival area. We were running short on time so we didn't see much, although I did manage to get a fun picture.
Yay! I made it to space with my Cup o' Noodle!
Sapporo at night. It's a huge bustling city just like Tokyo. They keep the sidewalks nice and clear of snow and there are little kiosks at the corners containing personal-size bags of gravel which you can sprinkle over uncertain footing. The women here are H-A-R-D-Y. I was bundled up in jeans, a down jacket, gloves, a scarf, and a knit hat and I was still freezing. Everywhere we looked were women dressed in jean mini-skirts, boots, and thin fashion jackets. No gloves. I don't know how in the world they withstood it because it was bitterly cold. Like, the kind of cold where I got so cold that I was no longer cold. I was just numb. Maybe that's how they do it. But I'm pretty sure that's the start of frostbite, so maybe not. That night Kaz took us to sushi.
This conveyor belt sushi restaurant was the absolute best one. They had a huge variety and the fish was melt in your mouth tender. Oh, it was so yummy. I think I had something like eleven plates. It was wonderful. And it was a funny selection, too, because along with the sushi were containers of pudding and noodles, fish salads and sliced fruit. Oh, and it cost us less than $10!!!
Haha! I saw this on the sushi menu and I'm like, I gotta have that! It's hamburger! Wrapped in seaweed and garnished with ketchup, lol. The meat was pretty good, flavored with several herbs, but it tasted really weird with the rice so I ate it sans rice. Apparently it's something that little kids order. After dinner we headed off to a Mandarake in Sapporo. It was larger than the one in Ikebukuro and was more like an Animate in that it carried character goods and books in addition to doujinshis.
Previous to this visit to Mandarake I hadn't bought any yaoi besides those BL games from Character Queen. My interest in this trip had been in buying posters, art and game characters of Death Note, which I've recently discovered. However as I quickly learned, none of the stores stock DN art or posters or pretty much anything. I found a calendar, T-shirt, two stickers, a phone charm and a statue of Ryuk (though I only bought the calendar, a sticker and the charm), but that's it. I really, really wanted some art. So then it occurred to me, there are doujinshi out there with gorgeous covers. I'm not a fan of djs in general because I consider them a crap shoot. Half the time the art inside sucks (and everything is sealed so you can't check). But in this instance I didn't care about the inside art. I figured if the art was bad, I'd just cut off the cover and use it as a mini poster. What a great idea! I immediately stocked up, buying 20 Death Note djs with the best covers (18 are here, 2 are going into the big YaoiCon raffle giveaway). My favorite is the one on the very bottom right. The text is covered in velvet. I would have bought more if I'd had time to go to the Mandarake in Ikebukuro again. I bought all the nice covers in Sapporo, though (they ranged in price from $2 - $6 so it's easy to load up). I just learned there's a Death Note movie coming out, so maybe when I next return to Japan there'll be a lot more product. Note: I'm glad I'm not into Prince of Tennis because there's a gazillion tie-ins you could buy and I would've gone broke. And here, I have to admit to something which some of you will think awful. I bought hentai. For me. At first I was terribly embarrassed to do it, not because of the clerks; they were super professional and easy to purchase from. They've probably seen everything. No, I was embarrassed because of other women. That made me a little ticked off. I thought, why is it okay to buy yaoi books with graphic sex and sometimes noncon in them and tell everyone about it (and in fact they'll be envious of you) and yet if you buy something het, you're suddenly a perv? It's kind of how I feel some women (not all!) treat yaoi: that if it's two men and they can't associate it with their own sexuality, then they can pretend they don't wish some of the things that happen to yaoi guys happen to them. Well phooey on that. I like sex and I like reading about it, so I'm gonna buy some hentai, damn it! I don't have any problem associating the woman in the pictures with myself (minus the huge boobs of course). So yeah, after I decided that, I went and bought six hentai books and three of them are pretty damn hot (the other three are a little too graphic and were obviously written for men interested in detailed pics of female anatomy). I'll give those to my guy friend. And you know what? The next time I go to Japan I'm gonna buy some more. Hee!
I didn't know what I was buying but I ended up with two FF7 comics and a Death Note one, ironically enough. Then we headed off for the snow festival.
I should've got a shot of a person in this to show you the scale. It's pretty much a full-sized temple. It's awesome. The snow here was amazingly powdery. It was literally like walking on baby powder, it had that consistency beneath our boots. It made for some slippery surfaces and there were warnings all over the place to watch your footing. We were even given a pamphlet at the airport with instructions on how to walk on the streets so you don't fall.
So the specialty of the region is Hokkaido snow crab. These puppies are HUGE! Compare their size with the guy in back. Each crab is practically the size of your head. These are selling for around $40 each.
Because this is sooo appropriate for Japan. They had a large woman yodeler, too. And she was good!
Coca-Cola dancers in front of a huge montage of something. I want to say the big-headed dude is a golfer since I thought I saw a golf ball next to him, but I'm not sure. These dancers, though, man, they were really happy. It was like they'd all done mushrooms before running on stage.
