Japan 2015 trip report (na no da yo)
Friday, August 7th/Saturday, August 8th
I would like to preface my flight schedule by stressing that it was free (well, FF miles + ~$50 in taxes). My flight went from Grand Rapids to Detroit, then to LAX, then finally to Haneda. (On the way back, I would go Haneda, LAX, Atlanta, Grand Rapids.) My layover in Detroit was several hours and involved lots of walking (five miles' worth) and lots of texting (I'm not going to count those). LAX was a shorter layover, in a tiny, confined part of the airport that seemed to want to convince the world that the U.S. is not as unhealthy as it seems (not one fast food restaurant?). I also spent my day obsessively tracking my seat assignment on Delta's app, because I was hoping to have a row (two seat row) to myself on the flight to Haneda. Someone ended up choosing the seat next to mine, but I was able to switch to an empty row, so yay! That alone made upgrading to comfort economy worth it. (Oh, yeah, that part wasn't free.) Anyway, my flight was uneventful (but COLD, and no USB port so I ended up having to charge my phone from my laptop). I arrived on time and was able to exchange money (I tried to exchange too much again--they are firm with the ¥300,000 limit, not one yen over) and get on the last bus to the Prince Hotel.
sara_tanaquil had arrived earlier in the day and greeted me in our room. We had opted to go with the Twin B rooms (rather than A, as in previous trips), so we spent a little time arranging our big suitcases and other belongings into the limited space. I then had a snack and drink from the conbini downstairs--a "strong" chuuhai, which turned out to have no sugar (or purin-tai, whatever that is) and taste absolutely terrible. I finally zonked out around 2:30, I think.
Day 1 (Sunday)
...and, of course, woke up at 5:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. Yay, jet lag! This was the first shopping day, and you've all seen what I bought, so I'd like to take a minute here to say that I didn't go into the trip planning to buy nothing but MidoTaka doujinshi. (In fact, my shopping list had way more doujinshi for Haikyuu pairings, and almost as many KageHina doujinshi as MidoTaka.) BUT my two highest priorities were finding doujinshi by specific MidoTaka circles I'd fallen in love with on pixiv (dull and I-58), so that was the section I hit first and most, and...there's this downward spiral of reading doujinshi for a pairing and falling in love with them more so you buy more doujinshi and fall in love with them more, so you buy more doujinshi (and then goods), and...you get the picture. Plus, when you are looking for a specific thing, you have to keep going back to the section (in case somebody sold it since you were last there), and when you look through the section, you can't help finding OTHER awesome stuff, and the next thing you know you have 150 doujinshi for one pairing and your room looks like this. (just kidding, my room would never look like that there's no Takao)
ANYWAY. Our first shopping destination was K-Books doujinshi, and after picking up a few things on the new floor, we headed to the used floor where I plunged into the MidoTaka section. I snagged the FIRST part of I-58's super-long angsty story (the War and Peace of MidoTaka), but not the second, so I spent the rest of the day obsessed with finding that. After checking out all the used stores in Ikebukuro, I decided to run over to Nakano (without Sara, who had crashed in the hotel room) to check, and luckily found what I was looking for. (I had not, however, seen any of dull's doujinshi all day...and in the end, I never did see even one of her books in the used stores. Not that I ever stopped looking, mind.)
Day 2 (Monday)
The day started early, with texting from mangaroo, who arrived (with spacealien_vamp and her parents) at Haneda around 5:00am. We all met in the hotel lobby (around 7:30, maybe?) and then hung out at the tables in the back of Family Mart for a while. At some point we felt we were lingering too long after having finished our food, so we headed out in the mall to sit. The problem with a flight that arrives super early is that you can't check into your room yet, and though Sara and I had a room, it wasn't big enough to hold six people. At 10, most of us headed out to Animate to look at goods (M stayed behind to nap in our room). At some point I also checked out some of the used goods stores near Animate--right across the street from the new Animate location are a goods branch of Lashinbang, and a Shounen Jump goods branch of K-Books (yes, K-Books branches in Ikebukuro are now so diversified there's a branch for JUST Shounen Jump series goods). After everyone else got checked in, we settled in our room to watch some episodes of KuroBasu. (56 is the best and worst episode. Life is hard when your favorite characters aren't on the main team.) Not only are the Twin B rooms small, the TVs are tiny--slightly bigger than my 13" laptop. Were the TVs this small in the Twin A? It's been so long that I honestly don't remember. Anyway, after that, we headed out to K-Books manga for shopping, then dinner and (for me and M) a quick stop in Mandarake. At some point on one of these days, Sara came up with the idea of taking pictures of doujinshi covers, to keep from double-buying. This was an awesome idea and saved me from lots of double-buys (though I still managed a few), and became the tradition after a day of shopping. Early bed that night--I think I was asleep by 7:30 or so.
Day 3 (Tuesday)
4:00am found me texting with people at home, who all asked me what I was doing up so early. "Well, I went to bed at 7:30..." This was the first of many mornings spent watching (and making fun of) the driving school that can be seen from our hotel room. Quality entertainment, you guys. Once the stores were open, we headed to Loft to check out non-anime/manga stuff. I may have gotten carried away in the pen section (but the erasable pens I found are AWESOME). We stopped at Andersen for lunch, then headed out to the Shibuya branch of Mandarake (by my request, since I was looking for a couple of circles I hadn't seen anywhere else). We split up on the way home so SV and her mom could go to Shinjuku to look at Yellow Submarine, while the rest of us went back to our rooms...only to leave shortly thereafter because housekeeping showed up. We had ice cream at Blue Seal, and then I decided I NEEDED to go to Tora no Ana because they had an exclusive special booklet when you bought the two books in Ogeretsu Tanaka's Renai Ruby series. We spent a little more time in the store than originally planned (Tora no Ana is very...distracting) and then I noticed a missed call on my phone and realized that SV probably wanted to get back into the hotel room (oops--we had both room keys with us), so we headed out.
We had okonomiyaki for dinner at Monjaya that night (where we spotted the Animate Cafe location--good thing, since we had all assumed it was in Animate), and then went to browse around Tokyu Hands. On the first floor, we discovered that K-Books had taken over a tiny corner with some used goods. I bought a pillow with Midorima on one side and Takao on the other, and...I think this was when someone first made a joke about me making a MidoTaka shrine? (Who made the joke? How did this start?) M bought this Midotaka poster, which I didn't buy it because I thought it was a blind box thing (though she grabbed me another one the next day), which is how I know this picture is from the next day, but this seems as good a spot as any to show off the proto-shrine:
The I-58 doujin is just there to represent all the other doujin.
