Lets Go to Japan! Part 1
OMG I need to get off my lazy butt TIME TO TALK ABOUT JAPAN! Here we go! Tons of text and pics under the cut :D I'm only going to do these posts covering 2 days at a time, because it's alot! So, let's start!
Day 1: Arriving in LAX, Meeting the tour group, Plane ride, Tokyo Tower, and a painful dinner..
Today John and I took a flight from SFO to LA, where we stood around the airport and were worried because we couldn't find our group. The guides showed up about 40 minutes later and we all rushed over! Everyone seemed really nice and seemed to have a good sense of humor, with all of us being geeks there wasn't any awkwardness at all. We were expecting a ton of people to be in our group... but there were only 7 of us at the airport, including the guides and me and John! Definitely a small group. The guides were named Evan and Gigi, and the rest of the group was Mike, Carina, and Chris. We were expecting another couple, but it turned out they were trapped in the airport in Denver because of a snowstorm, so they were planning to join us the following day in Japan. Evan and Gigi gave us our travel packets: which included the obligatory Pocky and free manga to keep us sane during the flight, then we all waited around for about an hour. We all went through the crazy security checkpoints, then waited around the waiting area and joked around until it was time for our flight. The airplane was Korean Air, and it was HUGE GINORMOUS WHOA, which I love because it means less turbulence! I'm a really horrible flyer and I tend to get massive panic attacks during takeoff, but I don't mind the bigger planes as much. It was ritzy and we all had our own personal touchscreens in the seats in front of us. Pretty awesome because they had movies that weren't even on DVD yet to watch.
Despite the fabulous entertainment, this flight was LONG. The seats were a bit cramped, and after 5 hours in the 11 hour flight my legs weren't happy. By the time we were 3 hours from Japan, I was totally stir crazy and spent most of it staring at the "countdown to destination" clock D:
It might look like I'm smiling, but I'm really wincing in pain. XD
But it was worth it when we finally touched down in Narita. While we're walking towards customs, the tour guides were telling us that customs was going to be ridiculously strict, that if we had any meds or anything they're going to crack down on us, so I'm sitting there being terrified that they're going to take away the anxiety meds I got for the flight. So after getting my bag, I walk to the customs officer looking like a scared kitten.. Here's how it went:
"Customs officer: Why are you in Japan?
Me: I'm with a tour group..
Customs officer: Ok, have a nice time!"
XD!! What! They were so easy going, didn't even glace at my bags hahaha. After going through customs, we all went to the money exchange counter and got some yen. Now I'm sitting there thinking that I brought a ton of cash to exchange, but Carina was the one who ended up literally breaking the bank. XD! She's a big cel collector, so she apparently brought a boatload of cash to exchange.. so much so that when the machine was counting her hundred dollar bills it broke, and they had to bring in 5 guys to fix it. lol! Now that's a serious collector, you guys. After we all had some cash, we jumped on a bus bound for Shinagawa.
The bus ride was mostly quiet since we were all tired from the plane ride, but I took the time to take lots of videos. It was raining, but my heart was still in my throat from excitement. The bus ride took around 45 minutes, and then we finally pulled up to the Shinagawa Prince hotel. This hotel was incredible! It had an IMAX theater, an aquarium, crazy amounts of restaurants, a shopping mall in it, it was a crazy high end hotel. Of course, we didn't get to see anything inside the hotel due to our extreme busyness during this trip, but that's ok! We checked into our rooms, which were mid-size rooms, which is something to be desired in Tokyo, haha. We were really high up in the tower so we got a lovely view of Shinagawa, and if you craned your neck you were even able to see the Tokyo Tower from our room, it was nice. After we were all settled in, at 7pm we met back up with everyone in the lobby.
Then it was time to see the Tokyo Tower up close! As we started our walk, 2 new members joined out party: Ursula and Frankie. They came there from Singapore to join our group! Introduced ourselves then we all walked for about 20 minutes through the side streets to find a small subway station, then we took a couple of transfers until we finally reached the Tower. It is absolutely breathtaking in real life, so much more so than in pictures. We got plenty of picture opportunities during the walk towards the tower. It was raining so the pics really don't do the tower justice.
Tower from afar.. bad pic because of the rain ><
Tower a little closer!
