Japan Day 10 - Toy shopping, Catan, sightseeing, hanging out with Hitoshi again, Anna Miller's, etc.
Right, so we made plans with Hitoshi again, but he couldn't hang out until dinnertime. So we had an afternoon to kill. I actually slept pretty late, like almost 11am, because Nykkel went off to do laundry in the morning, and didn't get back until then. (He called me to let me know he was leaving at 9:30 but I just flipped over and went back to sleep, heh).
I finally got to take him for Kaiten sushi for lunch! Yay!!! We went to the kaiten place about 3 blocks from the ryokan because I figured it'd be Nykkel-friendly since they have an English menu to help you understand what the weird crap on the conveyor belt is. I had like 7 plates and was totally stuffed... this is also the place that makes "Califomaki", which is basically crab-avocado rolls, which are bizarre in Japan. Anyway. It was cool and Nykkel didn't complain about it too much and maybe now he'll go with me to Blue C sometimes in Seattle.
We went into the train station to go get some JR tickets... Nykkel wanted to wait until meeting up with Hitoshi to have him help us read the forms and whatnot but I figured that was a rude use of Hitoshi's time. So I went up to the JR information booth and explained in Japanese that I didn't know how to fill out the forms; the lady at the booth said something like "Bring a form here and I will try to help you"; so I got some forms and I told her we were going to Nagoya tomorrow, etc etc, needed a return trip, etc... and she helped me figure out which things to circle and what to write and all. (Har, she complimented me on my kanji writing since I wrote all the placenames and whatnot in Japanese, until I had to write Ikebukuro on the form for my Narita Express ticket and totally booched it. The other amusing thing was that I needed a phone number, and didn't know the ryokan number offhand, but I told her I was staying at the Kimi and they actually had a Kimi pamphlet there at the JR info desk. Heh!) The depressing thing is... we made all that effort to fill in our forms and have them for the ticket desk people, and then a few places in line ahead of us was a very stereotypical loud obnoxious gaijin family and they just walked up to the counter like "Hello, we need tickets to go to..." wherever in English, no forms, no nothing. Sigh.
Anyway... incase you didn't see my last reply to you,![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the2belo, we're showing up in Nagoya at 12:04pm tomorrow (Sunday) on the Hikari 267. I'll probly be wearing a black "the brilliant green" t-shirt and khakis because I think that's almost all I have left that's clean.
Nykkel and I got done with tickets around 1:30pm, and both of us had different ideas of how to spend the day until meeting up with Hitoshi at 6:30, so we split up. He went off to Akihabara and I went... well, first I went to east Ikebukuro to see how crowded Moai was to get in some cheap Bemani time. It was PACKED! I went around the UFO catcher places a little too and they were also depressingly packed for 2 on a Saturday afternoon. I stopped by the super-cheap CD store and got like 8 CDs that cost a total of 290 yen... god I love Japan sometimes. Anyway, it was so nice outside that I felt dumb just being in east Ikebukuro, so I went and got on a Yamanote with no particular destination. My first thought was going back to the Tokyo Dome area and hunting down baseball stuff... my second thought was going to Shibuya since I hadn't been there this trip... my third thought was... hey, I've never seen Meiji Jingu stadium, why don't I go there? Maybe they'd have a baseball store there too. Well. So I went there. I went to Shibuya, then switched to the Ginza line to Gaienmae, and exited for the "Jingu Stadium" exit.. then promptly had no idea where to go. I asked an old lady on the corner where I could find "Meiji Jingu... anou... yakyuu no tokoro?" I forgot the word for stadium :) But she pointed me the right way, and I went there.
Well, uh, I don't know what was going on there today, but since the Swallows are playing at the Tokyo Dome all weekend, the baseball stores at Meiji were not open. Doh! But I got to walk around the stadium and see all the Yakult vending machines, which was kind of amusing.
Then since I was already at a Ginza line stop, I had the option of going back to Shibuya, or maybe going to... Ginza! All I wanted to see in Ginza was the Hakuhinkan Toy Palace, but... oh man, that was TOTALLY worth it. I went up to the fourth floor, which is games, and there was a guy demoing the Settlers of Catan :) I talked to him for like 20 minutes about board games and Catan and whatnot. It was troublesome sometimes because of my lack of gamer vocabulary in Japanese but we got along okay. Turns out he works for Hanayama Toys which are the people who translated and promote Catan in Japan, so... heh, he said board games aren't so popular in Japan; I told him that Catan is insanely popular in America and he was happy to hear that. I looked through the set and thought it was cool enough that I picked up a copy. (It was only like $35 which is how much Catan costs in America too.) So, yeah. I got a ton of Catan pamphlets in Japanese which I plan to give to people when I get back. They are crazy cute and manga-style!
I had a lot of fun on that floor; there was a guy demoing these other puzzle thingies so he kept setting up puzzles for me and I kept solving them. There was one really hard one but the rest were pretty easy. I said I was on "haru-yasumi" in Japan and he wanted to know what college I went to... it was kind of a tough situation to explain so I just said I was on vacation from work. Heh.