Day 4 (Wednesday)
On our last trip, we discovered that you can't necessarily buy Disney tickets for the next day, so we went to the Disney Store to see what day we would be able to get tickets for...and ended up getting them for the next day. We met up with SV's gaming friend for lunch, and split up for afternoon shopping. I remember feeling particularly distressed on this day...I don't know if I thought I was buying too much, or was worried because there were some things I really wanted and couldn't find, but somehow I found myself at Loft, buying a big squishy pillow. Maybe I need to get myself to a cat cafe on future trips. Kitties de-stress me.
Day 5 (Thursday)
Disney day! We discovered it was raining when Sara stopped at Starbucks, so we had to go back for umbrellas (though we couldn't find Sara's), making us a little later than planned. We still got there around 8 and went right to Tower of Terror fastpass. On the way we saw the fastpass line for the new Toy Story ride, which closed as we walked (before 8:30--standby was over 3 hours). By this time, poor Sara was soaked, so we stopped at a store so she could snag a rain poncho. Disney now has an official popcorn map showing where you get which popcorn bucket and which flavor of popcorn, so we headed straight for the cart of the one I wanted (the Donald one which will show up in later pictures). [This will become outdated in no time, but right now--OMG. The vampire Mr. Potato Head bucket is so awesome.] With nothing better to do until our next fastpass time, we decided to do Storm Riders (which was a lot wetter than I remembered it). After snagging a Journey to the Center of the Earth fastpass, we killed time (walking, shopping) until our time came up for Tower of Terror. After that we had lunch (fries + dessert for us crazy people who don't want meat) and snagged our last fastpass of the day, for Indiana Jones, and then tried to figure out how to kill the next 8 hours until our Journey fastpass time came up. We did a lot of walking around shopping, too much snacking, rode Sindbad twice, the train once, 20,000 Leagues on the way to dinner (nobody was really hungry but we all wanted to sit down). Then M had a gyoza dog and we went on our last two rides, Journey and Indy. (Our Indy time window was the half hour before the park closed, and as we sat waiting for our time, a park worker announced they were closing the standby line.) SV had been looking around for Tsum Tsums for a coworker, but apparently they aren't sold in the parks at all, just at Disney Stores. (We even stopped at the big store outside Disneyland when we got back to Maihama station, but no luck there, either.) The train ride home was uneventful, but it was so late the secret tunnel through the mall was closed. By calculation of various devices, total walking for the day was in the neighborhood of 15 miles. (My feet.)
Day 6 (Friday)
While SV and her parents went off to Yokohama, ST and M and I stayed in the hotel room to plan our Comiket strategy. All day. So much planning. All day planning. Much back pain from hunching over the keyboard. I think we were up until about 1:30? It was awesome (we are so organized!) but also kind of a nightmare. We need to not try to do this all in one day ever again.
(Lest you think we had a day with *gasp* no shopping, we actually made a quick trip to K-Books to check for...something. I can't remember what, exactly, but it was important that we buy it before Comiket? Or we needed to get it to know if we wanted to add more of it to our Comiket shopping list?)
Day 7 (Saturday)
Comiket! We left a little later than we meant to, but I think arrived at Big Sight around 7:15. We split up into Team East (me and SV) and Team West (M and ST) The line for east hall was way more crowded and it took us much longer to get in. (For days this crazy, leaving on the first train of the day is starting to look like a good idea.) Also, the girls behind us in line thought instrumental singing of It's a Small World (and various other songs, but mostly that) was a good way to pass the time? Please, if you are ever in a long line: don't do this. Think of the people around you who can't escape and are forced to listen.
When we finally got in, they funneled us straight through to the back of the hall (all side aisles were blocked off, which must have been super annoying for people who wanted stuff that was right there), and then set us free. I went straight to Gusari's line...and stayed there for the next hour. I had my umbrella with me (in case of rain) and stupidly didn't use it as a shade from the sun beating down on me, so I ended up with a sunburn. (I had put sunscreen on at the beginning of the day, and put more on in line, but I think I just sweated off the second application. The stuff is supposed to be sweat-proof, but probably doesn't do much good if you put it on while you're covered in sweat.) The awesome thing about waiting in line was that when M texted me a sign showing that Suiton wasn't at her table, I was able to check online and see that she had posted to Twitter that she would be late, but would be there eventually, so M was able to stop by later and pick up her books. Eventually M came to switch with me so I could go buy stuff (including the all-important dull for me and 58 for Sara. We had been referring to 58's doujinshi as "angst," so I then sent what might be my favorite text I've ever written: "I have dull and angst!") [Side note: when dull posted her Comiket menu to pixiv, she said that she had only limited copies of one of her earlier books--the one I most wanted, actually--and to message her if you were interested in buying it. I had done this, so knowing she was saving a copy of the thing I wanted most specifically for me eased a lot of my anxiety while I was waiting in line.] Since I was in that area, I hit a couple other MidoTaka tables and then started around A (the popular circles around the wall). I ran into SV partway around and gave her part of my list to work on. Then at some point M and ST texted me and we met to split up the rest of my 8000 tables between us. This is the point, mind, that circles were starting to sell out of stuff, and I felt this horrible pressure to try to pick the most important tables (choose between my babies??) that had the stuff we really wanted. Eventually we decided we had everything important (except for the sold-out stuff) and left around 1:00. In retrospect: was Gusari's line worth it? We got cool fans, yes, but I missed out on some other goods I wanted and it caused a lot of anxiety and chaos in general. And Gusari's new book, of course, was in stores just a couple of days later. Also, for future reference: we all need printed copies of everyone's spreadsheets. (We did at least all have digital versions of them--thank you Sara, for this idea--which definitely helped, but wasn't perfect.)
Back at the hotel, fun times sorting out doujinshi and settling up money. We bought such equal amounts of doujinshi that most of us barely owed each other any money, which was kind of awesome. Hilariously, when I got back to the hotel, I realized I hadn't bought anything but MidoTaka doujinshi. (My list had tons of non-MidoTaka stuff on it, but when we divided it up, other people ended up getting all of that.)
