ccc_soshiki (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ccc_soshiki) wrote,@ 2008-11-02 04:10:00 |
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Japan Trip
Before my journey today had started I realised that I had left the keys to the lock on my luggage at the internet cafe. Hazukashi desu nee. Fortunately I'm fairly good at picking locks and after about 10 minutes I poped it using a twist tie to depress the pins and a flat piece of metal to turn it. Maybe I should buy another lock.
Starting the morning by walking to Akihabara (after retreiving my keys despite cross-communication issues - CHISANA AOI KAGI USHINATTA - took me a while to string that together coherantly) and picking up something interesting, I caught the train to Shinjuku and went up to the 45th floor of the Metropolitan offices. The view was both spectacular, and uninspiring. Both spectacular and uninspiring in the way Tokyo just keeps on going and going. The map to point out which buldings were which somewhat failed when the land marks were too distant and thus covered in the Tokyo haze. On the way out I found a small festival was taking place in the governmental plaza, mostly involving drums but also the tiniest, non-fearsome Chinese dragon I have ever seen. I walked around down to the department store area but there really was not anythign interesting. In attempting to get to a shrine, I didn't. I ended up wasting an hour walking through a residentual district.
I did end up managing to finally get going on the cultural scene, but unfortunately I have to prefix it with the following. Much of the ancient has been trashed over the years due to mad monks burning them down, earthquakes, and WWII. The Meiji Shrine (dedicated to the Emperor Meiji and his consort, thats the emperor that Westernised Japan) is not different, most of it being built in the fifties. Also, it's entirely the wrong season for going, the gardens were being chem-sprayed and it's Autumn here. In any case it was still very interesting, and the religion very active. While I was there everyone had to get out of the way of a wedding procession. I then attempted to proceed to Yoyogi park following my map, unfortunately instead I took the loop road and ended back at the fucking shrine. Thanks map.
The best store today was KiddyLand in Harajuku. It is something like 6 floors of pure Toy awesome. Each floor has a theme to some extent, so one was nothing but Charlie Brown and Snoopy, another Ghibli and Disney, another pokemon, transformers, and lego. I got my younger brothers a Shaymin (a hedgehog pokemon with a garden on its back instead of quills plushie, and a Windwaker Link plushie. The main boulevard of Harajuku (Omotesando) is aptly compared to those in Paris, consisting solely of extremely upmarket clothing and boutique labels. The other lane Takeshite is the one foreigners think of as Harajuku, and it was just as I remembered it down to the scary black guys accosting people and trying to drag them off to buy expensive jeans. It divides up between Gangsta (MTV), Goth/punk, and a more retro/punk in terms of clothing stores. Do not let large signs saying 'enter risky - FUCK' put you off as it really didn't deliver on the promise. It was very busy compared to last time. I kind of caved when I spotted a desert cafe (Japan has so many of these) and scoffed a wonderful Chocolate Tiramisu and an Iced Mocha.
I continued on to Shibuya which is a apparently a trendy young people place. If by trendy young people you mean girls. I infiltrated their hive known as Shibuya 109, 7 floors of womenswear. Quite frankly, it appears that the entire Western side of Tokyo is for women only. If you are female, belong to any clique, follow faashions, or just want to shop, and have a fuckton of money, you will have a great time. This is crystalised in a store called Forbidden Fruit with a giant Vagina flower logo. Harajuku seemed bent on seperating males to MTV and females to Lolita and punk. Oh, and buy fuckton I mean about 50000 yen for a full outfit. In the same way it would be better if I knew Japanese, it would be better if I had a girlfriend to dress.
What is really driving me up the wall are the prices, i:ve mentioned this before but it is just that bad. On top of this doing price comparisons is very troublesome. A lot of stores don:t seem to bother with barcodes (or uniformity of price) so you can often find the same thing in the same store, cheaper. The example today would be from Shibuya Mandarake which I accidentally found; the Emiri figure from Haruhi was in store at both 7350, and 17500. What? I really hate finding things cheaper somewhere else after I have bought them. This overwhelming voice is yelling GOTTACATCHEMALL concerning the Haruhi figurines but I really do not care for Kyons sister or Tsuruya, and am kind of indifferent towards Mikuru. It's also yelling the same thing concerning the whole store but that yeah.
My feet hurt so much from all the walking. The main shopping streets here are effectively as long as central Wellington. You would think of all the people in the world with both the need and the capacity the Japanese would have invented and proliferated motorised shoes. Part of this is of course I end up doing a lot of extra unecessary walking due to going off track. Why do I even try with the maps? Whenever I try to follow one in English or in Japanese I end up hopelessly disoriented. I find my way back eventuall but the maps have a tendancy to vary in accuracy. Expanding on that point, if you wander, you will ALWAYS end up in the red light district. And Tokyo has a lot of red light districts so I guess that:s not really all that difficult. Today I ended up in both Shinjuku:s (though more like Male host bars, where women go to pay large money to talk to pretty and thematic males), and later Shibuya (more along the lines of flashing neon).
Finally some observations; It seems that in Japan Evangelion is synonymous with Pachinko. If you see enormous Evangelion posters, it will be a pachinko palor. Every single time. Also, I am beginning to notice more and more the ubiquitous police standing on every corner, guarding every street. I am also noticing just how dirty the city is. It:s not just the cigarettes but the overall atmosphere. Everything has a fine layer of black dust from the pollution - don't use the handrails. Apart from the smoking is the spitting too. Also, hobos. Lots and lots of hobos. Found a small Hobo town near Yoyogi park
Shinjuku Metropolitan
Tokyo doesn't end
The tiniest dragon I ever saw
Meiji Shrine
Apparently the French have donated a barrel of their finest wine a year to the Emperor Meiji - the opposite side of the path has the sake
What was actually down there wasn't a tenth as exciting as the sign
Tiramisu and Iced Mocha
Harajuku
Day Five - Was intended to be significant but little actually happened. - 14/10/08
Again waking up too early for anything to be open (Otaku time equals 12, Chris time equals 8) I went for a stroll through the Ueno markets as I had done the last time I was in Japan. They hadn:t changed at all overall with numerous shops hawking bags, food, t-shirts, and in two notable exceptions, one that specialised in Giant cowboy belts/buckles, and one that specialised in transformers.
After that I went through to Akihabara again with the intent of purchasing those other two freeing figures if they were the cheapest there; I went to the Mandarake and it's still amusing how the floors are specifically labelled 'guys ｐｏｒｎ' and the next one up 'girls ｐｏｒｎ'. Unfortunately they didn't have what I was after, so I caught a train to Nakano to visit the main Mandarake. What I envisaged was something self contained, like some sort of weeaboo department store. Nope, it was another case of warrens, 5 floors of little shops. Mandarake itself is divided over three of the 5 floors and all around them. In any case, Nakano Broadway is like a bit of Harajuku and a bit of Akihabara mixed together. It has something like four cosplay shops which was interesting, especially considering it actually had a decent ration of male to female costumes. Unfortunately the average price is around 22000 for one costume.
However the 4th floor had decided to close (at 4pm) so I have yet to see what is up there. I also didn't find any of the FREEing figures cheaper. Following that, I returned and bought the Emiri figure for 7350 yen, and to my horror found that both floors of Yellow Submarine/Kotobukiya had sold out of the Ryoko. It is an October release so it makes sense that every guy and his uncle doesn't have their sexy blue bunny girl with horrifically elongated legs yet. A final lesson learned at Nakano Broadway; NEVER DRINK SOMETHING CALLED LASSI.
It rained finally today. Suddenly everyone had a clear plastic umbrella. Now this is not a conspiracy theory but abject truth; the Japanese give you dirty foreigners two options when passing by, #1, be decapitated by their honorabible umbrella, or #2, duck and bow down before them. Option three is to dodge but it generally doesn't work in a crowd.
Day Six, Seven, Eight; Kyoto. 15-17/10/08
As said for Kyoto 3 days really isn't enough time, I think a week minimum is necessary, two extra days for temples, another for museums, and another for the mountains. In any case I've walked all over the city and my feet are tired. Even walking around inside the buildings and gardens is tiring as some of them are huge. On average I've started around 9am and been walking until 5pm when everything closes (the sun is down by 6pm). It's the amazing Kyoto weight loss program. Curiously enough you can get tired of seeing perfect gardens and temples after a while, they aren't any less beautiful, it's just that they are all beautiful in a similar way. Some temples or Shrines are of course, branches of one I will have already visited.
Day One - 15/10/08; I got the Utano Youth Hostel around 12am and was exhaused, so much to the point I woke up at 9 31 instead of 9am and thus missed the breakfast I had paid for. They wouldn't refund me for it, and I spent the next couple of hours waving between RAGE and ZETSUBOUSHITA. However I discovered the novelty of a coffee vending machine and three small cups of different varities later I was feeling better. I mean, there were buttons for Cream, Sugar, Cream and Sugar, and nothing! And it was like *WHIR BUZZ* and then a little arm came out and dropped the cup in front of you. In any case, I walked to Takao. Not really a good idea. takes about 2 hours there and that again back. Despite being in the mountains it wasn't exactly the scenic route either. The three temples out there, Jinjoji, Saimyoji, and Kozanji (the last as a heritage site) were very interesting. Popping out the other end at the tourist bus depot I found a map of the place that looked absolutely nothing like what I had just visited. The three temples, especially Jinjoji have a bit of a walk or flights of stone stairs of mossy uneveness to deal with. There were no foreigners, just a few of those horrendously fit old people that hike all the time. Kozanji is a world heritage site partially on the merit of what totes as 'the first manga', scrolls of animals behaving badly and satirising court life. I somehow doubt the authentic ones were kept there considering the display case was full of beatles. Got back eventually, and switched hostels, though I spent a fair amount of time looking for it; Kiyomizu-dera youth hostel.
