Osaka Concert Weekend: Before the Storm

Tags

Dotonburi, Imamiya Ebisu, kamameshi, Osaka, Tsutenkaku, 今宮戎神社

Before getting to the post about ARASHI’s show…

In the early afternoon, before the show, I went to look around the city with one of my friends. It would be the last chance for me to sightsee in Osaka this weekend.

We walked to the Shinsekai District to see the tower Tsuutenkaku.

There was a one hour wait to go up into the tower, so we gave up on that.

Then we came across Imamiya Ebisu Shrine (今宮戎神社).

A view from the rear of the main hall.

We noticed that there were only women at the shrine and figured that maybe this was a shrine for wishing for good marriage or childbirth. While I still don’t know why they were there, after looking around on the shrine website I wonder if they were women who were applying to be “fukumusume” (福娘), special shrine maidens for the Tooka Ebisu Festival in January. I came across this interesting blog post by an international student at Ritsumeikan University who actually got to be a fukumusume.

After that my friend and I hurried back to the Namba area to meet up with three other friends–one who had come in from Singapore, and another from California, to see the ARASHI show. Once everyone was gathered, we went for lunch at a kamameshi restaurant. In brief, “kamameshi” is a style of cooking that involves using a metal pot called a “kama.” Now, you can go to restaurants and have your own individual-serving pot.

“Tori San Shoku Kamameshi,” or “Tri-Colored Chicken Kamameshi.”

After lunch it was pretty much time to head over to the Kyocera Dome for the show. Since there was a Dolce & Gabana store nearby, I did suggest we go there just to see if GACKT was there shopping before his show. >o<; Not having found him, we headed for the Dome.

I don’t know if it’s fair to say that these sculptures on store signs are characteristic of Osaka. Maybe it’s just the Namba/Doutonburi area?

☆

次回！Okay, for real this time. We make storm!

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Osaka Concert Weekend: Camui Gakuen Osaka Branch School

Tags

Camui Gakuen, Camui Gakuen de Dashinasai, GACKT, Gakuensai, Osaka

I’m writing this from my mother’s house in Detroit. Well, I started writing this post over a month ago, but mid-November through December was crazy busy. So as I lie here at six in the morning on Christmas Eve Eve waiting for my non-jet-lagged family to wake up so I can go eat breakfast, I figured I should get Lucky Hill up to date. ^o^;

Onward to Catch-Up Post One of Five!

The weekend of Nov. 17-18, I went up to Osaka with some friends for two concerts. We flew to Osaka and before we even got there, we ran into GACKT.

I picked up ANA’s magazine, flipped it open, and happened to land on this ad. ♡

On the way to the venue, Intex Osaka.

Saturday’s show was the first day of this year’s “Gakuensai,” the school festival of the Camui Gakuen. This time it was called “Camui Gakuen de Dashinasai,” which I think we can translate as “Let it all hang out at the Camui School Festival.” Or something like that.

At these shows GACKT plays the character of Student Council President, and we must thus address him as “Kaichou” (会長). “Students” must attend the shows wearing a school uniform or something that can pass for a uniform. There are many other “school rules,” and I was a bit surprised to find them posted in Japanese, English, Korean, and Chinese.

Click to read at full size! Ahaha…I just noticed that while the Korean and Chinese translations have the ♂ (symbol for Mars/men) the English translation leaves it out.

The 購買部, or “Cooperative Store” where you can buy goods. While the high schools I’ve worked at in Fukuoka have 売店, a little store that sells stationery, I’ve never seen a student-run store like the DECA stores in many American high schools.

The show opened one hour late. It started with the usual singing of the school song and explanation of the rules by the Kyoutou-sensei. There was a Mr. and Ms. Camui Gakuen who got school blazers with huge epaulets to wear. On top of the usual picking of “chairman” and “vice chairmen” to take photographs of the students, there was also an award ceremony for the students who had gotten the highest scores in the Camui Gakuen mobile phone game. If I had known that playing said game would earn one the chance to get called up to the stage and shake GACKT’s hand I would’ve played it! Then there was the introduction of “F9,” the upperclassmen, who this year consisted of:

(Left to right) Back row: Taya, Shinnosuke, Kazuya, Hayato and Baru of Duel Jewel (I don’t know which is which), and Wong. Front row: Takumi, YOU, Seito Kaichou, and Chachamaru. I’m still not sure if we’re supposed to count Kaichou as part of F9, but seeing as this is a “Hana Yori Dango” reference I assume that he is a part of it.

After this there was a play making fun of MOON SAGA Yoshitsune Hiden. It was called “Yoshitsune Kaden” (「義経家電」) meaning “Yoshitsune Home Appliances.” It opens with Benkei running on stage with a bag from Yodobashi Camera. Otherwise it had nothing to do with electronics. Chachamaru played Tomoe, Takumi played Yoshinaka, YOU played Hiyori, Kazuya played Kage, and one of the Duel Jewel guys played Yoshitsune. After Kazuya recreated Kage’s fight scene, Yoshitsune tried his hand at fighting the whatever-monster-shadow-thing that was, but had to do it with a hair dryer. >o<

Then there was intermission. At this time you could either line up to buy goods or food and hope that you got to meet the band members, who go out briefly to serve in the Cafeteria (ショック堂 not 食堂) and the Store, or line up to be photographed by the chairpersons, whose “collected smiles” end up in a yearbook of sorts sent to fanclub members later. My friends and I lined up to get goods and food, but I think none of us got to meet any member of F9.

After the intermission, the concert part finally started. Like a school festival where student rock bands perform covers, GACKT’s band covered such singers, bands, and groups as Mika Nakashima, GLAY, L’arc~en~Ciel, Shonan no Kaze, X Japan, and…we’ll come back to this later. XD He did sing one of his own songs, namely “Graffiti.”

My third favorite part of this show was Takumi’s “saxophone solo.” I don’t remember exactly what song this happened during (maybe the Checkers’ “Namida no Request”). Before the performance Seito Kaicho tells us that Takumi has been learning to play the saxophone just for this solo. There’s two or three parts in the song for the sax solo–but Takumi never quite plays! This was a reference to how Takumi didn’t go through with bungee jumping for the Nico Nico Douga YELLOW FRIED CHICKENz show. At the very end of the song, Takumi lets out one completely out of tune and improperly blown note.

My second favorite part of this show was when the band briefly covered L’arc~en~Ciel’s 「花葬」(“Kasou” which, written as 火葬 means “cremation” but here is written with the character for flower rather than fire). This is one of my absolute favorite L’arc songs. GACKT sang only the chorus, with Shinnosuke up on a ladder throwing flower petals at him, and other members sweeping the petals about on stage with huge brooms. But more amusingly, he impersonated HYDE’s wiggly dancing. About midway through GACKT stopped the dancing; one of my friends said that it was because he was on the verge of busting out laughing and so had to stop dancing.

My favorite part of this show was without a doubt the grand finale. It was…AKB48’s “Heavy Rotation”!

XDDD

Now, I don’t particularly like AKB48 or that song. But seeing GACKT having a blast dressed like a schoolgirl with little pink pom-poms in his hair, wearing the shortest skirt on stage, totally nailing every move in that dance, and smiling a smile that seemed to just be bursting out of him…♡♡♡! We were also very lucky in that we were seated not only in the 7th row, but also to the right of the stage, meaning that we had a nice view during a particular part of that dance. XDDD

After the show we went for one more round at the Cooperative Store, took more photos with the cardboard cutouts, and talked to some fans. I ran into some Fukuoka DEARS, as well as a fan I’d seen about the GACKT fan interwebs (who has a post with the show’s setlist–I hope you don’t mind me linking to you!).

Then my friends and I headed for Doutonbori (道頓堀), the famous street in Osaka that has the Glico billboard. (And I just now realized that I didn’t take a picture of it with my camera. >o<;;;; I’ll have to ask my friends to send me the pics they took.) We had takoyaki from a stall and then went to an okonomiyaki restaurant and reminisced about the show. Then we went to our hotels and called it a night.

