Japan Day 7 - Ghibli Museum, Inokashira, Nakano, and other fun stuff
Today we had tickets to go to the Ghibli Museum, so we did. First we stopped off in Shinjuku for lunch; ended up getting soba-udon stuff. I showed Nykkel the Yodobashi store I like, and then we got on the Chuo line or whatever towards Mitaka.
Finding the Ghibli museum once we were in Mitaka wasn't too hard. There are signs all over the place leading to it. We had to wait around a little while, then go inside and exchange ticket vouchers, and then... explore! The museum is kinda built like a crazy person's house, there are weird stairways and bridges and stuff all over the place... like spiral staircases leading to low archways leading to hallways with bridges to cross over to get to entrances to... let's see. Anyway. There was an animation room which was cool, and a HUGE fuzzy catbus with tons of kids crawling all over it. There was a room that looked like an artist's sketch room, and it had movie sketches all over the place; you could even look through the sketch storybooks of all the Ghibli movies! There was a Laputa/Porco Rosso room that had lots of airplanes and cels and stuff, and maps of the castle in the sky and whatnot. On the roof of the museum they had a huge robot, like the one in Laputa, it was really cool, and one of the few things you were allowed to take a picture of. Basically, it was just a big house full of random Ghibli stuff. There was a stuff store and a book store; I got a bunch of stuff (I got something Kiki-related for Nick! Now I just have to remember to bring it to Carnival) and I got a museum book. We also stopped at their cafe thing and got ice cream. I had banana ice cream. It was good.
The Ghibli museum is right next to Inokashira park, which was on Nykkel's list of places to go because it had sakura trees and ducks. Well, it did infact have sakura trees and ducks and a neat shrine. The ducks were in a lake full of paddle boats and the sakura trees were around said lake. So we basically walked around the whole lake. I took a whole bunch of pictures of stuff. It was really nice out and there were a bazillion people out on the lake; imagine like Greenlake but twice as many people and tons of sakura trees and swan boats. The other cool thing was seeing ducks AND giant koi fishies.
We stopped at a vending machine to eat Kit-kats after that (do they have white chocolate kitkats in america?) and then wandered the neighborhood a bit to get back to a train station. Apparently Hitoshi lives somewhere near there, because Nykkel was vaguely familiar with the area, but not really... we got near a different station though and found a BOOKOFF! Wheee! The Kichijouji bookoff is really neat! It had a really extensive 250-yen section with TONS of stuff I wanted... so I went kinda crazy... well.. in a sort of... normally I buy two Japanese CDs for 60 bucks, right? Here I bought 20 Japanese CDs for 60 bucks... :) I looooooove Bookoff! It makes me feel less bad about spending money.
Anyway, after that we hit up Nakano, which has a Mandarake, or more like, it has 5 Mandarake stores all in this one mall area near the Nakano station. Nykkel went off to look for his doujinshi and hentai stuff and I explored the mall. I went into an anime CD store and... hey Jeff (![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
damienroc that is), I don't think there IS one CD with all the Ranma themes on it. Nykkel seems to think there was an opening theme CD and a closing themes CD but I haven't seen those either. I wanted to keep an eye out for something else cool to get you but it's hard to figure out what. They had the Azumanga vocal collection there...
So I wandered around the mall. Found a poster store. Found some REALLY cool posters. Bought some really cool posters since they were cheap. So I now have a Japanese movie poster for Pirates of the Caribbean, for example. Fear me. I didn't buy anything else in the mall though. Go me.
Nykkel wanted to go check out an old arcade he used to go to in the mall to see what Bemani they had. It was SO neat! They had a bunch of older Bemani there! In order, down the corner of the wall, they had PNM 11, *MAMBO A GOGO*, Guitar Freaks 8th, Drummania 9th, Drummania 6th, Beatmania the Final, Beatmania IIDX 9th, DDR Disney's Rave, and DDR 4th Mix. Yay 4th mix!!! So we played some 4th mix doubles for old times' sake. How cool! Then Nykkel and I played a few games of IIDX together, which was also fun. It's convenient that I'm a left-scratch person and he's a right-scratch person, and that we both play around the same level of songs.
After that we went to Shinjuku and walked around for a while looking for somewhere to get dinner, eventually deciding on just going to a C&C Curry place and feeling pretty stupid since there's an ekimae one in Ikebukuro. Oh well. We also stopped in the Taito Inn so I could look at UFO catchers... there was this one with battery-operated dogs that would bark and walk and flip over... this one dude was trying REALLY hard to get one and couldn't. I went in and on my first try managed to pick one up, and Nykkel and I were both amazed, until of course, RIGHT before it would have dropped out of the machine, the claw dropped it on its side back inside the machine. Dammit! That made me really sad but I didn't want to spend the money to try to get one again. We went to Tower Records and I went to try to look up Ranma CDs but totally failed since there are too many. Ugh.
Came back to Ikebukuro after that and now I am at the internet cafe. I think they're getting used to my ugly mug now. Like an idiot I went and got a pepsi as my free drink here... which is caffeine which means I may have trouble sleeping which means waking up at 6:15 to get out of the ryokan by 7:15 to get to Tokyo station by 8 might be difficult. Sigh. Well, we'll see.
Fighters won tonight! So I guess it didn't matter which game I went to. Giants lost to Chunichi, who are on a roll apparently. And it looks like the Mariners lost their home opening. Damn.