Yeah.
In Japan, they have turtle everywhere.
Jingo-Ji
Saimyo-Ji
Day Two - 16/10/08; this time not to waste time, I decided to go earlier and follow a more intelligent route. To be put simply, go North from Kiyomizudera. Kiyomizudera as mentioned was very very very active. I thought 9 30 was early, not early enough. I had to avoid permanently scaring some girls for life by bumping them off their journey between the two rocks (sucessful walk between the two with eyes closes = love life). So did everyone else for that matter. The whole place was awash (more than anything subsequent) with places to buy and put charms of great variety. On the way out I was mobbed by children aged around 8 I think and their teacher as part of their school curiculum. Basically, nab foreigner, practice their English. I don't know if they were good or just knew their sentances by roat, but in any case I answered them in Japanese to their suprised cries of Sugoi. I well know my Japanese is not sugoi. Answering their types of questions like 'what country' and so on was easy enough.
Following this was Kodaiji Temple and Ryozen Kannon. After than I tried to go to the Museum of History and Weaponry but much to my dismay it was closed. Following this I went to Yasui Konpira Shrine followed by Kenniji temple. Next was Yasaka Shrine which hosts one of the most important festivals, even on an average day it still ahs plently of stores selling the usual shrine and temple fare. Next was Chorakuji Temple, followed by Chion-in where the route led you up the hill until eventually finding a sign saying 'exit' but really leading to a graveyard. I somehow doubt this was intentional. Next was Shoren-in. By this time it was already 3;30, so I had to forgo the Museums of Art and Modern art, and continued on to Heian Jingu Shrine. The last place I got to was Nanzenji. All of it was walked, and was very tiring.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WATCH OUT when you go to the Konchi-in, a small garden offshoot of Nanzenji. The ticket booth guy is basically the scary old man from family guy, albiet Japanese and half the age. My name is also Chris of course... 'You have strong hands. Good hands. Good hands for Masturbation. I don't have a girlfriend. What long hair you have. It's good to be a young man'. He was quite fluent in english.
Kiyomizudera
Up at the top of the steps is the first of two rocks, you're supposed to walk between them blindfolded to achieve success in love. Slightly difficult given the ridiculous crowds.
WW2 memorial
11?
Yanaka/Gion Shrine
Chion-in
Heian Jingu
Part of the Nanzenji complex
Day Three - 17/10/08; starting earlier from 8;45, I had until 5pm to do what I could in Kyoto. I decided to mostly go after the World Heritage sites in a kind of dirty foreign tourist style tour. I bused straight to Toji, and paid 1000 yen for I don't know what extra. I think it was for the musuem and the rest of exterior but nobody was checking tickets anyway. I then walked to Nishi-Honganji followed by Higashi as well. Both were similar, though interestingly the later was much bigger despite not being the world hertage site. This was followed by Nijo castle and its squeky nightengale floor. Almost lastly were the three temples I should have been to on the first day, Kinkakuji (the golden reconstruction), Ryoanji (where many people sat for ages discerning mean from the rock garden), and Ninnanji. As I discovered I in fact still had an hour, I buses across to Ginkakuji and made it just in time to visit it. The light of the setting sun in Kyoto hits the hills with this increadible set of vivd oranges.
The thing that can bother somebody that does art history is that very little is authentically ancient let alone old. Every single temple and shrine seems to have been burned down over the last 1200 years at least 5 times (usually by lightning) and even then the ones they say are authentic might not be. I've watched them constructing ancient temples at at least 4 locations with some of the larger sites are under going rennovation. Many perfectly fine structures still have little tin sheds hidden in a corner with men preparing timbers. Kyoto might be a good place to visit in 2012 since most of the stuff claims it will be finished by then. This has to be taken with the facts that firstly, they are all built of wood. Some are specifically built in a way that require replacement of parts every x number of years anyway. Secondly, these are all active sites of active religions with active priests. The reason we have authentic Roman and Greek ruins is that they are made of marble, and few people if any still worship Zeus and want to rebuild it. At least not as badly as Meiji era Nishi-Hongani where they made the rope from their followers hair and 'many perished dragging the log sleds down from the mountains in the snowy season'. Specifically,Ginkakuji's titular structure, a large portion of Nishi Hongnji, some pieces of Chion-in, are other bits and pieces are all scaffolded. They still charge full price toHAI GOHYAKKUEN DESU HAI GOHYAKKUEN DESU HAI GOHYAKKUEN DESU HAI GOHYAKKUEN DESU HAI GOHYAKKUEN DESU AI GOHYAKKUEN DESU。
Toji
Playing with camera is fine too
Higashi-Honganji
Renovations
Nijo Castle
Kinkakuji
Ryo-an-ji
Ninna-ji
Ginkakuji
Some notes - Many trees in Kyoto are in a transitional phase going into their famous autumn oranges and reds, but I liked this better as you would often find trees that made the most wonderful transition from green through to red almost anywhere. However it seems that Kyoto is specifically set up to cater for the Spring season in May when the Sakura blossem. Heian Jingu and Ninnanji in particular present rather lackluster gardens without their focal point.
- Nijo Castle is perhaps the most touristy, and Kiyomizudera perhaps the most active. For the later it's not really suprising given that hordes of hapless schoolchildren descend upon it daily to be taught history but really to try and improve their love life.
- City seems to be currently overrun with French tourists.
- My Kyoto experience was someone like a Zelda game 'You got a piece of map!' 'You got a piece of map!' 'You got a piece of map!' 'You got a piece of map!' 'You got a piece of map!' 'You got a piece of map!' 'You got a piece of map!'
- The Camera is clearly sees more light than I do. I still need a bit of practice using the manual function and so on. While those last photos of Ginkakuji are very nice, it's nothing compared to what I saw.
In any case I have a fuckload of photos, which amusingly enough have just filled my memory card. My feet are quite frankly a bit fucked from 20 hours worth of walking and hill climbing. My back as well.
Day Nine - 18/10/08
Today was another one of those do nothing days, crashing until 10:30am due to tiredness. I was planning to head North to Ueno to visit the Zoo, the musuem of Western Art, and Tokyo's largest Museum, but in the end I ended up in Akihabara again. Why? I needed to buy another SD card for my camera. Well yeah, I did buy one. A 4gb with 22mb a second transfer for the equivlent of $14. The one I bought in the camera to Japan has identical specs, yet it cost me $100. That's perhaps a bit much to put down to shipping costs. Hopefully it won't blow up or something.
I ended up hunting for that damn bunny girl again. It released on the 11th, the day I got to Japan (didn't known this to start off). Subsequently I saw some in stores on the 12th when I went to Akihabara but decided to keep looking since I got many of the other figures for 7500+-. Unfortunately that was the last day the figure was in stock anywhere in Tokyo. According to a clerk at Super Modellers 'there aren't any left in Akihabara'. Fortunately I proved him wrong today and located one for 8480 at a godly store called Kamifusen. I found the store once and then couldn't find it again till today. That piece of success (having traipsed up and down Akihabara looking for it) along with picking up the Masterpiece Starscream from Mandarake is all my main targets acquired. I am going to have to buy another bag for my clothes so I can use my big one as a loot sack.
As a side note, it's amusing that the adult shops often have a much larger variety of cosplay costumes than the cosplay shops themselves. You could get a female Char costume - kinda creepy. School girl uniforms in every colour of the school girl uniform rainbow
I've ended the day with a beer sampling. Yebisu is very thick and very nice, Asahi Super Dry Clear is goddawful.
Day Ten - 19/10/08
The morning consisted of running up to the Ameyoko shopping district in Ueno to fetch a couple of bags for the substantial quantity of loot I had acquired. It took a while to find a couple of decent size bags for about $18 each. It seems in Japan that everything has a brandname driving up the price, I have yet to see the equivelent of the Warehouse there, though plenty of 100 Yen shops. It only just fit. Sort of. Dragging all three bags through the rail network I popped up in Akasaka at the Grand Prince Hotel and proceeded to wait for my father to show up. We had lunch at the hotels Felix Cafe, a Felix the Cat themed restaurant with the most horrific prices you'll ever encounter in your life. $50 burgers, $11 drinks. It was ok, but it wasn't spectacular or anything to warrant the prices. Every single time we used the elevators in the building we were subjected to its ceaseless advertisements.
Though it was getting later in the day (3pmish) I decided that this time I'd take dad to Harajuku rather than Akihabara. I found out why Akihabara no longer has the street closures, it was due to this. We popped out of the subway beneath the main road and headed over one block to Takeshi-dori, the street most people think of when they think Harajuku. As the schools had/were getting out it was very busy compared to when I had gone previously. I guess they run home, mess up their hair, and rush back to Harajuku to be looked at. We stopped at the dessert cafe I had encountered previously. From here we went on to Yoyogi park, the part I hadn't gotten to and the reason for going on a Sunday. It appeared as though the bands had migrated there from Akihabara. There was a different person holding a 'free hugs' sign on the bridge - some sort of evil organised hugging syndicate?
In front of the NHK buildings it would seem that they were having a flee market, though whether an event or a weekly fixture I have no idea. The bands as usual ranged between good to awful. I think dad bought an album from one of them. One group (heavy metal) had huge speakers that blew you away once you were in front of them. There was even a DJ with huge speakers throwing a mini rave in the park forest which seemed to be attracting mostly foreigners. The entrance way to the park contained the usual slew of rockabillies (who by 5pm were looking kinda tired), as well as 50/60s style dancers. The park itself was mostly filled with people just sitting around, walking their tiny tiny dogs, or in the case of the pond, filled with couples. Personally I didn't find the rather grayed tones of 5pm Tokyo particularly romantic but I guess a park of any sort is more appreciated for Japanese.
