![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Tachihachioji
Jan. 29th, 2008 01:30 am(Everything's an oji these days. They even did the Kamikami Oji gag on SMAPxSMAP again today, heh.)
Today, I hung out with Pau for the first time in like two months! It was a lot of fun. He puts up with my dorkiness and followed me into the far reaches of Western Tokyo to find more baseball card stores!
Well, it started in Shinjuku, with okonomiyaki at Osaka House. The okonomiyaki was fantastic, but the waitress spoke with some bizarre accent and I ordered "gyuu-tama" and she said "juu-tama" and I was like "Dude, do I not speak Japanese or does she not speak Japanese?" Pau assured me that I do infact speak Japanese, so who knows.
We then went off to Hachioji after that. We boarded a Chuo-sen train bound for Ome, which should automatically clue some of you into the fact that we were on the wrong line, but since we'd originally thought about going to Tachikawa first, it wasn't such a big deal (all trains go to Tachikawa). Anyway, we got started going through baseball card doubles on the train, see... first we went through some Nostalgic Baseball cards, and I gave Pau a bunch of them. Then we went through normal 2007 BBM 2nds... and well, he wasn't quite done all 12 teams by the time we hit Tachikawa, so we thought about just going to Hachioji.
Except, um, the Ome line doesn't go to Hachioji. Which I noticed when we hit Ushihama. I was like "Uhhh... wait a minute, why are we at stations I've never heard of?"
Fortunately the damage wasn't too bad; we just had to go back one stop to Haijima and catch the Hachiko line to Hachioji from there.
Hachioji Mint was at the top of this shopping center by the Keio Hachioji station. It wasn't much of a baseball card store, mostly specializing in other sports and in other collectibles, but they did have a lot of binders of old books, and I enjoyed looking through the 1970's and 1980's Calbee cards, especially being like "Pau! Look! It's Hoshino! It's Ochiai-kantoku! It's Nomura in a ridiculous green Nankai uniform! It's Tabuchi! Look look!" Sadly, they didn't have the 2006 Nostalgic set, which is what he's looking for. I picked out a Yukio Tanaka 1996 and a 2001 card for my collection, and then we bought a couple packs of these, for lack of a better term, "crap packs". 30 cards for 100 yen, but you can only see the top card and bottom card and there's just a bunch of crap in the middle. We also bought some team sets (Fighters, Carp, Dragons) for like 200-250 yen each.
(There's a Book-Off on the way to the shopping center with Mint in it, if I ever end up out there again, which seems unlikely)
Then we went to Tachikawa, which was easy to get to from Hachioji, of course. This time the Mint was on the 4th floor of a shopping center right by the station. However, it kind of sucked. It was really mostly other sports, and they didn't even have any discounted packs or anything; their "Crap packs" were 200 yen instead of 100 yen, they also didn't have the Nostalgic sets, and I didn't really find much of interest in the card binders. They did have Fukubukuro, 5-pack mystery bags for 780 yen, but we decided not to buy anything and left.
After a LONG hunt for a decent eating/trading place we ended up at Mos Burger. Seriously, since when is it so hard to find a Denny's/Jonathan's/Gusto/whatever? Mos Burger turned out to be a decent call though, the third floor was non-smoking and pretty empty and they didn't care how long we were up there, so we took over a table and ate food and then went through the crap packs, which were, infact, mostly crap. I ended up taking home a whole ton of Dragons, Lions, Swallows, and Giants cards; Pau took the Carp, Eagles, Tigers, and Hawks; we kind of split the rest of the crap. Oh, yeah, we also argued over Masaru Takeda, but I ended up keeping that card and completing my Fighters set, and he ended up keeping a few Dragons cards that I still don't have and completing his set. AND I gave him a Furuta that was in one of my crap packs. I think he totally came out ahead :) But, I guess 100 cards for the price of what's normally a 5-card pack isn't too bad. Or something.
Sadly, by the time we were all done with that, it was almost 9pm, so we didn't have time to play any baseball dice games, which was the whole point of getting together originally, before I dragged him to the middle of nowhere to look for cards. Whoops. So hopefully we can figure out a time to do that before he disappears off to visit his girlfriend in China again in a few weeks.
Anyway, I came home and got in just in time to see Jane Birkin on the SMAPxSMAP show (I was confused why they had a French-Japanese translator for once), which also included them doing a performance with DEEN of このまま君だけを奪い去りたい, and then later they also performed with Okuda Tamio, doing a medley of his hits. It was actually pretty good, lots of vocal range there for guys who usually don't sing anything except easy pop stuff.
Then there was Ainori. Apparently they have replaced Carbonara with this guy named Seiji. Seiji is a 24-year-old soccer player. The girls were all like "omfg! so cute! SO CUTE! And he smells SO GOOD!" But, of course, there's a major problem with Seiji (there always is). Dude has a huge hangup about his ex-girlfriend and basically won't shut up about her. They showed him sitting there talking to Kuro, then Momo, then Remi, and in all cases he was all like "blah blah ex-girlfriend blah blah can't stop thinking about her blah blah" and the girls are like "Uhh... ok... yeah..." The cast also visited the home of their driver and were all like "You have chocolate beer in Germany?" They were making fun of Miya because he's only 20 and hasn't really drunk alcohol before. Or much of anything. Poor Miya. Anyway, Hasami was all like "SEIJI IS PSYCHO! HE SHOULD GO HOME IF HE CAN'T SHUT UP ABOUT HIS EX!" but the guy commenters were like "awww, poor him. Let's hope he can find love." Whaaaatever.
