I am the Karaoke Queeeeeeeen

First, more about yesterday. Oren left his rail pass at Anrakutei yakiniku on Tuesday night, so on Wednesday morning he was going to bail on the Kamakura trip. Except... I was supposed to meet them in Akabane at 10:45am, only I accidentally left my D200 in my bike basket when I parked my bike at the garage. I got all the way to Kawaguchi before realizing "OH FUCK WHERE IS MY CAMERA?" and turned right around and ran back to Warabi. Fortunately, in the 20 minutes I had left it there, nobody had seen fit to run off with my $500 camera. Thank god for Japan being so, well, Japanese. I arrived in Akabane more like 11:15.

Anrakutei opened at 11:30 so we decided to just wait until then. Oren talked to them though and they said they hadn't seen it (but he left my phone number as a contact just in case). Then I suggested we ask at the Koban, and the police officers ALSO hadn't seen it and had us fill out something. Fine. Oren got a ticket and got on the 11:58am train with me and Carl, and halfway to Ikebukuro we got a call about his rail pass, which had been found. We thought it was the cops, but as it turns out, it was actually the yakiniku place. Oren went back to figure that out, and Carl and I went onwards to Kamakura, where we walked around and ate a ton of food and took pictures of stuff, eventually finding Oren halfway through the day when he joined us there.

I think everything else for the day is covered in the picture post. I'm still sad I didn't get to ride the Shonan monorail is all. Oh well, gives me a project for another random day.

So, today I met up with the guys in Akabane around 11:45, and we went to Heiroku for lunch. I came in with them and the old dude sushi chef was all like "Oh! It's you! Long time no see," and I was like "Yeah! Happy new year!" and he said "Your friends want to order the gokanmori, right?" and I was like "..." Still, we ate sushi and it was good.

We headed to Ginza after that, first stopping at the Hakuhinkan Toy Park, where we looked at lots of games. Oren got a travel shogi set I think. Then on to Kimuraya, since Carl loves bakeries I thought he'd like to see the place that invented an-pan (thanks to Kat and Jesse for that one!). We got various anpan flavors; I tried strawberry, yuzu, and creamcheese; Carl got uguisu (we still have NO clue what it is), yuzu, and sakura. Yummy! Out of annoyance at crowds we took the subway up to Ochanomizu after that so I could show them Jimbocho -- but first walking down the big hill past all the music stores and Meiji and all.

They went to Shosen and I went to Mint to complete some baseball card sets. I asked the store guy whether team cards were also only 50 yen each and he said "we're having a 20% off sale for new year's! so 40 yen!" and so I ended up completing all three of the Chunichi "Consecutive" 3-sets (I had 3, so this was 6 more cards to get Masa, Kosuke, and Kenshin's sets), and then I also got the 3-sets for Shunsuke Watanabe ("Gorgeous") and Yu Darvish ("Clever") and Yukio Tanaka ("2000 Hits"). I also got Draft Story cards for Yukihiro Nishizaki, and... Tadanori Ishii. Who? Well, would you believe that I never knew Takuro Ishii changed his name when he changed from being a pitcher to an infielder? Yeah.

We wandered around Jimbocho for a while but all the bookstores were closed for the most part, which was very depressing, so on Oren's suggestion we just walked to Akihabara at that point. He went to look for used games; Carl and I went to Yellow Submarine, where I showed him dice, and where I found out that they had sold their copy of the baseball RPG I saw there, but they will get more copies again soon :( Also, they apparently have a weekly board games day at the store!!!! ...on Wednesdays from 12:30pm-8:30pm. I work from 1pm-10pm. Argh.

We returned to Akabane and went to karaoke, which was great fun for me, although I don't know whether the same is true for Oren and Carl. I just kept picking and singing songs, and/or singing the songs they picked, and so on. Nah, to be fair I tried hard not to monopolize the mic, and to pick things they would know too, but it was kind of difficult. On the other hand I actually sang "I Believe" by EXILE, which has been playing EVERYWHERE these last few weeks, and aside from not being male it wasn't too bad. Sadly the place didn't have the 2007 Chunichi Dragons song, so I did about half of the 2006 one and gave up. Also I have this funny goal of going to karaoke sometime in the spring (assuming I ever find local friends to go to karaoke with) and singing an "All-Cherry" set.

Stopped for curry for dinner (Little Spoon didn't have any katsu at 8pm. Dondake??) and then we raided some bookoffs, notably Jujo and Otsuka. At the Jujo bookoff I found, no joke, the Pop'n'Music Artist Live DVDs 2-4, for 1000 yen each. Man, talk about total awesomeness. I'm watching/listening to Live 2 right now, Natural Bear performing the song "Massara". I did also see a Beatmania Visual Something-or-Other DVD for like 1300 yen but didn't buy it because I knew I wasn't going to watch it. Still, whee!

I realized that despite my work hours being long and annoying, they're actually kind of good for me. On a work day I spend like no money -- I have a train pass that GEOS pays for, and I basically just eat a cheap lunch and cheap dinner. But weekends and holidays I spend all kinds of money taking the train to crazy places and/or buying stuff and eating more complicated food. Tomorrow I'm going to spend a whole bunch of money on a train ticket to Kanazawa, too. So.

Yeah, speaking of which, I'm going to Kanazawa for the weekend with Carl and Oren. I'll return to Tokyo on Sunday night, and they'll continue on their journey around the country.

We're in Kanazawa and it's really freaking cold

I'm just writing a short entry while on the ryokan's computer:

Got up, went to Omiya.  Got a train ticket for literally like 5 minutes later at the counter.  We sat in jiyuuseki on the shinkansen to Echigo-Yuzawa but then didn't have seats together on the Hakutaku train to Kanazawa.  I sat in a seat behind Carl and Oren sat in the car behind us.  The guy next to me coughed the whole trip and a lady across the aisle from Carl talked to us in English.  I tried to study some 2-kyuu stuff but fell asleep doing so.  Saw lots of snow outside and nice coasts and mountains and stuff.

We got to Kanazawa and took the bus to Korinbo, and found the ryokan, and... then we wandered around outside for a while.  It's pretty cold.  Eventually we ended up getting dinner at an Italian place.  I had pasta polonaise which was actually really damn good, and we had garlic bread which was also great.  Carl got gnocchi and Oren had "kaga wafuu" which basically means "Japanese-style, Ishikawa-area pasta" or something to that effect.  The music on the speakers was all old American pop/rock, pretty surreal.

I played a game of PNM at the Taito arcade near here.  They have it set up so the sound doesn't come from the machine but instead is blasted from a set of speakers behind you, which is both awesome and awful all at once.

We came back here and played a game of Settlers of Catan, which Carl won.

Now it is late and I think I might try to go to sleep at an early hour, because we have to be up for breakfast and I'd rather shower in the morning than at night.  I hope the weather isn't too awful tomorrow; I want to take nice pictures of Kenrokuen.  And then Toyama on Sunday and then home wheeee.