We came back through Takeshi dori again which looks completely different at night, though just as busy, carrying on through to Omotesando with a brief stop to point out the Kiddyland store. Getting back to the hotel we met up with my father friends who had done much of the hotel organising for the trip, and had dinner at the buffet restaurant on the 40th floor. Much economy and politics was talked. We later tried one of the minibar drinks which turned out to be fantastic. An Asahi Grapefruit, about 6% alcohol. Very Nice.
Rockabillies looking a little tired.
Forest side rave
Omotesando
Day Eleven - 20/10/08
Morning consisted of buffet breakfast at the hotel. Just to say, it was buffet breakfast every morning onwards.
Taking a taxi to Roppongi hills, a very upmarket set of stores, restaurants, theatres, and giant advertisement screens, the morning event was the opening to Tiffcom (Tokyo international Film Festival commision). It was basically a meet and greet for the various film directors pitching projects. Much introducting to people was done.
Following that we went out to Akihabara, I showed dad around a few interesting shops, specifically though with large display cases, and we bought my 18 year old brother some sexy figurines. Since he wanted to having mentioned it, we ended up going to a maid cafe, specifically one called 'Cafe with Cat. It's spelt in a way that the with and the Cat overlap so it could be 'Cafe with Chat, or Cafe Witch Cat. The later was more appropriate considering that they had a halloween thing going on. Effectively cat ears plus orange and black frilly clothing. They do very good dessert, the chicken and chips was fairly average. Most maid cafes don't exactly have the most amazing range of food, I don't think that's what the customers are there for. Overall it was interesting but hardly the full on maid experience. There are now 48 maid cafes in the main Akihabara area, stacked one on top of another over four floors in one case. I think it would be interesting to by a Federation uniform cosplay and then go to Cafe ZEON...
For dinner we decided after the atrocious prices of the hotel to pop down into the Akasaka area and explore. Though not as bad as Roppongi, there were a great many people handing out flyers to less than respectable places and a few girls lurking on the corners trying to sell their wares. In the end we somehow ended up as two New Zealanders in Japan, at an Italian restaurant being served by a pretty Sweedish girl. The pizza was good, the beer was not. And there was a Japanese guy with a guitar signing various Italian songs.
Day Twelve - 21/10/08
Meetings meetings...I'm probably confusing some of the details of the three days worth of Tiffcom meetings.
Since food was provided by another Tiffcom party and it was late we didn't go anywhere else for dinner. Day Thirteen - Ueno Park and Thai Princess - 22/10/08
And with that Dad went off to Korea.
The morning started off a bit lazy with me just watching a bit of CNN and BBC. Nothing but the state of the world economy and how crazy Sarah Palin is. One channel was showing a bunch of Japanese getting a chimpanzee to ride a segway. It was very un-PC indeed.
My epic quest to visit the attractions of Ueno park was cut slightly short (by two hours) when an old guy walked up and started talking to me in quality English about the state of affairs in Japan, youths, the internet, politics, the world. Long story short, he thinks that the Japanese have developed a communication problem, yet it could be remedied if strangers would just say good morning to each other like in the good old days. This communication problem leads to things like this. Basically, if I ran away I would probably confirm everything; when he was finally done I felt like I had passed some sort of test that most fail with feigned excuses of places to be urgently or something.
Despite having a slew of rare and endangered animals Ueno Zoo was incredibly depressing. It belongs to the style of zoo keeping known as 'thematic concrete'. I.e, These are penguins. They live on ice. The concrete is light blue. These are Bears. They live in woods and mountains. The concrete is brown and grey. Some areas were better than others but many animals like one of their nocturnal foxes were just pacing back and forth endlessly which was kind of creepy. The Armadillo was clearly attempting to dig its way out. Other enclosures were worse, just little muddy spaces covered in shit and crows. The space for the Galapogos turtle was only the size of 8 Galapagos turtles. Despite this, I took my favourite picture in Japanese here, it was of a little yellow hatted kindergartener and a Giant Japanese Salamander staring at each other. I forgot to mention the kids (and their parents) at the zoo for the most part were also pretty awful, whacking the cages and enclosures. The zoo gives me the feeling that the only thing it manages to accomplish is the breeding of more crows. The bastard things were everywhere, they had competely taken over some places.
From the Zoo I bascially turned the corner and went into the Tokyo Gallery of Art, an exhibiton site with 6 large spaces with rotating exhibitions and no permanent displays. It was slightly irritatating that every one required a seperate payment. A pleasant suprise however was that their main attraction was a Vermeer and Delft Masters of Light display. They didn't have any of the main works but had still assembled a sizeable collection that was drawing a crowd. There were quite a few stereotypical 'Look at me I am an arty type' type people wandering around in clothing that looked a bit like Cruella DeVille impersonators. I also went through an exhibiton of high resolution photographs, many were amazing, though others were only good I think because they were high resolution. I crossed to the other side of the park to the Tokyo Musuem of of Western Art, outside they have several casts of Rodin works including a Gates of Hell which is quite a sight to behold. The museum itself had a sizeable permanent exhibition with many canonical artists, thought it sort of felt like the tail end of them. The less famous paintings that could be gotten on the (relative) cheap. I also visited the musuem of Science and History which was suprisingly large (due to its multiple basement floors). It was a rather unfulfilling experience since I couldn't read much, though I marvelled at their geological collection. There were quite simply multiple metric fucktons of Stuffed/pickled/ethered animals.
The evening consisted of going to a reception hosted by the Thai Princess -. Bascially it was for a self starring movie's release. The movie itself was rather...busy, though its goals were good (raise awareness of children in poverty). The plot seemed to be something along the following lines: Business women (Princess) has car crash, it kills her daughter and the daughters heart is transplanted to woman. However woman's body slowly rejects daughters heart. Woman finds new meaning in teaching in a rural school however they find out eventually that her previous job was demolishing rural schools. Things light on fire. People shout. Etc. Couldn't see much of the subtitles. The food was quite good
It's like 30cm deep and completely covered
As I was coming up to this shrine I saw a bunch of school kids. One of them freaked out when one of the others pointed out the large Mantis on his back. They then proceeded to bury in in the gravel and stomp it to death. This really pissed me off.
Extremely poisonous frogs
.
My favourite photo - It's a Giant Japanese Salamander. The one on the left.
The Gates of Hell
Thai Princess
Day Fourteen - 23/10/08
The main event for the day was touring three Japanese film and post production facilities, Imagica, Toho, and Omnibus. It was effectively 30-40 minute tours with 30-40 minute van rides between them. I ended up playing Pokemon Diamond on my DS until it ran out of batteries, the curious thing being that I didn't fall asleep. The tours were interesting, but primarily a facility selling exercise aimed at the rest of the people I was with. Toho was interesting and has quite a history, it seemed to be the off time as very little was going on, though their post production was currently working on the sound for something called おっぱいバレ. Lols. Unfortunately it started raining heavily so we couldn't take photos in front of their Godzilla though I still took one of the Godzilla anyway. Imagica didn't have much of interest to me, though they gave everyone 1gb usb keys. Finally at Omnibus we were introduced to a big expensive camera and all its technical details. I was amused to see that one of their showreels was for Detroit Metal City and snorted when it was mentioned. I think I was the only one in the room to have heard of any of their show titles. Also amusing that such a high performance camera was used for it so perhaps I should see it and not just the anime.
Yet again I let Tiffcom feed me for dinner at their finishing party which was on quite a grand scale. The food this time was quite good, and the view would have been stunning should they have turned off the lights and let me get a photo. Good food was had, and many last goodbyes to various important people.
Yes, a giant spider thingie.
Day Fifteen and Sixteen - 24-25/10/08
Today was pretty much the last chance to blow the small amount of money I had left. Quite frankly there is 0 chance of buying anything American or Japanese for a long long long time. The NZ dollar is around 50 yen/US cents, down from averages of 75. As you can see, this is a muthafukin third. SHIT. In the end I bought an Evangelion T-Shirt which I liked more than the others (at $50 a pop I couldn't exactly spend much), as well as finding a Federation Uniform for a similar price (which fits astoundingly well). I can wear it with a big sign saying 'Expendable'. The Gundam equivelent of a Star Trek Red Shirt. I was hoping to get a Zeon Flag or Banner as well but they don't seem to quite get it in Japan at times, the closest thing to a flag being a bathtowl (Future Robot Piloting Nazi bathtowels are still good though). I mentioned that Akihabara is infested with maid cafes, well in one spot they have Zeon and Federation themed bars stacked on top of one another. Like I said before, makes me feel like wearing a Federation uniform and stirrin' up some trouble at Zeon. Unfortuantely such dreams will never come to fruition as apparently both bars are a pretty poor effort. It's just girls wearing t-shirts with the mobile suits of the respective sides depicted.
In the midst of the buying, a torrential downpour occured. It pretty much killed Akihabara, being a place wear you have to walk the streets, and visit a lot of small stores. Despite their preparations of special plastic bags for carrying your wet umbrella in (and the small transparent umbrellas themselves being sold conviently which offer little protection against the torrent) business sortadried up washed out I think.