The tower was definitely different from what I expected. At the bottom, there were a couple of shops, which we spent some time looking in. Then we all took the elevator to the observation area. We were there on a Thursday, and apparently on Thursdays they have live music so there was a guy there playing guitar. Definitely added to the experience! I took a ton of videos in there and unfortunately no pics really turned out of the inside of the tower, but I'm too lazy to upload my videos. So here's a couple of pics from inside:
Here's one of the views from inside the tower.
Here's the guy that was playing live music in the tower.
We walked around, enjoying the view, I bought my mom a ton of souveniers (she collects Eiffel Tower stuff, but Tokyo Tower is the next best thing! XD), enjoyed the musician, and had a lovely evening in the tower. Oh, speaking of the tower, I need to mention this.. the mascots of the tower look like penises. No, really, what is this?!
Hahaha! What else could that be? We all took a picture outside of the tower:
Meet the group! Mike on the left, Gigi, Carina behind Gigi, Chris next to them, me and John in the back, and Ursula and Frankie in the front! And Evan is.. taking the picture, so here's a picture of Evan from inside the tower so you know what he looks like XD:
Our oh so professional guides? XD
And then by this time, we were all getting pretty cranky and hungry. So we all walk back to the subway, which ends up being closed >< So we had to walk pretty far to get to the next station that was open, then we make 3 transfers to get back to our hotel. We then walked back to the hotel, where Evan says that he knows a great place to eat. Now, at this point, I'm going to be honest, I was exhausted, my feet were throbbing, and I would have been quite content with eating at a fast food place at this point. But he insisted that we all go to this restaurant that he had in mind. Oh and keep in mind, by now it's 10pm and we're all jetlagged like no other. I expected the restaurant to be close. But it ended up being a 30 minute walk to get there. Ugggh. The group wasn't the least bit happy, I'll tell you that. The restaurant ended up being really strange. I'm not sure what it's called, but it was a place where you order small plates and share them. We got to be in the special back area that's usually reserved for big spenders, and it was traditional Japanese style seating which was interesting. And we never actually ordered from a waitor, there was a touchscreen where you choose what you want and then they just bring it out XD
No no, my redness isn't from getting drunk, it's from being DEAD TIRED! XD
The food itself was.. just ok. Wasn't worth the jetlagged walk, for sure, but it was an interesting experience at least. After eating we walked back to the hotel, tired out of our minds, and passed out as soon as we got back to the room.
Day 2: The Ghibli museum, Akihabara shopping, authentic ramen, crane machines, and a Maid Cafe!
Today we woke up and met with everyone in the lobby at 8:30, we ended up being a little late. We all headed to the subway where I ate authentic melon bread for the first time.
*angels sing* It was DELICIOUS!
They actually had an Anderson bakery there (same bakery that's in Japan town), and this melon bread.. oh my god. It was crunchy and sweet on the outside and chewy on the inside, and it was just amazing. Then it was time to jump on the subway and head towards the Ghibli museum. After we got off at the right station, we had a bit of a walk to get to Ghibli, but it was a heck of a lot more fun than I ever imagined it would be. PIC OUTSIDE OF GHIBLI
Sign for the Ghibli museum!
Totoroooooooo!
Many of the exhibits were interactive. They don't allow photography so I unfortunately don't have any pics of the inside, but I'll try my best to explain it. I could be completely wrong on this since I'm going from memory, but here it goes! As you go down the stairs from the main desk, you're greeted with an odd looking structure, to the left is a spiral staircase that leads to the 3rd floor, also to the left is big doors which lead to a movie theatre. To the right is an exhibit room, where they had a giant tube full of figures that would twirl around, and as it turned the way the figures were made it look as if they were moving. This was my favorite part of the museum, it was mind blowing to me. This is really something you have to experience, it's incredible. There were also mini 3D dioramas from different Miyazaki movies, and a film reel to show how each cel becomes animated. On the 2nd floor there was a cat bus area for the kiddies to play in, and a gift shop. On the 3rd floor is an area that has original sketches and cels from tons of different Ghibli films, and a giant Ponyo exhibit. Oh, and there were gorgeous stained glass windows which featured different characters, which I found to be amazing. And then you could go on the roof, where pictures were allowed! I'll be honest, I've only seen Spirited Away, Howl's Castle, Ponyo, and Princess Mononoke, so I have no clue what these statues are based off of, but we posed with them anyway!