☆

次回！：嵐、嵐、for dream.

Japanese Teacher for a Day

Less than a day, actually.

Each year JETs are encouraged to take one of the JET Japanese Language Correspondence Courses.  Last year, I completed the Advanced Course, so this year, I’m doing the Linguistics and Pedagogy Course, which I’ve mentioned before.  In order to complete the course, participants must attend a week-long training seminar.  The highlight of this training is actually executing the Japanese lesson plan one has been drafting over the course’s homework assignments.

The seminar took place at the Japan Intercultural Academy of Municipalities in Shiga Prefecture.  Most of the participants were actually CIRs (Coordinator of International Relations, one of the other type of JET), and, despite that most JETs are American, less the half of this course’s participants were from the States. (So get to studying, American JETs!)

It was nice to meet JETs from all over.  When American JETs from the mainland would tell me where they were from, I was left a little in awe, because I’m used to JETs pretty much only being from Hawaii (where most Fukuoka JETs come from).  ^_^;  I also met JETs from Korea, Australia, New Zealand, France, Indonesia, Russia, Brazil, Spain, and Argentina!  My group had the highest number of different nationalities. While everyone spoke English at least a little bit, the official common language was of course Japanese.

The trainee rooms were equipped with the same model TV that I have in my apartment. Not that I got to watch it much.

I like it when there's only a partial shadow over mountains. Taken from within the JIAM building.

The participants were divided into 5 groups of 10 for the practicum.  When one wasn’t teaching, one played the role of student.  For my part, I tried to play a “regular” student, asking questions such as “why is ‘kaeru’ a class one verb when it looks like a class two verb?,” and purposely not pronouncing the “h” during the Spaniard’s lesson (since her lesson was geared toward Spanish students and the “h” is silent in Spanish).

I chose to do my lesson on 「（場所）に（物）があります／（場所）に（人・動物）がいます」(“there is (thing) at (place)/ there is (person or animal) at (place)”).  My lesson was geared to American freshman college students, so the activity portion was a lighthearted game where the students had to get each other’s items (with the exception of money) by asking things like 「◯◯さんのかばんの中に鉛筆がありますか。」(“Is there a pencil in [your] bag?”)  and handing over whatever items they did possess that the questioner asked for.  I had handed out many small things, such as a handkerchief, umbrella, and anything else whose name the students were supposed to know given their presumed total Japanese study time, so that they wouldn’t feel like they had to use too much of their actual belongings.  This activity went alright, but the rest of the lesson, for which I was using the textbook and a bunch of picture cards and realia, was a bit clumsy given the number of items I had.

Oh well, live and learn.

I was lucky to have ended up in a group that got along really well.  At first I wondered how it would go, since I didn’t know anyone save the other Fukuoka JET there (who I didn’t even know was in the course).  But by the end, my group kept eating its meals together. We even had an impromptu “party” with stuff bought from the conbini on the last night.

I got Ryu's theme in my head just looking at this!

On the last day, each group had to do a presentation about what they learned.  All of them took the form of skits.  My group decided to do a skit centered on how a teacher should react when students ask unexpected questions, such as asking about a grammar point they heard somewhere that the whole class hadn’t studied yet.  There were three questions, and for each we showed a good reaction and a bad reaction.  We used Street Fighter as a framing device; e.g. we would say “Round one, FIGHT!” when the bad teacher came out to a clip from Ken’s theme, then said “YOU LOSE!” to them.  The good teacher came out to a clip from Ryu’s theme as the rest of the group said “Round two, FIGHT!”  At first we had wanted to have many different tracks, but figured it would be simpler to have less to deal with managing, so I decided to just play off Ryu and Ken’s friendly rivalry. ^o^ (How many people actually got the full meaning of the reference, I wonder?)

You can see Lake Biwa in the background.

I unfortunately didn’t get to see Lake Biwa up close during the day.  One night I went with two other JETs to see it, but couldn’t get to the lake shore since the stretch of it closest to where we were was blocked off by hotels, a local university yacht club’s boathouse, etc.

Anyway, I took the photo above from the train station on the day the seminar was over.

Now, I had purchased my shinkansen tickets to that I would have about 4 hours to look around Kyoto, since I had to go through Kyoto Station anyway.  The team wasn’t quite ready to part, so we had lunch together at a restaurant in Kyoto and talked for a while.  Of course the Korean member was taken for Japanese, so the waiters initially addressed only her.  The other patrons kept looking at us, since on top of being foreign we were speaking Japanese. ^_^;;;

After lunch most of us had to part ways, but my new friend from Spain and I decided to go to karaoke.  After belting out some assorted Beyoncé, Shakira, and Madonna, we went back to Kyoto Station, figured out where our respective trains were, and began our respective journeys home.

Within a week, participants are supposed to receive a DVD with a recording of the lesson they did on it.  Then we have to review ourselves based on the video.  /°0°\

(That’s my emoticon version of the dude in Edvard Munch’s The Scream, by the way.)

Well, that’s all about this, for now.

☆

次回！My Kids are More Talented Than Yours! *Raspberry*

(Just kidding, just kidding!  Don’t get so defensive!)

A Mock School Concert

Tags

Camui Gakuen, Camui Gakuen de Fukinasai, GACKT, Gakuensai, Kobe

I’d been debating whether I should post about this concert over on this blog, and two weeks later decided to go ahead say how it went considering I’d mentioned it briefly before going.

So, Saturday November 6th two friends and I got to get up at some unholy time in the AM (7 or so) to catch a shinkansen to Kobe for the GACKT concert I’d won tickets to.  It’s a relatively short ride at just under 3 hours.

Now, this concert, besides having had ticket sales limited to fanclub members, was special in that you had to go dressed in something that resembled a school uniform (or an actual uniform, of course, if you had one and wanted to wear it).  But the mock school thing didn’t end there!  People who’d won tickets were called “gakuensei” (but in one of the many puns, this was written 楽園性 which says “rakuensei” but the “sei” is written…oh, let’s just say it’s written with a different kanji than usual! ^_^;) and had to take a 3 x 4 cm ID style photo so that a “student ID” could be made for them!  The ID had slots for “credits,” and one credit could be earned by going to a concert.  Only someone who went to every single one of these Gakuensai concerts could accumulate enough credits to “pass” to the next grade. We were informed at the concert that everyone had “failed” the grade last year. ^o^;  People who were going as guests of someone who’d won tickets didn’t get a Student ID, but they still had to wear mock uniforms and were called 他校性 (takousei) meaning “student of another school.”

So, we’d arrived in Kobe around 11:15, but after queuing to reserve our seats for the shinkansen back home that same night, and taking a few photos with the cardboard cutouts of “Student Council President” (meaning, GACKT himself) and crew at the concert venue, it was time to line up for 入楽手続き (continuing with the pun, this is read as “nyuugaku tetsuzuki”) meaning “Admissions.”  After that, we all tried the YOU Curry at the ショック堂 (get it?), bought some goods, and by then, the doors opened so we lined up to go in.

Now, this whole concert lasted a good 4 hours, though there was about a 30 minute break between the first half which was more like a “culture festival” and then the concert proper.  The event started up with, appropriately enough, a 始業式 (shigyoushiki), meaning Opening Ceremony.  First, the “kyoutou-sensei” of the Camui Gakuen (that’s the name of the mock school BTW) literally hopped and skipped up on stage and gave a speech that included instruction on “proper speech.”  Basically, we had to use old Japanese as responses.  Instead of various greetings such as “konnichi wa,” we had to say “gokigen yo” (ご機嫌よ); instead of “hai!” we had to say “kashikomari!”; and instead of “sumimasen,” “goburee” (ごぶれぇ).

Then the bald-save-for-a-single-braid-with-a-big-red-bow “kouchou-sensei” came up on stage and gave a speech.  I don’t remember much of it now.

