The plane into Atlanta, where I'd catch my flight overseas into Japan flew through a lot of overcast skies and clouds. I could go into detail and show you all the photos I took while in the clouds but there's 664 photos in this folder so I ought to cut short in some places.
Shortly after this, I arrived in Atlanta, and didn't take any pictures in the airport, nor on the plane over the Pacific. So we now fast-forward something like eighteen or so hours.
And welcome to Japan! This is the sights right outside the Nippori station, in Tokyo. I landed in Narita airport, which is a fair ways out of Tokyo and took an express train into the city. I would have loved to take photos of the train ride, but it was dark outside and the train inside bright. There was too much reflection ;_;.
Turns out lugging around luggage doesn't put you in a particularly good spot to take photos. Or maybe I'm just still getting into the momentum here. But the next picture is our Tokyo AirBnB apartment. Cozy little thing that would happily house two, maybe three people. But get up to five and things definitely start feeling tight. Still, it was an amazing location that was only about fifteen minutes walk out of Akibahara and close to plenty of metro and rail lines.
The photo from the OP is the nighttime view from our apartment's front door. In a stroke of good luck, the only times it was rainy or drizzly were at the very beginning of my stay in Japan, and at the very end. And the wet streets and city lights made for what I thought was a very lovely little scene.
I'm a particular sucker for super-urban cities. And Tokyo works wonders with the building construction; very little of it looks too repetitive or cookie-cutter.
These big posters of the Love Live Sunshine girls would become the sort-of meeting point for my travel group over the time in Tokyo. They were pretty much right at Akibahara station, and pretty noticeable. They're where we met up with the second group of people who were rooming somewhere further away on the first day, and kind of just became easy to head towards whenever meeting up needed to be done.
Akiba is really colourful, and cram posters and advertisements in practically wherever they can. It's both really exciting and engaging, and also kind of overwhelming. Especially when the streets start to get packed with people, it can be kind of hard to find somewhere to catch your breath.
If you've ever dealt with doujinshi you're probably familiar with Toranoana,but even then, experiencing it in-person is something else. There is porn. Lots of porn. But there's also a lot of artbooks, and releases of popular or anime-receiving manga and LN, along with figures and gunpla. Pretty much a little bit of everything, and then a metric fucktonne of doujinshi.
This first day in Akibahara was devoted far more to Toranoana than I'd rather admit. But still, I also got to experience rearu Nipponese arcades. And then promptly left because they are really sensory overload-y. Lots of bright lights, and all the sounds of the machines roll together into a dull, roaring static. I think I might have been a bit off thanks to timezone shifts or something, because this one really did me in. So instead I just sat outside for like an hour or something while some of my friends danced off in DDR.
There's really something amazing about how Akiba lights up at night though. All the colourful components of it go neon once the sun sets, and it really kicks the vibrant nature of the town up several notches. If I'd been on my lonesome I probably could have gotten happily lost in here, just wandering the streets.
We would walk by this PC store pretty regularly while in Japan and the monitor with the girls on it would play this pair of ads on loop non-stop. >>>/watch?v=PtHugtXVWlI The lyrics were really catchy though and it was fun to start it and watch a bunch of my friends start to join in somewhat involuntarily.
Some times it was kind of hard to figure out why certain figures were showcased with others. It's not like Fate, Monogatari, and Unbreakable Machine Doll are all on the same popularity level. Maybe it's just company-sorted.
TN's going to love my finger here (sorry TN!) but the bright logos and adverts here were really nice.
Today we were also trailing around two Japanese guys that I'd met over the net too. One was a guy who lived pretty close to Toyko, and the other lived something like two or so hours away. The guy who lived far away had never actually been to Akibahara before, and so he got a tour of the place by one of the guys in our group who spoke fluent Japanese. The irony of a native getting a tour of Akiba from a gaijin was thankfully lost on no one.
We went to karaoke with the two of them, and the one who'd come in from out of town performed a pretty impressive cover of a Linken Park song I've forgotten the name of already. The guy who lives close by sung u's No Brand Girls and one of the Hidamari Sketch OPs in a hilarious high-pitched voice--that really didn't sound too far off the pitch of a girl's singing voice actually. Karaoke was a blast. We all sang along when we knew the lyrics and tried our damnedest when we didn't.
MEAL BLOG ONE: Over the days in Japan we ate at a bunch of restaurants with varying themes and menus. This day we stopped at a tsukemen place. The soup was this thick, heavy pork-based soup that you dipped the noodles (I think they were udon but I don't know my noodles) into and let soak a bit. It was a nice, simple meal, and that slab of meat was this amazingly succulent pork that you could just bite into and have it melt on your tongue. It was delicious and made me reconsider my usual unenthusiastic disposition towards pork. One of the best meals I had in Japan.
While we usually met up at the Love Live poster, an occasional meeting spot was the Gundam Cafe also just outside Akibahara station. Never actually went in it, but it was funny to see a themed cafe like it. There was also an AKB48 cafe right next door to it but idols aren't my jazz.