My Comiket haul (each pile was doujinshi bought by one person)--that's Sara's haul in the background.
Later, we played the best ever game of Cupid's Holiday. The player colors in the game are yellow, blue, purple, and green, so we each took on the character of one of the KuroBasu miracles, with Kise copying the previous player's actions, Aomine lounging around bored, Murasakibara munching on food (and putting up hair at a hilariously appropriate moment), and Midorima saying "na no da yo" all the time. And winning. Because Midorima is the best. Also, there's no red player.
Day 8 (Sunday)
In the morning, Sara and I did laundry in the nice laundromat that SV's parents had found. I had heard horrors of the sauna-like one near the Prince Hotel and wasn't looking forward to it, but this was relatively not-painful. (Though I had a long walk to the hotel and back to hang up line-dry-only clothes.) After lunch in the hotel room, we headed out to Tokyo Sky Tree...but never went up to the observation platform because there was a three hour wait between buying tickets and going up.
This was about as close as we got.
We did find a TV Asahi store that had lots of fun anime goods, and went into a Tokyo Banana store--it seems Tokyo Banana has invented a bunch of new varieties that they only sell in certain locations. The one by Sky Tree ("Tokyo Banana Tree") has leopard print on it and chocolate on the inside. Also, the McDonald's by Sky Tree sells a special "tower size" ice cream:
We then went to Asakusa to wander around shops and see the temple (which was closed). After that, to Tokyo station to have dinner at T's Tantan, an awesome vegan restraurant. I had the (midori, haha) tantan as a set with karaage and it was awesome. (Also awesome: the restaurant kept pitchers of water at the table so you could refill your glass as you liked...only we were so thirsty we had to also ask for our pitchers to be refilled, with mixed sucess.)
While we were in the station, we noticed that the Tokyo Station-specific Tokyo Banana ("Tokyo Banana Roar") is caramel-flavored and ADORABLE. I didn't buy any, though--can't remember if it's because I was too full or just felt we had too many Tokyo Bananas to eat already. My notes tell me that I also rearranged the MidoTaka shrine that night, so have another picture:
Day 9 (Monday)
SV and her parents headed off for an overnight trip in Kamakura. M and I went to Nakano, where we bought a few doujinshi and checked out every shop in the mall that had goods. EVERY SHOP. ALL THE GOODS.
Sign spotted in Nakano for custom phone covers. I just love that Midorima made a Takao cover for his phone. But also, the printing doesn't fade because Midorima does everything humanly possible and follows fate. [ETA: Oh! I just realized there's a pun--the same word is used for "fade" (maybe "come off" is a better translation?) and "miss," so they just changed his "that's why I don't miss" speech to "that's why our printing doesn't fade."] And apparently today's lucky item is an iPhone 6 cover, na no da yo.
(it's not)
I was still on the hunt for a Hinata Nendoroid so I also checked out the goods shops in Ikebukuro in the evening. (No luck. But I did buy the Kageyama Nendoroid, which was probably a mistake for a number of reasons.) And...after all those goods I bought, surely I rearranged the shrine again?
Day 10 (Tuesday)
I was pretty wiped out by this time, so had a pretty lazy day. In the morning, I wandered around the mall a bit (looking at/buying socks--guys, Japanese socks are the best--and looking for dishtowels for my mom). After lunch, I rested in the room while M shopped. (Sara had gone to One Piece Tower.) SV and her parents came home in the afternoon, and at some point M and I went out to Haikyuu Cafe, but saw that reservations were filled. (We would later check the website and find that reservations were done by lottery weeks ago and we had totally missed our chance. Bummer!) As consolation(?), we shopped at Animate for goods (this was the day I made the questionable decision to buy a giant Rei head for mereflair).
By this point, my side of the hotel room was starting to look a little crazy.
Later in the evening, we broke open our special Tokyo Bananas (verdict: the chocolate ones are AWESOME) and the giant Sky Tree strawberry cake tower thingy that SV had bought, and then watched a few episodes of the new season of Junjou Romantica.
Day 11 (Wednesday)
I started a little slow in the morning; I needed to wash some things in the sink [maybe TMI?](normally I wear bras for several days before washing them, but Japan in August is SO hot they got totally gross after just one day, so in addition to the laundry on Sunday, I had to wash bras in the sink twice.) and didn't start early enough. So everyone else went to Junkudo while I stayed home and organized/counted my doujinshi (and, despite Sara's awesome picture idea, I found four duplicates). Then we went to Nakano and shopped for doujinshi (and goods) again. M went back to Ikebukuro (for more doujin checking), while the rest of us went to Nataraj for dinner. After looking all over, I finally managed to snag some acceptable towels on the way home. (I'm pretty sure they're face towels, but as they're patterned with fruit, veggies, and other food, they pass for kitchen towels.)
Day 12 (Thursday)
In the morning, we played Mysterium (I am a terrible ghost, never let me do this again), then megory and I went to the Japan Mint to buy coins. (I thought my dad would think that was a funny present, because we always make fun of him for collecting US coins, but I'm not sure he got the joke.) I had decided to get the big expensive figures of Midorima and Takao (retail price about ~¥7500 each, and Midorima was more like ¥10,000 because he was released a while ago, and the boxes they come in are HUGE, but it just seemed the perfect cap to what had turned into such a MidoTaka-centric trip for me), so my first priority was to go out and buy those. At lunchtime, I took a little break from shopping to watch part of Koushien final. (Go Kaijou! They ended up winning 10-6.) Then I went on a mission to find le coq sportif shoes for mereflair--I had looked in Seibu and found they didn't have men's sizes (women's shoes in Japan generally only go up to an 8), so I also looked in Tobu, with no luck--but I did find a store that had shirts, bags, socks, and stuff like that. A quick check on my phone and I was off to Mejiro (the next stop over on the Yamanote line, which is a hilariously tiny station compared to Ikebukuro) to a store where I was actually successful in finding shoes. And then I decided to go back to Tobu to get a bag after all. I then went to the Pokemon Center for my brother--turns out they recently put on into the Sunshine City mall, which is pretty convenient for me. After dinner, I made the mistake of going to K-Books with M and bought like 30 more doujinshi? (How do these things happen?) Back in the room, we started packing and I became filled with a growing horror about the amount of stuff I had bought. I went to bed in a mid-packed state--my small suitcase was in good shape, but my big suitcase was 75lbs--ouch.
