George's Journal
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
George's LiveJournal:
[ << Previous 20 ]
| Monday, March 29th, 2004 | | 10:08 pm |
| | 10:01 pm |
| | Thursday, March 18th, 2004 | | 10:26 am |
| | 10:12 am |
| | Saturday, March 6th, 2004 | | 11:36 pm |
Starsky & Hutch
eh pretty much exactly what you would expect from this kind of movie. There are a number of funny bits (presumably more the drunker you are) and some good tunes. The plot is pretty weak compared to contemporary pieces, but it is meant to be true to the 70's... right? The car is nice, and it is worth staying for the beginning of the credits to see some outtakes of it. There is a somewhat odd, jaring cameo at the end - but it is also a nice symbolic passing of the torch as if they were planning on making a sequel or two. Owen Wilson was his usual character, which works rather well in the movie. Ben Stiller... eh, wasn't his usual self (no toilet humor at all!) but he still didn't really feel like he belonged. All in all not a complete waste of two hours, but if you can catch a matinee you'll feel more like you got your money's worth. | | 11:22 pm |
Steel Battalion
Worth $200 bucks? Eh I dunno, but the only reason I didn't buy it the first time around was because I didn't own an X-Box and couldn't really justify spending $400 on a single game. Now I have an X-Box so it was less of a stretch. Damn is this game cool. We got the special niftay HDTV connectors for the X-Box and hooked up the massive controller (some assembly required!!!). After a couple minutes of trying to be good and actually reading the manual I tossed it aside and just started the darn game up. It took me oh... maybe two minutes to die. Playing at the easiest level (Rookie). Looked at a couple things while it was restarting (you mean you can Lock on to a VT!) and did much better the second time around. I made it up to the second mission before dying (did I mention death is permanant if you don't eject in time?) and I only finished the first mission with 9 seconds left. *shudder* After that the X-Box started misbehaving. We've long had a problem where it would crash trying to load the next level and it started doing that again. Jared gave it a try and gave up after it crashed twice after the intro mission. I'm going to go ahead and replace it tomorrow. It's annoying because they don't exactly let you swap the hard drive so all the saved games will be lost. There isn't much of value, but it would have been nice to keep the extra characters we unlocked in Fallout:BOS for example. Right now I only have the original single player game that comes with the controller. In a couple days I should be able to get the latest version which is online only. This means I'll actually have to activate that Live subscription I bought so long ago, but I think it will be worth it. One of my fondest memories of my early college years was playing in the Battletech Autumn Rumble Challenge at the Battletech center. This is as close as I can get to a pod right now and it will be damn cool to go 3v3 or 5v5 with real people with voice comms. | | Friday, March 5th, 2004 | | 12:02 am |
You give your love and friendship unconditionaly. You enjoy long, thoughtful conversations rich in philosophy and spirituality. You are very loyal and intuitive.
Find out your color at Quiz Me!
|
|
| | Thursday, February 26th, 2004 | | 2:19 pm |
Are you Addicted to the Internet?
Hardcore Junkie (61% - 80%)
While you do get a bit of sleep every night and sometimes leave the house, you spend as much time as you can online. You usually have a browser, chat clients, server consoles, and your email on auto check open at all times. Phone? What's that? You plan your social events by contacting your friends online. Just be careful you don't get a repetitive wrist injury...
The Are you Addicted to the Internet? Quiz at Quiz Me!
|
| | 2:15 pm |
You're The Giver!
by Lois Lowry
While you grew up with a sheltered childhood, you're pretty sure
everyone around you is even more sheltered. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, you were
tapped on the shoulder and transported to the real world. This made you horrified by
your prior upbringing and now you're tormented by how to reconcile these two lives.