Apparently that was the last photo of the twenty-eighth I took, because the next photo is the morning of the twenty-ninth! Day one of Comiket! The five of us in the apartment split into two groups for this day. Two brothers, the veterans of Comiket, headed out not quite for the first train, but still pretty early in the morning. They had lists to tick off, men on a mission. The remaining three of us took it a bit easier, leaving more around ten in the morning. If we had any popular circles on our lists for the day there was pretty much a zero-percent chance of getting it with how easygoing we went at it.
I would later learn taking photos inside the halls is considered pretty rude, so photos like these taper off pretty quick. Still it shows a good idea of what a "not really packed" image of Comiket is like. Day One is a pretty big day, and we were getting there two hours after the doors opened. There were some parts of the halls that felt kind of packed at times, but as I would come to learn, it was nothing before the super-dense battleground which was Day Three.
TN !PcAPtAiNJo
>I wonder should I comment about finger >scrolls down
A photo op like this probably wouldn't have been available until much later in the day on Day Three. There would still be too many people around. And they'd all be pushing you along as they tried to get to the tables they wanted stuff from.
I should also note that I spent the entire time I was in the halls--a good four or so hours, just in the East Halls 1-6. I didn't even know there were East Halls 7 and 8 until Day Two, and I never actually got around to the West Halls, where all the major corporate tables were set up, at a time where I could expect to still buy things, on any of the days. Comiket covers a lot of ground, surprisingly.
Apparently /a/ and /jp/ organize a gaijin meet-up for Comiket, and every time, they meet at the end of the day at this giant saw. According to another veteran we were going around with, one year they all sat in that indent next to the saw as some stupid autistic joke. And next Comiket, there was a sign in plain English--no Japanese mind you, saying "Do not sit here". I believe moot also took a stealth picture of them doing it from a vantage point not unlike this. No one knew he was even there until he put the photo online. Or something.
I wouldn't claim to be an expert on it yet, but I think a lot of people leave Day One fairly early. Even then, there are still huuuuge lines of people at the ticket machines at the station nearest Big Sight. Pro-tip: if you're planning on hitting up Comiket while in Japan, get an IC/Suica card. It's a 500yen deposit but it's far worth the struggle of waiting for tickets.
MEAL BLOG TWO: After Comiket we returned to Akibahara for more Toranoana/Melonbooks/etc. scouring, but along the way we also stopped at Gogo Curry. It's a chain of curry restaurants native to Japan that serve their curry with this really intense curry sauce. It's not spicy in terms of heat, but the flavour is really strong. It's also really fucking good. Cheap too, I think this meal cost no more than 700yen and was quite filling. The pork katsudon was also nicely done. I've always loved schnitzel, and pork katsu---katsu, not katusdon--is really reminscent of that for me. The Akiba location does get pretty packed around dinner time though, and you might end up waiting a while before getting in. Still, not long enough to be an actual detriment to the enjoyment of the meal. The tsukemen from the day before still probably reigns supreme as the best meal I had, but Gogo Curry did win the award of being one of the only places I visited twice while in Japan.
Again, it was so much fun to walk around Akiba at night. The streets were also now starting to get packed with all the folks that had finished up their Comiket Day One stuff, but weren't quite satisfied in their otaku desires. I also began to see a lot more foreigners now. They were always here and there in the streets before Comiket, but they really came out of the woodwork in the after-Comiket evenings.
Kannagi
>>2178 That would be the life, There are number of Japanese people who do just that. Travelling around Japan blogging about food and local specialities with occasional sight seeing
Before retiring for the night I did a bit of kickback drinking with one of --actually two of the guys in the apartment. Nothing too much, just a bit of alcohol after a day's work...of walking. Lots of walking. They were all really pleasant guys, the ones I stayed with. I'd never actually met them before, and only ever talked with two of them. It could have gone a lot worse, but it didn't.
In a kind of weird turn of events, Day Two started off even earlier than the day before. Day Two of Comiket is the bulk of the fujoshi circles, along with some smaller major topics like Pokemon, and a bunch of niche stuff that doesn't fit in on any of the other two days. Nothing that really made any of us jump out of bed for, but still, all five of us left the apartment around eight -- Oh wait the timestamps on these have been modified for my timezone. So we actually left around ten in the morning, which makes much more sense.
I'd focused on the road that runs out basically straight out our apartment's front door before, but the views to the left and right are still both pretty neato too. You don't see urbanity like this anywhere in North America.
A lot of the Kirara magazine serials had their circles on Day Two. Coffee Cuties, New Game!, Kiniro Mosaic maybe I don't remember. Pretty much if it was still getting doujinshi drawn of it, it was on Day Two. This is the main reason we even came on Day Two even. One of us is a die-hard Hidamari fan, and is pretty determined to collect every Hidamari doujinshi made it seems. No matter the content, no matter the art quality. If anything his passion is admirable.