Final state of the hotel version of the shrine. This was taken, of course, before I started packing.
Day 13 (Friday)
The first thing I did after getting up was to repack my big suitcase to not be overweight (I had been trying to avoid a 50lb carry-on, but that clearly wasn't going to happen). M, SV, and her parents checked out, and then played some played Japanese the Game (since we had connecting rooms, we were able to still use the checked-out room). We went out for an early lunch at Miami Garden, and, afterwords, browsed a store in the mall called Keyuca, which had all sorts of really nice kitchen supplies (towels! washcloths!) and other household goods. When we went back to the room, we found the connecting door closed and locked (sad!), and then split up for various different shoppings. (Note: I had no problem buying iTunes gift cards with my credit card at Bic Camera.) We went out for one last okonomiyaki dinner and then Sara and I saw the others off on their bus. Back in the room, Sara finished packing, while I unpacked my carry-on because I couldn't stand being separated from my favorite doujinshi. (I put all my favorites in my carry-on, see, so I would have them even if something happened to my checked luggage. Of course, I would end up checking the carry-on in LAX...in fact, when they made the announcement that we could check larger carry-ons for free because the plane was full, I couldn't get up to the counter fast enough. That thing was SO HEAVY. And, in the end, thank goodness I didn't have to worry about it when I was in Atlanta. But now I'm getting ahead of myself.)
Day 14 (Saturday)
We got up super early to get Sara checked out and on her bus. After (or maybe during?) fun with trying to get the clerk to do a phone authorization for her demagnetized credit card, she also tried to buy a bus ticket and couldn't for the 6:15 bus because it was full--turns out you can only buy a ticket the same day, but you're supposed to reserve a seat ahead of time? So confusing. Luckily, there was a 6:45 bus, which she got a ticket for and boarded safely. I went back to the room to finish packing and then kill time until I had to check out at 11:00. (Once I had finished packing--with both of my suitcases supposedly under 50lbs--I used my shiny new iTunes credit to buy tons of KuroBasu songs, and then made myself a bunch of new playlists, which I spent the day listening to as I wandered around Tokyo.) I had brought a cart into the room because I couldn't really handle all of my luggage on my own, and, hilariously, almost couldn't get out of the room because my suitcase is taller than the door is wide.
This will end well.
Once I checked out, I went around Ikebukuro shops looking for a manga for mereflair, but just ended up buying more doujinshi for myself. (I make good decisions.) I had lunch at T's Tantan (I tried the "plain" tantan and curry set, and it was good, but not as good as what I had on my first trip), and decided to pick up a box of the Tokyo Banana Roar after all. Later, when I got home and opened it, I would find this:
(It might only sound like a meow, but)
It's a "roar" full of feeling, as a tiger.
This Tokyo Banana has the symbol of a kitten.
With a small body, and a big heart, ready, set.
Tokyo Banana "Roar"
(By the way, the caramel isn't as amazing as the chocolate one. It's good, but didn't taste very caramel-y to me. Too bad, because I LOVE caramel and banana together.)
After lunch, I wandered around Akiba for a while, but it was really hot and crowded and I didn't find anything I was looking for (namely the Hinata Nendoroid and one of the KuroBasu fan disc DVDs)...but I did buy three more doujinshi (I am crazy). Also saw (but did not buy) this, which just makes me laugh. On the way back to Ikebukuro, I rode the Yamanote around the wrong way so it would take longer. (I can't stress enough how long and tiring this day was, so just sitting down and relaxing was awesome.) I had dinner (and charged my phone) in the combini, but still had a couple of hours before my bus would come. I changed my clothes in the bathroom into something warmer for the plane (though later I would regret doing this so early when I got hot and sweaty from dragging all my suitcases around) and did some rearranging of my suitcases.
Eventually I boarded the bus and made it to Haneda--but when I got there I was surprised to find no luggage carts available for me to use. I kind of stood around for a while, trying to figure out what to do, when one of the bus attendants brought me one. (Thank you thank you, awesome Japanese customer service.) When I went to check in for my flight, I had the unpleasant surprise of finding that both of my suitcases were overweight. This was kind of a nasty shock, because my luggage scale has already been accurate before (could a low battery cause it to be less accurate?), but I decided I was going to have to bite the bullet and have one overweight suitcase. Delta has one check-in counter/area reserved for people who want to weigh and repack their bags (I guess this is a frequently occurring problem...), so I went over there to move all my stuff around. They also can now take overweight fees right at the check-in counter (they used to send you to one special counter to pay extra fees). Maybe because I was so flustered from repacking my luggage, when I went through security, I forgot to take my phone out of my pocket and set off the metal detector. So then I had to get a pat-down, and take off my shoes (normally you don't take off shoes in Japanese security). This made me feel pretty dumb, since I've gone through airport security about a million times. But I got through, anyway, and then had to drag my 50+lb carry-on the 8 miles (that's what it felt like) to my gate. My carry-on is on wheels, but when they're that full, they are hard to drag around, especially when stupid airports put freaking CARPET everywhere.
I didn't have a row to myself on plane ride back, but my seat did have a USB port, so I got to keep my phone charged and happy. My connection in LAX was uneventful except that the immigration line was CRAZY long for non-citizens. (Note to self: don't wear headphones while waiting in crazy long lines, because you can miss announcements telling you that citizens don't need to wait in them.) Atlanta was something of a nightmare of delays due to weather and plane mechanics (getting on the plane, getting off the plane, switching gates, waiting, waiting, waiting) but I finally made it home, just a few hours later than planned. (It was around 2pm Sunday; I think I figured that I'd been traveling for about 30 hours.) The first day, I managed about this much unpacking:
...that is to say, I basically took everything out of my suitcases and threw it all on the floor. (Note to self: next time you're buying big expensive figures, also buy bubble wrap, because you hate seeing the beat up boxes.) I couldn't let it STAY that way, though, because I live in the basement and we've had problems lately with my window leaking in heavy rains, so a week later my room looked like this:
Those two bins hold ALL of my B5 doujinshi from the trip.
Also, have an updated shrine picture:
If you are so inclined, there are a few more pictures in my scrapbook album. Scrapbook is stupid, so if you want to go in the correct order, you should start at the end of the album and work back to the beginning.