Then, the man himself, seito kaichou (Student Council President), sloooooowly sauntered up on stage to give a speech.  ^o^;  Four audience members were picked to be fukuiinchou (副委員長 meaning “vice-chairman,” in this case, of the Student Council).  Along with the name of the concert (“Fukinasai” written as フキナ祭), “fukuiinchou” was another word that for reasons I don’t really understand, was always pronounced as if with a stutter. That is to say, GACKT always stressed the two i’s as being separate sounds.

Hm, well, the rest might not be of much interest to those who read this blog out of interest in someday doing JET, since the mock school stuff pretty much ends here.  After this point, one could say the part before the concert proper was like a bunkasai.  There was a skit that was sorta making fun of the play Nemuri Kyoushirou, then a dance-off, and then…I think that was it before the break.  After that was the concert itself, which was all covers.  Despite only being familiar with 3 of the songs, I really enjoyed the concert. I hope I get to go to another Gakuensai someday! My plaid skirt will be waiting. ^O^♡

I couldn’t take photos inside the venue of course, but here’s an article on a Japanese page about the show with some high resolution photos! 「GACKTが本気で遊びの楽園祭（学園祭）を開催！」: http://www.news2u.net/releases/78122?ref=rss

Okay, you’ve read this far eh?  You deserve some amusing photo to look at.

In real life, I don’t think I even knew who my student council president was.

That photo was taken before I bought the official school tie. ^o^;;;

Speaking of that tie, last Wednesday was the first day of Mid-Year Seminar, a meeting of ALTs and JTEs.  Since we have to dress super-formally, I put on my formal blazer (not the one in the photo), and when I looked in the mirror, the outfit felt empty.  It needed something. And the red & pinkish gold tie of the Camui Gakuen matched my light pink shirt too perfectly not to wear it!  So, I had a few Japanese people (mostly men) staring at me with WTF?! looks on their faces, which I found thoroughly amusing.  The best one had to be this one guy on the train platform.  I was going home, and as the train pulled in to some station or other, I see this grown man wearing bright yellow leggings and a bright yellow skirt.  And when I say bright, I mean BRIGHT.  The train pulls in, I see him…and he glares at me like few have glared at me before!  I don’t know if it was because I was dressed “like a man,” or because I was looking at him in his “girls'” outfit.

You’d think two people cross-dressing on a crowded train would’ve had more empathy between them.

XDDD Okay, there’s enough in this post to give you, O Reader, your Daily Recommended Dose of Wonk.  Don’t you just feel the life energy pulsing through you with unprecedented zest?!

Weekend in The Northern Land

Tags

Battle of Dannoura, Kokura Castle, Miyamoto Musashi, Moji, Sasaki Kojiro, Shimonoseki

If the northeastern part of Kyuushuu wasn’t called Kita Kyuushuu (“kita” meaning “north”) I probably wouldn’t think of it as The Northern Land considering it’s still much further south than southern Michigan. ^o^;

This past weekend I went to hang with some friends who live in that Northern Land.  First, we headed to Moji to take a boat to Ganryuujima, an island in the Kanmon Straits where famed swordsmen Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojirou had their last duel in 1612.

Susanoo, look at me, wooooh ♬

Musashi (at right) fighting Kojirou with a wooden sword he supposedly made from an oar of the boat he'd rowed out to the island in.

After taking many jump shots (that is, taking photos while jumping; unfortunately the ones I took didn’t come out very well) in front of the statue and getting Death Glared by an obaa-chan, we went to look for and skip rocks.  Once we started doing it, *everyone* did it.  >o<  But I can’t skip rocks.  I think I’ve achieved it once in my life, in Lake Huron.

Genji wasn't around to dance "Waves of the Blue Ocean." Sadness.

Then we took another boat to head to Shimonoseki, on Honshuu.  We got there around four o’clock so everything was already closing down.  We got some sea salt ice cream before going through the fish market on the wharf to see about getting some fugu, but since the stalls were closing for the day we’d have to go to a restaurant to get a meal with fugu rather than just buy a piece at the market.  There was another local specialty that I wanted to try so I opted not to risk getting the deadly part of the fish (because my life is plagued by Irony so I know I will die some really stupid way ^o^;;;).

There were helicopters flying about near the wharf.  If I had known in advance that you can go on helicopter rides, I would’ve done it.  It is expensive: the cheapest tour costs 3000 yen and lasts “3-4 minutes.”  A 12-14 minute tour costs over 10,000 yen.  But it’s a helicopter!  It’s not like I can ride a helicopter whenever I feel like it.  I’m not Tseng.  Oh well.

Hm…I wonder what’s more dangerous: eating fugu or flying in a helicopter? ^o^

Having looked around a bit, we decided to head back to Kyuushuu to eat yakikaree (fried curry).  Rather than take the boat back, we decided to walk back via the tunnel for pedestrians and cyclists. (O Reader, do you realize how AWESOME it would be if there were such a tunnel connecting Windsor and Detroit?! I’d go over to Windsor all the time for no reason!) On the way to the tunnel, we saw this cool building.  I forgot what it was called, but it was something for Sino-Japanese relations.  It has the Imperial Seal on it, so it’s a government building.

I'll try to dig around and see if I can figure out what this building is.

Close to the entrance of the tunnel, we saw another statue, this one commemorating the Battle of Dannoura in which Minamoto Yoshitsune and his clan defeated the Heike clan. The statue of the Heike warrior wasn’t very interesting, so I only took Yoshitsune’s picture. ^o^;

Catchin' waves.

Then we went to the tunnel.  It’s accessed via an elevator that takes you underground.  There’s a line in the tunnel showing the boundary between Fukuoka Prefecture on Kyuushuu and Yamaguchi Prefecture on Honshuu.

If one commits a crime while on the line, whose jurisdiction does it fall under?

About 10 minutes later we emerged back in Moji.  We walked by the track of the Shortest Train Line in Japan, home of the Slowest Train in Japan.  It’s a small, sight-seeing train. We were lucky enough to see it coming once we had already crossed the track.  One of my friends decided to race it. ^O^  He was wearing flip-flops, and it was drizzling, so while he kept pace with it, he didn’t outrun it.  I couldn’t see it myself, but apparently the conductor was very amused. XDD  I didn’t take any pictures, but here’s a post about it on another blog (Japanese only).

After that it started to pour.  My little umbrella only kept the rain off my head, but I was pretty wet otherwise and my friends were soaked.  Once we got to the first building with an awning we stood under it and tried to dry ourselves off with our little handkerchiefs.  The building housed an Indian food restaurant, and since we were standing there for a good while the proprietors were staring at us.  But it worked out, since we had planned on eating yakikaree anyway we decided to eat in that restaurant. I liked the yakikaree, but my favorite part was the naan since I love breads.

The area the restaurant was in is called Moji Retro.  It has many old, European style buildings that were renovated as tourist attractions some 20 years ago (so I read).  You can get rickshaw rides there, as well as take a picture with Banana Man, the Messenger of Love and Justice.

愛と正義の使者！

I think the rickshaw drivers leave their rickshaws on purpose so people can take pictures of them.

The white bridge in the background of the above photo connects Kyuushuu and Honshuu.  The tunnel is at about the same place.

After that, we headed downtown to Kokura. We took jump shots in front of Kokura Castle and discussed fire drills.  Why, I don’t remember. ^o^;

Because important cultural artifacts were meant to be jumped in front of. If you don't do it, the daimyou will cry and he won't be able to take over the whole country.

Oh dear, what ludicrous jokes I make.

TWB – Day 4 + Return

Tags

108 bell tolls, ARASHI, Geihinkan, Meiji Jingu, Sensouji, Tokyo, Yamanote Line merchandise

I’ve been holding off on this one because it’s gonna be massive.  I’ll try to be brief. ^_^; Picking up where the previous post left off…

At the stroke of midnight, the crowd surged forward into the temple.  The young dude in front of us was taking pictures of the crowd and saying 「すげえ、これ！」(“this is incredible yo!”).  I guess even he was surprised by how feisty the people got. ^o^  It seemed to me like the cops were pushed out of the way! Their “shibaraku omachi kudasai” signs sunk into the crowd like the Titanic into the deep.  Well, just that faster and with less ice.