Wacom also had a booth up in the east halls showcasing all their flagship products. Just the sight of them was temptation in of itself. I avoided drawing on them to try and stave off the urges to rush out and buy one immediately, but even then. I still want onnnneeee.
I did make my way into the west halls on Day Two, but like i mentioned earlier, I was never there in time to actually buy anything from the tables. It's kind of a shame; I would have really liked to see the corporate tables, but it's a shark bath apparently. I only got the official Trigger artbook >>2189 because I had someone who was gunning for it and up for getting multiple copies.
The corporate tables can also afford to get these nice big banners advertising the stuff they're marketing. Maybe next time I'll gun for the west halls on one of the two days they're open. Unlike the east halls, which change circles every day, the corporate tables have the same stock both days they're open.
Day two was pretty short. Less shock and awe dragging the experience out, and less eventful too. Still less horrifying than I had expected. I was expecting YAOI EVERYWHERE when really it wasn't as bad as that. And if the Kirara manga serials have all their shit on Day Two I expect I'll be showing up for it whenever I'm at Comiket anyway. Maybe that gets shuffled around though.
If you haven't noticed yet there's a definite theme to most of the stay in Tokyo. Because of Akiba's walking distance from our apartment, and because we're all fucking weeaboos. Electric Town became our regular stomping ground for pretty much the entire time we were in Tokyo. Really a shame that we didn't venture out to other parts much, but even still, there's so much to Akiba we didn't see either.
I think there's a shot in the Akiba's Trip anime airing this season which features this exact same location. At the least I believe the drugstore is recreated in the anime.
i think I was trying to take a picture of the Natsume Yuujinchou poster in the background but instead managed to take a very picturesque photo of a streetlamp. At least I think it's a streetlamp.
MEAL BLOG THREE: Tonight was a finger-invading meal of a roast beef don, made up in a particularly fancy display. Particularly fancy compared to the other meals we ate at least. The roast beef was apparently high-grade Japanese beef served over warm rice and topped with an egg. On the side was a small cube of cream cheese and another of wasabi, and some kind of soup that I have no clue what was in it, but it was quite refreshing and enjoyable to drink.
I'm going to be honest, I don't like coldcut meat. I like meat warm, so the fact that the roast beef came out cooler than the rice it was on top of was kind of a disappointment for me. Even then, it was some pretty good beef, but I don't know if it's any better than the high-grade meat I get fairly often over here. My tastebuds aren't really cultured for that sort of distinguish. It almost makes me wonder if I'd gone for the cheaper set, which is the same meal but with Australian beef, if it would have been particularly different. It was still undeniably an enjoyable and delicious meal, BUT. I don't know if it was worth the long, half an hour wait and 1500yen bill. Because of how much space comes at a premium in Akiba, if you're waiting on a restaurant, you're fairly often doing it outside. Sure the Japan winter is mild, but that doesn't make the wait outside particularly pleasant. All in all, I would probably be happy to return if I was coming with people who had never tried it before, if I could find it at a time where the line isn't such a long wait. But I think if I was returning with people that had already been, we'd probably all agree to go somewhere else.
Kannagi
>>2245 I quite like that EVA building side. >>2248 >Roast beef
Kannagi
Damn that looks so tasty. This feels like images you would see on a high quality photoblog. I hope if I can go to Japan I can make my own set of nice images and experiences
Incidentally, this was also THE DAY where I went and spent something like 75% of my total money spent on commercial goods too. Except maybe excluding the 4000yen worth of cardigans I bought in Kyoto.
Having been hanging around Toranoana for several days with my friends, I kind of formed up a list of the shit I wanted to buy.
>>2269 Oh wait I suddenly remember these. I remember people waiting for them to upload >>2271 wow you got a lot are they comics? I don't they are *know if they are LNS
ティルデ
The furthest row is manga. The other two rows are light novels. The stuff perched along the couch are freebies I got because I spent so fucking much. (They're just like four-page short stories from KonoSuba and a file holder-thing.)
Kannagi
Oh the freebies, I didn't know they were spending more, I thought they were store exclusives. since I know you get ones for toranoana. and other stores.
ティルデ
I mean they might have been store exclusive? My rune knowledge isn't enough to pick up on that yet. YET.
In an unfortunate turn of events pretty much all the photos I took of the Day Three early-morning Death March are kind of like this. I think this is the fault of holding my phone above my head and just pressing the shutter button without looking.
But I hope they give the idea that despite leaving the apartment at 04:30 to catch the first train, there are still A LOT OF PEOPLE HERE. And I don't even think this counts the people that camped out or took taxis or other motor vehicles.