Mecha dude?!?
Square of destiny?!? I dont know XD Hahaha.
We got to see a video being shown in their small movie theater, which was an original Ghibli short about sumo wrestling mice. It was adorable! We also shopped at the gift shop for awhile, they had some incredible stuff. John bought a pin, and I bought an adorable Soot Sprite plush keychain, because I'm in love with Soot Sprites X3 Something that I found truly amazing about this museum was that there were tour groups from so many different countries there. I saw a tour group from Germany, and even a tour group from France! It's nice that the world can come together to enjoy the same films, that really made me happy to see.
After enjoying the museum, we took the trek back to the subway station. While we were there, there was a guy announcing something on a speakerphone. Evan explained that someone had committed suicide in front of a train, and that it was a daily occurrence which is why nobody was even paying attention to the announcement. Definitely a difference in cultures when it comes to the topic of suicide. This certainly was a daily occurance, because for the rest of the vacation while we were on the train we would see "Accident" on the screen every single day. Very sad. But on a much lighter note.. we took the subway to Akihabara!
AKIHABARRAAAAAAAA!
Akihibara has become my favorite place ever! As soon as we got there, I got to see how crazily it's changed since I was there in 2001, it looks completely different! Anime shops and game shops EVERYWHERE, so heavenly. But before we got to explore the amazingness of Akihabara, Evan said he was going to take us to a delicious ramen shop. So we all headed down an alley until we came across an extremely small ramen shop. I ordered an "Everything" ramen that had a lot of unidentifiable meats in it, and yet it was the best bowl of ramen I've ever tasted. The broth wasn't too spicy but had just the right taste, the noodles were perfect, the unidentifiable meats whatever they might be were delicious.
Tasty Tasty Tasty ramen!
Crazy gaijin taking up all the counterspace!
But my meal was slightly stressful, because since the place was so small, and we were taking up the entire counter! So there was a line outside waiting for us to finish, and I was on the end where the employees would stand over me watching me eat @.@ A little nerve wracking, considering my ramen skills aren't exactly leveled up. I was splashing broth everywhere and dropping noodles, hahaha. But it was delicious, so it was worth the stress! After a tasty meal, it was time to branch away from the group for.. SHOPPING! Ohh glorious shopping. We started our journey at Animate, a glorious 8 floor store full of nothing but rare (and many exclusive to Animate stores) items. It was heavenly and my credit card company loves me. lol. I spent way too much money, my most exciting finds from Animate were Tsubasa card covers and book covers, Kobato figure, P3P straps, Persona Jack Frost headphone straps, CLAMP in Cardland binder (Yesss been wanting on forever), a Tsubasa inflatable pillow (there's feathers in it that float around, awesome), and soo much more. Love Animate, really. Then we went next door to Tora No Ana, a giant doujinshi store. Unfortunately, they seemed to only have newer doujinshi from the recent Comikets, and I was looking more for older stuff. And their sales bins were unmarked so I didn't want to spend the time looking through them >< It was funny though, the top floor was nothing but porn doujinshi, and I was fervently looking through the shelves for a Tsubasa porn I've been searching for for years... and realized I was probably the only girl that ever stepped foot in there. I got quite a few stares, that's for sure, hahahaha. Damn it, I'll buy porn if I want, the copious amounts of boobs on covers will not deter me! Sadly though, I didn't find anything ;_;
Hard to see, but Tora no Ana and Animate are right next to each other XD
By now, I'm having so many hot flashes and my legs are dangerously ready to give out they're shaking so badly. It might not seem like a lot of walking as I'm posting this, but I assure you, we were on our feet 90% of the time every day from 8am-midnight, it was a lot! We walked over to 7-11 to get a pick me up, chugging a drink helped quite a bit. Then we walked a few blocks down to my other most favorite store ever: Mandarake! Mandarake is a chain of stores in Japan that buy anybody's used Anime items, and then they resell them. You'd think it would be a store full of broken anime goods or something, but not at all. Most of the items in there were brand new, sealed, never been opened, in perfect condition.. and marked down insanely to low prices because they are considered "used". I saw a Shaymin pillow that I reallllyy wanted, and I really wanted to spend more time there, but our meeting time with the tour group was coming quickly so we didn't really have enough time to really shop there, boo. I did manage to snag a sitting CCS Sakura figure for $3, and a full set of Tales of Symphonia gachapon figures for $8, not bad at all. So we limp slowly towards the meeting spot, and get slightly lost due to a sudden downpour and the fact that I was in a sour mood for not being able to finish looking through the store. Finally after walking back and forth we found them, then we had some time to kill before going to the maid cafe so we spent our time in Club Sega!