Somehow, we made it up the few steps to the temple’s main hall alive.  But once close to the altar, I felt the full pressure of hundreds of people pushing against me.  I honestly wondered if I’d be crushed to death!  I looked for Cassie in the crowd, spotted her, then took a few seconds to relish the sight of fistfuls of golden five-yen coins flying through the air before throwing mine in, clapping, and getting the hell outta there!

The Flying Five Yen Coins compete with Dazaifu Tenmangu's Flying Plum Tree for the title of Most Righteous!!!

That poor 飛び梅 (Flying Plum Tree)…I just can’t help myself. >o<;;;;

Oh, right, I said I’d be brief.  I’ll try to cut back on the jokes, since that’s not what you folks come here for.  Or is it? @_@?

Number 13 Excellent Luck! (Even though the top line is written horizontally, it's read from right to left.)

So anyway, I waited for Cassie to emerge from the throng.  Then, we went to get our fortunes.  I don’t know if this is only for New Year’s, but instead of a simple box that you draw an omikuji from, there were metal canisters filled with numbered sticks with a hole big enough only for one stick to fall out.  You shook the canister until a stick fell out, and took a fortune from the drawer with the number on the stick you got.  I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw that I drew number 13, but it turned it to be 大吉 (daikichi), Excellent Luck!

Then, we walked around all the 屋台 (yatai), or stands selling stuff.  There were yatai for yakisoba, fishes on sticks, yakitomorokoshi (fried corn-on-the-cob; this was the first thing I ate in 2010.  ^___^), choco-bananas, amazake, fried mochi, and tons of other stuff that I can’t remember.  There were also yatai for daruma dolls and various luck charms, such as the bamboo rakes that help you rake in fortune.

Ring those mortal desires away!

We were about to head back to the hotel, but on the way we passed by the place on the temple grounds where they were doing the 108 tolls of the bell for the New Year (除夜の鐘撞き, joya no kanetsuki).  They were on ring number 70-something when we got there.

Shortly before midnight, temples start ringing their bells. They ring them 108 times to symbolize the 108 mortal desires (according to Buddhism) and pray that these desires disappear.   I don’t know if at small temples where there aren’t as many visitors each ring is struck by a different person, but since there were tons of people here, they had prearranged who would do each ring, and announced each person’s name and what number toll they were going to ring.  It was funny to see some of the men who struck the bell so hard they almost lost their balance, but they were mighty satisfied with themselves. ^o^  There were three women in kimono and face make-up in a row who rang the bell; when they went up everyone took photos of them.  I don’t know if they were geisha or just women completely decked out in the traditional style.  The women’s ringing of the bell elicited as much applause as the men who tried to ensure all of Tokyo heard their ring.

We stuck around until the 108th ring, then the speeches by some important dudes.  After that, they threw the branches that were up around the bell stand into a fire in a pit.  It must’ve been around 3AM when we finally returned to the hotel.  We showered quickly and went to bed.

We got up around 11AM.  I packed up my stuff, since I would depart Tokyo at night.  We went back into the thick of Akihabara Electric Town in search of a maid keitai strap.  Several stores later and no luck!  We stopped for breakfast at a donburi place, then resumed the search. We went into Don Quixote, a store selling all sorts of stuff with lots of American products.  What the store has to do with Cervantes’ famous character is beyond me.  Anyway,  I picked up Caramel & Yakipurin (aka flan) flavored Kit-Kats and Japan Railways socks.  Yes, official Japan Railways socks! There were towels, boxers, and socks featuring the signage from Tokyo’s circular Yamanote Line.  I got Tokyo, Shibuya, and Ebisu.

Three pairs for 1000-en yo.

We popped into a game center; no luck, but we took silly purikura (short for “print club,” which in English makes little sense given that it’s actually a photobooth and you don’t have to join anything to use them).  Goofing off completed, we continued the search.  How could it be that there wasn’t a maid keitai strap in Akihabara?!  We went into some regular stores and some…stores where the only females besides us were plastic and had triple J boobs. (I’m estimating.) The guys buying these oddly proportioned figures didn’t bat an eye at our presence though.  One store had a notebook full of customers’ drawings and impressions.  It had a note saying, “feel free to leave your impressions after shopping.”  Since I didn’t buy anything I didn’t draw in it.  But…I wonder what kinds of things people wrote? I mean, it’s almost like asking people to write down their thoughts of the AV section. ^-^;

Anyway, lest I give the impression that all of Akihabara is crawling with hentai and its 3D brethern, I actually found a very nice V-neck sweater for just 1800-en in a jeans store.  I think it’s for men, but who can tell with a sweater like that?  Maybe because it’s bright magenta.  <tangent> A friend recently emailed me this fascinsating article where I learned that pink used to be for boys.  The logic was that pink comes from red, an aggressive color unsuited for the “delicate” female, who was better suited for calming blue.  Go fig. </tangent>

We gave up the search for the maid keitai strap, asked Cassie’s iPhone where Meiji Jinguu was, and set out.  As we looked for it, we passed by a huge, European style building.  I asked the policeman guarding it what it was.  He said it was the “geihinkan,” but since I didn’t know what that meant, I asked him if it was a government building, and he said yes.  Somehow I had failed to see the large Imperial Seal on the gate. ^_^; When I looked it up at home, I saw that 迎賓館 (geihinkan) meant the State Guesthouse.

The Gate of the State Guesthouse

I rather like this shot through one of the gate's rings. ^_^

We walked around some more, and the iPhone was saying we had reached Meiji Jinguu!  But there was nothing shrine-like in sight, and since I knew that “jinguu” was more important than just a “jinja” I knew it had to be something hard to miss.  As we stood around confused, considering going back to the hotel as it was 4PM by then and my bus left at 9PM, we noticed we were next to Meiji Jinguu Golf Course.  A little ways up was Meiji Jinguu Baseball Field. ?!!?!? The iPhone had led us to the wrong Meiji Jinguu!  Cassie looked it up again and found the actual shrine.  We decided to rest up in a café before catching a train to the right location.

"I'm too sexy for this rope, too sexy for this rope, so sexy it hurts."

(At this point in the post, WordPress’ editor decided it wanted to act stupid and put things in dumb places.  Moving photos around without deleting and reuploading everything has proven difficult, so I will just apologize for the poorly placed photos.)

At the train station, everyone was taking pictures.  When we got closer we saw what the commotion was.  There were advertisements for a New Year’s Special drama featuring super popular boy band ARASHI.  There was a large billboard, but also ads on pillars showing each of the guys shirtless with duct tape over their mouths and real rope wound around the bottom of the pillars!  The policemen were actually yelling at people who touched the ads! Luckily, they didn’t see me when I did, LOL.

Then we went to visit the deified Emperor Meiji. (Nice segue, no? >o<)

It was a long, winding, dusty trail through a forest to reach Meiji Jinguu’s main hall.  It was dusk, so the sense of light was beautiful, but again, without a tripod, I couldn’t really capture it.  And, since we were in a rush, knowing that there would be a large line, we couldn’t really stop to snap photos.  As with Sensouji, we waited an hour, slowly advancing towards the temple.  Since it had already been the New Year for a good 15 hours, people weren’t pushing.  Once we got in, we put in our 5 yen and looked at the crowd for a bit before moving on to the omamori stands and yatai.

The whole of this white tarp is for throwing the 5 yen on!

