japan trip 2 day 2
Hello and welcome to day 2 of deanna trying to type on this damn keyboard!
Im back at Manboo mambo whatever. The attendant asked me if it was my first time since i seemed confused and i was like "iiie! kinou hajimeta!" cheerfully and she laughed. Heh.
Anyway. This morning I got up around 9am because hey, jetlag can bite me. Nyk apparently got up at like 6am and just sat around reading for a few hours, heh. So we got out of the ryokan and went to Tobu department store to the basement to the bakery to get breakfast. MMMMMM Bakery! I got a buncha fruity junkfood pastries, and Nykkel actually got real food kinda. I tried "sakura-pan" which turned out to just be an-pan with some other stuff in it. Was good though. We didnt know where to sit down and eat the food though, so we decided to go to Ueno Park and find a place under sakura trees to sit down and eat.
The irony is that it was Seattle-raining while we were at Ueno. So it was pretty beautiful and spectacular what with the huge walkways full of sakura trees in full bloom with leaves blowing everywhere ("Its just like anime!") but it also sucked because it was all cold and wet out. But, we walked around until we found a hana-matsuri thing with booths of food and a few games, and we sat down under a tree and ate breakfast. After that we walked... and walked... and walked some more. We went around a lake in Ueno park, and we walked by the zoo, and by the children:s amusement park thingy, and by a shrine, and just all over. We saw ducks and fish and duck boats and stuff. After an hour or two we got bored of Ueno and wanted to go elsewhere.
Ugh, someone near me just started smoking hardcore and my eyes are getting all teary and whatnot because theres no ventilation in here arrrrgh
We figured out that we were relatively near Todai (Tokyo Daigaku / University of Tokyo) so we decided to go there. It was, of course, more walking :) We apparently vaguely headed the wrong way and ended up walking up this huge windy passage of roads near a big brick wall, which we later figured out was the outer wall of Todai. Heh. Eventually we get to an intersection and see Tokyo University Information Building. Yay! So we were on campus. It was pretty interesting just to walk around... at first we were by the hospital part so there werent students or anything but eventually we found our way to the infamous clock tower and sat down on a bench near it. (by then it was nice and beautiful and sunny of course since we werent trying to go look at sakura trees.) It was really just pretty neato to be sitting in the middle of Todai campus. I just always feel at home at colleges I guess! Though we didnt really want to go into any buildings and trespass or whatever, so we didnt. We saw a lot of students wearing matching jackets, it was kind of odd.
I took a few pictures of the campus and we walked around some more and then we decided to go hit Akihabara for a few hours for lack of anything better to do. Akihabara was fun of course. I was really good and didnt buy very much. The only place I really broke down was this one store I forget the name of that had POPNMUSIC MERCHANDISE!!!! So I got the PNM card game, and a PNM keychain of Sana, and some buttons. There was more, I debated just grabbing stuff for DJ but I didnt know which things he'd want... I guess I can go back sometime. We went through various arcades, and I played some Azumanga puzzle bobble while Nykkel played Lupin the Typing or whatever. Elsewhere I played some Taiko while he played GF10. We also went into a gazillion videogame stores. Oh, also stopped in Yellow Submarine. They had Japanese copies of the D&D second edition books for like a hundred bucks each. CRAZY. I debated buying some japanese-translated board games but didnt. heh. I picked up a beetle keychain watch to replace my broken one (and get this... the one i bought is ALSO broken but i didnt discover that for a few hours AND i got it from a street vendor so theres not much i can do about it. sigh. there goes 10 bucks...) grumble. We went through Animate and Gamers and all but I just dunno any recent anime, I guess. There were a lot of cool piratey One Piece things though.
I was staaaaaaarving by 5:30pm so I made Nykkel come with me to go get food. Id noticed a tempura place along the main drag of Akihabara so we went there. I got tempura teishoku and it was FANTASTIC! I mean, there was squid tempura in there and i hate squid but even that was good. yummmmmy tempura. We went into a few more stores and then headed back to the Kimi.
I should note that Matrix Revolutions came out on DVD today in Japan and as a result every 2-3 stores had a huge Matrix display outside with people yelling and screaming about how you should buy a copy of it from them. It was somewhat surreal.
At the Kimi I tried to call Aaron and failed and tried to call![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the2belo and succeeded. Whee! That was pretty weird but cool. And hopefully we'll figure out plans soon enough, and will get the heck out of Tokyo for a day or two. I guess the cool thing is how even halfway around the world I still end up calling up a Jeff and babbling about baseball.
So, our plan for the evening was just to hit Kanamecho, for the Bookoff and the GEO. Well. Robert had never been to a Bookoff before, so he didnt understand the big deal... I think he does now :) We spent around 2.5 hours there. I went through tons of CDs, DVDs, videogames, and I even started looking through books, while Robert spent a whole bunch of time going through tons of videogames and a few CDs and some manga and whatnot. Oh yeah,eiriene, I found you Tokimeki 2 but none of the other stuff you asked about. I got myself one of the B'z DVD sets that I'd been drooling over in Kinokuniya but refused to spend 65 bucks on. Found it for 37 :) Otherwise I mostly just picked up a few CDs from the Y250-750 shelf. We went to GEO as well and I thought they had a ton of Karaoke Revolution discs but it turned out they were sold out of most of them, dammit! Bleh, it sucks to be semi-illiterate. Oh well.
Came back from Kanamecho; went to the Ryokan, and I decided I really wanted to come back out here and write an entry and read email and all. So yeah. It was a day of half touristy things and half shopping. I guess its about on par. Looks like the Giants lost and the Fighters won though... not sure thats on par :)
Tomorrow we meet up with Hitoshi Doi and one of his friends, and maybe Aaron will show up if we're lucky, and whatnot. Should be interesting.