>>2287 We caught the first train successfully, and it was an experience. To be honest the adrenaline and excitement was a lot of fun, despite the fact that I kind of get people-claustrophobic. The trains get really densely-packed, and when you're changing lines, there's almost a bit of a race with your fellow traingoers to get to the new platform the quickest to eliminate risk that you might not get on. The whole atmosphere around it was a buzz with this kind of mild frenzy, and I kind of get drunk on atmosphere pretty easily, so it infected me pretty much the whole day through. I'd totally do another first train day when I go back to Comiket--though maybe not more than once a trip.
Some /a/nons have posted videos of the event. it looks intense. >>2289 If you need any help learning moonrunes, I don't mind! it would be fun to learn along with someone! and I have so many, way too many resources.
This is the first stabilized photo of Day Three. We'd made it to the waiting zones, since even if you get to Big Sight at 06:00-06:30 in the morning, you still have ti -to wait around until just before 10:00 to start moving towards the building.
There's a really strange process they have for organizing the mass crowds at this point. As you're walking forwards, deep in the milling, churning swathes of people, eventually you get to a point where they take a chunk of those people, cut off at roughly equal parts, and get them all to squeeze together rrrreeeeaaaally tightly until you're kind of one big mass of sardines. Then they kind of cordon that pack off and let it expand a little bit within the holding pen, and then repeat for the next mass of people. And that's how you wait for the three or so hours until the doors open.
Kannagi
It always a unusual feeling when you realise how used to Japanese people having the same colour hair and same height you get.
I don't even remember what I did for those three hours. Wouldn't have had WiFi so no Internet. We were still all kind of drowsy so there wasn't much talking going on. Some of us were even curled up into sitting balls on the ground and pseudo-napping, hah hah. I tried my hand at that but it wasn't comfortable enough. I also can't really sit on hard ground in one position for long, I need to be able to shift my legs and sit in different positions. And with the super-tiny surface area I had allocated for me, that wasn't really possible without elbowing and kneeing the people around me.
To remedy my restless legs I did try standing, but once you were standing, you were exposed to the crisp morning winter air, which was certainly not as mild as the Japanese winter is during the day. At least down on the ground you were able to stay warm in the wind shelter of everyone around you. Still, there was a lovely east-facing view of the Tokyo harbourfront.
No seriously, praise it. In that cold morning air, the warm beams of the sun shining down on the body were a blessing. Invigorating and energizing after the long wait in the dark.
But finally, the line began to move once more, and we began the final leg of the Death March into Big Sight itself. From here on in, the battle would be gin, a vicious fight to elbow and push your way through errant currents and dense crowds to obtain precious doujinshi and item sets. And also to queue in one line for like an hour because I wanted a fucking book and like hell I wasn't going to get it.
But I learned my lesson on Day Two, and like I warned earlier, There will be no pictures today.
Kannagi
>>2313 Did you in the most English voice possible saying If only I could be as grossly incandescent.
Kannagi
I assume you have some of the advantage considering you were mostly likely a tall scary gaijin?
ティルデ
>Tall ;_;
You wound me Konna.
ティルデ
But yes scary. Very scary.
ティルデ
If only that actually intimidated anyone. I don't even think the tall German guy I was with was particularly effective at getting through the crowds. If anything, the best of us at crowd navigating was this short Chinese guy who was even shorter than your average Japanese guy.
>>2327 Well... I guess I got that wrong! >>2333 Tiny people can get through while tall people are gridlocked. I will just crouch when I go there and wear a scubmask.
And here we are at the end of the day. I actually left a bit early; an hour or two before Comiket closed for good. Helped a bit with dodging the day-end train rush. Unlike Day One and Two, a bulk of the people on Day Three stay all the way until the end. Maybe it just feels right, to see the last day all the way through. But a group of us that aren't as hugely enthusiastic about Comiket were leaving early and there wasn't anything else I thought I'd be gunning for buying, so I left with them.
Apparently I did get a shot of the AKB48 cafe. We just faffed around for the most part, going in and out of shops. This group was mostly the people I wasn't rooming with, and they weren't as doujinshi-obsessed as the other group was. So less of Toranoana (less, not nothing altogether though), and more of walking around Akiba and checking out shops here and there.
But once it got late enough we grouped up and hit up a drinking parlour, that gold sign on the sixth floor. We intended to nomihoudai and drink all we wanted, but this place had a much higher rate for that than the same franchise place near where my friends were rooming in Ueno. So instead we just ordered drinks and counted well enough to stay under the rate they would have charged us. It still got us well-enough drunk, at least four of our party were conked out and one guy was pretty fuzzy after like one or two pints. Though me and one other guy kept pretty much intact the whole night.
After which, we headed out to a karaoke parlour and did a bunch of totally drunk singing. Since we didn't have the Japanese guys with us this time, there was a definite slant towards more Western stuff--though we still got in the moody Japanese songs like the Ano Hana ED because for some fucking reason we all like singing it.
After karaoke it was getting late in the night, so those of us who lived near Akiba saw the ones that needed to catch a train to Ueno off before walking back. At some point during this the New Year rang in--which I felt kind of silly for completely forgetting. Maybe next time someone will keep a better track on the time.
