The second half of the week

Okay, I am a dumbass who didn't book her flights soon enough, so... I'm at an internet cafe now and just did it. I am coming back to Philly on Nov 22 (redeye flight) to the morning of Nov 23rd. So I will be in Seattle from Nov 18 to Nov 22 if anyone particularly wants to see me (hopefully I'll be staying in my old house), and let me know if there's anything I can bring back from Japan...

As for everything else...

Tuesday I went to the immigration office and got everything set for my re-entry permit. After that I ate sushi and went to GEOS for a while to get stuff (they took down all my postcards, sigh) and then went home to watch the Japan Series, and eventually ended up in McDonald's leeching internet for the evening.

Wednesday I got up and met Brian over at the Shinjuku Hilton. He decided to come to Tokyo for a few days before heading to Shanghai with some of his Microsoft coworkers. Eh. So we met up and I dragged him to Osaka House in east Shinjuku for some okonomiyaki. Yum. Then we went to Akabane, threw stuff down, and then headed out to Seibu for the Japan Series game. Which was fun.

Thursday we went to Tokyo Disneyland, I wrote about that. Afterwards we got yakiniku at Anrakutei in Akabane. Yay. Late night Thursday we went to an internet cafe here in Akabane -- where we are again. That night I had no trouble talking the people here into getting us both net booths even though only I had a card. (Tonight it didn't work. Grr.)

Friday we went to, well, Akihabara. We got lunch at Heiroku (which was ok, but none of my favorite people were there) and then headed out, basically. Spent the day in Akihabara for the most part. Went to some arcades, went to the RPG shop (I saw some guys playing a german card game I didn't know, sigh), went to the capsule game shop (I got some ekimelo charms. I hate myself when I do that), went to some other shops where I didn't get anything, then I went to the Mint card shop so I could sell off some of my Bikkuriman stickers and get the Tokyo Big 6 Fall box set.

The set was 10% off for 1800 yen, I sold off 30 of my stickers but most of them were only worth 10 yen each (I know if I do Yahoo Auctions I could possibly get upwards of 50-100 yen each BUT that requires a lot of effort, I've mostly been giving them away) for a total of 450 yen, so... in reality it wasn't that big a help. But the set is great. I have my Ohishi-kun's first card ever, I think! Yay.

Uh, then we went to Yodobashi Camera and spent like a bazillion years there looking at EVERYTHING. I ended up getting a camera lens pouch and cleaning set, and looked at some hard drives -- can you believe an external 1 TB drive is like 17000 yen? Man. Oh yeah, and Tower Records on the 7th floor, I introduced Brian to the wonder that is Jero. Hehe. I was like "Can you believe this singer is an American dude from Pitt?"

Shibuya after that and we got shabu shabu at Momo Paradise... figured while I was showing him all my favorite food places... yeah. After that we walked around Shibuya a bit and I made him do purikura too. Yay.

Today the forecast was for rain, but it actually wasn't so bad. We went to Kamakura since he wanted to see some old temples; got there around 2pm and wandered to Tsuruoka Hachimangu and the grave of Minamoto and some other things. The 7-5-3 ceremony seems to be around now, so there were a TON of cute little children in full kimono, with their parents, at the shrine. Which also meant tons of food stands, so we got candied grapes, and konpeito, and other stuff. Yay. Oh, and Satsuma-imo croquettes in town. Yum!

Went to Hase after that to see the big buddha. This time, we actually went inside for 20 yen. It was dark and scary, but interesting.

(This is like my 3rd or 4th time to Kamakura, so... somehow it is still fun though, dunno why.)

After that we did my traingeeking, rode the Enoden to Enoshima, but it was sadly dark by then. We went up to the island and even went to the lighthouse I wanted to see last time I was there, and it was dark and night but there was a cool candle garden and the observatory is still really neato. I want to go back when it is sunny and warmer though, maybe in late spring or early summer! Very nifty. I insisted on us riding the Shonan Monorail up to Ofuna after that, since I looooove the monorail and being a train nerd.

The mistake was after that -- we went to the Hard Rock Cafe in Yokohama for dinner because Brian had expressed interest in getting an HRC t-shirt.

