Greetings from Japan, Day 1
Okay, so things went perfectly fine. I'm a dork.
I packed, went to sleep at like 3-4am, got up at 8am, sleepwalked through my morning routine, got on the bus downtown, got on the bus to the airport. The line to get my ticket and check in my bag was HUGE and took longer than anything else -- roughly 40 minutes. Security was fast after that though they took away my water bottle, oops. I ate some lunch and then boarded the plane, where they immediately gave me more lunch, which I picked at and didn:t really eat.
I watched the movie "RV" - with Robin Williams and such. It was dumb but good, I actually did enjoy it in the end, but I spent the entire movie trying to remember Kirsten Chenoweth's name. Then I tried to watch "Pride and Prejudice" twice, and both times it cut out for half an hour in the middle -- there was just sound, no pictures. Bleh. On the other hand, the guy who played Mr. Darcy was really quite perfect, I was surprised. I slept for about 2 hours inbetween watching P&P.
There were no Japanese movies in the queue for whatever reason.
I got ravenously hungry about two hours before the plane landed -- it would have been about 9pm our time, which makes sense I guess. They gave us food, though, so that was good.
I got off the plane, got through all the stuff (immigration took like 30 minutes, nothing else had to take long)... exchanged money, investigated renting a cellphone (but didn't because I'm not sure I can justify spending over a hundred bucks to rent one for like 18 days), got my Japan Rail Pass, got on the Narita Express, got to Ikebukuro, checked in, called![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lqiu, an hour later we met at the Ikebukuro station, and have been wandering around since.
MOAI HAS TURNED INTO A CHINESE RESTAURANT ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH
St. Tropez now has four PNM machines to make up for it I guess, though one had no line so I played it and it turned out to be like, new PNM Animelo for dummies or whatever. On the other hand the super mario bros theme is COOL.
Oh yeah, so we basically just walked around Ikebukuro a lot. Got curry at the place near the station on the west side, then went east, walked around, checked out all of my old favorite places, mostly arcades, and sigh, I'm really bummed that Moai is gone. I loved that place.
I called![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alibash and hopefully I'll get to see him sometime. I suck at planning, and these baseball games are poorly scheduled :) Oh so Li and I are going up to Sendai tomorrow to see the Hawks play the Eagles, I think. Should be crazy. I've never been to Sendai before and I:ve never seen the Eagles and Kazumi Saitoh (the Hawks starter) is the best pitcher in Japan right now, so it should be fairly awesome. Assuming it doesn:t rain out.
Anyway, I think that's it for now. Let's see if I can properly repunctuate this now...
I packed, went to sleep at like 3-4am, got up at 8am, sleepwalked through my morning routine, got on the bus downtown, got on the bus to the airport. The line to get my ticket and check in my bag was HUGE and took longer than anything else -- roughly 40 minutes. Security was fast after that though they took away my water bottle, oops. I ate some lunch and then boarded the plane, where they immediately gave me more lunch, which I picked at and didn:t really eat.
I watched the movie "RV" - with Robin Williams and such. It was dumb but good, I actually did enjoy it in the end, but I spent the entire movie trying to remember Kirsten Chenoweth's name. Then I tried to watch "Pride and Prejudice" twice, and both times it cut out for half an hour in the middle -- there was just sound, no pictures. Bleh. On the other hand, the guy who played Mr. Darcy was really quite perfect, I was surprised. I slept for about 2 hours inbetween watching P&P.
There were no Japanese movies in the queue for whatever reason.
I got ravenously hungry about two hours before the plane landed -- it would have been about 9pm our time, which makes sense I guess. They gave us food, though, so that was good.
I got off the plane, got through all the stuff (immigration took like 30 minutes, nothing else had to take long)... exchanged money, investigated renting a cellphone (but didn't because I'm not sure I can justify spending over a hundred bucks to rent one for like 18 days), got my Japan Rail Pass, got on the Narita Express, got to Ikebukuro, checked in, called
lqiu, an hour later we met at the Ikebukuro station, and have been wandering around since. MOAI HAS TURNED INTO A CHINESE RESTAURANT ARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH
St. Tropez now has four PNM machines to make up for it I guess, though one had no line so I played it and it turned out to be like, new PNM Animelo for dummies or whatever. On the other hand the super mario bros theme is COOL.
Oh yeah, so we basically just walked around Ikebukuro a lot. Got curry at the place near the station on the west side, then went east, walked around, checked out all of my old favorite places, mostly arcades, and sigh, I'm really bummed that Moai is gone. I loved that place.
I called
alibash and hopefully I'll get to see him sometime. I suck at planning, and these baseball games are poorly scheduled :) Oh so Li and I are going up to Sendai tomorrow to see the Hawks play the Eagles, I think. Should be crazy. I've never been to Sendai before and I:ve never seen the Eagles and Kazumi Saitoh (the Hawks starter) is the best pitcher in Japan right now, so it should be fairly awesome. Assuming it doesn:t rain out.Anyway, I think that's it for now. Let's see if I can properly repunctuate this now...
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It was a small Bemani-only arcade, for those who don't know.
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But 'like' the new animelo, or 'IS' the new animelo?
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Near where you are, the best place to go is Shibuya. There is an arcade near HMV (about a minute walk away) called Popolare. This is the greatest arcade in Tokyo for popular Bemani in my opinion, due to the fact that the machines are better than perfect. They have two IIDX DistorteDs, two Pop'n 14s and a GF/DMV2 session. Pretty standard, but its all 100 yen per play, and there isn't normally many people in there (its on the second floor as you walk up the street towards Adores arcade from HMV). The volumes are sky high and they use the Bemani sound separators to keep external noise out. Also the place is so clean you could eat off the floor!
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Ikebukuro - near Sunshine City. It's sorta near a crepe stand...sorry I can't give better directions than this. :( Look for a place sort of out of the way with faded arcade advertisements on the walls outside - I found this by noticing that one poster pictured three old 2nd mix machines and taking a chance that they might still have something. This place has two Extremes in great condition, 4 songs for 100 yen, and joint premium, plus it attracts some skilled regulars yet isn't that crowded when I go. And it has tons of other Bemani games too.
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