I would like to preface my flight schedule by stressing that it was free (well, FF miles + ~$50 in taxes). My flight went from Grand Rapids to Detroit, then to LAX, then finally to Haneda. (On the way back, I would go Haneda, LAX, Atlanta, Grand Rapids.) My layover in Detroit was several hours and involved lots of walking (five miles' worth) and lots of texting (I'm not going to count those). LAX was a shorter layover, in a tiny, confined part of the airport that seemed to want to convince the world that the U.S. is not as unhealthy as it seems (not one fast food restaurant?). I also spent my day obsessively tracking my seat assignment on Delta's app, because I was hoping to have a row (two seat row) to myself on the flight to Haneda. Someone ended up choosing the seat next to mine, but I was able to switch to an empty row, so yay! That alone made upgrading to comfort economy worth it. (Oh, yeah, that part wasn't free.) Anyway, my flight was uneventful (but COLD, and no USB port so I ended up having to charge my phone from my laptop). I arrived on time and was able to exchange money (I tried to exchange too much again--they are firm with the ¥300,000 limit, not one yen over) and get on the last bus to the Prince Hotel.
sara_tanaquil had arrived earlier in the day and greeted me in our room. We had opted to go with the Twin B rooms (rather than A, as in previous trips), so we spent a little time arranging our big suitcases and other belongings into the limited space. I then had a snack and drink from the conbini downstairs--a "strong" chuuhai, which turned out to have no sugar (or purin-tai, whatever that is) and taste absolutely terrible. I finally zonked out around 2:30, I think.
Day 1 (Sunday)
...and, of course, woke up at 5:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. Yay, jet lag! This was the first shopping day, and you've all seen what I bought, so I'd like to take a minute here to say that I didn't go into the trip planning to buy nothing but MidoTaka doujinshi. (In fact, my shopping list had way more doujinshi for Haikyuu pairings, and almost as many KageHina doujinshi as MidoTaka.) BUT my two highest priorities were finding doujinshi by specific MidoTaka circles I'd fallen in love with on pixiv (dull and I-58), so that was the section I hit first and most, and...there's this downward spiral of reading doujinshi for a pairing and falling in love with them more so you buy more doujinshi and fall in love with them more, so you buy more doujinshi (and then goods), and...you get the picture. Plus, when you are looking for a specific thing, you have to keep going back to the section (in case somebody sold it since you were last there), and when you look through the section, you can't help finding OTHER awesome stuff, and the next thing you know you have 150 doujinshi for one pairing and your room looks like this. (just kidding, my room would never look like that there's no Takao)
ANYWAY. Our first shopping destination was K-Books doujinshi, and after picking up a few things on the new floor, we headed to the used floor where I plunged into the MidoTaka section. I snagged the FIRST part of I-58's super-long angsty story (the War and Peace of MidoTaka), but not the second, so I spent the rest of the day obsessed with finding that. After checking out all the used stores in Ikebukuro, I decided to run over to Nakano (without Sara, who had crashed in the hotel room) to check, and luckily found what I was looking for. (I had not, however, seen any of dull's doujinshi all day...and in the end, I never did see even one of her books in the used stores. Not that I ever stopped looking, mind.)
Day 2 (Monday)
The day started early, with texting from mangaroo, who arrived (with spacealien_vamp and her parents) at Haneda around 5:00am. We all met in the hotel lobby (around 7:30, maybe?) and then hung out at the tables in the back of Family Mart for a while. At some point we felt we were lingering too long after having finished our food, so we headed out in the mall to sit. The problem with a flight that arrives super early is that you can't check into your room yet, and though Sara and I had a room, it wasn't big enough to hold six people. At 10, most of us headed out to Animate to look at goods (M stayed behind to nap in our room). At some point I also checked out some of the used goods stores near Animate--right across the street from the new Animate location are a goods branch of Lashinbang, and a Shounen Jump goods branch of K-Books (yes, K-Books branches in Ikebukuro are now so diversified there's a branch for JUST Shounen Jump series goods). After everyone else got checked in, we settled in our room to watch some episodes of KuroBasu. (56 is the best and worst episode. Life is hard when your favorite characters aren't on the main team.) Not only are the Twin B rooms small, the TVs are tiny--slightly bigger than my 13" laptop. Were the TVs this small in the Twin A? It's been so long that I honestly don't remember. Anyway, after that, we headed out to K-Books manga for shopping, then dinner and (for me and M) a quick stop in Mandarake. At some point on one of these days, Sara came up with the idea of taking pictures of doujinshi covers, to keep from double-buying. This was an awesome idea and saved me from lots of double-buys (though I still managed a few), and became the tradition after a day of shopping. Early bed that night--I think I was asleep by 7:30 or so.
Day 3 (Tuesday)
4:00am found me texting with people at home, who all asked me what I was doing up so early. "Well, I went to bed at 7:30..." This was the first of many mornings spent watching (and making fun of) the driving school that can be seen from our hotel room. Quality entertainment, you guys. Once the stores were open, we headed to Loft to check out non-anime/manga stuff. I may have gotten carried away in the pen section (but the erasable pens I found are AWESOME). We stopped at Andersen for lunch, then headed out to the Shibuya branch of Mandarake (by my request, since I was looking for a couple of circles I hadn't seen anywhere else). We split up on the way home so SV and her mom could go to Shinjuku to look at Yellow Submarine, while the rest of us went back to our rooms...only to leave shortly thereafter because housekeeping showed up. We had ice cream at Blue Seal, and then I decided I NEEDED to go to Tora no Ana because they had an exclusive special booklet when you bought the two books in Ogeretsu Tanaka's Renai Ruby series. We spent a little more time in the store than originally planned (Tora no Ana is very...distracting) and then I noticed a missed call on my phone and realized that SV probably wanted to get back into the hotel room (oops--we had both room keys with us), so we headed out.
We had okonomiyaki for dinner at Monjaya that night (where we spotted the Animate Cafe location--good thing, since we had all assumed it was in Animate), and then went to browse around Tokyu Hands. On the first floor, we discovered that K-Books had taken over a tiny corner with some used goods. I bought a pillow with Midorima on one side and Takao on the other, and...I think this was when someone first made a joke about me making a MidoTaka shrine? (Who made the joke? How did this start?) M bought this Midotaka poster, which I didn't buy it because I thought it was a blind box thing (though she grabbed me another one the next day), which is how I know this picture is from the next day, but this seems as good a spot as any to show off the proto-shrine:
The I-58 doujin is just there to represent all the other doujin.