I got an omamori for studying. Yeah, even though I live so close to Dazaifu Tenmangu, which is one of the temples for the academically inclined,  but I figured it couldn’t hurt to have an Emperor on my side right?  No offense to Sugawara no Michizane. Anyway, Cassie got another fortune, but I figured I couldn’t top what I got at Sensouji and decided not to risk it. ^o^  We didn’t dally too much at the yatai since I had a bus to catch.

We went back to the hotel. I grabbed a nikuman from the attached conbini before heading to the room to pick up my stuff.  Oh yeah, I should mention this:  we had been a bit worried about having access to our money since we both bank with our regional bank rather than a large national bank like Sumitomo, and we’d been warned about this at Tokyo Orientation, but it was no problem.  The ATM at the conbini even had a calendar with the schedules the different banks would keep during the holiday season! (ATMs, like human employees, have days off in Japan, with the exception of some found in 24-hour conbini; but if you go to even those ATMs on a day when your particular bank has a holiday, you won’t be able to do anything.) I had taken enough money with me for the whole trip, but I took some out just in case, and vowed not to spend it.  (Hey, I came back with half of that just-in-case money! ^o^)  In short: you can file “you won’t have access to your money all over Japan if you bank at a regional bank!” under Things They’re Still Telling JETs Even Though They’re No Longer True.  Well, unless you bank at a super-duper inaka bank with only one branch I guess, but does such a bank exist?

But getting back to the story (:P), we headed to Shinjuku Station.  The bus ticket only said that the departure point was “Shinjuku Station West Exit.”  So we go to the West Exit, and there’s a bus terminal there, but…it seemed to be only for local buses.  To make a long story short, “Shinjuku Station West Exit” refers to several city blocks along which buses going all over Japan line up. x_X  Luckily we’d gotten there early, but it took us 30 minutes of walking around asking to figure out what the hell was going on and where I needed to catch my bus at.  It was a block over from where the bus coming into Tokyo had dropped us off.  There, a woman asked me, “Oh, you’re going to Hakata Station aren’t you?  The bus will be here soon.”  How she knew, I’ve no idea.  Maybe she’d been on the same bus as us coming from Fukuoka?  Or maybe she overheard me cursing Nishitetsu under my breath for not being more specific on their bus tickets when there’s no signage for them at the bus stops? ^o^;

So, I get on the bus and get cozy.  About 20 minutes later I realize I left my phone charger in the hotel room and text Cassie to see if she can bring it back with her when she gets back to Fukuoka.  It’s cool, she says, so I relax and try to watch the Japanese-dubbed American action movie, something with Jamie Foxx, but I couldn’t get into it so I played some Final Fantasy: Dissidia instead.

Fourteen hours later and I was back in Fukuoka.  Out of sheer exhaustion I was able to get some sleep on this bus trip, though not much.  I had two particularly funny moments of half-asleep disorientation.  First, probably from a combination of sleep deprivation and dehydration (my water had run out), I thought I was dead.  ^o^;;;;  It didn’t help that on these overnight buses, they have curtains to divide the rows at night; so there I was, sleepy and thirsty in my own dark curtained-off bus seat, I couldn’t feel the breath in my body, so I honestly thought I had died. I thought, no, I have to drink something…even if all I have is this energy drink which will prevent me from sleeping…so, I drank it. The Final Fantasy Elixir I’d bought in Akihabara. LOLOL

Yes, I thought I was dead and drank an Elixir to feel better.  Oh my god….>o<;;;;;;;;  There aren’t enough sweatdrops in the world.

The other funny thing that happened to my disoriented self was, open waking from sleep, I looked out the window and saw something white and something black beyond that.  Since I’d been trying to sleep, I didn’t have my glasses on.  I thought, Huh, why are we driving by a white sand beach?  Thinking the white stuff was sand and the black stuff beyond water.  I put my glasses on and looked out the window again and…realized I’d been looking at the side of one of the other Nishitetsu buses making the trek back to Fukuoka.

*Mega Super Ultra Facepalm + LOL*

Furthermore, I realized that we weren’t even moving.  We were in a parking lot making the first driver-only rest stop of the trip.^o^;;;;

Well, once Cassie got back in town, I went downtown to meet her and get my phone charger. We went to watch the Nodame Cantabile movie (it was great!) and ate at Canal City Hakata’s Ramen Stadium, an area full of ramen restaurants.  After that, we went our separate ways.  Soon as I got off the train back in my neighborhood I ran to the SoftBank store to pick up my phone (it had needed repairs right before I left for Tokyo, so I’d been using a substitute phone they’d given me) before the store closed.  I equipped my phone with the Kingdom Hearts chibi Sephiroth strap I’d bought at the Square-Enix Store a few days earlier and returned to my cozy old government housing. ^_^

~End of Tokyo Winter Break~ (’bout time right?!)

Tokyo Winter Break – Day 3

Tags

Asakusa, Big Black Maria, Ginza, hatsumoude, Kabukiza, Roppongi, Roppongi Hills, Sensouji, silver accessory shop, Sony Building, Tokyo, Tsukiji Hongwanji

Thursday, December 31st, we woke up too late to have the hotel’s 1000 yen breakfast.  I’d been wanting some fried rice, so we walked in the general direction of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and ate at the first Chinese restaurant we found.  Now, while I’m pretty sure “chaahan” (チャーハン） equates to “fried rice,” none of the chaahan I’ve had in Japan so far is quite like the fried rice I’ve had in the States. I wish I could say chaahan in tastier, but most of it is not.  So, at this Chinese restaurant, I looked at the menu and saw a chaahan that looked like the fried rice in the States.  Without noticing the 「辛」 written above the picture, I ordered the big serving.

辛 stands for “spicy” (as in, 辛い “karai”).  It didn’t go well. It’s not that it was terribly hot, but after a lot of even a mildly spicy food, the spice accumulates in your mouth and gets hotter.  I couldn’t finish it, and it wasn’t that good to begin with.  *sigh* So we finished up, left, and once again headed for the museum – stopping at a conbini on the way to pick up dairy products to fight the spice.  As we walked, we saw a sign for a silver accessory shop with a very interesting name, and decided to check it out after the museum.

Well, we really should’ve known, it being New Year’s Eve, but the museum was closed.  *wump wump wummmp*  All I could do was take a picture of the Museum of Photography.

Because nothing can break my sense of irony.

After that, we headed back to the silver accessory shop’s sign.  We followed two more signs into a small alley.  (The suspense is building, no? ^o^) Finally, we came to it: Big Black Maria.

This ring is called SATORI, meaning "Englightenment." This picture is from Big Black Maria's site, linked to above. They say they ship overseas. : )

While there wasn’t a big, black Maria, there were many pictures, paintings, and statuettes of the Virgin Mary, along with plenty of Mexican-style skulls (such as the sugar skulls for Dia de los Muertos), some Buddhas, and other random things that metalsmiths who were probably hippies would amass.  And of course, the main attraction: awesome silver accessories.  When I saw the price tags, I was thinking of getting outta there, but the guy started straightening up the place (it was a bit messy; but hey, they’re artists!) so I started to feel bad about not buying anything after he’d gone through the trouble. And, there was a really cool ring I actually wanted, 禅ヒッピーリングSATORI, (“Zen Hippy Ring SATORI,” LOL)  pictured above. The price: over 19,000 yen (about 200USD)!

Luckily, there was a similar ring, 禅ヒッピーリング道  (“Zen Hippy Ring Michi,” michi meaning “road” but in this case it probably means “the way” as in the teachings of Buddha), which cost 13,000 yen (about 140USD).  SATORI is basically two Michi rings put together. While I like single-knuckle armor rings, SATORI’s price was a bit much, so I went with Michi and vowed not to buy myself anything else for the rest of the trip.  We waited about 20 minutes while the shopkeeper/metalsmith/artist sized the ring for me.

After that, we went back to the area of the museum to look around.  The area was Ebisu.  There was beautiful weather, it was a pretty open area, and there were barely any people around, so it wasn’t the usual atmosphere one imagines for Tokyo.  We took in the air, walked the length of the skywalk between two stations (I can’t remember which ones) on its moving walkways, and decided to head for Ginza, to the Sony Building and the nearby Tsukiji Fish Market.