Oh well. Off to try to sleep soon. Tomorrow, Kyoto! Hopefully.
Finding the Ghibli museum once we were in Mitaka wasn't too hard. There are signs all over the place leading to it. We had to wait around a little while, then go inside and exchange ticket vouchers, and then... explore! The museum is kinda built like a crazy person's house, there are weird stairways and bridges and stuff all over the place... like spiral staircases leading to low archways leading to hallways with bridges to cross over to get to entrances to... let's see. Anyway. There was an animation room which was cool, and a HUGE fuzzy catbus with tons of kids crawling all over it. There was a room that looked like an artist's sketch room, and it had movie sketches all over the place; you could even look through the sketch storybooks of all the Ghibli movies! There was a Laputa/Porco Rosso room that had lots of airplanes and cels and stuff, and maps of the castle in the sky and whatnot. On the roof of the museum they had a huge robot, like the one in Laputa, it was really cool, and one of the few things you were allowed to take a picture of. Basically, it was just a big house full of random Ghibli stuff. There was a stuff store and a book store; I got a bunch of stuff (I got something Kiki-related for Nick! Now I just have to remember to bring it to Carnival) and I got a museum book. We also stopped at their cafe thing and got ice cream. I had banana ice cream. It was good.
The Ghibli museum is right next to Inokashira park, which was on Nykkel's list of places to go because it had sakura trees and ducks. Well, it did infact have sakura trees and ducks and a neat shrine. The ducks were in a lake full of paddle boats and the sakura trees were around said lake. So we basically walked around the whole lake. I took a whole bunch of pictures of stuff. It was really nice out and there were a bazillion people out on the lake; imagine like Greenlake but twice as many people and tons of sakura trees and swan boats. The other cool thing was seeing ducks AND giant koi fishies.
We stopped at a vending machine to eat Kit-kats after that (do they have white chocolate kitkats in america?) and then wandered the neighborhood a bit to get back to a train station. Apparently Hitoshi lives somewhere near there, because Nykkel was vaguely familiar with the area, but not really... we got near a different station though and found a BOOKOFF! Wheee! The Kichijouji bookoff is really neat! It had a really extensive 250-yen section with TONS of stuff I wanted... so I went kinda crazy... well.. in a sort of... normally I buy two Japanese CDs for 60 bucks, right? Here I bought 20 Japanese CDs for 60 bucks... :) I looooooove Bookoff! It makes me feel less bad about spending money.
Anyway, after that we hit up Nakano, which has a Mandarake, or more like, it has 5 Mandarake stores all in this one mall area near the Nakano station. Nykkel went off to look for his doujinshi and hentai stuff and I explored the mall. I went into an anime CD store and... hey Jeff (
damienroc that is), I don't think there IS one CD with all the Ranma themes on it. Nykkel seems to think there was an opening theme CD and a closing themes CD but I haven't seen those either. I wanted to keep an eye out for something else cool to get you but it's hard to figure out what. They had the Azumanga vocal collection there...So I wandered around the mall. Found a poster store. Found some REALLY cool posters. Bought some really cool posters since they were cheap. So I now have a Japanese movie poster for Pirates of the Caribbean, for example. Fear me. I didn't buy anything else in the mall though. Go me.
Nykkel wanted to go check out an old arcade he used to go to in the mall to see what Bemani they had. It was SO neat! They had a bunch of older Bemani there! In order, down the corner of the wall, they had PNM 11, *MAMBO A GOGO*, Guitar Freaks 8th, Drummania 9th, Drummania 6th, Beatmania the Final, Beatmania IIDX 9th, DDR Disney's Rave, and DDR 4th Mix. Yay 4th mix!!! So we played some 4th mix doubles for old times' sake. How cool! Then Nykkel and I played a few games of IIDX together, which was also fun. It's convenient that I'm a left-scratch person and he's a right-scratch person, and that we both play around the same level of songs.
After that we went to Shinjuku and walked around for a while looking for somewhere to get dinner, eventually deciding on just going to a C&C Curry place and feeling pretty stupid since there's an ekimae one in Ikebukuro. Oh well. We also stopped in the Taito Inn so I could look at UFO catchers... there was this one with battery-operated dogs that would bark and walk and flip over... this one dude was trying REALLY hard to get one and couldn't. I went in and on my first try managed to pick one up, and Nykkel and I were both amazed, until of course, RIGHT before it would have dropped out of the machine, the claw dropped it on its side back inside the machine. Dammit! That made me really sad but I didn't want to spend the money to try to get one again. We went to Tower Records and I went to try to look up Ranma CDs but totally failed since there are too many. Ugh.
Came back to Ikebukuro after that and now I am at the internet cafe. I think they're getting used to my ugly mug now. Like an idiot I went and got a pepsi as my free drink here... which is caffeine which means I may have trouble sleeping which means waking up at 6:15 to get out of the ryokan by 7:15 to get to Tokyo station by 8 might be difficult. Sigh. Well, we'll see.
Fighters won tonight! So I guess it didn't matter which game I went to. Giants lost to Chunichi, who are on a roll apparently. And it looks like the Mariners lost their home opening. Damn.
Oh well. Off to try to sleep soon. Tomorrow, Kyoto! Hopefully.
no subject
I also saw dark chocolate kit kats, once.
I've been reading your entries, although I don't understand most of them. It's like you're in a different country. ;-)