Dinner itself was ok -- I got a fantastic cobb salad -- the problem is, halfway through, there was this wedding party there in their nijikai or sanjikai, I don't know, BUT, they decided to shine this big light on the middle of the restaurant and start trying to get the entire place involved in their dancing celebration, to stupid old pop songs like YMCA and whatever the hell else I forget. It was loud and annoying and I did NOT want to be filmed as being part of this stupid wedding party, and to make it worse there were a bunch of other forieigners there who just totally got into it and were club-dancing with the wedding ceremony people. Most of the Japanese people sitting near us were kind of embarrassingly clapping along; I just tried to hide behind my napkin, I was pretty shell-shocked. That sucked. I don't mind parties and I don't mind celebrations but I do NOT like being there and FORCED INTO THE MIDDLE OF SOME STRANGER'S DANCE PARTY with NO CHOICE in the matter.

Fuck.

So we rode the train home after that for an hour from Sakuragicho and I just kinda buried myself in my cellphone writing Japanese text messages to people.

Now we are here and I feel better. Gonna head home in a bit, then in the morning go to a book event... Wally Yonamine's gonna read and sign his recent biography by Rob Fitts down at the Tokyo American Club. I am terrified and psyched all at once!

Also, game 7 of the Japan Series. Must watch. I can't believe it is going this far, so tomorrow night is THE FINAL OMFG!

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It's not a great photo but...



Rob Fitts is on the left, and Wally Yonamine is on the right. Yonamine is known as the "Jackie Robinson of Japan" -- a Hawaiian nisei, he was the first American to play baseball here after WWII. Rob wrote a biography of him, which I couldn't get until today because it's not selling in Japan I don't think. The good part is, now I have a signed copy... the bad part is, I bet I will have a ton of questions to ask AFTER I read it, but it was frustrating during the event because I couldn't think of any questions to ask.

Also I didn't know anyone there and felt very out of place, it was at the Tokyo American Club which is apparently a club for rich American ex-pats, and I think most people there were Wally's friends and family essentially. Though -- Rob, the author, has written emails with me for the last few years about Japanese baseball cards so HE was all like "wow! Deanna! it's so nice to finally meet you after reading your blog for so long!" and stuff. But I had NO clue what to say to Mr. Yonamine himself... I mean... the man is a freaking legend. I felt like a big dumbass.

Ran into Mitch and Noriko and their son Max, so that was funny. Max broke his arm, but he's still a cute kid, he had his Bobby-signed Marines hat and some dude's like "you a Marines fan? I'm friends with Bobby" and Max is like "so are the rest of us" and shows him the cap brim. Heh. Eventually they gave me a ride back to Shinagawa station, that was nice.

I ate some kaitensushi at the station and came home and did laundry for the afternoon...

Shinsuke (CMU friend I hadn't seen in like 3 months) came over around 6:15 and we watched the Japan Series final game together. Originally we were going to watch it on my TV but channel 4 comes in CRAPPY, he took one look at it, laughed, and got out his Playstation Portable which has 1-seg and so we huddled under the kotatsu and watched the game on his PSP. That was funny. For the first half we were convinced the Giants were going to win and that was really sad, so we geeked out about trains and stuff instead... he's crazy about travelling to random places on trains and knows more than I ever will, and makes me look like not a train geek at all in comparison. We were discussing Eulerian paths to go ride all of the train lines in Kyushu -- that was hilarious.

About 2/3 of the way through the Seibu Lions started winning and then we were like "OMFG" and were glued to the game. They held onto the lead and WON THE JAPAN SERIES. Take that, Gomiuri!

Shin and I were dumbasses and didn't eat dinner, but by the time the game was over it was 10pm so he had to head home, and I headed here to McDonald's to eat gurakoro and leech internet. Yay. He realized we should have just called and ordered a pizza, heh, which is true.

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Also, to add to last night's entry... the internet cafe was dumb and didn't give me change when I paid. That was really annoying. They had to count the cash register to give me my change, seriously... and then I saw a cockroach in my kitchen when I got home afterwards. Grumble.