In order to escape the rain I decided to take refuge in maid cafes. I had seen some unfortunate girls in maid costumes holding advertisements pointing to their cafe hiding under a ledge, and decided to follow up on it. My bag had gotten quite drenched, my map having disintegrated and even by passport getting damaged. All in all I had a Ginger Ale, as well as a Curry Rice. This one was a bit more typical in style complete with Okaeri Nasai Gosshujinsama (Welcome back, Master) as the greeting. For dessert I headed back to the Cafe with Cat and enjoyed a ridiculous Parfait, Iced Mocha, and Chocolate Cake. Two desserts was a bit much I think.
Most of the rest of the day was spent in preperation for getting home. The huuuuge lightning storm of explosioning thunderclaps right by the highway was slightly discouraging for the flight home. Fortunately it had stopped by the time we reached the airport, though curiously nobody else I mentioned this to seemed to have noticed. Even more curiously the guy that had sat next to me on the flights from Wellington->Sydney->Tokyo was on the same flights back. Worse still, apparently we had been in the same places at pretty much the same times. o_o
The overnight flight was quite uneventful, apart from having to wait about an hour for them to reset my screen since it had frozen. To make matters worse the screen was severely burnt out so anything in the dark was pretty much blank. The brightness adjustment was just the gamma so didn't help. I still watched Indiana Jones (meh), Get Smart (eheh), and The Forbidden Kingdom (yaaaaaawn).
Sixteen: Transfer continued through Sydney airport without a hitch. I bought by younger brothers Super Mario Galaxy, as well as a couple of bottles of Limoncello for myself (pretty much the only alcohol I really like (others being dessert wine, flaming zambukas, grapefruit liquors)). Coming into NZ I got a wonderful view of Farewell Spit and the Malbourough Sounds (North of South Island), however as to be expected the entirety of the North Island was burried under extensive cloud cover. The pilot tried landing but apparently 'missed' and decided to fly all the way to Christchurch for refueling before trying again. The second time worked, but had added something like 3 hours onto our arrival time.
Got my baggage, and to my relief none of my precccccccccccccioussssssssss's had been damaged. Slept. Lots. Proceeded to catch up on 2.2 weeks of missed programs, i.e., about 50 episodes of anime and tv shows. Still going. Enjoying a little shot glass each night of my sugery alcoholy limoncello.
Day One. Sort of. - 10/10/08
Completing the trip over the ditch to Australia to transfer was about a 4 hour flight, that plus daylight savings meant it wasn't fast enough to get here before I left.
I'm typing from a free internet terminal that someone has curiously lined up 45 cents in Australian coins. I'm not going to touch them in fear it's a trap to test for terrorists or something. I've already been bomb sniffed. Again. Talking about money, the vending machines are even more nightmarishly expensive than in Wellington, about 60% so. The duty free on the other hand is like a buffet of cameras and alcohol. I don't drink but it kinda makes me want to. I'll probably get myself a bottle of limoncello, my brother a bottle of absinthe (he seems to like it/wants it/weirdo).
It's just vaguely (extremely) annoying because my new Ipod could have been gotten duty free for about $50 less, the 4gb SD card I got for about $30 less. I expect the latter in Japan might be cheaper still, but hey, I'm stupid. I know Ipod in Japan are in fact more expensive than they are here slightly, though duty free might offset this.
This leads onto talk of currency. Fuck you wall street and your non existant money anihilating the world economy (as I'm typing the news yells out '80 BILLION AUST WIPED OFF STOCK MARKT BIGGEST FALL SINCE 1997). The day I went to do currency exhange the yen was down to 68 from 72 per NZ dollar. It had been bouncing up and down all month, so I decided to wait until the next day. Instead it dropped to 60. Now it's at 58.5 - Something like a 7 year low. This effectively shaved 20-25% off of my money for Japan, about $700 worth.
On the sort of upside, the Australian dollar is hovering around 87-89 cents per NZ dollar. Now would have been a really really good time to go to Australia and loot it for cheap goods. Unfortunately I'm not going to Australia. When getting my currency all the bank branches in central Wellington were cleaned out of Australian dollars. Multiple banks, and multiple branches of those banks.
In any case, I'm waiting around another two hours for my 8 hour flight.
Day Two: Tokyo Game Show - 11/10/08
On a side note, just after I typed that the airport rickrolled me. The Japan flight was a bit crap as I couldn't get much sleep.
The Tokyo game show was interesting, but completely overwhelming. Unless you are fluent in Japanese it's probably 1/10 of the experience. The sheer scale of the place is ridiculous, and it was still jam packed crowded. The Makahuri Messe consists of 9 'halls' seperated into groups of three (they can close them off within each three with retractable walls). Each hall is about 2 times bigger than the Events Center in Wellington (and it's not small). It was ridiculous.
To take out my frustration and not being able to do much I proceeded to take photos. Naturally there were numerous showgirls for every area ready for photographical molestation, they are emplyed to be camera-raped, and that's pretty much what every person and his enormous camera was doing. I went for the cosplayers instead, but due to the aforementioned lack of Japanese I just took photos using my zoom. The cosplayers naturally were mostly highly impressive.
In terms of getting around my Japanese is clearly useless. Also, aparently you are unable to buy Japan Rail Passes in Japan which makes traveling for this week a fair bit more expensive. There are consession tickets for going from Tokyo to the furthest east of Honshu, and one beginning in Kyoto for travelling further west, but nothing that covers Tokyo and Kyoto just cause being useless is awesome. Apparently vouchers had to be purchased from your home country first, though in checking this there is nowhere to get one in Wellington anyway. In terms of things being expensive, it is ridiculous. Bad currency exhange wouldn't really change this fact. The example is a large watery ginger ale (and their definition of large is more like medium) from subway was $5. The sub itself was $11. Both were highly inferior to the motherland. At least today I shouldn't need spend any money on trains at all since Akihabara is only a couple of minutes away on foot.
On a side note, I appear to be in an interesting area to begin with, though I'm not sure if this is confined to here, or similar throughout Tokyo. When going down a street the stores follow a fixed pattern of '100 Yen store/restaurant/brothel'. Every street. Everywhere. When you go into the main streets you can exchange brothel for 'bad clothing'.
Also, every male in Japan smokes
The Japanese personification of Norton Anti-Virus. He'll punch malware into submission
This is one hall of 9. FUCKING BUSY
Mmmm...Haseo x Shino
Day Three; Akihabara - 12/10/08
It's clear that I've been living on Japan time the last 5 years, I wake up at 7am to a bright and sunny morning, not a cloud in the sky. Unfortunately I discover this means that Akiba isn't open yet. I decide to wander around the streets for three hours or so in an attempt to learn the place. 1, I didn't, 2, open Akiba is completely different from closed Akiba. This was interupted by a brief interlude at starbucks where the automatic door button got me and a nice young lady who apparently used to teach English overseas pressed the button (I was looking up, thought it was a sliding door). My bacon and cheese sandwich of minicule proportions was like $8.
Still waiting, I discover near the station that there is in fact an 'anime information center'. It wasn't open either. But I did get a map. In Japanese. Fortunately I could read it enough to work out that pink dots = figures, brown dots = cosplay, etc. Unfortunately this map containing information for upcoming events was not only out of date (at least, some shops didn't exist), I think its scale was off (at least, it didn't have some of the side streets listed). I was soon reoriented with where I had been prior, with at least four stores (Yellow Submarine tower (probably my name, not theirs), a giant robot place, a duty free goods place, and a random merchandise with posters) making me nostalgic because they really hadn't changed in layout or style in the past three years.
I didn't use the map for the first 4 hours. No point considering that checking it was irritating enough. Effectively, I just went down one side of the road going through every store floor by floor. Oh God the stairs. If I don't loose weight from all this walking and climbing i'll be pissed. I discovered that the average anime related building has at least one Yaoi floor. Sometimes two. Saw extensive loli and tentacle rape. Even though I knew it was like this from my prior visit, it still gets me and my western ways about the casualness of the hardest rapiest umɐɹd in Japan. I had that thought that should Tokyo be leveled in an earthquake, future archeologists would be excavating umɐɹd for a century.
I knew not to buy the first things I saw, and so ended up filling in a store name/item/cost table. Specifically for the Haruhi FREEing range. Subsequently my first two pieces of loot were Yuki and Haruhi for 11920 yen total. Compare this to HLJ for 20000 total 1、2 and I'm pretty chuffed. Oh god I wrote chuffed.
My third piece and final piece of loot for the day was this for 5100 (HLJ 5500).
Also, I'm probably going to end up buying Masterpiece Starcream and Skywarp.
5930 (HLJ - 10000)
7970 (HLJ - 9800)
These two are from the same store as the Haruhi figures. It's prices are godly in comparison to most of the place, and then on top of that they're having a 10% off special. It's part of a chain of them called Liberty. I'm worried given the hueg scale of these things not that I won't be able to fit them, but that someone will feel like trying to set the tax demons on me.
I had lunch/dinner at a BLOODY EXCELENT curry place run by authentic (and usefully, tri-lingual) Indian's and Pakistanis. For a HUGE piece of naan, rice, salad, and two small curries, plus a Corona, it was 2000 yen. For Japan that's pretty good. And pretty good for something that's actually good is...good.
So now I'm in an internet cafe (seems more like H and coffee to me) so I can print out some maps. It's really unfortunate how past 12 the day becomes so unplesantly hot and muggy. that period of bright, chill, sunny crispness from 7-12 is much nicer.
In general, I'm beginning to think that Japanese keyboard keys are perhaps 10% smaller, just enough that you can't touch type without a noticibly increased level in typo. Also, Jesus Christ, I see the NZ dollar is at 91 AUS! Holy shit! Is that an all time high or something? I hope it can maintain that kind of FUCK YEAH level for when I go through Sydney's duty free on the 25th. I'll give that credit card a full $899 beating.