I'm braindead and I just realized, I think people are supposed to come look at my heater in the morning. And I might have a class at 1pm tomorrow. Or not. I honestly can't remember. Whoops.
Today, I hung out with Pau for the first time in like two months! It was a lot of fun. He puts up with my dorkiness and followed me into the far reaches of Western Tokyo to find more baseball card stores!
Well, it started in Shinjuku, with okonomiyaki at Osaka House. The okonomiyaki was fantastic, but the waitress spoke with some bizarre accent and I ordered "gyuu-tama" and she said "juu-tama" and I was like "Dude, do I not speak Japanese or does she not speak Japanese?" Pau assured me that I do infact speak Japanese, so who knows.
We then went off to Hachioji after that. We boarded a Chuo-sen train bound for Ome, which should automatically clue some of you into the fact that we were on the wrong line, but since we'd originally thought about going to Tachikawa first, it wasn't such a big deal (all trains go to Tachikawa). Anyway, we got started going through baseball card doubles on the train, see... first we went through some Nostalgic Baseball cards, and I gave Pau a bunch of them. Then we went through normal 2007 BBM 2nds... and well, he wasn't quite done all 12 teams by the time we hit Tachikawa, so we thought about just going to Hachioji.
Except, um, the Ome line doesn't go to Hachioji. Which I noticed when we hit Ushihama. I was like "Uhhh... wait a minute, why are we at stations I've never heard of?"
Fortunately the damage wasn't too bad; we just had to go back one stop to Haijima and catch the Hachiko line to Hachioji from there.
Hachioji Mint was at the top of this shopping center by the Keio Hachioji station. It wasn't much of a baseball card store, mostly specializing in other sports and in other collectibles, but they did have a lot of binders of old books, and I enjoyed looking through the 1970's and 1980's Calbee cards, especially being like "Pau! Look! It's Hoshino! It's Ochiai-kantoku! It's Nomura in a ridiculous green Nankai uniform! It's Tabuchi! Look look!" Sadly, they didn't have the 2006 Nostalgic set, which is what he's looking for. I picked out a Yukio Tanaka 1996 and a 2001 card for my collection, and then we bought a couple packs of these, for lack of a better term, "crap packs". 30 cards for 100 yen, but you can only see the top card and bottom card and there's just a bunch of crap in the middle. We also bought some team sets (Fighters, Carp, Dragons) for like 200-250 yen each.
(There's a Book-Off on the way to the shopping center with Mint in it, if I ever end up out there again, which seems unlikely)
Then we went to Tachikawa, which was easy to get to from Hachioji, of course. This time the Mint was on the 4th floor of a shopping center right by the station. However, it kind of sucked. It was really mostly other sports, and they didn't even have any discounted packs or anything; their "Crap packs" were 200 yen instead of 100 yen, they also didn't have the Nostalgic sets, and I didn't really find much of interest in the card binders. They did have Fukubukuro, 5-pack mystery bags for 780 yen, but we decided not to buy anything and left.
After a LONG hunt for a decent eating/trading place we ended up at Mos Burger. Seriously, since when is it so hard to find a Denny's/Jonathan's/Gusto/whatever? Mos Burger turned out to be a decent call though, the third floor was non-smoking and pretty empty and they didn't care how long we were up there, so we took over a table and ate food and then went through the crap packs, which were, infact, mostly crap. I ended up taking home a whole ton of Dragons, Lions, Swallows, and Giants cards; Pau took the Carp, Eagles, Tigers, and Hawks; we kind of split the rest of the crap. Oh, yeah, we also argued over Masaru Takeda, but I ended up keeping that card and completing my Fighters set, and he ended up keeping a few Dragons cards that I still don't have and completing his set. AND I gave him a Furuta that was in one of my crap packs. I think he totally came out ahead :) But, I guess 100 cards for the price of what's normally a 5-card pack isn't too bad. Or something.
Sadly, by the time we were all done with that, it was almost 9pm, so we didn't have time to play any baseball dice games, which was the whole point of getting together originally, before I dragged him to the middle of nowhere to look for cards. Whoops. So hopefully we can figure out a time to do that before he disappears off to visit his girlfriend in China again in a few weeks.
Anyway, I came home and got in just in time to see Jane Birkin on the SMAPxSMAP show (I was confused why they had a French-Japanese translator for once), which also included them doing a performance with DEEN of このまま君だけを奪い去りたい, and then later they also performed with Okuda Tamio, doing a medley of his hits. It was actually pretty good, lots of vocal range there for guys who usually don't sing anything except easy pop stuff.
Then there was Ainori. Apparently they have replaced Carbonara with this guy named Seiji. Seiji is a 24-year-old soccer player. The girls were all like "omfg! so cute! SO CUTE! And he smells SO GOOD!" But, of course, there's a major problem with Seiji (there always is). Dude has a huge hangup about his ex-girlfriend and basically won't shut up about her. They showed him sitting there talking to Kuro, then Momo, then Remi, and in all cases he was all like "blah blah ex-girlfriend blah blah can't stop thinking about her blah blah" and the girls are like "Uhh... ok... yeah..." The cast also visited the home of their driver and were all like "You have chocolate beer in Germany?" They were making fun of Miya because he's only 20 and hasn't really drunk alcohol before. Or much of anything. Poor Miya. Anyway, Hasami was all like "SEIJI IS PSYCHO! HE SHOULD GO HOME IF HE CAN'T SHUT UP ABOUT HIS EX!" but the guy commenters were like "awww, poor him. Let's hope he can find love." Whaaaatever.
I'm braindead and I just realized, I think people are supposed to come look at my heater in the morning. And I might have a class at 1pm tomorrow. Or not. I honestly can't remember. Whoops.
