So it's been a little longer than I anticipated on this entry. Truth be told, last time I paid for my blogging on a Monday and wasn't keen to repeat the process the following day. Besides that, I ended up going and having myself another interesting experience that day, which I also hope to tell you about, that left me finishing my homework the following morning after riding a bus home. Shame on me. By the time I was free enough to write this entry, I was tired and lazy. So here we are. It's Monday again, and between all the things I have to do today, it is going to be quite busy, but now that the list of blog entries I wish to post has piled up to four (ye gads...), I have had to move blogging into a higher priority slot.
By the way, for those of you that end up wondering when and if I'm going to post again, and who aren't automatically notified, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that checking once a week is probably your best bet. Although I still post about twice per week, my posts tend to come in bunches, and therefore checking more frequently will probably tire you out unnecessarily. And we wouldn't want that. (Also, sort of worth noting in this regard, I only post links on facebook when I think a wider range of people will find my entry entertaining. This means that for those of you that wish to read more, waiting for links may make you think this blog has become a wasteland or an abandoned project. Be assured this is not the case.)
So, back to the purpose of this entry. I believe I've already talked about all the books I bought and was just getting on to the games.
First off, I bought a Super Famicom
The deck itself was pretty cheap, but the cords to connect it were sold separately. Between that and buying a controller it ended up being a relatively hefty sum, and there wasn't even a guarantee on the system working. I asked if they'd at least tested it, and they shook their heads. The bright side of this is that the controller works well and although the cord is short I should be able to use it in the US as well. The controller port looks the same. Also, despite the lack of guarantee, it works, and I should be able to sell it in the US to people who hunger for import games. Speaking of which...
YESSS! Now I can FINALLY date imaginary high school girls!
The second thing I picked up was a hundred yen game that I actually recognized the title of: Tokimeki Memorial, a sort of famous dating simulation game from back in the early 90's. I first heard of it at a Japanese market near Chicago, where Tina picked up the second game (for Playstation) with the thought that it might be amusing to try and play it. We could never get the bugger to work on an American Playstation though (despite buying a device that promised to make it possible), and even if we could, it would have been all in Japanese, and back then I'm pretty sure neither of us had taken any classes on it. It may come to use though, if we happen to find a cheap PS1 here...
Anyhow, the idea wasn't so much that ether of us would play this one. As you may have noted from the price sticker, it was 100 yen, which isn't very expensive. I'm almost positive that I can sell it for more than this, and I needed a game to test my Famicom anyhow.
Having spent way too much time talking about my excitement over purchasing a dating sim, let's move on to what we did next in Tokyo...
We were all set to leave Akihabara when I realized that we hadn't yet gone to a maid cafe. For those of you not familiar with the idea, it's basically a cafe with a bunch of cutesy stuff where girls dressed as maids serve you extremely overpriced food and drinks. The girls will draw your favorite anime character for you in ketchup, and preform "maid magic" on your drinks to make them tastier. The appeal ranges from fetishists to people looking for a laugh, or as we were, simply to go once because you're in Tokyo and that's one of the things you do there. Apparently.
Anyhow, pictures are a no-no in maid cafes (rather, they cost money that we don't have), so I've taken the liberty of googling one that looks close enough to the place we went to. However, the image was taken down sometime in the last couple years, so I'm afraid you'll have to google it yourself.
Where we were there was also a TV depicting more exciting moments at that particular cafe, some of which were pretty amusing. The day we went it seemed pretty quiet. We were given three different maids at three different times, because they couldn't seem to figure out whether or not we could speak Japanese (which was understandable). First we were given a foreign maid who Tina thinks was Siberian, because our tutors
Translating this last phrase is a little bit difficult. This page helped me understand it: http://simonesmith.hubpages.com/hub/Moe-Moe-Kyun, but when it comes to actually translating, I think they failed pretty badly. The phrase is a meme that originated from K-On!, anime about a high school's music club (to put the premise very, very simply). Moe literally means "budding" or "sprouting," but has come to be used as slang to refer to intense cuteness (of young girls in particular, not of say, a kitten), particularly in anime and manga. Even having said that, I feel like I'm not doing the word justice. We don't have an English translation for it, so you would really have to see it in practice to fully understand it. As one final example before I exhaust my effort on this subject, maids are definitely a "moe" sort of thing. Anyhow, "kyun" is only marginally easier. Kyun is a sound effect. The Japanese have sound effects for way more than we do though, and this is one of the ones that fall outside of the realm of normal for an American speaker. It's basically a sound effect for "heart aflutter." Think "noise a girl makes when she's getting worked up over something either extremely cute or extremely cool, by her standards."
I could have probably just spit this out without that long monologue, but basically "Moe moe kyun" is a bunch of nonsense. In this particular instance, it's being used as something along the lines of magic words to complete a spell. Why am I talking for so long about this?
After Akihabara we were more than a little hungry, so we went to a Japanese Italian restaurant called Saizeria, which is both tasty and relatively cheap. This part is pretty boring, and pretty hazy as well, as during this period we were either in a coma from lack of food or completely wrecked from finally eating food after having gotten very little sleep. After Saizeria we walked around and looked at some stores and stuff. That's about as descriptive as I can get. Feeling that we had squeezed all we could out of the day, Tina and I declared that we were heading home.
Three of our four tutors then brightened up declared that they weren't leaving yet. I'm beginning to get the impression that this was a routine trip for them, except that they'd taken the liberty to drag two foreign exchange students with them, and that they were somewhat glad to be rid of us. So much for showing us around. >_<
Following our parting, the more observant and patient of our tutors (who was forced to go with us for train ticket reasons, as I mentioned in part one I think), asked us if there was anywhere else we wanted to go on the way back out of Tokyo, for example to the Pokemon Center. The answer was a resounding, "Hell, yes."
On the way there, we saw giant underground shopping areas. Those were pretty interesting.
The Pokemon Center was basically a Pokemon merchandise store, which was good, as it was a good place for us to pick up souvenirs (I say that, even though I didn't buy any). I'm sure there are also special events there, because I simply can't conceive of there not being, but the part I liked best was this window:
I like the Japanese better actually. Despite being less flowery, it more correctly says, "Pokemon are always with you," with Japanese wording that I can appreciate very much. I'd certainly like to think that they are.
There's also this second picture that our tutor took:
Like the delinquent I am...
This entry is getting much longer than I wanted it to be, so let it suffice to say that we planned to do some more stuff, but didn't, rode a train for half an hour, rode another train for another two hours or so in heavily varying degrees of crowdedness, and walked home. We'll probably go again sometime, but not yet, and we'll plan better with snacks, take our time, and find a good place to hunt for video games and more used manga. I have instant ramen and doughnuts to eat, so I'll see you later. (Who want's simple carbs? I want simple carbs!) Peace out.
moe moe kyun! love it.
ReplyDeleteFigured you might. It being from K-On! and all.
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