Tommorow I might do Shibuya or something
.
Gateway to Hell
Day Four; Shinjuku, Harajuku, Shibuya - 13/10/08 Completing the trip over the ditch to Australia to transfer was about a 4 hour flight, that plus daylight savings meant it wasn't fast enough to get here before I left.
I'm typing from a free internet terminal that someone has curiously lined up 45 cents in Australian coins. I'm not going to touch them in fear it's a trap to test for terrorists or something. I've already been bomb sniffed. Again. Talking about money, the vending machines are even more nightmarishly expensive than in Wellington, about 60% so. The duty free on the other hand is like a buffet of cameras and alcohol. I don't drink but it kinda makes me want to. I'll probably get myself a bottle of limoncello, my brother a bottle of absinthe (he seems to like it/wants it/weirdo).
It's just vaguely (extremely) annoying because my new Ipod could have been gotten duty free for about $50 less, the 4gb SD card I got for about $30 less. I expect the latter in Japan might be cheaper still, but hey, I'm stupid. I know Ipod in Japan are in fact more expensive than they are here slightly, though duty free might offset this.
This leads onto talk of currency. Fuck you wall street and your non existant money anihilating the world economy (as I'm typing the news yells out '80 BILLION AUST WIPED OFF STOCK MARKT BIGGEST FALL SINCE 1997). The day I went to do currency exhange the yen was down to 68 from 72 per NZ dollar. It had been bouncing up and down all month, so I decided to wait until the next day. Instead it dropped to 60. Now it's at 58.5 - Something like a 7 year low. This effectively shaved 20-25% off of my money for Japan, about $700 worth.
On the sort of upside, the Australian dollar is hovering around 87-89 cents per NZ dollar. Now would have been a really really good time to go to Australia and loot it for cheap goods. Unfortunately I'm not going to Australia. When getting my currency all the bank branches in central Wellington were cleaned out of Australian dollars. Multiple banks, and multiple branches of those banks.
In any case, I'm waiting around another two hours for my 8 hour flight.
Day Two: Tokyo Game Show - 11/10/08
On a side note, just after I typed that the airport rickrolled me. The Japan flight was a bit crap as I couldn't get much sleep.
The Tokyo game show was interesting, but completely overwhelming. Unless you are fluent in Japanese it's probably 1/10 of the experience. The sheer scale of the place is ridiculous, and it was still jam packed crowded. The Makahuri Messe consists of 9 'halls' seperated into groups of three (they can close them off within each three with retractable walls). Each hall is about 2 times bigger than the Events Center in Wellington (and it's not small). It was ridiculous.
To take out my frustration and not being able to do much I proceeded to take photos. Naturally there were numerous showgirls for every area ready for photographical molestation, they are emplyed to be camera-raped, and that's pretty much what every person and his enormous camera was doing. I went for the cosplayers instead, but due to the aforementioned lack of Japanese I just took photos using my zoom. The cosplayers naturally were mostly highly impressive.
In terms of getting around my Japanese is clearly useless. Also, aparently you are unable to buy Japan Rail Passes in Japan which makes traveling for this week a fair bit more expensive. There are consession tickets for going from Tokyo to the furthest east of Honshu, and one beginning in Kyoto for travelling further west, but nothing that covers Tokyo and Kyoto just cause being useless is awesome. Apparently vouchers had to be purchased from your home country first, though in checking this there is nowhere to get one in Wellington anyway. In terms of things being expensive, it is ridiculous. Bad currency exhange wouldn't really change this fact. The example is a large watery ginger ale (and their definition of large is more like medium) from subway was $5. The sub itself was $11. Both were highly inferior to the motherland. At least today I shouldn't need spend any money on trains at all since Akihabara is only a couple of minutes away on foot.
On a side note, I appear to be in an interesting area to begin with, though I'm not sure if this is confined to here, or similar throughout Tokyo. When going down a street the stores follow a fixed pattern of '100 Yen store/restaurant/brothel'. Every street. Everywhere. When you go into the main streets you can exchange brothel for 'bad clothing'.
Also, every male in Japan smokes
The Japanese personification of Norton Anti-Virus. He'll punch malware into submission
This is one hall of 9. FUCKING BUSY
Mmmm...Haseo x Shino
Day Three; Akihabara - 12/10/08
It's clear that I've been living on Japan time the last 5 years, I wake up at 7am to a bright and sunny morning, not a cloud in the sky. Unfortunately I discover this means that Akiba isn't open yet. I decide to wander around the streets for three hours or so in an attempt to learn the place. 1, I didn't, 2, open Akiba is completely different from closed Akiba. This was interupted by a brief interlude at starbucks where the automatic door button got me and a nice young lady who apparently used to teach English overseas pressed the button (I was looking up, thought it was a sliding door). My bacon and cheese sandwich of minicule proportions was like $8.
Still waiting, I discover near the station that there is in fact an 'anime information center'. It wasn't open either. But I did get a map. In Japanese. Fortunately I could read it enough to work out that pink dots = figures, brown dots = cosplay, etc. Unfortunately this map containing information for upcoming events was not only out of date (at least, some shops didn't exist), I think its scale was off (at least, it didn't have some of the side streets listed). I was soon reoriented with where I had been prior, with at least four stores (Yellow Submarine tower (probably my name, not theirs), a giant robot place, a duty free goods place, and a random merchandise with posters) making me nostalgic because they really hadn't changed in layout or style in the past three years.
I didn't use the map for the first 4 hours. No point considering that checking it was irritating enough. Effectively, I just went down one side of the road going through every store floor by floor. Oh God the stairs. If I don't loose weight from all this walking and climbing i'll be pissed. I discovered that the average anime related building has at least one Yaoi floor. Sometimes two. Saw extensive loli and tentacle rape. Even though I knew it was like this from my prior visit, it still gets me and my western ways about the casualness of the hardest rapiest umɐɹd in Japan. I had that thought that should Tokyo be leveled in an earthquake, future archeologists would be excavating umɐɹd for a century.
I knew not to buy the first things I saw, and so ended up filling in a store name/item/cost table. Specifically for the Haruhi FREEing range. Subsequently my first two pieces of loot were Yuki and Haruhi for 11920 yen total. Compare this to HLJ for 20000 total 1、2 and I'm pretty chuffed. Oh god I wrote chuffed.
My third piece and final piece of loot for the day was this for 5100 (HLJ 5500).
Also, I'm probably going to end up buying Masterpiece Starcream and Skywarp.
5930 (HLJ - 10000)
7970 (HLJ - 9800)
These two are from the same store as the Haruhi figures. It's prices are godly in comparison to most of the place, and then on top of that they're having a 10% off special. It's part of a chain of them called Liberty. I'm worried given the hueg scale of these things not that I won't be able to fit them, but that someone will feel like trying to set the tax demons on me.
I had lunch/dinner at a BLOODY EXCELENT curry place run by authentic (and usefully, tri-lingual) Indian's and Pakistanis. For a HUGE piece of naan, rice, salad, and two small curries, plus a Corona, it was 2000 yen. For Japan that's pretty good. And pretty good for something that's actually good is...good.
So now I'm in an internet cafe (seems more like H and coffee to me) so I can print out some maps. It's really unfortunate how past 12 the day becomes so unplesantly hot and muggy. that period of bright, chill, sunny crispness from 7-12 is much nicer.
In general, I'm beginning to think that Japanese keyboard keys are perhaps 10% smaller, just enough that you can't touch type without a noticibly increased level in typo. Also, Jesus Christ, I see the NZ dollar is at 91 AUS! Holy shit! Is that an all time high or something? I hope it can maintain that kind of FUCK YEAH level for when I go through Sydney's duty free on the 25th. I'll give that credit card a full $899 beating.
Tommorow I might do Shibuya or something
. Gateway to Hell
Before my journey today had started I realised that I had left the keys to the lock on my luggage at the internet cafe. Hazukashi desu nee. Fortunately I'm fairly good at picking locks and after about 10 minutes I poped it using a twist tie to depress the pins and a flat piece of metal to turn it. Maybe I should buy another lock.
Starting the morning by walking to Akihabara (after retreiving my keys despite cross-communication issues - CHISANA AOI KAGI USHINATTA - took me a while to string that together coherantly) and picking up something interesting, I caught the train to Shinjuku and went up to the 45th floor of the Metropolitan offices. The view was both spectacular, and uninspiring. Both spectacular and uninspiring in the way Tokyo just keeps on going and going. The map to point out which buldings were which somewhat failed when the land marks were too distant and thus covered in the Tokyo haze. On the way out I found a small festival was taking place in the governmental plaza, mostly involving drums but also the tiniest, non-fearsome Chinese dragon I have ever seen. I walked around down to the department store area but there really was not anythign interesting. In attempting to get to a shrine, I didn't. I ended up wasting an hour walking through a residentual district.
I did end up managing to finally get going on the cultural scene, but unfortunately I have to prefix it with the following. Much of the ancient has been trashed over the years due to mad monks burning them down, earthquakes, and WWII. The Meiji Shrine (dedicated to the Emperor Meiji and his consort, thats the emperor that Westernised Japan) is not different, most of it being built in the fifties. Also, it's entirely the wrong season for going, the gardens were being chem-sprayed and it's Autumn here. In any case it was still very interesting, and the religion very active. While I was there everyone had to get out of the way of a wedding procession. I then attempted to proceed to Yoyogi park following my map, unfortunately instead I took the loop road and ended back at the fucking shrine. Thanks map.
