Tokyo Trip (part 1)

Alright, all cocoa'ed up and full of delicious air?  I certainly am, minus the cocoa part and plus a jumbo hotdog with fries, salad and rice.

Before I begin, a couple of shout outs:  First to Tina's mum and her church for sending us delicious goodies to munch.  You'll be happy to know they just arrived and that for now I'll be enjoying the pack of gum and some fruit snacks.  Probably more later.  Second to my parents for teaching me by example how to make tasty fried rice.  I have done so three times, and you'll be glad to know that it has saved me money and two of those times it was very tasty as well.  Let's not talk about the other time.  I've been meaning to pitch that batch for almost a week now >.>

So, the Tokyo trip.

We started out in Asakusa, famous for it's large temple which is now pretty much a tourist attraction but still retains a lot of its authenticity I think.  It's famous for it's giant red thing, as shown here with us standing in front of it:

It's giant and red alright.  No, I don't know what that says, but the bottom kanji is "gate."  Go figure.


































I'll spare you most of the details about this place.  It's an experience to be there, but I don't think the pictures we have really capture the spirit of the experience.  Let it suffice to say that I wafted incense at my head, ritualistically washed my hands, and tossed a coin into a large box and wished for something.  No, I won't tell you what it is.  It's a secret.


Next we went to Akihabara.  Ironically, as fun as this place usually sounds, neither of us found it particularly entertaining.  We went to a bookstore and bought manga, and that was entertaining; we went to a game store, and that was entertaining as well; more on these things in a minute.  That was about it though.  It was interesting to look at, and fun to walk around in for a while (though not as much for Tina as she was starving by this point and no one seemed to find it necessary to feed her =[  ), but the maid cafe was honestly not that interesting--except for "maid magic," that was kind of fun--and I could have really done without my attempt at playing DDR.  It was too hot, way too noisy, way too expensive, the timer on the machine was super short, I couldn't find out how to access the options menu due to Konami's complete lack of standardization in the games and hence couldn't read the arrows at all, and contrary to what I've been told about them starting to make harder songs, I thus far haven't seen it, not that I would have been able to read it anyway.  I'll wait until I get back to the US and play dance games the way God intended them to be: designed far better with no menu timer.


I also in retrospect would have liked to look at more of the random shops, but despite our tutors offers to go to any shop that interested us, I didn't really feel like stopping our group of six to look at the type of merchandise Akihabara has to offer.  Maybe next time I go, especially if I can go off by myself for a little while.  Anyhow, a picture is worth a thousand words, so have 5,000 words worth of pictures.  And some more words.

 AW YEAH

 GIANT BUILDINGS PLASTERED WITH ANIME

AND MAIDS.  Also, who's that guy looking at us??

 AND CUTE GIRLS IN ELF OUTFITS.  Also Assassin's Creed and Left 4 Dead.  Also a tiny picture of Hatsune Miku near the bottom in the center.  Go to Japan and you will never have too little Hatsune Miku.  I've already had far too much.

 Wish we could have gone here.  Didn't obviously.


Before we move on to the next area, I'll get back to the manga and game shops.  For those of you familiar with manga, I give you this sentence fragment:  TWO ENTIRE FLOORS OF MANGA.  I got all of the following books for 105 yen each (at the current exchange rate, just over $1.30; usually the cheapest I can find them used in the US is $4, and that's a stretch).

Actually this one is Tina's, and because it's in color it was a bit more expensive.  It's also the easiest to read.

I made this one bigger because it actually is bigger.  I should have done a comparison.  It was still only 105 yen despite having been roughly $10 retail.  Also, this used to be my favorite manga.

Peach-Pit's famous manga about learning to be yourself.

...and in the Japanese version you get to see the back of her head too!

And this.  I've never read it before.  I decided to branch out.  I've heard it's pretty good.
























If my selection looks kid-ish, that's because it is.  I tried to pick things that were easy to read so that it wouldn't take me half an hour to translate two frames like in this manga:

...which happens to be my current favorite, the problem being that I can't read it hardly at all.


Okay, so I really would have liked to finish this today, but I think you'll have to wait for tomorrow for Part Two.  It's ten o'clock and I haven't done any of my homework.  See you tomorrow.