Club Sega is one of many gigantic gaming places covered with crane machines, giant tetris, and so many more wonderful things. It was here that I discovered my talent for Japanese crane machines XD Japanese crane machines are a little different, the figures are down on their sides with a ring strapped to them, and instead of lifting the figure, you try to pull it off the ledge. After a few tries, the Rena figure I wanted was mine! I was so excited! My bucket list had "Win from a Japanese crane machine", and I did it~ haha. Oh, and the crane machine places were great because every machine had rare anime figures in them. And TONS of them! Love it! After some walking around, it was time to head towards the Maid Cafe! The maid cafe was called Pinky Cafe, and it was an experience I will never forget XD
"Love-u Love-u PINKY PINKY!"
Basically, all the waitresses were dressed up like anime maids, and they acted really cute. Pretty much everybody got burgers which were interesting.. considering the burger had a giant slice of egg on it, and the "fries" were potatoes shaped like smiley faces.
Burger with egg!
MY FRIES ARE HAPPY!
The obligatory melon soda, which is pretty much what I drank everywhere lol. SO YUM.
There was this one loner customer in the back.. to be quite honest, I never noticed him there until we left, he was so quiet o.o But yeah inside the maid cafe!
Carlos and our guides REALLY like those potatoes..
Ah, and Carlos joined us late, he might show up in other pics in these entries because he just showed up for short periods of time lol. Oh yes, and we had to perform a "magical spell" on our food to make it taste better, and seeing some of the more serious guys on the tour doing this made me laugh. There was a sign about there being a live show, so Carina and I started talking about how we wanted to see a live show.. and moments later, the lights dim! Yayyy! 3 of the maids got up and did a sing and dance for us, it was..do I dare say it... so cute, ugugugu. Frankie couldn't take the cute and actually left and waited outside, that's how much cute there was in there XD We got to do cute little motions with our arms to the music while they sang, it was so fricking cute and I loved it. Carina, John, and I were having the time of our live, but.. the rest of the group seemed very disturbed. Oh well, all I know is that I loved the experience lol. Oh yeah, and we all got personalized pictures with out maid, but I've already framed mine so I'll have to share it later XD Soooo cute though!
After dinner, since we were so hyped up from the cute, we decided to go to a place called Don Quiote. But I decided to go on a search for the Higurashi Daybreak PSP game since there was a video game store right next door. So I checked, and they had it! So I bought it, and was pretty much happy until.. I went into the video game store next door to that, and found the LIMITED edition version for the same price. Damn! So of course I bought it, I can't turn down 3 figures and a CD, so I'll be selling the regular version lol. Back to Don Quiote, we decided to check out inside. It was the most randomest store you could possibly imagine, with towels and housewares and sex costumes and food and.. just random. But there wasn't anything geeky, so we soon turned bored.. well, until we saw the crane machines around the corner. I won an Umineko figure first try :D So awesome, I love Japanese crane machines. Spent a looong time trying to win John something, poor Johnoes was not having the crane luck that I was having >< Soon our time ran up so we went to the bottom floor to wait for the rest of the group. While we waited, we found this!
PANTIES?!?!
Yep, that is exactly what it looks like: a gachapon machine where you put in 500 yen and get some girl's used panties. HAHAHAHA. Oh, Japan. After everyone was done shopping we headed back to the subway, went back to the hotel, and promptly passed out yet again.
And that's only the first 2 days! I have never done so much in one day until this trip came around, we did so much everyday. There's still many more days to write about, so stay tuned~! In the next entry, I'll talk about the next 2 days of the trip which include: the Tokyo Anime Faire, Pokemon Center Tokyo, Harajuku, Shibuya, the Square Enix store, a sushi misadventure, and much more. Lots and lots to talk about XD
Day 1: Arriving in LAX, Meeting the tour group, Plane ride, Tokyo Tower, and a painful dinner..