Day 4 (Wednesday)
On our last trip, we discovered that you can't necessarily buy Disney tickets for the next day, so we went to the Disney Store to see what day we would be able to get tickets for...and ended up getting them for the next day. We met up with SV's gaming friend for lunch, and split up for afternoon shopping. I remember feeling particularly distressed on this day...I don't know if I thought I was buying too much, or was worried because there were some things I really wanted and couldn't find, but somehow I found myself at Loft, buying a big squishy pillow. Maybe I need to get myself to a cat cafe on future trips. Kitties de-stress me.
Day 5 (Thursday)
Disney day! We discovered it was raining when Sara stopped at Starbucks, so we had to go back for umbrellas (though we couldn't find Sara's), making us a little later than planned. We still got there around 8 and went right to Tower of Terror fastpass. On the way we saw the fastpass line for the new Toy Story ride, which closed as we walked (before 8:30--standby was over 3 hours). By this time, poor Sara was soaked, so we stopped at a store so she could snag a rain poncho. Disney now has an official popcorn map showing where you get which popcorn bucket and which flavor of popcorn, so we headed straight for the cart of the one I wanted (the Donald one which will show up in later pictures). [This will become outdated in no time, but right now--OMG. The vampire Mr. Potato Head bucket is so awesome.] With nothing better to do until our next fastpass time, we decided to do Storm Riders (which was a lot wetter than I remembered it). After snagging a Journey to the Center of the Earth fastpass, we killed time (walking, shopping) until our time came up for Tower of Terror. After that we had lunch (fries + dessert for us crazy people who don't want meat) and snagged our last fastpass of the day, for Indiana Jones, and then tried to figure out how to kill the next 8 hours until our Journey fastpass time came up. We did a lot of walking around shopping, too much snacking, rode Sindbad twice, the train once, 20,000 Leagues on the way to dinner (nobody was really hungry but we all wanted to sit down). Then M had a gyoza dog and we went on our last two rides, Journey and Indy. (Our Indy time window was the half hour before the park closed, and as we sat waiting for our time, a park worker announced they were closing the standby line.) SV had been looking around for Tsum Tsums for a coworker, but apparently they aren't sold in the parks at all, just at Disney Stores. (We even stopped at the big store outside Disneyland when we got back to Maihama station, but no luck there, either.) The train ride home was uneventful, but it was so late the secret tunnel through the mall was closed. By calculation of various devices, total walking for the day was in the neighborhood of 15 miles. (My feet.)
Day 6 (Friday)
While SV and her parents went off to Yokohama, ST and M and I stayed in the hotel room to plan our Comiket strategy. All day. So much planning. All day planning. Much back pain from hunching over the keyboard. I think we were up until about 1:30? It was awesome (we are so organized!) but also kind of a nightmare. We need to not try to do this all in one day ever again.
(Lest you think we had a day with *gasp* no shopping, we actually made a quick trip to K-Books to check for...something. I can't remember what, exactly, but it was important that we buy it before Comiket? Or we needed to get it to know if we wanted to add more of it to our Comiket shopping list?)
Day 7 (Saturday)
Comiket! We left a little later than we meant to, but I think arrived at Big Sight around 7:15. We split up into Team East (me and SV) and Team West (M and ST) The line for east hall was way more crowded and it took us much longer to get in. (For days this crazy, leaving on the first train of the day is starting to look like a good idea.) Also, the girls behind us in line thought instrumental singing of It's a Small World (and various other songs, but mostly that) was a good way to pass the time? Please, if you are ever in a long line: don't do this. Think of the people around you who can't escape and are forced to listen.
When we finally got in, they funneled us straight through to the back of the hall (all side aisles were blocked off, which must have been super annoying for people who wanted stuff that was right there), and then set us free. I went straight to Gusari's line...and stayed there for the next hour. I had my umbrella with me (in case of rain) and stupidly didn't use it as a shade from the sun beating down on me, so I ended up with a sunburn. (I had put sunscreen on at the beginning of the day, and put more on in line, but I think I just sweated off the second application. The stuff is supposed to be sweat-proof, but probably doesn't do much good if you put it on while you're covered in sweat.) The awesome thing about waiting in line was that when M texted me a sign showing that Suiton wasn't at her table, I was able to check online and see that she had posted to Twitter that she would be late, but would be there eventually, so M was able to stop by later and pick up her books. Eventually M came to switch with me so I could go buy stuff (including the all-important dull for me and 58 for Sara. We had been referring to 58's doujinshi as "angst," so I then sent what might be my favorite text I've ever written: "I have dull and angst!") [Side note: when dull posted her Comiket menu to pixiv, she said that she had only limited copies of one of her earlier books--the one I most wanted, actually--and to message her if you were interested in buying it. I had done this, so knowing she was saving a copy of the thing I wanted most specifically for me eased a lot of my anxiety while I was waiting in line.] Since I was in that area, I hit a couple other MidoTaka tables and then started around A (the popular circles around the wall). I ran into SV partway around and gave her part of my list to work on. Then at some point M and ST texted me and we met to split up the rest of my 8000 tables between us. This is the point, mind, that circles were starting to sell out of stuff, and I felt this horrible pressure to try to pick the most important tables (choose between my babies??) that had the stuff we really wanted. Eventually we decided we had everything important (except for the sold-out stuff) and left around 1:00. In retrospect: was Gusari's line worth it? We got cool fans, yes, but I missed out on some other goods I wanted and it caused a lot of anxiety and chaos in general. And Gusari's new book, of course, was in stores just a couple of days later. Also, for future reference: we all need printed copies of everyone's spreadsheets. (We did at least all have digital versions of them--thank you Sara, for this idea--which definitely helped, but wasn't perfect.)
Back at the hotel, fun times sorting out doujinshi and settling up money. We bought such equal amounts of doujinshi that most of us barely owed each other any money, which was kind of awesome. Hilariously, when I got back to the hotel, I realized I hadn't bought anything but MidoTaka doujinshi. (My list had tons of non-MidoTaka stuff on it, but when we divided it up, other people ended up getting all of that.)