I am super jelly. I can think of bunch of songs I'd like to try out on the karaoke is it super pricey for drink there? or can you get it cheap depend on how much you have?
ティルデ
Hm, I don't remember the drinks being particularly expensive. I think I ordered six or so glasses of whisky sours in varying flavours, and my bill was only something like 1000yen I think. Hm no that doesn't sound right. Maybe more like 1400yen? Still, they were pretty weak. Maybe if I had gone double shots for all six I could have gotten decently drunk, but only the last two were. But the nomihoudai price for unlimited drinks was like 2000 or 2500yen per person for ninety minutes. More than what my friends that had been to another place under the same
Sounds cheap, I guess that makes sense for a Karaoke place, I only know of them from idol stuff and anime/manga.
ティルデ
>>2373 franchise had paid, by a large margin. With enough effort we might have been able to pay out the nomihoudai price, but that would have been a lot of alcohol in ninety minutes.
>>2377 We didn't actually order any alcohol at the karaoke place, hah hah. We were kind of in a sobering phase by then, so we were just having tea and coffee. The first karaoke place we went to had a drink included in the per person fee though, and I think it was about as weak there as the single shots at the drinking parlour, if not weaker.
no different. Figure stores had open box sales galore, and all manner of shops had the surprise grab bags outside lining the walk outside the storefront. If only I had not already been tight for space with all the book-buying I had done days before (and with all the books I had yet to buy).
Kannagi
Oh I can see the images now. For a second they were broken.
No not really. But I did say I'd talk about Denny's when I actually visited one. We stopped by Denny's for lunch and I got a pretty simple hambaagu and cheese over rice. Family restaurants are a much different experience in Japan than in North America. The food is actually both pretty nice and pretty cheap, and they pretty much all come equipped with drink bars. In a country where standing and never sitting in one place for long seems to be the norm, famires seem to be the lone exception and offer you a spot to sit down and rest your feet for an extended period of time. In a sense they feel more like a cafe that offers an extensive food menu on top of or instead of a variety of drinks.
Kannagi
You seem to have a dish a day ready for talking about! I am hungry. all the food looks better than what I have eaten in my life. I usually eat terribly!
Our first attempt to New Year's shrine visit ended in failure.
Kanda Myojin is a temple just outside of Akibahara. It has some small infamy of being featured in Love Live!, but other than that is not particularly large, nor particularly famous. So we thought we could dodge large crowds and get in for a little tradition respecting.
>>2405 We all knew it's super popular; that's why we immediately struck out the large, famous shrines and temples. This one was also within walking distance of Akibahara, which meant it was also pretty close for those of us rooming near it too.
Despite the otaku culture that has overtaken Akiba over the past two decades you still see tech hobbyist shops like this.
If anything the otaku culture is now getting challenged by an incoming tourism culture attack. Since Akiba is a hotspot for otaku tourists, you're seeing more and more stuff that kind of caters to that moving in. I kind of worry it might ruin the original culture which attracts people to it in the first place.
Kannagi
>>2406 The quality of those figs are pretty scary, those faces.
Kannagi
>>2408 There is apparently a street dedicated to the denkiya They say for the new olympics Akiba is going to be sanitized. The Tokyo governor Ishihara wanted to push for harsh rules and policies to make the areas look "clean" for westerners when they comes for the olympic games
ティルデ
How terrible. I mean I dunno, I don't think Akiba looks any dirtier than a more normie-centric place like Shibuya. Just the themes of the adverts is different.
Kannagi
They want to ban all the R18 stuff so that altheles and tourist don't get the wrong idea about Japan, mostly old men thinking the otaku stuff is abnormal and unseemly
ティルデ
Hm, okay, I can think of maybe two or three stores that fall under that sort of imagery. Or do you mean from the stores entirely, and not just from the outside-facing posters and whatnot.
Kannagi
They want them behind curtained sections and any questionable posters and book artwork removed. Questionable being entirely down to whatever they want.
ティルデ
Hah, RIP Toranoana C. You pretty much enter the door into the store, look right, and PORN. PORN EVERYWHERE.
Well the first part of the laws he wanted to put in have long ago gone into affect, they actually stopped some manga being published for free of fines. anyway I don't want to detract too much from the blog!
Apparently there is a somewhat "Day Four" to Comiket too; where you get everyone who missed out on buying from tables during the actual event flocking to Toronana and Melonbooks and whatnot to buy what they didn't get.
Kannagi
>>2420 Yep that is a thing. Toranoana and all those stores (Gamers, Melonbooks, Animate etc) all hold stock and sometimes you can get some nice privelleges from each one.
One of the things for newly released volumes of manga is to go around each of them for different freebes usually author signed art cards.
ティルデ
Toranoana even rents out a whole floor of the ADX building for a one'day Toranoana "D" building to centralize the doujinshi haul. That's where the Drifters statue was set up.