Today John and I took a flight from SFO to LA, where we stood around the airport and were worried because we couldn't find our group. The guides showed up about 40 minutes later and we all rushed over! Everyone seemed really nice and seemed to have a good sense of humor, with all of us being geeks there wasn't any awkwardness at all. We were expecting a ton of people to be in our group... but there were only 7 of us at the airport, including the guides and me and John! Definitely a small group. The guides were named Evan and Gigi, and the rest of the group was Mike, Carina, and Chris. We were expecting another couple, but it turned out they were trapped in the airport in Denver because of a snowstorm, so they were planning to join us the following day in Japan. Evan and Gigi gave us our travel packets: which included the obligatory Pocky and free manga to keep us sane during the flight, then we all waited around for about an hour. We all went through the crazy security checkpoints, then waited around the waiting area and joked around until it was time for our flight. The airplane was Korean Air, and it was HUGE GINORMOUS WHOA, which I love because it means less turbulence! I'm a really horrible flyer and I tend to get massive panic attacks during takeoff, but I don't mind the bigger planes as much. It was ritzy and we all had our own personal touchscreens in the seats in front of us. Pretty awesome because they had movies that weren't even on DVD yet to watch.
Despite the fabulous entertainment, this flight was LONG. The seats were a bit cramped, and after 5 hours in the 11 hour flight my legs weren't happy. By the time we were 3 hours from Japan, I was totally stir crazy and spent most of it staring at the "countdown to destination" clock D:
It might look like I'm smiling, but I'm really wincing in pain. XD
But it was worth it when we finally touched down in Narita. While we're walking towards customs, the tour guides were telling us that customs was going to be ridiculously strict, that if we had any meds or anything they're going to crack down on us, so I'm sitting there being terrified that they're going to take away the anxiety meds I got for the flight. So after getting my bag, I walk to the customs officer looking like a scared kitten.. Here's how it went:
"Customs officer: Why are you in Japan?
Me: I'm with a tour group..
Customs officer: Ok, have a nice time!"
XD!! What! They were so easy going, didn't even glace at my bags hahaha. After going through customs, we all went to the money exchange counter and got some yen. Now I'm sitting there thinking that I brought a ton of cash to exchange, but Carina was the one who ended up literally breaking the bank. XD! She's a big cel collector, so she apparently brought a boatload of cash to exchange.. so much so that when the machine was counting her hundred dollar bills it broke, and they had to bring in 5 guys to fix it. lol! Now that's a serious collector, you guys. After we all had some cash, we jumped on a bus bound for Shinagawa.
The bus ride was mostly quiet since we were all tired from the plane ride, but I took the time to take lots of videos. It was raining, but my heart was still in my throat from excitement. The bus ride took around 45 minutes, and then we finally pulled up to the Shinagawa Prince hotel. This hotel was incredible! It had an IMAX theater, an aquarium, crazy amounts of restaurants, a shopping mall in it, it was a crazy high end hotel. Of course, we didn't get to see anything inside the hotel due to our extreme busyness during this trip, but that's ok! We checked into our rooms, which were mid-size rooms, which is something to be desired in Tokyo, haha. We were really high up in the tower so we got a lovely view of Shinagawa, and if you craned your neck you were even able to see the Tokyo Tower from our room, it was nice. After we were all settled in, at 7pm we met back up with everyone in the lobby.
Then it was time to see the Tokyo Tower up close! As we started our walk, 2 new members joined out party: Ursula and Frankie. They came there from Singapore to join our group! Introduced ourselves then we all walked for about 20 minutes through the side streets to find a small subway station, then we took a couple of transfers until we finally reached the Tower. It is absolutely breathtaking in real life, so much more so than in pictures. We got plenty of picture opportunities during the walk towards the tower. It was raining so the pics really don't do the tower justice.
Tower from afar.. bad pic because of the rain ><
Tower a little closer!