My Comiket haul (each pile was doujinshi bought by one person)--that's Sara's haul in the background.
Later, we played the best ever game of Cupid's Holiday. The player colors in the game are yellow, blue, purple, and green, so we each took on the character of one of the KuroBasu miracles, with Kise copying the previous player's actions, Aomine lounging around bored, Murasakibara munching on food (and putting up hair at a hilariously appropriate moment), and Midorima saying "na no da yo" all the time. And winning. Because Midorima is the best. Also, there's no red player.
Day 8 (Sunday)
In the morning, Sara and I did laundry in the nice laundromat that SV's parents had found. I had heard horrors of the sauna-like one near the Prince Hotel and wasn't looking forward to it, but this was relatively not-painful. (Though I had a long walk to the hotel and back to hang up line-dry-only clothes.) After lunch in the hotel room, we headed out to Tokyo Sky Tree...but never went up to the observation platform because there was a three hour wait between buying tickets and going up.
This was about as close as we got.
We did find a TV Asahi store that had lots of fun anime goods, and went into a Tokyo Banana store--it seems Tokyo Banana has invented a bunch of new varieties that they only sell in certain locations. The one by Sky Tree ("Tokyo Banana Tree") has leopard print on it and chocolate on the inside. Also, the McDonald's by Sky Tree sells a special "tower size" ice cream:
We then went to Asakusa to wander around shops and see the temple (which was closed). After that, to Tokyo station to have dinner at T's Tantan, an awesome vegan restraurant. I had the (midori, haha) tantan as a set with karaage and it was awesome. (Also awesome: the restaurant kept pitchers of water at the table so you could refill your glass as you liked...only we were so thirsty we had to also ask for our pitchers to be refilled, with mixed sucess.)
While we were in the station, we noticed that the Tokyo Station-specific Tokyo Banana ("Tokyo Banana Roar") is caramel-flavored and ADORABLE. I didn't buy any, though--can't remember if it's because I was too full or just felt we had too many Tokyo Bananas to eat already. My notes tell me that I also rearranged the MidoTaka shrine that night, so have another picture:
Day 9 (Monday)
SV and her parents headed off for an overnight trip in Kamakura. M and I went to Nakano, where we bought a few doujinshi and checked out every shop in the mall that had goods. EVERY SHOP. ALL THE GOODS.
Sign spotted in Nakano for custom phone covers. I just love that Midorima made a Takao cover for his phone. But also, the printing doesn't fade because Midorima does everything humanly possible and follows fate. [ETA: Oh! I just realized there's a pun--the same word is used for "fade" (maybe "come off" is a better translation?) and "miss," so they just changed his "that's why I don't miss" speech to "that's why our printing doesn't fade."] And apparently today's lucky item is an iPhone 6 cover, na no da yo.
(it's not)
I was still on the hunt for a Hinata Nendoroid so I also checked out the goods shops in Ikebukuro in the evening. (No luck. But I did buy the Kageyama Nendoroid, which was probably a mistake for a number of reasons.) And...after all those goods I bought, surely I rearranged the shrine again?
Day 10 (Tuesday)
I was pretty wiped out by this time, so had a pretty lazy day. In the morning, I wandered around the mall a bit (looking at/buying socks--guys, Japanese socks are the best--and looking for dishtowels for my mom). After lunch, I rested in the room while M shopped. (Sara had gone to One Piece Tower.) SV and her parents came home in the afternoon, and at some point M and I went out to Haikyuu Cafe, but saw that reservations were filled. (We would later check the website and find that reservations were done by lottery weeks ago and we had totally missed our chance. Bummer!) As consolation(?), we shopped at Animate for goods (this was the day I made the questionable decision to buy a giant Rei head for mereflair).
By this point, my side of the hotel room was starting to look a little crazy.
Later in the evening, we broke open our special Tokyo Bananas (verdict: the chocolate ones are AWESOME) and the giant Sky Tree strawberry cake tower thingy that SV had bought, and then watched a few episodes of the new season of Junjou Romantica.
Day 11 (Wednesday)
I started a little slow in the morning; I needed to wash some things in the sink [maybe TMI?](normally I wear bras for several days before washing them, but Japan in August is SO hot they got totally gross after just one day, so in addition to the laundry on Sunday, I had to wash bras in the sink twice.) and didn't start early enough. So everyone else went to Junkudo while I stayed home and organized/counted my doujinshi (and, despite Sara's awesome picture idea, I found four duplicates). Then we went to Nakano and shopped for doujinshi (and goods) again. M went back to Ikebukuro (for more doujin checking), while the rest of us went to Nataraj for dinner. After looking all over, I finally managed to snag some acceptable towels on the way home. (I'm pretty sure they're face towels, but as they're patterned with fruit, veggies, and other food, they pass for kitchen towels.)
Day 12 (Thursday)
In the morning, we played Mysterium (I am a terrible ghost, never let me do this again), then megory and I went to the Japan Mint to buy coins. (I thought my dad would think that was a funny present, because we always make fun of him for collecting US coins, but I'm not sure he got the joke.) I had decided to get the big expensive figures of Midorima and Takao (retail price about ~¥7500 each, and Midorima was more like ¥10,000 because he was released a while ago, and the boxes they come in are HUGE, but it just seemed the perfect cap to what had turned into such a MidoTaka-centric trip for me), so my first priority was to go out and buy those. At lunchtime, I took a little break from shopping to watch part of Koushien final. (Go Kaijou! They ended up winning 10-6.) Then I went on a mission to find le coq sportif shoes for mereflair--I had looked in Seibu and found they didn't have men's sizes (women's shoes in Japan generally only go up to an 8), so I also looked in Tobu, with no luck--but I did find a store that had shirts, bags, socks, and stuff like that. A quick check on my phone and I was off to Mejiro (the next stop over on the Yamanote line, which is a hilariously tiny station compared to Ikebukuro) to a store where I was actually successful in finding shoes. And then I decided to go back to Tobu to get a bag after all. I then went to the Pokemon Center for my brother--turns out they recently put on into the Sunshine City mall, which is pretty convenient for me. After dinner, I made the mistake of going to K-Books with M and bought like 30 more doujinshi? (How do these things happen?) Back in the room, we started packing and I became filled with a growing horror about the amount of stuff I had bought. I went to bed in a mid-packed state--my small suitcase was in good shape, but my big suitcase was 75lbs--ouch.