I actually ended up buying more doujinshi on Day Four than I did on the entire of Comiket. Mostly because I was walking around the shops during Day Four with friends who could recommend stuff--we had given up pretty quickly as staying during a group during the actual Comiket sessions--and also in a few cases, because I'd stopped by a table and bought one of their books, only to find they had a second that had been selling there but ended up sold out until Day Four.
Excuse the indecency but-oh it didn't want to upload anyway.
For real this time. I kind of regret only having ramen once during the trip, especially considering I didn't have it in Kyoto. But at least the ramen I had was a particularly special kind. It was a smorgasbord of ingredients all stuffed into the bowl. A whole chicken thigh, two chicken meatballs, two egg halves with a seasoned yolk, and some kind of mushroom/fungi thing. I'll admit I kind of like simpler meals; dishes that cram a bunch of ingredients into one serving kind of feel weird to me. And I really don't like mushrooms much, but this fungi wasn't actually all that bad. Granted it wasn't all that good either, it was just a kind of neutral taste with a firm, slightly chewy texture to it. The meatballs were also fairly flavourless, but not unpleasant to eat. And the eggs were, well, eggs. You eat a lot of egg in Japan, it just kind of happens. The chicken thigh was definitely the highlight of the dish. I definitely prefer breast meat to thigh almost any day, but this was a nice quality piece of chicken. After it soaked in the soup a bit, they exchanged and complimented each others flavours well. Still I don't really like having to pick at my meal for tidbits of meat, so I definitely left a lot of the chicken still on the bone. All in all, it was pretty good ramen. Was a bit -Was a short wait too, but we probably just beat out the supper rush.
Kannagi
Yep, I can't upload large images with spoiler. >resizing error.
>>2452 My mom eats the bone as well as the chicken. it is super freaky. Apparently people eat the bone.
I also ate eating chicken skin. *hate It feels like it would stick in my throat.
ティルデ
Yeah, ew. I could never do that.
ティルデ
I'm okay with chicken skin for the most part. I don't particularly relish it, where as my sister loves it, but I'll eat it.
Kannagi
I only usually eat chicken because it is cheap. and I don't often have the chance of eat proper meat outside of processed stuff. So chicken is my usual meat.
>>2471 I mentioned it earlier, but the worst weather we had were the day I landed in Japan, and the last couple days before we left. Everything else was nice weather, or at worst just overcast.
Kannagi
>>2474 You shared your journey on moe I think, It feels weird that it was 5 years ago. you went to some korean theme park too right?
One of the smaller things that fascinated me about Japan were, even in these kind of "dirty" spots that you find in every city, they still look exceptionally safe. Like there's always -that- part of the city that every city has that you know just from appearances you shouldn't really take a shortcut through. But the ones around Akiba, while reminiscent of that feeling, didn't feel particularly threatening. Or maybe I'm just oblivious in my gaijin, dumb-male armor.
We still had to cross the river to get into Akiba though, but the pedestrian bridge we took offered a different view of the river.
Kannagi
One of things I remember reading was that a lot of Japanese people feel safe enough to leave their doors open and some foreigners find it hard to imagine. but that was like something I read that was printed before the 90's
Samurai !KW2DbpWwls
>>2477 it does seem like the years have flown by but a lot has happened since, i'm a whole different person yep the korean expo
Even so, it was a long wait in the slow shuffle towards the money bin. Still, it was a great chance to look around and soak in the details. I love shrine and temple design from Asia, so I'm always happy to eat it up when I see it.
When I said it was a money bin, I wasn't kidding. I know shrines usually have nice respectable receptacles set up, but this one was almost comically basic. You'd also get people that were way off to the edges that just pitched money over the heads of other people to get it in the bin.
Did you know that Shrine is super old. Tokugawa Ieyesu prayed at that shrine. also there are several kami enshrined there. One which is a big fat dwarf
ティルデ
I didn't know the history of it! We didn't really do culture all that much until we hit Kyoto. Tokyo was much more about otaku-ing it up as much as possible.
A bunch of super-old video games going for 100yen or less. I wonder if there's even anything notable in here.
Kannagi
Ohhh, that is real cool. I like old games. I don't see anything in there particuarly interesting except for the basara game i think
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I don't remember what I did for the rest of January 2nd but I didn't have many other pictures from that day. Maybe my phone died early or something? In any case it was probably just another day of stomping around Akiba, dodging into doujinshi stores.
Oh maybe it's the day I went and got the New Game tankoubons. It's hard to remember when I actually picked them up.
I went and got a closer shot of that shrine today, since the close-up I'd taken the day before had turned out horrendously blurry for some reason. Even this one is kind of mussed up by the sun beams.