The tower was definitely different from what I expected. At the bottom, there were a couple of shops, which we spent some time looking in. Then we all took the elevator to the observation area. We were there on a Thursday, and apparently on Thursdays they have live music so there was a guy there playing guitar. Definitely added to the experience! I took a ton of videos in there and unfortunately no pics really turned out of the inside of the tower, but I'm too lazy to upload my videos. So here's a couple of pics from inside:
Here's one of the views from inside the tower.
Here's the guy that was playing live music in the tower.
We walked around, enjoying the view, I bought my mom a ton of souveniers (she collects Eiffel Tower stuff, but Tokyo Tower is the next best thing! XD), enjoyed the musician, and had a lovely evening in the tower. Oh, speaking of the tower, I need to mention this.. the mascots of the tower look like penises. No, really, what is this?!
Hahaha! What else could that be? We all took a picture outside of the tower:
Meet the group! Mike on the left, Gigi, Carina behind Gigi, Chris next to them, me and John in the back, and Ursula and Frankie in the front! And Evan is.. taking the picture, so here's a picture of Evan from inside the tower so you know what he looks like XD:
Our oh so professional guides? XD
And then by this time, we were all getting pretty cranky and hungry. So we all walk back to the subway, which ends up being closed >< So we had to walk pretty far to get to the next station that was open, then we make 3 transfers to get back to our hotel. We then walked back to the hotel, where Evan says that he knows a great place to eat. Now, at this point, I'm going to be honest, I was exhausted, my feet were throbbing, and I would have been quite content with eating at a fast food place at this point. But he insisted that we all go to this restaurant that he had in mind. Oh and keep in mind, by now it's 10pm and we're all jetlagged like no other. I expected the restaurant to be close. But it ended up being a 30 minute walk to get there. Ugggh. The group wasn't the least bit happy, I'll tell you that. The restaurant ended up being really strange. I'm not sure what it's called, but it was a place where you order small plates and share them. We got to be in the special back area that's usually reserved for big spenders, and it was traditional Japanese style seating which was interesting. And we never actually ordered from a waitor, there was a touchscreen where you choose what you want and then they just bring it out XD
No no, my redness isn't from getting drunk, it's from being DEAD TIRED! XD
The food itself was.. just ok. Wasn't worth the jetlagged walk, for sure, but it was an interesting experience at least. After eating we walked back to the hotel, tired out of our minds, and passed out as soon as we got back to the room.
Day 2: The Ghibli museum, Akihabara shopping, authentic ramen, crane machines, and a Maid Cafe!
Today we woke up and met with everyone in the lobby at 8:30, we ended up being a little late. We all headed to the subway where I ate authentic melon bread for the first time.
*angels sing* It was DELICIOUS!
They actually had an Anderson bakery there (same bakery that's in Japan town), and this melon bread.. oh my god. It was crunchy and sweet on the outside and chewy on the inside, and it was just amazing. Then it was time to jump on the subway and head towards the Ghibli museum. After we got off at the right station, we had a bit of a walk to get to Ghibli, but it was a heck of a lot more fun than I ever imagined it would be. PIC OUTSIDE OF GHIBLI
Sign for the Ghibli museum!
Totoroooooooo!
Many of the exhibits were interactive. They don't allow photography so I unfortunately don't have any pics of the inside, but I'll try my best to explain it. I could be completely wrong on this since I'm going from memory, but here it goes! As you go down the stairs from the main desk, you're greeted with an odd looking structure, to the left is a spiral staircase that leads to the 3rd floor, also to the left is big doors which lead to a movie theatre. To the right is an exhibit room, where they had a giant tube full of figures that would twirl around, and as it turned the way the figures were made it look as if they were moving. This was my favorite part of the museum, it was mind blowing to me. This is really something you have to experience, it's incredible. There were also mini 3D dioramas from different Miyazaki movies, and a film reel to show how each cel becomes animated. On the 2nd floor there was a cat bus area for the kiddies to play in, and a gift shop. On the 3rd floor is an area that has original sketches and cels from tons of different Ghibli films, and a giant Ponyo exhibit. Oh, and there were gorgeous stained glass windows which featured different characters, which I found to be amazing. And then you could go on the roof, where pictures were allowed! I'll be honest, I've only seen Spirited Away, Howl's Castle, Ponyo, and Princess Mononoke, so I have no clue what these statues are based off of, but we posed with them anyway!