A rock band in front of a huge ice castle. They were pretty good. The girl had a nice voice.
I tried to take pics of them separately but they kept bouncing around.
There were more elaborate carvings, certainly, but from what I could tell this carving receiving the most attention.
I like this one a lot. It's multi-dimensional with a lot of detail.
I want to know if they cheated on that railing. I mean, how in the world would snow stay suspended like that?
There must have been a couple hundred carvings. After a while you just can't take any more pictures and I figured you guys would get bored after a handful anyway.
Look at the size of the people in comparison. Isn't that amazing? The thing was enormous.
"One of these penguins is not like the others ..." That night I needed to use the internet again so a friend and I went searching Sapporo for a Yahoo cafe he'd seen earlier. It turned out to be closed, but I'd spotted a comic and internet cafe on a side street so we went there. Good thing my friend can manage broken Japanese and read it, too, because the girl at the desk didn't speak English. We managed to get 30 minutes for 3 bucks, which is high, but it ended up being worth it. Upstairs past what looked like a library of manga, we were each given our own cubicle containing a sofa, a desk, a flat screen TV and a computer. 'Course I only used the computer but it was nice. Also, you could have all you could drink hot or cold beverages so I had hot chocolate. The keyboard was a Japanese one and I managed to fumble my way around it and input new subscribers. I was in the middle of making an LJ entry when I accidentally pushed a button near the space bar. Suddenly every character I typed was in Japanese. I couldn't switch it back to English. It was okay, though, because I'd already finished my business.
Feb 8th - Sapporo
This was very, very cool. We're at the Sapporo Bier Garten (beer garden). For $30 we could eat all the lamb and veggies we could stuff down our throats in 90 minutes. I ate super fast the first 20 minutes and then I wanted to roll over and die.
Look at our spread! This was repeated at every place setting. On the upper right is the grill where you laid your meat and vegetables on. You had to first prep it by rubbing a cube of lamb fat over the surface. That's a dipping sauce at the bottom and next to it is a bib which was a good idea since the fat splattered all over the place. On the plate are bean sprouts, cabbage, kabocha squash, onions, and slices of lamb. The lamb was so stiff you could stand it on end, making me believe it was either partially frozen or else cured. It was delicious!
Okay, yeah, I know the meat looks kinda gross here but it's about to be flipped so it can cook on the other side. It was truly, truly delicious. I don't normally eat the fat from meat (I'll only eat filet mignon, for instance) but these things had fat all over them and I gobbled them up because they tasted sooo good. There was a lot of smoke, which was why each person was given a plastic bag to stuff their coat into. The bag then hung from pegs underneath the table for that purpose. I should've asked for a shower cap, too. When we went to Book Off afterwards, I could smell the lamb in my hair, and no doubt everyone else could, too. Good thing there weren't any packs of wild dogs roaming around, otherwise I'd have been dinner.
This was such a good meal. Oh, man, I wish they had these things in the U.S.
This was at Hobby Off, which we walked to after eating the lamb feast. Oh, my god, I thought about buying this for a split second. It's a Hamtaro maker! Haha! It's cute, but then I asked myself, what the hell would I do with a bunch of Hamtaros? O_o
Isaac, one of our guides.
Feb 9th - Shinagawa After shopping at Book Off and Hobby Off it was time to return to Tokyo. We checked back into the Shinigawa Prince hotel that night and Chris and I ate our first ramen of the whole trip there. Then we had crepes again for the third time. The next morning we cruised the gift shops a little but we really had no more room in our luggage if we bought anything. I did buy two happis (sp?) for my mom and myself. They're like short kimonos.
Chris, waiting in the lobby of our hotel for our final departure. *sniff* I really loved the hotel we stayed at. I highly recommend the Shinigawa Prince Hotel to anyone who visits. It's very close to Western standards and it's directly across the street from the train station. Plus it has a food court, a movie theater, a bowling alley, an aquarium with a seal show, and probably other stuff I don't know about.
I went to Tokyo and all I got was a lousy newspaper ... with me in it! Whee! A reporter and photographer had followed us around on one of the days and this is the result. Lydia and I are in the top photo and Chris and I are in the bottom. How cool is this?! The middle picture, by the way, is taken from the Maid Cafe, where servers dress like maids and offer you special services. You have to buy 30 minutes worth of talk time for $60 first, and then you can buy things like putting your head in a maid's lap and having her massage your feet. Really weird, huh? So it was time to leave. We all hopped on a limo bus for the ride to the airport. I really didn't want to fly away. It was sad. I'll definitely be going on this tour again or else living in Tokyo. When I returned to the U.S. and encountered unfriendly customs agents and grumpy gift store clerks I really missed Japan. It's a wonderful place, even if you're not into anime or any of the stuff I bought. The culture itself is great and as Isaac once said, "They're as afraid of you as you are of them", so no one will ever yell at you or criticize you for making tourist-y mistakes. If you ever get the opportunity to go, or better yet if you want to go with me, I highly recommend it! -Tricia, February 13, 2006
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