The best store today was KiddyLand in Harajuku. It is something like 6 floors of pure Toy awesome. Each floor has a theme to some extent, so one was nothing but Charlie Brown and Snoopy, another Ghibli and Disney, another pokemon, transformers, and lego. I got my younger brothers a Shaymin (a hedgehog pokemon with a garden on its back instead of quills plushie, and a Windwaker Link plushie. The main boulevard of Harajuku (Omotesando) is aptly compared to those in Paris, consisting solely of extremely upmarket clothing and boutique labels. The other lane Takeshite is the one foreigners think of as Harajuku, and it was just as I remembered it down to the scary black guys accosting people and trying to drag them off to buy expensive jeans. It divides up between Gangsta (MTV), Goth/punk, and a more retro/punk in terms of clothing stores. Do not let large signs saying 'enter risky - FUCK' put you off as it really didn't deliver on the promise. It was very busy compared to last time. I kind of caved when I spotted a desert cafe (Japan has so many of these) and scoffed a wonderful Chocolate Tiramisu and an Iced Mocha.
I continued on to Shibuya which is a apparently a trendy young people place. If by trendy young people you mean girls. I infiltrated their hive known as Shibuya 109, 7 floors of womenswear. Quite frankly, it appears that the entire Western side of Tokyo is for women only. If you are female, belong to any clique, follow faashions, or just want to shop, and have a fuckton of money, you will have a great time. This is crystalised in a store called Forbidden Fruit with a giant Vagina flower logo. Harajuku seemed bent on seperating males to MTV and females to Lolita and punk. Oh, and buy fuckton I mean about 50000 yen for a full outfit. In the same way it would be better if I knew Japanese, it would be better if I had a girlfriend to dress.
What is really driving me up the wall are the prices, i:ve mentioned this before but it is just that bad. On top of this doing price comparisons is very troublesome. A lot of stores don:t seem to bother with barcodes (or uniformity of price) so you can often find the same thing in the same store, cheaper. The example today would be from Shibuya Mandarake which I accidentally found; the Emiri figure from Haruhi was in store at both 7350, and 17500. What? I really hate finding things cheaper somewhere else after I have bought them. This overwhelming voice is yelling GOTTACATCHEMALL concerning the Haruhi figurines but I really do not care for Kyons sister or Tsuruya, and am kind of indifferent towards Mikuru. It's also yelling the same thing concerning the whole store but that yeah.
My feet hurt so much from all the walking. The main shopping streets here are effectively as long as central Wellington. You would think of all the people in the world with both the need and the capacity the Japanese would have invented and proliferated motorised shoes. Part of this is of course I end up doing a lot of extra unecessary walking due to going off track. Why do I even try with the maps? Whenever I try to follow one in English or in Japanese I end up hopelessly disoriented. I find my way back eventuall but the maps have a tendancy to vary in accuracy. Expanding on that point, if you wander, you will ALWAYS end up in the red light district. And Tokyo has a lot of red light districts so I guess that:s not really all that difficult. Today I ended up in both Shinjuku:s (though more like Male host bars, where women go to pay large money to talk to pretty and thematic males), and later Shibuya (more along the lines of flashing neon).
Finally some observations; It seems that in Japan Evangelion is synonymous with Pachinko. If you see enormous Evangelion posters, it will be a pachinko palor. Every single time. Also, I am beginning to notice more and more the ubiquitous police standing on every corner, guarding every street. I am also noticing just how dirty the city is. It:s not just the cigarettes but the overall atmosphere. Everything has a fine layer of black dust from the pollution - don't use the handrails. Apart from the smoking is the spitting too. Also, hobos. Lots and lots of hobos. Found a small Hobo town near Yoyogi park
Shinjuku Metropolitan
Tokyo doesn't end
The tiniest dragon I ever saw
Meiji Shrine
Apparently the French have donated a barrel of their finest wine a year to the Emperor Meiji - the opposite side of the path has the sake
What was actually down there wasn't a tenth as exciting as the sign
Tiramisu and Iced Mocha
Harajuku
Day Five - Was intended to be significant but little actually happened. - 14/10/08
Again waking up too early for anything to be open (Otaku time equals 12, Chris time equals 8) I went for a stroll through the Ueno markets as I had done the last time I was in Japan. They hadn:t changed at all overall with numerous shops hawking bags, food, t-shirts, and in two notable exceptions, one that specialised in Giant cowboy belts/buckles, and one that specialised in transformers.
After that I went through to Akihabara again with the intent of purchasing those other two freeing figures if they were the cheapest there; I went to the Mandarake and it's still amusing how the floors are specifically labelled 'guys ｐｏｒｎ' and the next one up 'girls ｐｏｒｎ'. Unfortunately they didn't have what I was after, so I caught a train to Nakano to visit the main Mandarake. What I envisaged was something self contained, like some sort of weeaboo department store. Nope, it was another case of warrens, 5 floors of little shops. Mandarake itself is divided over three of the 5 floors and all around them. In any case, Nakano Broadway is like a bit of Harajuku and a bit of Akihabara mixed together. It has something like four cosplay shops which was interesting, especially considering it actually had a decent ration of male to female costumes. Unfortunately the average price is around 22000 for one costume.
However the 4th floor had decided to close (at 4pm) so I have yet to see what is up there. I also didn't find any of the FREEing figures cheaper. Following that, I returned and bought the Emiri figure for 7350 yen, and to my horror found that both floors of Yellow Submarine/Kotobukiya had sold out of the Ryoko. It is an October release so it makes sense that every guy and his uncle doesn't have their sexy blue bunny girl with horrifically elongated legs yet. A final lesson learned at Nakano Broadway; NEVER DRINK SOMETHING CALLED LASSI.
It rained finally today. Suddenly everyone had a clear plastic umbrella. Now this is not a conspiracy theory but abject truth; the Japanese give you dirty foreigners two options when passing by, #1, be decapitated by their honorabible umbrella, or #2, duck and bow down before them. Option three is to dodge but it generally doesn't work in a crowd.
Day Six, Seven, Eight; Kyoto. 15-17/10/08
As said for Kyoto 3 days really isn't enough time, I think a week minimum is necessary, two extra days for temples, another for museums, and another for the mountains. In any case I've walked all over the city and my feet are tired. Even walking around inside the buildings and gardens is tiring as some of them are huge. On average I've started around 9am and been walking until 5pm when everything closes (the sun is down by 6pm). It's the amazing Kyoto weight loss program. Curiously enough you can get tired of seeing perfect gardens and temples after a while, they aren't any less beautiful, it's just that they are all beautiful in a similar way. Some temples or Shrines are of course, branches of one I will have already visited.
Day One - 15/10/08; I got the Utano Youth Hostel around 12am and was exhaused, so much to the point I woke up at 9 31 instead of 9am and thus missed the breakfast I had paid for. They wouldn't refund me for it, and I spent the next couple of hours waving between RAGE and ZETSUBOUSHITA. However I discovered the novelty of a coffee vending machine and three small cups of different varities later I was feeling better. I mean, there were buttons for Cream, Sugar, Cream and Sugar, and nothing! And it was like *WHIR BUZZ* and then a little arm came out and dropped the cup in front of you. In any case, I walked to Takao. Not really a good idea. takes about 2 hours there and that again back. Despite being in the mountains it wasn't exactly the scenic route either. The three temples out there, Jinjoji, Saimyoji, and Kozanji (the last as a heritage site) were very interesting. Popping out the other end at the tourist bus depot I found a map of the place that looked absolutely nothing like what I had just visited. The three temples, especially Jinjoji have a bit of a walk or flights of stone stairs of mossy uneveness to deal with. There were no foreigners, just a few of those horrendously fit old people that hike all the time. Kozanji is a world heritage site partially on the merit of what totes as 'the first manga', scrolls of animals behaving badly and satirising court life. I somehow doubt the authentic ones were kept there considering the display case was full of beatles. Got back eventually, and switched hostels, though I spent a fair amount of time looking for it; Kiyomizu-dera youth hostel.
Yeah.
In Japan, they have turtle everywhere.
Jingo-Ji
Saimyo-Ji
Day Two - 16/10/08; this time not to waste time, I decided to go earlier and follow a more intelligent route. To be put simply, go North from Kiyomizudera. Kiyomizudera as mentioned was very very very active. I thought 9 30 was early, not early enough. I had to avoid permanently scaring some girls for life by bumping them off their journey between the two rocks (sucessful walk between the two with eyes closes = love life). So did everyone else for that matter. The whole place was awash (more than anything subsequent) with places to buy and put charms of great variety. On the way out I was mobbed by children aged around 8 I think and their teacher as part of their school curiculum. Basically, nab foreigner, practice their English. I don't know if they were good or just knew their sentances by roat, but in any case I answered them in Japanese to their suprised cries of Sugoi. I well know my Japanese is not sugoi. Answering their types of questions like 'what country' and so on was easy enough.
Following this was Kodaiji Temple and Ryozen Kannon. After than I tried to go to the Museum of History and Weaponry but much to my dismay it was closed. Following this I went to Yasui Konpira Shrine followed by Kenniji temple. Next was Yasaka Shrine which hosts one of the most important festivals, even on an average day it still ahs plently of stores selling the usual shrine and temple fare. Next was Chorakuji Temple, followed by Chion-in where the route led you up the hill until eventually finding a sign saying 'exit' but really leading to a graveyard. I somehow doubt this was intentional. Next was Shoren-in. By this time it was already 3;30, so I had to forgo the Museums of Art and Modern art, and continued on to Heian Jingu Shrine. The last place I got to was Nanzenji. All of it was walked, and was very tiring.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WATCH OUT when you go to the Konchi-in, a small garden offshoot of Nanzenji. The ticket booth guy is basically the scary old man from family guy, albiet Japanese and half the age. My name is also Chris of course... 'You have strong hands. Good hands. Good hands for Masturbation. I don't have a girlfriend. What long hair you have. It's good to be a young man'. He was quite fluent in english.
