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Saitama Sightseeing (not)
So this morning Carl called me and woke me up at like 11am. He was going to come out here to my place -- I'd drawn him a map last night -- and normally it should have taken half an hour, but he ended up taking the wrong exit out of Warabi station, maybe my fault for assuming the "East Exit" sign was a lot more prominent. But, still, he found his way here eventually and we hung out here for probably an hour or so. I let him use my internet and climb around my apartment (as seems usual for when new people come here, the first thing he did was climb up on the loft). Also, he brought me a box full of homemade Christmas cookies! I had totally forgotten how much I love the cookies his family makes each year, so this was a super-happy surprise. Yay :)
For lack of anything better to do, I suggested the kinds of things I would normally do on a day like today: bum around the south end of Saitama. First we walked to Tsukagoshi Jinja, the shrine down the street from me, and we prayed for good wishes for the new year. I should have bought an arrow but I didn't. We dropped my bike off at Warabi station because I wasn't sure where we'd end up ultimately, and wanted to be able to ride home later.
Went to Nishi-Kawaguchi, hit up the new Book-Off. Despite it being New Years, this store was overstaffed for the Grand Opening, including people giving out tissue packs at the station and everything. It's a pretty big Book-Off, three floors. Carl scoured the second floor for manga and I scoured the basement for CDs and DVDs. It was disturbing how many box sets they had of doramas I've watched. On the other hand they were mostly lacking in stuff I actually wanted -- or at least at prices I felt like paying. I picked up HY's first EP, Departures, for 500 yen, and I found the special edition of the Yokohama Baystars Jump CD for 750 yen. Whee. I also FINALLY got a new Book-Off T-Point card... 3 months after they phased out the old Book-Off point cards, heh. To her credit, the sales clerk didn't make some comment about "Holy crap you can write your address in kanji OMFG". BUT, after I filled out the paper I couldn't find Carl again so I'm standing there looking like a dumbass in the entryway and another store clerk looked at me funny and I said "友達はどこかなぁ" and the store clerk smiled and pointed to Carl who was down another aisle looking at videogames. Of course the gaijin is looking for the other gaijin!
We walked to Kura after that and ate LOTS AND LOTS OF SUSHI. I got to show off the super-cool ordering touch-screen mechanism, AND the game where you put the plates in the chute and try to get a jackpot.
The plan after that was to go see Smile again -- turns out that the first day of the month, all movies cost 1000 yen at Movix, and there really wasn't anything else there that I wanted to see. So we were about to leave Kura to walk down to Ario when we got a call from Oren, who was done meeting up with his other friend. He came up to Kawaguchi and we met him at the station and walked to Ario and got to the theater around 4:40pm for a 4:50pm movie. Whew.
The movie was still pretty good even the second time, and I caught a few more details that I didn't catch the first time, which was great. I did notice that I thought it was really a shame they had to end on the Rena plot though, because the movie really is so awesomely silly and funny up until then. Oh well. I think a lot of Japanese movies suffer from being about 20 minutes too long for their own good, but for the most part this one doesn't. Judging by how much I heard them laughing I assume that Oren and Carl also enjoyed the movie, but it's hard to tell.
We wandered back to Akabane after that (also stopping in the Kawaguchi "ekimae" Book-Off, which I'd never been in before, but which is pretty small), and got dinner at Anrakutei. Yakiniku wheeee! We were sitting near the drink bar so I used that as an opportunity to make Carl get me a lot of Coke. Also, so we tried some pork to go with the normal ロース and I don't think it was all that good. Goddamn, I ate a LOT of food today. Good thing I also walked like 3 miles to go with it?
I came home after that, and have been goofing off on the computer, and eating Christmas cookies. Well, one or two cookies. They taste like sugar and flour and candy canes and ten years of friendship. Yum.
Anyway, tomorrow we are going to Kamakura I think, and stopping in Yokohama/Minatomirai on the way home. I kind of hope we can take the Shonan Monorail but who knows if we'll have time. I've wanted to take it forever but have pretty much just never been all the fuck way out in Ofuna to try it. So, here's hoping!
For lack of anything better to do, I suggested the kinds of things I would normally do on a day like today: bum around the south end of Saitama. First we walked to Tsukagoshi Jinja, the shrine down the street from me, and we prayed for good wishes for the new year. I should have bought an arrow but I didn't. We dropped my bike off at Warabi station because I wasn't sure where we'd end up ultimately, and wanted to be able to ride home later.
Went to Nishi-Kawaguchi, hit up the new Book-Off. Despite it being New Years, this store was overstaffed for the Grand Opening, including people giving out tissue packs at the station and everything. It's a pretty big Book-Off, three floors. Carl scoured the second floor for manga and I scoured the basement for CDs and DVDs. It was disturbing how many box sets they had of doramas I've watched. On the other hand they were mostly lacking in stuff I actually wanted -- or at least at prices I felt like paying. I picked up HY's first EP, Departures, for 500 yen, and I found the special edition of the Yokohama Baystars Jump CD for 750 yen. Whee. I also FINALLY got a new Book-Off T-Point card... 3 months after they phased out the old Book-Off point cards, heh. To her credit, the sales clerk didn't make some comment about "Holy crap you can write your address in kanji OMFG". BUT, after I filled out the paper I couldn't find Carl again so I'm standing there looking like a dumbass in the entryway and another store clerk looked at me funny and I said "友達はどこかなぁ" and the store clerk smiled and pointed to Carl who was down another aisle looking at videogames. Of course the gaijin is looking for the other gaijin!
We walked to Kura after that and ate LOTS AND LOTS OF SUSHI. I got to show off the super-cool ordering touch-screen mechanism, AND the game where you put the plates in the chute and try to get a jackpot.
The plan after that was to go see Smile again -- turns out that the first day of the month, all movies cost 1000 yen at Movix, and there really wasn't anything else there that I wanted to see. So we were about to leave Kura to walk down to Ario when we got a call from Oren, who was done meeting up with his other friend. He came up to Kawaguchi and we met him at the station and walked to Ario and got to the theater around 4:40pm for a 4:50pm movie. Whew.
The movie was still pretty good even the second time, and I caught a few more details that I didn't catch the first time, which was great. I did notice that I thought it was really a shame they had to end on the Rena plot though, because the movie really is so awesomely silly and funny up until then. Oh well. I think a lot of Japanese movies suffer from being about 20 minutes too long for their own good, but for the most part this one doesn't. Judging by how much I heard them laughing I assume that Oren and Carl also enjoyed the movie, but it's hard to tell.
We wandered back to Akabane after that (also stopping in the Kawaguchi "ekimae" Book-Off, which I'd never been in before, but which is pretty small), and got dinner at Anrakutei. Yakiniku wheeee! We were sitting near the drink bar so I used that as an opportunity to make Carl get me a lot of Coke. Also, so we tried some pork to go with the normal ロース and I don't think it was all that good. Goddamn, I ate a LOT of food today. Good thing I also walked like 3 miles to go with it?
I came home after that, and have been goofing off on the computer, and eating Christmas cookies. Well, one or two cookies. They taste like sugar and flour and candy canes and ten years of friendship. Yum.
Anyway, tomorrow we are going to Kamakura I think, and stopping in Yokohama/Minatomirai on the way home. I kind of hope we can take the Shonan Monorail but who knows if we'll have time. I've wanted to take it forever but have pretty much just never been all the fuck way out in Ofuna to try it. So, here's hoping!