Final state of the hotel version of the shrine. This was taken, of course, before I started packing.
Day 13 (Friday)
The first thing I did after getting up was to repack my big suitcase to not be overweight (I had been trying to avoid a 50lb carry-on, but that clearly wasn't going to happen). M, SV, and her parents checked out, and then played some played Japanese the Game (since we had connecting rooms, we were able to still use the checked-out room). We went out for an early lunch at Miami Garden, and, afterwords, browsed a store in the mall called Keyuca, which had all sorts of really nice kitchen supplies (towels! washcloths!) and other household goods. When we went back to the room, we found the connecting door closed and locked (sad!), and then split up for various different shoppings. (Note: I had no problem buying iTunes gift cards with my credit card at Bic Camera.) We went out for one last okonomiyaki dinner and then Sara and I saw the others off on their bus. Back in the room, Sara finished packing, while I unpacked my carry-on because I couldn't stand being separated from my favorite doujinshi. (I put all my favorites in my carry-on, see, so I would have them even if something happened to my checked luggage. Of course, I would end up checking the carry-on in LAX...in fact, when they made the announcement that we could check larger carry-ons for free because the plane was full, I couldn't get up to the counter fast enough. That thing was SO HEAVY. And, in the end, thank goodness I didn't have to worry about it when I was in Atlanta. But now I'm getting ahead of myself.)
Day 14 (Saturday)
We got up super early to get Sara checked out and on her bus. After (or maybe during?) fun with trying to get the clerk to do a phone authorization for her demagnetized credit card, she also tried to buy a bus ticket and couldn't for the 6:15 bus because it was full--turns out you can only buy a ticket the same day, but you're supposed to reserve a seat ahead of time? So confusing. Luckily, there was a 6:45 bus, which she got a ticket for and boarded safely. I went back to the room to finish packing and then kill time until I had to check out at 11:00. (Once I had finished packing--with both of my suitcases supposedly under 50lbs--I used my shiny new iTunes credit to buy tons of KuroBasu songs, and then made myself a bunch of new playlists, which I spent the day listening to as I wandered around Tokyo.) I had brought a cart into the room because I couldn't really handle all of my luggage on my own, and, hilariously, almost couldn't get out of the room because my suitcase is taller than the door is wide.
This will end well.
Once I checked out, I went around Ikebukuro shops looking for a manga for mereflair, but just ended up buying more doujinshi for myself. (I make good decisions.) I had lunch at T's Tantan (I tried the "plain" tantan and curry set, and it was good, but not as good as what I had on my first trip), and decided to pick up a box of the Tokyo Banana Roar after all. Later, when I got home and opened it, I would find this:
(It might only sound like a meow, but)
It's a "roar" full of feeling, as a tiger.
This Tokyo Banana has the symbol of a kitten.
With a small body, and a big heart, ready, set.
Tokyo Banana "Roar"
(By the way, the caramel isn't as amazing as the chocolate one. It's good, but didn't taste very caramel-y to me. Too bad, because I LOVE caramel and banana together.)
After lunch, I wandered around Akiba for a while, but it was really hot and crowded and I didn't find anything I was looking for (namely the Hinata Nendoroid and one of the KuroBasu fan disc DVDs)...but I did buy three more doujinshi (I am crazy). Also saw (but did not buy) this, which just makes me laugh. On the way back to Ikebukuro, I rode the Yamanote around the wrong way so it would take longer. (I can't stress enough how long and tiring this day was, so just sitting down and relaxing was awesome.) I had dinner (and charged my phone) in the combini, but still had a couple of hours before my bus would come. I changed my clothes in the bathroom into something warmer for the plane (though later I would regret doing this so early when I got hot and sweaty from dragging all my suitcases around) and did some rearranging of my suitcases.
Eventually I boarded the bus and made it to Haneda--but when I got there I was surprised to find no luggage carts available for me to use. I kind of stood around for a while, trying to figure out what to do, when one of the bus attendants brought me one. (Thank you thank you, awesome Japanese customer service.) When I went to check in for my flight, I had the unpleasant surprise of finding that both of my suitcases were overweight. This was kind of a nasty shock, because my luggage scale has already been accurate before (could a low battery cause it to be less accurate?), but I decided I was going to have to bite the bullet and have one overweight suitcase. Delta has one check-in counter/area reserved for people who want to weigh and repack their bags (I guess this is a frequently occurring problem...), so I went over there to move all my stuff around. They also can now take overweight fees right at the check-in counter (they used to send you to one special counter to pay extra fees). Maybe because I was so flustered from repacking my luggage, when I went through security, I forgot to take my phone out of my pocket and set off the metal detector. So then I had to get a pat-down, and take off my shoes (normally you don't take off shoes in Japanese security). This made me feel pretty dumb, since I've gone through airport security about a million times. But I got through, anyway, and then had to drag my 50+lb carry-on the 8 miles (that's what it felt like) to my gate. My carry-on is on wheels, but when they're that full, they are hard to drag around, especially when stupid airports put freaking CARPET everywhere.
I didn't have a row to myself on plane ride back, but my seat did have a USB port, so I got to keep my phone charged and happy. My connection in LAX was uneventful except that the immigration line was CRAZY long for non-citizens. (Note to self: don't wear headphones while waiting in crazy long lines, because you can miss announcements telling you that citizens don't need to wait in them.) Atlanta was something of a nightmare of delays due to weather and plane mechanics (getting on the plane, getting off the plane, switching gates, waiting, waiting, waiting) but I finally made it home, just a few hours later than planned. (It was around 2pm Sunday; I think I figured that I'd been traveling for about 30 hours.) The first day, I managed about this much unpacking:
...that is to say, I basically took everything out of my suitcases and threw it all on the floor. (Note to self: next time you're buying big expensive figures, also buy bubble wrap, because you hate seeing the beat up boxes.) I couldn't let it STAY that way, though, because I live in the basement and we've had problems lately with my window leaking in heavy rains, so a week later my room looked like this:
Those two bins hold ALL of my B5 doujinshi from the trip.
Also, have an updated shrine picture:
If you are so inclined, there are a few more pictures in my scrapbook album. Scrapbook is stupid, so if you want to go in the correct order, you should start at the end of the album and work back to the beginning.