Im back at Manboo mambo whatever. The attendant asked me if it was my first time since i seemed confused and i was like "iiie! kinou hajimeta!" cheerfully and she laughed. Heh.
Anyway. This morning I got up around 9am because hey, jetlag can bite me. Nyk apparently got up at like 6am and just sat around reading for a few hours, heh. So we got out of the ryokan and went to Tobu department store to the basement to the bakery to get breakfast. MMMMMM Bakery! I got a buncha fruity junkfood pastries, and Nykkel actually got real food kinda. I tried "sakura-pan" which turned out to just be an-pan with some other stuff in it. Was good though. We didnt know where to sit down and eat the food though, so we decided to go to Ueno Park and find a place under sakura trees to sit down and eat.
The irony is that it was Seattle-raining while we were at Ueno. So it was pretty beautiful and spectacular what with the huge walkways full of sakura trees in full bloom with leaves blowing everywhere ("Its just like anime!") but it also sucked because it was all cold and wet out. But, we walked around until we found a hana-matsuri thing with booths of food and a few games, and we sat down under a tree and ate breakfast. After that we walked... and walked... and walked some more. We went around a lake in Ueno park, and we walked by the zoo, and by the children:s amusement park thingy, and by a shrine, and just all over. We saw ducks and fish and duck boats and stuff. After an hour or two we got bored of Ueno and wanted to go elsewhere.
Ugh, someone near me just started smoking hardcore and my eyes are getting all teary and whatnot because theres no ventilation in here arrrrgh
We figured out that we were relatively near Todai (Tokyo Daigaku / University of Tokyo) so we decided to go there. It was, of course, more walking :) We apparently vaguely headed the wrong way and ended up walking up this huge windy passage of roads near a big brick wall, which we later figured out was the outer wall of Todai. Heh. Eventually we get to an intersection and see Tokyo University Information Building. Yay! So we were on campus. It was pretty interesting just to walk around... at first we were by the hospital part so there werent students or anything but eventually we found our way to the infamous clock tower and sat down on a bench near it. (by then it was nice and beautiful and sunny of course since we werent trying to go look at sakura trees.) It was really just pretty neato to be sitting in the middle of Todai campus. I just always feel at home at colleges I guess! Though we didnt really want to go into any buildings and trespass or whatever, so we didnt. We saw a lot of students wearing matching jackets, it was kind of odd.
I took a few pictures of the campus and we walked around some more and then we decided to go hit Akihabara for a few hours for lack of anything better to do. Akihabara was fun of course. I was really good and didnt buy very much. The only place I really broke down was this one store I forget the name of that had POPNMUSIC MERCHANDISE!!!! So I got the PNM card game, and a PNM keychain of Sana, and some buttons. There was more, I debated just grabbing stuff for DJ but I didnt know which things he'd want... I guess I can go back sometime. We went through various arcades, and I played some Azumanga puzzle bobble while Nykkel played Lupin the Typing or whatever. Elsewhere I played some Taiko while he played GF10. We also went into a gazillion videogame stores. Oh, also stopped in Yellow Submarine. They had Japanese copies of the D&D second edition books for like a hundred bucks each. CRAZY. I debated buying some japanese-translated board games but didnt. heh. I picked up a beetle keychain watch to replace my broken one (and get this... the one i bought is ALSO broken but i didnt discover that for a few hours AND i got it from a street vendor so theres not much i can do about it. sigh. there goes 10 bucks...) grumble. We went through Animate and Gamers and all but I just dunno any recent anime, I guess. There were a lot of cool piratey One Piece things though.
I was staaaaaaarving by 5:30pm so I made Nykkel come with me to go get food. Id noticed a tempura place along the main drag of Akihabara so we went there. I got tempura teishoku and it was FANTASTIC! I mean, there was squid tempura in there and i hate squid but even that was good. yummmmmy tempura. We went into a few more stores and then headed back to the Kimi.
I should note that Matrix Revolutions came out on DVD today in Japan and as a result every 2-3 stores had a huge Matrix display outside with people yelling and screaming about how you should buy a copy of it from them. It was somewhat surreal.
At the Kimi I tried to call Aaron and failed and tried to call
the2belo and succeeded. Whee! That was pretty weird but cool. And hopefully we'll figure out plans soon enough, and will get the heck out of Tokyo for a day or two. I guess the cool thing is how even halfway around the world I still end up calling up a Jeff and babbling about baseball. So, our plan for the evening was just to hit Kanamecho, for the Bookoff and the GEO. Well. Robert had never been to a Bookoff before, so he didnt understand the big deal... I think he does now :) We spent around 2.5 hours there. I went through tons of CDs, DVDs, videogames, and I even started looking through books, while Robert spent a whole bunch of time going through tons of videogames and a few CDs and some manga and whatnot. Oh yeah,
eiriene, I found you Tokimeki 2 but none of the other stuff you asked about. I got myself one of the B'z DVD sets that I'd been drooling over in Kinokuniya but refused to spend 65 bucks on. Found it for 37 :) Otherwise I mostly just picked up a few CDs from the Y250-750 shelf. We went to GEO as well and I thought they had a ton of Karaoke Revolution discs but it turned out they were sold out of most of them, dammit! Bleh, it sucks to be semi-illiterate. Oh well.Came back from Kanamecho; went to the Ryokan, and I decided I really wanted to come back out here and write an entry and read email and all. So yeah. It was a day of half touristy things and half shopping. I guess its about on par. Looks like the Giants lost and the Fighters won though... not sure thats on par :)
Tomorrow we meet up with Hitoshi Doi and one of his friends, and maybe Aaron will show up if we're lucky, and whatnot. Should be interesting.
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