Kiyomizudera
Up at the top of the steps is the first of two rocks, you're supposed to walk between them blindfolded to achieve success in love. Slightly difficult given the ridiculous crowds.
WW2 memorial
11?
Yanaka/Gion Shrine
Chion-in
Heian Jingu
Part of the Nanzenji complex
Day Three - 17/10/08; starting earlier from 8;45, I had until 5pm to do what I could in Kyoto. I decided to mostly go after the World Heritage sites in a kind of dirty foreign tourist style tour. I bused straight to Toji, and paid 1000 yen for I don't know what extra. I think it was for the musuem and the rest of exterior but nobody was checking tickets anyway. I then walked to Nishi-Honganji followed by Higashi as well. Both were similar, though interestingly the later was much bigger despite not being the world hertage site. This was followed by Nijo castle and its squeky nightengale floor. Almost lastly were the three temples I should have been to on the first day, Kinkakuji (the golden reconstruction), Ryoanji (where many people sat for ages discerning mean from the rock garden), and Ninnanji. As I discovered I in fact still had an hour, I buses across to Ginkakuji and made it just in time to visit it. The light of the setting sun in Kyoto hits the hills with this increadible set of vivd oranges.
The thing that can bother somebody that does art history is that very little is authentically ancient let alone old. Every single temple and shrine seems to have been burned down over the last 1200 years at least 5 times (usually by lightning) and even then the ones they say are authentic might not be. I've watched them constructing ancient temples at at least 4 locations with some of the larger sites are under going rennovation. Many perfectly fine structures still have little tin sheds hidden in a corner with men preparing timbers. Kyoto might be a good place to visit in 2012 since most of the stuff claims it will be finished by then. This has to be taken with the facts that firstly, they are all built of wood. Some are specifically built in a way that require replacement of parts every x number of years anyway. Secondly, these are all active sites of active religions with active priests. The reason we have authentic Roman and Greek ruins is that they are made of marble, and few people if any still worship Zeus and want to rebuild it. At least not as badly as Meiji era Nishi-Hongani where they made the rope from their followers hair and 'many perished dragging the log sleds down from the mountains in the snowy season'. Specifically,Ginkakuji's titular structure, a large portion of Nishi Hongnji, some pieces of Chion-in, are other bits and pieces are all scaffolded. They still charge full price toHAI GOHYAKKUEN DESU HAI GOHYAKKUEN DESU HAI GOHYAKKUEN DESU HAI GOHYAKKUEN DESU HAI GOHYAKKUEN DESU AI GOHYAKKUEN DESU。
Toji
Playing with camera is fine too
Higashi-Honganji
Renovations
Nijo Castle
Kinkakuji
Ryo-an-ji
Ninna-ji
Ginkakuji
Some notes - Many trees in Kyoto are in a transitional phase going into their famous autumn oranges and reds, but I liked this better as you would often find trees that made the most wonderful transition from green through to red almost anywhere. However it seems that Kyoto is specifically set up to cater for the Spring season in May when the Sakura blossem. Heian Jingu and Ninnanji in particular present rather lackluster gardens without their focal point.
- Nijo Castle is perhaps the most touristy, and Kiyomizudera perhaps the most active. For the later it's not really suprising given that hordes of hapless schoolchildren descend upon it daily to be taught history but really to try and improve their love life.
- City seems to be currently overrun with French tourists.
- My Kyoto experience was someone like a Zelda game 'You got a piece of map!' 'You got a piece of map!' 'You got a piece of map!' 'You got a piece of map!' 'You got a piece of map!' 'You got a piece of map!' 'You got a piece of map!'
- The Camera is clearly sees more light than I do. I still need a bit of practice using the manual function and so on. While those last photos of Ginkakuji are very nice, it's nothing compared to what I saw.
In any case I have a fuckload of photos, which amusingly enough have just filled my memory card. My feet are quite frankly a bit fucked from 20 hours worth of walking and hill climbing. My back as well.
Day Nine - 18/10/08
Today was another one of those do nothing days, crashing until 10:30am due to tiredness. I was planning to head North to Ueno to visit the Zoo, the musuem of Western Art, and Tokyo's largest Museum, but in the end I ended up in Akihabara again. Why? I needed to buy another SD card for my camera. Well yeah, I did buy one. A 4gb with 22mb a second transfer for the equivlent of $14. The one I bought in the camera to Japan has identical specs, yet it cost me $100. That's perhaps a bit much to put down to shipping costs. Hopefully it won't blow up or something.
I ended up hunting for that damn bunny girl again. It released on the 11th, the day I got to Japan (didn't known this to start off). Subsequently I saw some in stores on the 12th when I went to Akihabara but decided to keep looking since I got many of the other figures for 7500+-. Unfortunately that was the last day the figure was in stock anywhere in Tokyo. According to a clerk at Super Modellers 'there aren't any left in Akihabara'. Fortunately I proved him wrong today and located one for 8480 at a godly store called Kamifusen. I found the store once and then couldn't find it again till today. That piece of success (having traipsed up and down Akihabara looking for it) along with picking up the Masterpiece Starscream from Mandarake is all my main targets acquired. I am going to have to buy another bag for my clothes so I can use my big one as a loot sack.
As a side note, it's amusing that the adult shops often have a much larger variety of cosplay costumes than the cosplay shops themselves. You could get a female Char costume - kinda creepy. School girl uniforms in every colour of the school girl uniform rainbow
I've ended the day with a beer sampling. Yebisu is very thick and very nice, Asahi Super Dry Clear is goddawful.
Day Ten - 19/10/08
The morning consisted of running up to the Ameyoko shopping district in Ueno to fetch a couple of bags for the substantial quantity of loot I had acquired. It took a while to find a couple of decent size bags for about $18 each. It seems in Japan that everything has a brandname driving up the price, I have yet to see the equivelent of the Warehouse there, though plenty of 100 Yen shops. It only just fit. Sort of. Dragging all three bags through the rail network I popped up in Akasaka at the Grand Prince Hotel and proceeded to wait for my father to show up. We had lunch at the hotels Felix Cafe, a Felix the Cat themed restaurant with the most horrific prices you'll ever encounter in your life. $50 burgers, $11 drinks. It was ok, but it wasn't spectacular or anything to warrant the prices. Every single time we used the elevators in the building we were subjected to its ceaseless advertisements.
Though it was getting later in the day (3pmish) I decided that this time I'd take dad to Harajuku rather than Akihabara. I found out why Akihabara no longer has the street closures, it was due to this. We popped out of the subway beneath the main road and headed over one block to Takeshi-dori, the street most people think of when they think Harajuku. As the schools had/were getting out it was very busy compared to when I had gone previously. I guess they run home, mess up their hair, and rush back to Harajuku to be looked at. We stopped at the dessert cafe I had encountered previously. From here we went on to Yoyogi park, the part I hadn't gotten to and the reason for going on a Sunday. It appeared as though the bands had migrated there from Akihabara. There was a different person holding a 'free hugs' sign on the bridge - some sort of evil organised hugging syndicate?
In front of the NHK buildings it would seem that they were having a flee market, though whether an event or a weekly fixture I have no idea. The bands as usual ranged between good to awful. I think dad bought an album from one of them. One group (heavy metal) had huge speakers that blew you away once you were in front of them. There was even a DJ with huge speakers throwing a mini rave in the park forest which seemed to be attracting mostly foreigners. The entrance way to the park contained the usual slew of rockabillies (who by 5pm were looking kinda tired), as well as 50/60s style dancers. The park itself was mostly filled with people just sitting around, walking their tiny tiny dogs, or in the case of the pond, filled with couples. Personally I didn't find the rather grayed tones of 5pm Tokyo particularly romantic but I guess a park of any sort is more appreciated for Japanese.
We came back through Takeshi dori again which looks completely different at night, though just as busy, carrying on through to Omotesando with a brief stop to point out the Kiddyland store. Getting back to the hotel we met up with my father friends who had done much of the hotel organising for the trip, and had dinner at the buffet restaurant on the 40th floor. Much economy and politics was talked. We later tried one of the minibar drinks which turned out to be fantastic. An Asahi Grapefruit, about 6% alcohol. Very Nice.
Rockabillies looking a little tired.
Forest side rave
Omotesando
Day Eleven - 20/10/08
Morning consisted of buffet breakfast at the hotel. Just to say, it was buffet breakfast every morning onwards.
Taking a taxi to Roppongi hills, a very upmarket set of stores, restaurants, theatres, and giant advertisement screens, the morning event was the opening to Tiffcom (Tokyo international Film Festival commision). It was basically a meet and greet for the various film directors pitching projects. Much introducting to people was done.
Following that we went out to Akihabara, I showed dad around a few interesting shops, specifically though with large display cases, and we bought my 18 year old brother some sexy figurines. Since he wanted to having mentioned it, we ended up going to a maid cafe, specifically one called 'Cafe with Cat. It's spelt in a way that the with and the Cat overlap so it could be 'Cafe with Chat, or Cafe Witch Cat. The later was more appropriate considering that they had a halloween thing going on. Effectively cat ears plus orange and black frilly clothing. They do very good dessert, the chicken and chips was fairly average. Most maid cafes don't exactly have the most amazing range of food, I don't think that's what the customers are there for. Overall it was interesting but hardly the full on maid experience. There are now 48 maid cafes in the main Akihabara area, stacked one on top of another over four floors in one case. I think it would be interesting to by a Federation uniform cosplay and then go to Cafe ZEON...