In the Sony Building we saw all sorts of cool gadgets, some more useful than others.  Among the useless ones was Rolly, a cylindrical music player that “dances” in time to your music by rolling around. Cute, but the novelty wears off pretty quickly. The most useful ones were cameras with auto-stabilization.  That is to say, no matter how unsteady your hand, the video captured would remain steady. The main attraction, however, was the HD 3D technology.  It was unbelievable! Well, I haven’t seen the latest 3D in the States.  I’m comparing this to crappy “3D” where you put on those paper glasses with one red lens and one blue lens.

After that, we headed towards the Tsukiji Fish Market.  On the way, we spotted the Kabukiza, the main kabuki theater of Tokyo.

There wasn’t much going on at the fish market by the time we got there.  It’s a bunch of stalls with seafood.  But as we left, we saw the side of a strange building and went to check it out.  Turned out to be Tsukiji Hongwanji.  According to its Wikipedia article, the current building was built in the 1930s, which helps explain the strange architecture (for a temple).  The article refers to a “memorial” in the temple’s main hall to X Japan’s guitarist Hide, but…well, I guess you can call a table in a dark corner with notebooks and photos a memorial.

.

The banners on the temple say, 心の安らぎのために本堂へお参り下さい, "Come to the temple for peace of mind." (Loosely translated.)

Next, we went to Roppongi.  Now, the previous two days we’d gone out with coats on and been too hot, so on this day we had decided to go out with just sweaters.  It was fine in the daytime, but by evening it had gotten chilly. When we got off the subway in Roppongi, it was windy and the sun had set.  Shivering, we saw “Maman,” a huge sculpture of a stylized spider, and had a nice view of Tokyo Tower just past dusk.  We both struggled to get a good shot, but could only withstand the cold for so long.  Without a tripod, this is as good a photo as I could get:

Having at least gotten this much, we ran into the nearest building not caring for what it was.  Turned out we were in the Mori Arts Center within Roppongi Hills Mori Tower.  They had a special exhibit going on that seemed cool, about art and medicine, but tickets were nearly $50, so we didn’t go.  Instead, we went to the museum gift shop.  They had really cool stuff, such as purses made of zippers.  Just zippers!  So, you could custom build your own purse to whatever size and color(s) you wanted by buying the purse bottom, top, and then how many ever zippers you needed to make the body.  There was also a shirt with blinds drawn on and a string attached to where the string would be on actual blinds, and if you pulled the string the shirt would roll up like blinds! I picked up some post cards and cookies to be omiyage for the teachers. Done shopping, we decided to go back to the hotel to get our coats and drop off our swag.

Once bundled up, we set off for dinner.  We ate at an Asian fusion restaurant not far from Akihabara station.  The food was great!  They had chaahan that actually tasted delicious!  Still not like fried rice in the States, but it was very tasty.  Since it was our last meal of 2009, we made sure to get desserts.  I had cheesecake. ^_^

By the time we finished eating, it was about 10PM.  We made our way to what we thought was “Asakusa Temple,” the famous temple with the red gate and huge red lantern in Asakusa.  In the station we asked how to get to Asakusa and followed the instructions we were given.  But once we arrived, there were signs everywhere pointing to “Sensouji” (the signs said “Sensouji” in romaji).  We were a bit confused, but then noticed that “Sensouji” was written with the same kanji as “Asakusa Temple” (浅草寺).  We followed the signs, and indeed, Sensouji was the famous temple with the large red gate. (Once I got home I looked it up in Wikipedia, and it turns out that Asakusa Shrine is next to Sensouji; the shrine being a Shinto shrine, while Sensouji is a Buddhist temple.)

「決めポースするな！」

We actually hadn’t walked in from the main gate, so we walked down the path with all the stalls selling omiyage, amazake (sweet sake) and some kind of deep-fried mochi (rice cake), then came to the main gate.  We took the obligatory pictures with it. As Cassie took mine, there happened to be this young guy next to me doing 決めポース (“kime poosu,” meaning “set pose”), and his friends were yelling at him not to do that. When I see this guy, I feel as if a victory fanfare should be playing. ^o^

Then, we walked back toward the main hall.  This was at around 11PM.  It was crowded, but since people were still looking at the stalls, half of the approach to the temple was still clear, so we were able to go almost to the very front of the crowd.  Why they were only lining up on one side, I don’t know.  I was worried that we’d cut in front of hundreds of people, but neither they nor the many policemen we walked past said anything to us.

Approach to the temple

Hm, I just realized I haven’t explained what’s so important about going to a temple on New Year’s. ^_^;

On New Year’s, and the days following that, it’s customary to go to a shrine (or temple) to do 初詣 (“hatsumoude”) meaning the first visit to a shrine of the new year.  You pray for a good new year, or whatever you feel you need to.  You should have a five-yen coin (or two, or three, or…a fistful) at the ready for when you enter the shrine, as “five yen” in Japanese is “go en,” which also sounds like “relationships,” so you throw the five yen coin(s) into a special area for them to hope for good relationships.

Anyway, we went up near the front of the crowd, close to the entrance to the temple’s main hall.  A few people were allowed in before the stroke of midnight; I don’t know if they were special people, or people who didn’t care about not going in during the New Year proper.  As it got closer to midnight, the crowed slowly pushed forward.  By then the aisle was completely packed.  The police officers keeping the crowd in check held up their 「しばらくお待ちください」(“please wait a little longer”)  signs with a little more fervor.  Cassie and I started doing a countdown at 10 seconds to midnight, and this Japanese guy next to us joined in. ^o^  Once it officially became the New Year, it was no-holds-barred!

~Day 3 melts into Day 4~

Tokyo Winter Break – Day 2

Tags

Shibuya, The Lion King Musical, Tokyo, Tokyo Pokémon Center, Zoujouji

Before I go into Day 2, there’s something that’s been on my mind about the maid café.  The maids are supposed to follow orders, but at the same time, they give orders, and as patrons in the “world” of the maid café, we follow them unquestioningly.  I didn’t see anyone refuse to do the “magic” or refuse to take part in the 15-minute “Dream Time” ordered by two of the patrons. I wonder what the maids say if a customer says, “no, I don’t want to say ‘moé moé kyuuun’ at some guy’s champagne!” ^O^

Anyway…

On Day 2, Wednesday the 30th, we got up and had breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant.  They had a 1000 yen all-you-can-eat Japanese/Western breakfast.

Then, we hopped on the Yamanote Line to Hamamatsuchou to go to the Shiki Gekijou (四季劇場) to get tickets to see the Lion King musical.  I don’t particularly like musicals and decided to go if there were cheap tickets.  Since there were, I bought a 3000 yen ticket, though I had to sit a few rows behind where Cassie was. We got our tickets and since we had over two hours till showtime, we went to kill time at the Tokyo Pokémon Center; we had happened to see a sign for it at Hamamatsuchou Station.

The Center was jam-packed with people of all ages.  There was every kind of Pokémon merchandise available.  I was surprised to see shirts with this nice, glittery design on it.  I don’t remember at the moment what Pokémon it is, but it was cheap, large, and pretty so I got one.  I also picked up some Evie clear files (the PCFC grows!) and souvenirs for a certain Pokémon-loving friend. ^_~ (Though, once I got back to Fukuoka I learned there was a Pokémon Center in nearby Canal City Hakata. ^_^; Though it’s only about half the size of Tokyo’s.)

Now, from where we were we could see Tokyo Tower, so after the Pokémon Center we walked towards it.  On the way there, we turned onto a street with a torii.  Before reaching the shrine at the end of the street, we stopped at a Starbucks.  I’d been wanting a chai latte for a while.  (Someone got me hooked on those. LOL) As my friend checked out some Year of the Tiger goods there, a friendly barista started talking to us.  She recommended we go to either Asakusa or Meiji Jingu for New Year’s.  There were free pamphlets at the counter explaining the temple down the street; turned out it was Zoujouji (増上寺, “ji” means “temple” so I think it’s a bit redundant to say “Zoujouji Temple”).