The third was also the day I finally got to get into Melonbooks. Through the infuriating inconveniences of chance, any other time a friend of mine was going to the store, I was unavailable to join them in going. And it was also constantly impossible to get someone to answer the simple question of which Melonbooks store (of which there are two in Akiba) I'd want to go for doujinshi. But I got there in the end, which was a good thing since there was a book Blue wanted me to get for him that, failing to get at Comiket, was only being sold at Melonbooks. But they didn't have the book in stock. Sorry Blue!
I picked it up for him later in Kyoto though.
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I also visited Mandarake, of which I don't really have any good photos for. Besides dealing in normal otaku books and goods, they also apparently have a pretty thorough selection of older doujinshi. I went in looking for ANOTHER book that Blue would have loved to get his hands on that was old enough to maybe apply, but while they had the author, they didn't have the specific book in stock. Sorry Blue!
I am going to have to call it a night here. I have to go to work in a few hours! It sucks I can't join for more of your blog! It was fun!
Nighties
ティルデ
Gooood ngiht. Night, even.
I was figuring I'd finish up the Tokyo portion of the trip and then maybe take a breather for the night but oh fuck I took so many pictures of Shibuya and Odaiba. Time to hunker down I guess.
Something must have clicked in us. Maybe it was the fact that the third was our last full day in Toyko, but all of a sudden a bunch of us definitely found the determination to go and see other sights than just Akiba and its surroundings. So we caught a train, and headed out to the other large tourist hotspot in Tokyo. Shibuya.
And what trip to Shibuya is complete without a picture of Hachiko?
Of course taking a picture was a fucking nuisance in the first place. Every baka gaijin wanted to go up and get their picture taken with the dog, never minding all the people standing around who just wanted a plain picture of the statue. I think this twit in particular spoiled two of my other photos by pacing back in forth in front of it.
For people familiar with Shibuya, or have just played The World Ends With You, the 109 building should be particularly memorable. I'll admit I kind of expected it to be a little more grandiose, but it still sticks out more than enough to be a landmark.
Shibuya is kind of neat for two reasons. One, the pocket WiFi I carried around most days in Toyko died right as we arrived in the town, so most of my memories are kind of loose, since I didn't have a chance to share them as they were happening.
Two, the geography of the town is completely different from anywhere else in Tokyo I went. Akiba, Big Sight, Odaiba; they're all fairly flat parts of Tokyo. You could walk all over them and barely feel any natural incline.
Shibuya is filled with alleys and side roads like this. An all of a sudden, narrow, steep curve upwards up a hill into a different part of the town. It kind of almost gives the town a snake-y feel to it Some times when you try to build a city in a place with rough terrain, you throw extra effort into landscaping the area and making it smooth. But Shibuya really feels like a town that was built around the natural geography in an extremely harmonic way.
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>>2549 A little pocket device with a SIM card, that broadcasts a WiFi signal. It came with the apartment we rented in Tokyo. It was an amazing little thing for me, who realized too late what I needed to do to unlock my phone and couldn't just rent a Japanese SIM card in Japan. Normally the battery at full charge could last twelve or fourteen hours with ease, but some dolt had knocked or unplugged it off its charge cable the night before and it started the day on a partially-used battery.
I've lauded the architectural variety of Tokyo before, but even then, I was pretty much always finding a "that's so cool" detail or aspect that you'd never see in North America while walking around.
One of the excuses we had to go to Shibuya was actually for sushi. I don't really know why we just didn't find some place around Akiba for sushi, but we ended up in Shibuya. Despite being neither really near lunch or near supper, the sushi place was surprisingly kind of crowded. Maybe because the New Years holidays were still going on, there was just more people out on the streets. So we had to wait a decent bit, in an amusingly efficient game of scooching across benches as we moved up in the line. At least this place offered seating for waiting customers. We ordered sushi off of tablets in front of our seats, which were then ferried out to us on on these sets of rails that ran along a long table. The whole eating experience was pretty much automatic, and kind of nifty. You could only order three dishes at a time, but there was no real upward limit of how much you could eat.
The actual sushi was pretty good. Or at least, pretty good for someone who doesn't really get to enjoy fresh fish very much. The sushi I get here, at home, isn't really all that amazing, since it's hard to get fresh sea fish this far inland fast enough. So getting to experience sushi in an almost fresh environment is amazing, even if the quality of fish isn't. Though for this matter I can't say much personally and I'm just parroting what my friends who'd had some amazing, expensive sushi in Hokkaido before I arrived were saying. Not that the fish quality was bad, or even worse than decent, it just was't particularly impressive.
But the important detail is, it was tasty-enough, and it was CHEAP. Seven plates, which each plate having about much quantity as the photo above, and it only rang me up 842yen. I could have opted for more expensive, fancy dishes--and I did, for one plate, but in terms of eating filling, decent food on a budget, this place is pretty good.