Mecha dude?!?
Square of destiny?!? I dont know XD Hahaha.
We got to see a video being shown in their small movie theater, which was an original Ghibli short about sumo wrestling mice. It was adorable! We also shopped at the gift shop for awhile, they had some incredible stuff. John bought a pin, and I bought an adorable Soot Sprite plush keychain, because I'm in love with Soot Sprites X3 Something that I found truly amazing about this museum was that there were tour groups from so many different countries there. I saw a tour group from Germany, and even a tour group from France! It's nice that the world can come together to enjoy the same films, that really made me happy to see.
After enjoying the museum, we took the trek back to the subway station. While we were there, there was a guy announcing something on a speakerphone. Evan explained that someone had committed suicide in front of a train, and that it was a daily occurrence which is why nobody was even paying attention to the announcement. Definitely a difference in cultures when it comes to the topic of suicide. This certainly was a daily occurance, because for the rest of the vacation while we were on the train we would see "Accident" on the screen every single day. Very sad. But on a much lighter note.. we took the subway to Akihabara!
AKIHABARRAAAAAAAA!
Akihibara has become my favorite place ever! As soon as we got there, I got to see how crazily it's changed since I was there in 2001, it looks completely different! Anime shops and game shops EVERYWHERE, so heavenly. But before we got to explore the amazingness of Akihabara, Evan said he was going to take us to a delicious ramen shop. So we all headed down an alley until we came across an extremely small ramen shop. I ordered an "Everything" ramen that had a lot of unidentifiable meats in it, and yet it was the best bowl of ramen I've ever tasted. The broth wasn't too spicy but had just the right taste, the noodles were perfect, the unidentifiable meats whatever they might be were delicious.
Tasty Tasty Tasty ramen!
Crazy gaijin taking up all the counterspace!
But my meal was slightly stressful, because since the place was so small, and we were taking up the entire counter! So there was a line outside waiting for us to finish, and I was on the end where the employees would stand over me watching me eat @.@ A little nerve wracking, considering my ramen skills aren't exactly leveled up. I was splashing broth everywhere and dropping noodles, hahaha. But it was delicious, so it was worth the stress! After a tasty meal, it was time to branch away from the group for.. SHOPPING! Ohh glorious shopping. We started our journey at Animate, a glorious 8 floor store full of nothing but rare (and many exclusive to Animate stores) items. It was heavenly and my credit card company loves me. lol. I spent way too much money, my most exciting finds from Animate were Tsubasa card covers and book covers, Kobato figure, P3P straps, Persona Jack Frost headphone straps, CLAMP in Cardland binder (Yesss been wanting on forever), a Tsubasa inflatable pillow (there's feathers in it that float around, awesome), and soo much more. Love Animate, really. Then we went next door to Tora No Ana, a giant doujinshi store. Unfortunately, they seemed to only have newer doujinshi from the recent Comikets, and I was looking more for older stuff. And their sales bins were unmarked so I didn't want to spend the time looking through them >< It was funny though, the top floor was nothing but porn doujinshi, and I was fervently looking through the shelves for a Tsubasa porn I've been searching for for years... and realized I was probably the only girl that ever stepped foot in there. I got quite a few stares, that's for sure, hahahaha. Damn it, I'll buy porn if I want, the copious amounts of boobs on covers will not deter me! Sadly though, I didn't find anything ;_;
Hard to see, but Tora no Ana and Animate are right next to each other XD
By now, I'm having so many hot flashes and my legs are dangerously ready to give out they're shaking so badly. It might not seem like a lot of walking as I'm posting this, but I assure you, we were on our feet 90% of the time every day from 8am-midnight, it was a lot! We walked over to 7-11 to get a pick me up, chugging a drink helped quite a bit. Then we walked a few blocks down to my other most favorite store ever: Mandarake! Mandarake is a chain of stores in Japan that buy anybody's used Anime items, and then they resell them. You'd think it would be a store full of broken anime goods or something, but not at all. Most of the items in there were brand new, sealed, never been opened, in perfect condition.. and marked down insanely to low prices because they are considered "used". I saw a Shaymin pillow that I reallllyy wanted, and I really wanted to spend more time there, but our meeting time with the tour group was coming quickly so we didn't really have enough time to really shop there, boo. I did manage to snag a sitting CCS Sakura figure for $3, and a full set of Tales of Symphonia gachapon figures for $8, not bad at all. So we limp slowly towards the meeting spot, and get slightly lost due to a sudden downpour and the fact that I was in a sour mood for not being able to finish looking through the store. Finally after walking back and forth we found them, then we had some time to kill before going to the maid cafe so we spent our time in Club Sega!