Zoujouji with Tokyo Tower in the background. Preparations for the huge New Year's Day crowds were under way.

At Zoujouji, we got omikuji, or fortunes written on little folded pieces of paper that you draw from a box after dropping in 100 yen.  Since these mikuji also had little guardian charms attached, they cost 200 yen.  I drew a good fortune, with a charm of a bamboo rake.  The bamboo rake helps you “rake in” fortune if you keep it in your wallet.  (You better believe I put that bad boy in there! ^o^) If you draw a bad fortune, you can tie it to lines set out just for that, (some temples have small trees for this) and the temple spirits or gods will take on the burden of your bad luck. ^_^; There was a beautiful Buddha statue there, and across from it was a pine tree planted by Ulysses S. Grant.

I left the photo at full size so you can read the plaque.

Since we still had time before the show, but not too much, we stopped at Mos Burger on the way back to the theater for some quick lunch. It was pretty good.  Then, we rushed out to the theater and got there about 15 minutes before show time.

As I said, I don’t particularly like musicals, but since I did like the movie The Lion King, and that’s pretty much a musical, there wasn’t much difference when it comes to the random let’s-bust-out-in-song-and-dance-even-if-we’re-villains factor so I enjoyed it. Being familiar with the story made it pretty easy to understand in Japanese.  Actually, all the historical dramas I watch also helped, since everyone spoke to Mufasa in keigo.  The sets, costumes, and effects were incredible.  It’s been a really long time since I saw The Lion King so I don’t really know how the lyrics in Zulu and Swahili are supposed to sound (well, to say nothing of them probably being pronounced incorrectly in the original movie anyway), but my friend commented that the Japanese cast sounded funny trying to sing in African languages. They didn’t do the Mufasa/Que pasa joke with the hyenas.  When Zazu was singing in a cage and Scar told him to sing something happier, it sounded like Zazu started singing enka! The audience laughed.  I assume it must’ve been a pretty famous song. At the end, there were about 10 curtain calls!  Before leaving the theater I picked up some “crepe cookies” with the musical’s logo to be an omiyage for my kouchou-sensei. (Once back in Fukuoka, a while after I gave him the gift, he went to the shokuinshitsu to give me a 2010 calendar from Shiki Gekijou that the theater had sent him, lol. The picture for December is of Simba, Nala, and Rafiki presenting their cub.)

消火栓 (shoukasen) means "fire hydrant."

Hm, I could’ve sworn I took a picture in front of the theater, but I guess I didn’t, or I accidentally deleted it from my camera.  Oh well.  Instead, have a picture of cute chibi (samurai?) firefighters that I saw on fire hydrant covers in several places around Hamamatsuchou! I assume that under these covers is just a simple water pipe for use in case of fire.  Seems more logical than the red fire hydrants that stick out of the ground and get used by children on hot summer days to cool off.

After the show, we went to roll around Shibuya some more.  My objective was to go to Tower Records to get CDs of Russian composers, whose work isn’t available for sale in the U.S.  While the poor clerk scoured his database for the uncommon composers, I thought about buying the 3-disc Nodame Cantabile set they had, which covers all the music used in the live action drama and the movies! It was just about 4800 yen, which is pretty good for 3 discs but…I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t more interested in the pretty pictures of Tamaki Hiroshi than the music itself. ^o^;;;;

Oh yeah, before going up to the 6th floor where the Classical section was, I picked up GACKT’s latest single, “Stay the Ride Alive,” his third collaboration with the Kamen Rider franchise.  It wasn’t supposed to be out until New Year’s Day, but both Tower Records and Tsutaya had it on December 30th, if not earlier, even though both stores had signs for the single that said “OUT 2010.1.1.” For buying the single, I got a free GACKT x Tower Records poster.

The closest I'll ever come to taking a photo with GACKT? *wump wump wuuummp*

Tower had heavy promotion of Michael Jackson’s This Is It going on.  There was a TV playing “Smooth Criminal” with Japanese subtitles, mega-LOL.  「アンニ大丈夫か。アンニ大丈夫か。大丈夫か、アンニ。」^O^

After Tower, we went into the nearby Tsutaya.  I picked up GACKTIONARY, a book chronicling the 10 years of GACKT’s career so far.  It had been out since mid-December; honestly I could’ve gotten it in Fukuoka, but when it came out I was like “It’ll be a while before I can read Japanese quickly enough to actually want to read this book, so why bother?” but since it was right there in front of me, fangirl collectionism won out. ^o^;;

Tsutaya had a special sign for their store this day; instead of the usual “Tsutaya” sign, the first “a” was Ayumi Hamasaki’s funky looking “A.” People were taking pictures of it, but I don’t really care for Ayu (no offense to her fans) so I didn’t.

When we were done shopping, we looked for a place to have dinner.  A restaurant with various yakiniku caught my eye.  It was actually a motsunabe place. Motsu = innards and nabe = pot.  Nabe ryouri is very popular in the winter months.  I didn’t know that motsu was innards, it was the yakiniku I’d gone for, but since they had a tabehoudai (all-you-can-eat) for the nabe, we got some.  We tried the innards; I didn’t like them so I only ate the other kinds of meat. Ironically enough, motsunabe was orginally a Fukuoka specialty. And here I went and ate some all the way in Tokyo…

~End of Day 2~

Tokyo Winter Break – Departure + Day 1

Tags

109, Akihabara, maid cafe, Sephiroth, Shibuya, Square-Enix Character Goods Show Case, Tokyo

Alright, here come the day-by-day posts. It takes me a long time to do each post, so I will only post one day at a time.  In the meantime, there’s always the summary below this post.

Before leaving, we went up to a shop in the Transit Center to get snacks for the trip.  There I found Marias, these cookies/crackers.  I had been thinking of bringing Marias as omiyage, but decided against it given how fragile they are. It was surprising to find them, and I bought a pack.  These Marias are from Portugal.

Portuguese Marias from the Fukuoka Transit Center!

We left Fukuoka around 7PM via overnight rapid bus. The bus ride took 14 hours.  The older gentleman (or as I say, that ojiichan) in the seat in front of me didn’t turn off his light until midnight, and even then, he opened the curtain! I can’t sleep sitting up or even reclining anyway, but it was somewhat annoying.  In the evening they played some boring movie, but in the morning they played 「犬と私の１０の約束」, or, Ten Promises to My Dog. It’s a cute movie; really sad.

When we got to Tokyo, we hopped on a train and went to the hotel, the Hotel Mystays Ochanomizu.  It’s really close to Akihabara Electric Town, affordable, and comfortable. We checked in, dropped our stuff in the room, and had breakfast at the nearby Spanish-themed restaurant El Chateo del Puente. I had a dish that was called…something or other manchego. (Manchego = Spanish sheep milk cheese.) I don’t remember, but it was good!

Olé!

WARNING: This post is about to get really GEEKY really fast! If you can’t handle it, go do something that proves how much of a non-geek you are.

After breakfast, we headed on a train for Shibuya to go to the Square-Enix Character Goods Show Case.  Yup, that again. I got two chibi Sephiroths, an umbrella with various Final Fantasy critters like Mog and Cactuar on it, and took a better picture of the life-size Sephiroth statue in the floor there.

I left this one at full size for your viewing pleasure. ^o^

After the SE Store, I happened to spot the Soccer Shop Kamo and went in to see what they had. ^_~

Then, we went to Harajuku to walk around and see all the people in the crazy Harajuku fashion.  There weren’t too many people in extreme clothes.  Then again, there were soooo many people there that it was hard to distinguish one for the other.  It’s the closest thing to the Castlevania boss Granfalloon that I’ve ever seen.