Another thing of note is that Shibuya has this kind of distinctly...almost sleazy feel to it. Not really in a repulsive, unpleasant way, but it doesn't really hide the less savoury parts of it. I walked past a soapland who's front door was pretty much on a main road, who's sign could be read by anyone walking down the sidewalk. I also saw at least two buildings that were places for setting up compensated dating. I'm sure places like that existed in or around Akiba, but they did a much better job of staying out of sight, out of mind.
When weeaboos think of tourism in Tokyo they probably think of Akibahara. But for a lot of normal people, tourism in Tokyo brings more to mind Shibuya. Shibuya gets a lot of tourist interest, and it really shows. Shops and places promoting their English fluency--some even say foreigners only--and a bunch of stores that show off that they're tax free--even though very few commercial goods in Japan are even taxed in the first place.
It is however, a little less overwhelming than Akiba. A little. Akiba has banners and posters and advertisements EVERYWHERE. But Shibuya seems content for the most part to just stick to logos and store banners. I guess the twisty-curvy nature of Shibuya also helps break line of sight and not see everything at once.
They also have a much more cooler Mandarake than Akiba. Maybe I should have gone in there. Maybe I could have found Carcharias books Blue wanted that the Akiba Mandarake didn't have. Sorry Blue!
It was featured from a vantage point >>2542 here, but this is Shibuya crossing, the largest (maybe don't quote me on it) crosswalk in the world. A tonne of people cross it when the diagonal crossing comes up, and a lot of people even stop in the middle of it to take a commemorative photo. It's kind of neat.
You don't really get this much light and activity at night here. Or maybe we do and I've never been to the right part of the city.
Anyway that wraps up Shibuya. After this, the five of us that had gone split up. One of us was feeling really under the weather, so he went back to the apartment with another guy for company. The three of us that were still up for more took a train out to Odaiba. There aren't really a lot of pictures for a while because it had gotten pretty dark and Odaiba isn't particular illuminated like Shibuya or Akiba are.
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However, there's something in Odaiba that absolutely must be seen.
I'm not even a huge mecha fan in particular but this is something else.
Anno
It feels a bit too shiny.
ティルデ
Probably because they need it reflective for the light show they shine on it. They do this cool show with music from Gundam series, and light to recreate the imagery of moving parts inside the Gundam, and maintenance hatches opening up. And stained glass and clock pendulums for whatever reason.
>>2599 I think it's something you might have to see in person. Or with a better camera than a cell camera at night. It really doesn't feel all that cheap to the eye.
Anno
I think it gives a bit of a feeling of cheapness. The light show sounds neat though.
The department store the Gundam is built outside also has a Gundam museum and gallery inside it. They showcase a bunch of gunpla works that have won certain competitions or been awarded particular note.
This one is by far my favourite thanks to its combination of detail and story telling.
This one doesn't render for me outside of its file thumbname and evidently doesn't render on /moe/ either. Shame it was the MORE DAKKA gunpla of "let's just stick as many guns on this frame as absolutely possible and enter it".
I can't remember what it was, but this was the winner of some major gunpla building competition. It is pretty fancy but I dunno. It must not have had particularly amazing competition or something.
Though they also had merchandise not strictly related to Iron-Blooded Orphans. In fact they had a whole line of "Principality of Zeon" attire, all red-themed.
Not fully pictured are the shelves on shelves on shelves...on shelves...on shelves...on...shelves...of gunpla models.the shop was selling. They must have every non-limited edition, non-out-of-production model in Japan. I followed one friend of mine around the shelves for an hour, probably more, as he hummed and hawed his way through them, looking for something to buy. I was probably pretty bitchy with him towards the end of it, but I don't really like being stuck walking and standing around waiting on someon after walking and standing around for ten hours or something already.
This is the last photo I have of January 3rd. I was trying to take a picture of the road as it stretched ahead, but my phone camera did focusey things and fixated on the guy in front of me instead.
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After Odaiba, the three of us returned to Akiba and picked up another four or five people to hit up an okonomiyaki/monjayaki place. Since it was our last night in Tokyo--and the last night in Japan for one of us--we wanted to do something a -with a bit of camaraderie. And okonomiyaki/monjayaki are a great option for that. Whatever you order, you get it all in a bowl, and then it's up to you to cook it on the hotplate in the centre of your table. Everyone crowds around the table and takes turns going at the preparation with what they ordered. Okonomiyaki ends up being a half-pancake, half-quiche-sans-crust, a crispy mash of all the various ingredients you threw into it. Monjayaki involves taking the ingredients that make up the okonimiyaki, forming a ring on the hotplate with them, and then using the ring to hold in this almost really watery pancake mix of soup stock. The liquid then cooks, but never really solidifies, and then you mush it all together to form this kind of goopy mess that gets pretty crispy on one side. I make it sound kind of gross because it is kind of gross, but it's also pretty tasty and fun to make. I'd had okonomiyaki before, so I took the plunge and gave monjayaki a try. While it was fun and tasty though, I think I'd opt for okonomiyaki the next time. It's easier to eat and feels kind of nice to sink your teeth into.