Anyway, the rest of the toy place was a lot less eventful. And after that I went to Shinjuku; it was about 5:50 when I got there and we were meeting Hitoshi at 6:30. So I quickly went to Yodobashi games and picked up IIDX 6th Style for Farren, and then ran back to the station. I stopped for a minute to listen to a few bands performing and then ran through the station... oh man, finding the Shin-Minami exit is a pain in the ass! Even worse, most of the attendants in the station had no idea where it was. Eventually I found someone who did, and then I found Nykkel and Hitoshi, and I was only a minute late. Whee.
Hitoshi wanted to go to dinner at Anna Miller's. Heh! He thought I would be offended by it, apparently, but eh... so, we took the Keio line one stop to somewhere I'm forgetting the name of, and right by the station there was the restaurant. It's very "american" ish; mostly burgers and sandwiches and stuff, and lots of pie. I got a club sandwich and some strawberry pie. Well, we all got sandwiches and pie. The waitresses really DO look like how Piro draws them in Megatokyo; they have these crazy short skirts and bodices to make their chests look big, and they are all really cute. (The chests is a big deal because I swear to god, maybe only 1% of Japanese women seem to be larger than an A cup.) The hostess actually had a different outfit on and Hitoshi explained that it was the "over 25" outfit; they can only wear the super cute outfits until they're 25 years old or something. He seemed to know an inordinate amount about the restaurant. I suppose it shouldn't surprise me. Hehe.
Anyway, we hung out talking there for an hour or two, and then went back to Shinjuku to hit up some shops and arcades and stuff. Hitoshi helped me get a Hello Kitty out of one of the UFO catchers, and Nykkel and I played a little Bemani, and we went through some videogame and computer stores, and then hung around talking about baseball for a while before we all adjourned to the appropriate stations. Whee! It was really fun hanging out with him. Anyone who can talk about baseball and videogames for hours is cool in my book.
Yeah, so after that Nykkel and I went to east Ikebukuro to hang out.. I played a few games of PNM at Moai. I got my first ever Extra Stage! I can't really figure out what you have to do exactly; it seems to be get over 100 points in Challenge mode but I had a game where I got 106 points and didn't get it, so hmm. I pulled off some mad good scores on stuff, like I full-comboed Murmur Twins with 17 goods, and Candy Heart with like 20 goods, and stuff like that... Damn, I'm really going to miss PNM 11. Sigh. I've had such fun playing it this trip.
And now I am here at the internet cafe. And soon I will sleep, and then a few hours later I will wake up and go to Nagoya! And then in a day I will come back to the states and I will be very sad. But then I will go to Pittsburgh and maybe be slightly less sad. We shall see.
I finally got to take him for Kaiten sushi for lunch! Yay!!! We went to the kaiten place about 3 blocks from the ryokan because I figured it'd be Nykkel-friendly since they have an English menu to help you understand what the weird crap on the conveyor belt is. I had like 7 plates and was totally stuffed... this is also the place that makes "Califomaki", which is basically crab-avocado rolls, which are bizarre in Japan. Anyway. It was cool and Nykkel didn't complain about it too much and maybe now he'll go with me to Blue C sometimes in Seattle.
We went into the train station to go get some JR tickets... Nykkel wanted to wait until meeting up with Hitoshi to have him help us read the forms and whatnot but I figured that was a rude use of Hitoshi's time. So I went up to the JR information booth and explained in Japanese that I didn't know how to fill out the forms; the lady at the booth said something like "Bring a form here and I will try to help you"; so I got some forms and I told her we were going to Nagoya tomorrow, etc etc, needed a return trip, etc... and she helped me figure out which things to circle and what to write and all. (Har, she complimented me on my kanji writing since I wrote all the placenames and whatnot in Japanese, until I had to write Ikebukuro on the form for my Narita Express ticket and totally booched it. The other amusing thing was that I needed a phone number, and didn't know the ryokan number offhand, but I told her I was staying at the Kimi and they actually had a Kimi pamphlet there at the JR info desk. Heh!) The depressing thing is... we made all that effort to fill in our forms and have them for the ticket desk people, and then a few places in line ahead of us was a very stereotypical loud obnoxious gaijin family and they just walked up to the counter like "Hello, we need tickets to go to..." wherever in English, no forms, no nothing. Sigh.