Next, we walked around Shibuya in search of the famous 109 (sometimes pronounced as “ichi-maru-kyuu,” meaning “one-o-nine”) building, where all the trendy girls shop. There is now a 109-2 building across the street from 109 with shops for men. Their website linked above has a few sections in English. The intersection in the photo below, like many major intersections in Japan, is a six-way crosswalk.  That is, when the lights turn red, they turn red on all sides for cars, and pedestrians cross the streets in all directions.

Shibuya 109 and the super busy intersection

We had lunch in a restaurant inside 109.  I was surprised to learn the girls who shop there eat. *rimshot* Anyway, the Italian city of Genoa is written in Japanese as ジェノバ (“jenoba”), which is the same way that Jenova (Sephiroth’s “mother”) is written, so when I saw ジェノバ風えびスパゲッティ (Genoa-style shrimp spaghetti) I had to eat it! ^o^ It was green too!

After dinner we went to Akihabara.  Akihabara is known as the tech and nerd capital of Japan.  Well, of the world really. ^o^  There’s plenty of stores for all your gamer/otaku/pervert needs.  (If you’re the only girl in the shop, you should probably leave.)

In front of Akihabara Gamers

As we walked around, we happened to see a Kotobukiya, a store that makes and sells various model kits, figurines, and other fandom goods.  I picked up a Lightning (the protagonist of Final Fantasy XIII) clear file to add to my Pretty Clear File Collection, as well as a Rosch Elixir to finally have 8 Elixirs (enough to be entered in the drawing for FFXIII stuff or a PS3).

After that, as we were walking about, there were many young women out in the streets promoting various maid cafés.  A maid café is a café where all the waitresses dress as maids, call patrons ご主人様 (goshujin-sama, meaning “Master”), and act super cutesy.  The second girl who gave us a flyer led us to the café. They serve a bit of diner type food, but also lots of sweets. My friend tells me that girls go to maid cafés because they think it’s cute and/or funny. Since I don’t know much about all the different types of maid cafés, rather than give the impression that they’re all the same, I will leave this link to a blog post on Akibanana reviewing the MaiDreamin franchise: To Akibanana!

Anyway, there was a 500 yen minimum table charge, and one drink minimum (it didn’t have to be alcoholic).  We both got parfaits.  The parfaits came with a choice of commemorative photo or game time, which I assume means the maid will play some cutesy little game with you.  You can’t take photos of the maids with your own camera, but you can buy photos that they already have printed, or get the food items that come with the chance to take a picture with the maid of your choice.

Like the maids, all the sweets were put together to be as cute as possible.  When it came time to take a picture with one of the maids, I had wanted to take a picture with one of the cooks, but I said the wrong name.  The girl who came out didn’t seem too pleased. T_T Oh well. They draw a heart and write the name of the maid over all the photos. I would put it up here if I had a scanner, but since it’s just about 2 x 3 inches, if I took a picture of it it wouldn’t come out right.

Two patrons paid for the “15 Minute Dream Time,” which included the maid bringing this to everyone’s attention, lowering the lights,  popping open a bottle of champaign, and proceeding to have everyone in the bar (maids and patrons) make the champaign more delicious with magic.  The magic consisted of putting your hands together in a heart shape and saying “moé moé kyuuun!” The maids also had patrons do this “spell” on their own drinks.

After that, we went back to the hotel.

~End of Day 1~

Tokyo Winter Break – Summary

Happy New Year! 新年あけましておめでとうございます！

Well, I got back to Fukuoka from Tokyo about 7 hours ago.  I’d been catching up on the interwebs, munching on Marias (yes, Marias as in the cookies, real Marias!), and looking at all the pretty pictures.

Hm, I should probably explain that from Dec. 28th-January 1st I was in Tokyo with my friend Cassie, since I’m trying to make this blog accessible for everyone including random readers that end up on here by Googling things like “cat walking a bike,” “tokyo eat,” and “lyric time slip kanji text” (those are all actual search terms that landed people on this blog, lol).

(Yay, run-on sentences! And so many parentheticals, too!)

Anyway, we did a lot in those four days.  Below I will write a bullet-point summary of the the trip.  I’ll write actual blog posts with photos (and video?! If I can figure it out) for each day later.

EDIT: Here goes a video! It’s the first video I make and the first time I upload to YouTube, so I don’t know yet about how to upload things in high quality, I just used the “Share -> YouTube” feature on iMovie which didn’t give me a high quality option.  This won’t replace the day by day posts, and doesn’t include everything.

Monday, December 28th, 2009

• Depart for Tokyo via overnight bus at around 7PM

Tuesday, December 29th

• Arrive in Tokyo around 9AM
• Check in at the hotel
• Eat breakfast at El Chateo del Puente
• Go to the Square-Enix Store
• Soccer Shop Kamo
• Walk around Harajuku and Shibuya; eat lunch in an Italian restaurant inside Shibuya’s 109 Building
• Walk around Akihabara; go to Kotobukiya and the maid café MaiDreaming

Wednesday, December 30th

• Breakfast in the hotel restaurant
• Go to Shiki Gekijou to get tickets for The Lion King
• Tokyo Pokémon Center
• Starbucks
• Zojoji Temple
• Lunch at Mos Burger
• Go see The Lion King
• Roll around Shibuya; go to Tower Records and Tsutaya
• Dinner at a place with motsunabe tabehoudai

Thursday, December 31st

• Drop postcards/nengajou off at the post office next to the hotel
• Chinese food for breakfast
• Go to a conbini to buy dairy products to counteract the spicy rice
• Attempt to go to the Tokyo Museum of Photography, but find it closed
• Silver Accessory Shop Big Black Maria
• Roll around Ebisu for a bit, then go to Ginza
• Go to the Sony Building
• Stop by the Kabukiza on the way to see the Tsukiji Fish Market
• Spot and go to Tsukiji Hongwanji Temple
• Go to Roppongi, run away from the cold by rushing into the nearest building, which happens to be the Mori Arts Center
• Return to the hotel to get coats
• Dinner at an Asian fusion restaurant
• Go to Sensouji; try amazake, look around the stalls, line up to go into the temple, do a New Year’s countdown with the Japanese dude next to us,

Friday, January 1, 2010

• then get crushed by Japanese and a few foreigners bum-rushing into the temple
• Throw in the go-en and get away from the altar while rib cages are intact
• Eat food from the many stalls, take lots of pictures
• Hear bell tolls number 70-something through 108 at nearby Ben-Ten-Ji (I think that was the name of it)
• Go back to the hotel around 3AM; shower and sleep
• Get up around 10 or 11AM; I pack up (Cassie’s staying one more day)
• Drop another batch of postcards/nengajou off at the post office
• Go to Akihabara in search of a maid keitai strap; go to various stores
• Breakfast at a donburi place
• Continue the search for a maid keitai strap, end up in Don Quixote
• Take purikura
• On the way to Meiji Jingu, walk past the Geihinkan (State Guesthouse)
• Realize that the “Meiji Jingu” the iPhone was leading to was an area of sports arenas named Meiji Jingu, not the shrine
• Rest up in Veloce Caffe
• Photograph the interesting ads in the train station
• Go to the real Meiji Jingu; line up, go in, and get some stall food
• On the way out, receive a Christian pamplet from a dude wearing an afro, huge sunglasses, and tiger costume (2010 being the Year of the Tiger)
• Return to the hotel, rest up, grab my luggage
• Go to Shinjuku Station’s West Exit, as written on the bus ticket, and where there is a bus terminal, only to realize that “West Exit” refers to several city blocks along which buses line up to board passengers, spend half an hour trying to figure it out
• Get help and find the correct loading point 15 minutes before departure
• Depart Tokyo around 9PM
• Realize I left my phone’s charger in the hotel room

Saturday, January 2nd

• Arrive in Fukuoka around 11AM

Well, that’s it for the summary.  I think it’s pretty amusing to see the trip broken down like this. ^o^