Club Sega is one of many gigantic gaming places covered with crane machines, giant tetris, and so many more wonderful things. It was here that I discovered my talent for Japanese crane machines XD Japanese crane machines are a little different, the figures are down on their sides with a ring strapped to them, and instead of lifting the figure, you try to pull it off the ledge. After a few tries, the Rena figure I wanted was mine! I was so excited! My bucket list had "Win from a Japanese crane machine", and I did it~ haha. Oh, and the crane machine places were great because every machine had rare anime figures in them. And TONS of them! Love it! After some walking around, it was time to head towards the Maid Cafe! The maid cafe was called Pinky Cafe, and it was an experience I will never forget XD
"Love-u Love-u PINKY PINKY!"
Basically, all the waitresses were dressed up like anime maids, and they acted really cute. Pretty much everybody got burgers which were interesting.. considering the burger had a giant slice of egg on it, and the "fries" were potatoes shaped like smiley faces.
Burger with egg!
MY FRIES ARE HAPPY!
The obligatory melon soda, which is pretty much what I drank everywhere lol. SO YUM.
There was this one loner customer in the back.. to be quite honest, I never noticed him there until we left, he was so quiet o.o But yeah inside the maid cafe!
Carlos and our guides REALLY like those potatoes..
Ah, and Carlos joined us late, he might show up in other pics in these entries because he just showed up for short periods of time lol. Oh yes, and we had to perform a "magical spell" on our food to make it taste better, and seeing some of the more serious guys on the tour doing this made me laugh. There was a sign about there being a live show, so Carina and I started talking about how we wanted to see a live show.. and moments later, the lights dim! Yayyy! 3 of the maids got up and did a sing and dance for us, it was..do I dare say it... so cute, ugugugu. Frankie couldn't take the cute and actually left and waited outside, that's how much cute there was in there XD We got to do cute little motions with our arms to the music while they sang, it was so fricking cute and I loved it. Carina, John, and I were having the time of our live, but.. the rest of the group seemed very disturbed. Oh well, all I know is that I loved the experience lol. Oh yeah, and we all got personalized pictures with out maid, but I've already framed mine so I'll have to share it later XD Soooo cute though!
After dinner, since we were so hyped up from the cute, we decided to go to a place called Don Quiote. But I decided to go on a search for the Higurashi Daybreak PSP game since there was a video game store right next door. So I checked, and they had it! So I bought it, and was pretty much happy until.. I went into the video game store next door to that, and found the LIMITED edition version for the same price. Damn! So of course I bought it, I can't turn down 3 figures and a CD, so I'll be selling the regular version lol. Back to Don Quiote, we decided to check out inside. It was the most randomest store you could possibly imagine, with towels and housewares and sex costumes and food and.. just random. But there wasn't anything geeky, so we soon turned bored.. well, until we saw the crane machines around the corner. I won an Umineko figure first try :D So awesome, I love Japanese crane machines. Spent a looong time trying to win John something, poor Johnoes was not having the crane luck that I was having >< Soon our time ran up so we went to the bottom floor to wait for the rest of the group. While we waited, we found this!
PANTIES?!?!
Yep, that is exactly what it looks like: a gachapon machine where you put in 500 yen and get some girl's used panties. HAHAHAHA. Oh, Japan. After everyone was done shopping we headed back to the subway, went back to the hotel, and promptly passed out yet again.
And that's only the first 2 days! I have never done so much in one day until this trip came around, we did so much everyday. There's still many more days to write about, so stay tuned~! In the next entry, I'll talk about the next 2 days of the trip which include: the Tokyo Anime Faire, Pokemon Center Tokyo, Harajuku, Shibuya, the Square Enix store, a sushi misadventure, and much more. Lots and lots to talk about XD