Anyway... incase you didn't see my last reply to you,
the2belo, we're showing up in Nagoya at 12:04pm tomorrow (Sunday) on the Hikari 267. I'll probly be wearing a black "the brilliant green" t-shirt and khakis because I think that's almost all I have left that's clean. Nykkel and I got done with tickets around 1:30pm, and both of us had different ideas of how to spend the day until meeting up with Hitoshi at 6:30, so we split up. He went off to Akihabara and I went... well, first I went to east Ikebukuro to see how crowded Moai was to get in some cheap Bemani time. It was PACKED! I went around the UFO catcher places a little too and they were also depressingly packed for 2 on a Saturday afternoon. I stopped by the super-cheap CD store and got like 8 CDs that cost a total of 290 yen... god I love Japan sometimes. Anyway, it was so nice outside that I felt dumb just being in east Ikebukuro, so I went and got on a Yamanote with no particular destination. My first thought was going back to the Tokyo Dome area and hunting down baseball stuff... my second thought was going to Shibuya since I hadn't been there this trip... my third thought was... hey, I've never seen Meiji Jingu stadium, why don't I go there? Maybe they'd have a baseball store there too. Well. So I went there. I went to Shibuya, then switched to the Ginza line to Gaienmae, and exited for the "Jingu Stadium" exit.. then promptly had no idea where to go. I asked an old lady on the corner where I could find "Meiji Jingu... anou... yakyuu no tokoro?" I forgot the word for stadium :) But she pointed me the right way, and I went there.
Well, uh, I don't know what was going on there today, but since the Swallows are playing at the Tokyo Dome all weekend, the baseball stores at Meiji were not open. Doh! But I got to walk around the stadium and see all the Yakult vending machines, which was kind of amusing.
Then since I was already at a Ginza line stop, I had the option of going back to Shibuya, or maybe going to... Ginza! All I wanted to see in Ginza was the Hakuhinkan Toy Palace, but... oh man, that was TOTALLY worth it. I went up to the fourth floor, which is games, and there was a guy demoing the Settlers of Catan :) I talked to him for like 20 minutes about board games and Catan and whatnot. It was troublesome sometimes because of my lack of gamer vocabulary in Japanese but we got along okay. Turns out he works for Hanayama Toys which are the people who translated and promote Catan in Japan, so... heh, he said board games aren't so popular in Japan; I told him that Catan is insanely popular in America and he was happy to hear that. I looked through the set and thought it was cool enough that I picked up a copy. (It was only like $35 which is how much Catan costs in America too.) So, yeah. I got a ton of Catan pamphlets in Japanese which I plan to give to people when I get back. They are crazy cute and manga-style!
I had a lot of fun on that floor; there was a guy demoing these other puzzle thingies so he kept setting up puzzles for me and I kept solving them. There was one really hard one but the rest were pretty easy. I said I was on "haru-yasumi" in Japan and he wanted to know what college I went to... it was kind of a tough situation to explain so I just said I was on vacation from work. Heh.
Anyway, the rest of the toy place was a lot less eventful. And after that I went to Shinjuku; it was about 5:50 when I got there and we were meeting Hitoshi at 6:30. So I quickly went to Yodobashi games and picked up IIDX 6th Style for Farren, and then ran back to the station. I stopped for a minute to listen to a few bands performing and then ran through the station... oh man, finding the Shin-Minami exit is a pain in the ass! Even worse, most of the attendants in the station had no idea where it was. Eventually I found someone who did, and then I found Nykkel and Hitoshi, and I was only a minute late. Whee.
Hitoshi wanted to go to dinner at Anna Miller's. Heh! He thought I would be offended by it, apparently, but eh... so, we took the Keio line one stop to somewhere I'm forgetting the name of, and right by the station there was the restaurant. It's very "american" ish; mostly burgers and sandwiches and stuff, and lots of pie. I got a club sandwich and some strawberry pie. Well, we all got sandwiches and pie. The waitresses really DO look like how Piro draws them in Megatokyo; they have these crazy short skirts and bodices to make their chests look big, and they are all really cute. (The chests is a big deal because I swear to god, maybe only 1% of Japanese women seem to be larger than an A cup.) The hostess actually had a different outfit on and Hitoshi explained that it was the "over 25" outfit; they can only wear the super cute outfits until they're 25 years old or something. He seemed to know an inordinate amount about the restaurant. I suppose it shouldn't surprise me. Hehe.
Anyway, we hung out talking there for an hour or two, and then went back to Shinjuku to hit up some shops and arcades and stuff. Hitoshi helped me get a Hello Kitty out of one of the UFO catchers, and Nykkel and I played a little Bemani, and we went through some videogame and computer stores, and then hung around talking about baseball for a while before we all adjourned to the appropriate stations. Whee! It was really fun hanging out with him. Anyone who can talk about baseball and videogames for hours is cool in my book.
Yeah, so after that Nykkel and I went to east Ikebukuro to hang out.. I played a few games of PNM at Moai. I got my first ever Extra Stage! I can't really figure out what you have to do exactly; it seems to be get over 100 points in Challenge mode but I had a game where I got 106 points and didn't get it, so hmm. I pulled off some mad good scores on stuff, like I full-comboed Murmur Twins with 17 goods, and Candy Heart with like 20 goods, and stuff like that... Damn, I'm really going to miss PNM 11. Sigh. I've had such fun playing it this trip.
And now I am here at the internet cafe. And soon I will sleep, and then a few hours later I will wake up and go to Nagoya! And then in a day I will come back to the states and I will be very sad. But then I will go to Pittsburgh and maybe be slightly less sad. We shall see.