For dinner we decided after the atrocious prices of the hotel to pop down into the Akasaka area and explore. Though not as bad as Roppongi, there were a great many people handing out flyers to less than respectable places and a few girls lurking on the corners trying to sell their wares. In the end we somehow ended up as two New Zealanders in Japan, at an Italian restaurant being served by a pretty Sweedish girl. The pizza was good, the beer was not. And there was a Japanese guy with a guitar signing various Italian songs.
Meetings meetings...I'm probably confusing some of the details of the three days worth of Tiffcom meetings.
Since food was provided by another Tiffcom party and it was late we didn't go anywhere else for dinner.
And with that Dad went off to Korea.
The morning started off a bit lazy with me just watching a bit of CNN and BBC. Nothing but the state of the world economy and how crazy Sarah Palin is. One channel was showing a bunch of Japanese getting a chimpanzee to ride a segway. It was very un-PC indeed.
My epic quest to visit the attractions of Ueno park was cut slightly short (by two hours) when an old guy walked up and started talking to me in quality English about the state of affairs in Japan, youths, the internet, politics, the world. Long story short, he thinks that the Japanese have developed a communication problem, yet it could be remedied if strangers would just say good morning to each other like in the good old days. This communication problem leads to things like this. Basically, if I ran away I would probably confirm everything; when he was finally done I felt like I had passed some sort of test that most fail with feigned excuses of places to be urgently or something.
Despite having a slew of rare and endangered animals Ueno Zoo was incredibly depressing. It belongs to the style of zoo keeping known as 'thematic concrete'. I.e, These are penguins. They live on ice. The concrete is light blue. These are Bears. They live in woods and mountains. The concrete is brown and grey. Some areas were better than others but many animals like one of their nocturnal foxes were just pacing back and forth endlessly which was kind of creepy. The Armadillo was clearly attempting to dig its way out. Other enclosures were worse, just little muddy spaces covered in shit and crows. The space for the Galapogos turtle was only the size of 8 Galapagos turtles. Despite this, I took my favourite picture in Japanese here, it was of a little yellow hatted kindergartener and a Giant Japanese Salamander staring at each other. I forgot to mention the kids (and their parents) at the zoo for the most part were also pretty awful, whacking the cages and enclosures. The zoo gives me the feeling that the only thing it manages to accomplish is the breeding of more crows. The bastard things were everywhere, they had competely taken over some places.
From the Zoo I bascially turned the corner and went into the Tokyo Gallery of Art, an exhibiton site with 6 large spaces with rotating exhibitions and no permanent displays. It was slightly irritatating that every one required a seperate payment. A pleasant suprise however was that their main attraction was a Vermeer and Delft Masters of Light display. They didn't have any of the main works but had still assembled a sizeable collection that was drawing a crowd. There were quite a few stereotypical 'Look at me I am an arty type' type people wandering around in clothing that looked a bit like Cruella DeVille impersonators. I also went through an exhibiton of high resolution photographs, many were amazing, though others were only good I think because they were high resolution. I crossed to the other side of the park to the Tokyo Musuem of of Western Art, outside they have several casts of Rodin works including a Gates of Hell which is quite a sight to behold. The museum itself had a sizeable permanent exhibition with many canonical artists, thought it sort of felt like the tail end of them. The less famous paintings that could be gotten on the (relative) cheap. I also visited the musuem of Science and History which was suprisingly large (due to its multiple basement floors). It was a rather unfulfilling experience since I couldn't read much, though I marvelled at their geological collection. There were quite simply multiple metric fucktons of Stuffed/pickled/ethered animals.
The evening consisted of going to a reception hosted by the Thai Princess -. Bascially it was for a self starring movie's release. The movie itself was rather...busy, though its goals were good (raise awareness of children in poverty). The plot seemed to be something along the following lines: Business women (Princess) has car crash, it kills her daughter and the daughters heart is transplanted to woman. However woman's body slowly rejects daughters heart. Woman finds new meaning in teaching in a rural school however they find out eventually that her previous job was demolishing rural schools. Things light on fire. People shout. Etc. Couldn't see much of the subtitles. The food was quite good
It's like 30cm deep and completely covered
As I was coming up to this shrine I saw a bunch of school kids. One of them freaked out when one of the others pointed out the large Mantis on his back. They then proceeded to bury in in the gravel and stomp it to death. This really pissed me off.
Extremely poisonous frogs
. My favourite photo - It's a Giant Japanese Salamander. The one on the left.
The Gates of Hell
Thai Princess
Day Fourteen - 23/10/08
The main event for the day was touring three Japanese film and post production facilities, Imagica, Toho, and Omnibus. It was effectively 30-40 minute tours with 30-40 minute van rides between them. I ended up playing Pokemon Diamond on my DS until it ran out of batteries, the curious thing being that I didn't fall asleep. The tours were interesting, but primarily a facility selling exercise aimed at the rest of the people I was with. Toho was interesting and has quite a history, it seemed to be the off time as very little was going on, though their post production was currently working on the sound for something called おっぱいバレ. Lols. Unfortunately it started raining heavily so we couldn't take photos in front of their Godzilla though I still took one of the Godzilla anyway. Imagica didn't have much of interest to me, though they gave everyone 1gb usb keys. Finally at Omnibus we were introduced to a big expensive camera and all its technical details. I was amused to see that one of their showreels was for Detroit Metal City and snorted when it was mentioned. I think I was the only one in the room to have heard of any of their show titles. Also amusing that such a high performance camera was used for it so perhaps I should see it and not just the anime.
Yet again I let Tiffcom feed me for dinner at their finishing party which was on quite a grand scale. The food this time was quite good, and the view would have been stunning should they have turned off the lights and let me get a photo. Good food was had, and many last goodbyes to various important people.
Yes, a giant spider thingie.
Day Fifteen and Sixteen - 24-25/10/08
Today was pretty much the last chance to blow the small amount of money I had left. Quite frankly there is 0 chance of buying anything American or Japanese for a long long long time. The NZ dollar is around 50 yen/US cents, down from averages of 75. As you can see, this is a muthafukin third. SHIT. In the end I bought an Evangelion T-Shirt which I liked more than the others (at $50 a pop I couldn't exactly spend much), as well as finding a Federation Uniform for a similar price (which fits astoundingly well). I can wear it with a big sign saying 'Expendable'. The Gundam equivelent of a Star Trek Red Shirt. I was hoping to get a Zeon Flag or Banner as well but they don't seem to quite get it in Japan at times, the closest thing to a flag being a bathtowl (Future Robot Piloting Nazi bathtowels are still good though). I mentioned that Akihabara is infested with maid cafes, well in one spot they have Zeon and Federation themed bars stacked on top of one another. Like I said before, makes me feel like wearing a Federation uniform and stirrin' up some trouble at Zeon. Unfortuantely such dreams will never come to fruition as apparently both bars are a pretty poor effort. It's just girls wearing t-shirts with the mobile suits of the respective sides depicted.
In the midst of the buying, a torrential downpour occured. It pretty much killed Akihabara, being a place wear you have to walk the streets, and visit a lot of small stores. Despite their preparations of special plastic bags for carrying your wet umbrella in (and the small transparent umbrellas themselves being sold conviently which offer little protection against the torrent) business sorta
In order to escape the rain I decided to take refuge in maid cafes. I had seen some unfortunate girls in maid costumes holding advertisements pointing to their cafe hiding under a ledge, and decided to follow up on it. My bag had gotten quite drenched, my map having disintegrated and even by passport getting damaged. All in all I had a Ginger Ale, as well as a Curry Rice. This one was a bit more typical in style complete with Okaeri Nasai Gosshujinsama (Welcome back, Master) as the greeting. For dessert I headed back to the Cafe with Cat and enjoyed a ridiculous Parfait, Iced Mocha, and Chocolate Cake. Two desserts was a bit much I think.
Most of the rest of the day was spent in preperation for getting home. The huuuuge lightning storm of explosioning thunderclaps right by the highway was slightly discouraging for the flight home. Fortunately it had stopped by the time we reached the airport, though curiously nobody else I mentioned this to seemed to have noticed. Even more curiously the guy that had sat next to me on the flights from Wellington->Sydney->Tokyo was on the same flights back. Worse still, apparently we had been in the same places at pretty much the same times. o_o
The overnight flight was quite uneventful, apart from having to wait about an hour for them to reset my screen since it had frozen. To make matters worse the screen was severely burnt out so anything in the dark was pretty much blank. The brightness adjustment was just the gamma so didn't help. I still watched Indiana Jones (meh), Get Smart (eheh), and The Forbidden Kingdom (yaaaaaawn).
Sixteen: Transfer continued through Sydney airport without a hitch. I bought by younger brothers Super Mario Galaxy, as well as a couple of bottles of Limoncello for myself (pretty much the only alcohol I really like (others being dessert wine, flaming zambukas, grapefruit liquors)). Coming into NZ I got a wonderful view of Farewell Spit and the Malbourough Sounds (North of South Island), however as to be expected the entirety of the North Island was burried under extensive cloud cover. The pilot tried landing but apparently 'missed' and decided to fly all the way to Christchurch for refueling before trying again. The second time worked, but had added something like 3 hours onto our arrival time.
Got my baggage, and to my relief none of my precccccccccccccioussssssssss's had been damaged. Slept. Lots. Proceeded to catch up on 2.2 weeks of missed programs, i.e., about 50 episodes of anime and tv shows. Still going. Enjoying a little shot glass each night of my sugery alcoholy limoncello.
Booty