Ultimately, the struggle comes down to that old free will issue. Choose
wisely.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
| | Sunday, February 22nd, 2004 | | 9:58 am |
Drubar
Neon Tetra
Agility
8 | | | Strength
9 | | | Stamina
3 |
| Battle Rating
20Origins
Drubar was bought at Walmart |  |
|
| | Monday, February 16th, 2004 | | 12:01 am |
| | Thursday, January 8th, 2004 | | 4:20 pm |
| | Monday, December 22nd, 2003 | | 9:05 am |
| | Friday, December 12th, 2003 | | 3:18 am |
Final (Somewhat Random) Thoughts
Language, language, language. I think I would have enjoyed the trip much more if I had a little more of the language available. We were able to get by just pointing and grunting, but it made me feel at times silly and at others uncouth. With a greater ability to communicate I suspect I would have been able to more deeply appreciate a lot of the custom and culture that the Japanese have developed. Although it was clear that we were not expected to conduct ourselves as Japanese, it was frustrating not being able to even at times where I knew what to expect from reading etiquette books and travel guides. It also gave me an appreciation of what it is like to be illiterate, although Jon has lived there for something like 10 years working as a freelance translator and he still had trouble reading some of the signs I pointed at and said, “Gee that probably says something interesting.” Becky and I are discussing the possibility of taking some classes to prepare for future trips (if you happen to know of good evening classes in the Evanston/Chicago area please drop me a comment!). It would also be nice to start picking up the Japanese in the Anime we watch without having to rely on the English subtitles. One of the things I’ve heard of any visit to Japan was how willing young people were to approach you and practice their English. I suspect the suffering Japanese economy and recent decisions by the U.S. in international relations has lessened their eagerness. We certainly didn’t experience this during our week there. Everyone was still very polite, but nobody went out of their way to approach us to strike up a conversation. Perhaps we just didn’t go to the right spots, or maybe we just looked unapproachable or maybe we just didn’t have enough Japanese to understand when we were approached. I think this would have made for an interesting memory. Hopefully things will turn around by my next visit and these kinds of encounters will be more common once again. A few people have commented that we seemed to have a fascination with the bathrooms there. Certainly they were different then we are used to. First there are the two different styles or toilet. Japanese toilets are basically a trough on the floor, which I suspect you kneel above and do your business. I never had to resort to using one of those. Many places also had a Western Style toilet, including our ryoken. It was amusing that they put a sign up explaining their use. I’m sure many women in the U.S. would appreciate similar signs being used here. The nice thing about Japanese restrooms was their cleanliness, very few places I have been in the U.S. can compare. Of course the price of such vigilance is there will often be an old women cleaning while the restroom is in use. It seems to be accepted and expected that you just go about your business and don’t mind them at all. One thing I found strange was although all restrooms had sinks, some didn’t have soap and almost none of them had a way to dry your hands after washing them. I was expecting trouble with jet lag on the way there. Oddly it didn’t really kick in. I was a little offset from my usual hours, but not nearly by as much as the time difference would indicate. It really kicked in on my return. My first day back was almost normal but since then I have yet to sleep more then 3 hours straight, and have been taking naps during the afternoon to get by. Of course once I start taking naps I can’t get to sleep at night. It’s a vicious circle that I’m having a hard time kicking, but better here then while I was on vacation. Hopefully I’ll be able to phase out the naps over the weekend and get back to normal next week. Some of the amusing things we saw that stuck in my mind. Japanese are known for bowing a lot. It is said that many will even bow while speaking on the phone, because it is just that ingrained. We actually had a woman bow to us while driving for stepping out of the street so she could pass. We saw a young schoolgirl with the Playboy bunny on her socks on the train. This was one of the things that struck us – there were kids in uniforms all over the place. I don’t know if it was because it was a holiday or they were all just doing field trips, but even in the middle of the day it was rare for us to not see at least a few on the train. There were also a number that were seemingly unaccompanied that seemed as young as ten riding the trains. Not something you would see in the U.S. Everyone has heard that space is at a premium in Japan. This was really driven home for us by the parking garages that we got several pictures of. Some of those structures could hold as many as 24 cars stacked three high. It is a shame we never actually caught any in use, but it was definitely a clever, if cumbersome, way to store vehicles that might not get used very often. It is common practice for big U.S. stars to advertise products that they would never be caught dead supporting here. This was in fact part of the premise for Lost in Translation where Bill Murray advertises a Japanese whiskey. The two that stuck out the most were Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Cruise. Cruise was almost understandable with the release of The Last Samurai coming so soon. | | Thursday, December 11th, 2003 | | 7:15 am |
Day 7: Homeward Bound
I woke at 6:00am again of course, but expecting a long day ahead I just stayed in bed till Jared started moving about so he could get as much sleep as possible. Checkout was at 10:00am and we put it off almost until then, as we were not excited about being encumbered with our bags all day. Our plan for the day was to hit Tokyo station and take advantage of the lockers there to store our stuff while we wandered around. I was a little concerned because there were few available when we were scouting them out a couple days before. It turned out to not be a problem as we found another bank that was half empty and included the medium size lockers. We stored our stuff and I took a picture of the area in case we had trouble finding our way back. From there we had to decide what to do for the day. Several temples had been suggested and there was the whole twelve-story mall we were standing in to explore, but we decided to check out the Imperial Palace grounds that were only a few blocks west of the station. Jared didn’t think we’d actually be allowed on the grounds so we expected just to check it out across the moat and move on to something else, but the gate was open and we wandered in and discovered it didn’t even cost anything to visit. We didn’t have access to everything by any means, but a large portion of the grounds was open to the public and the signs were in both English and Japanese. Some of the highlights were a museum that featured the combination of Japanese, Chinese, and Western styles, a large bonsai tree that Jared really liked, and a garden featuring a large variety of trees. During our walk through the grounds we kept picturing what it would have been like to attack the walls while they were being defended. It seemed like it would have been a daunting task. Another point of interest was that it seemed pretty common for people to bring their lunch and we saw a number of groups painting in the gardens. There also seemed to be a number of people that were using it as a shortcut as there were several gates from which to exit. We finished our rounds of the grounds by about 1:00pm and headed back towards Tokyo station to look for food. We found a line of restaurants along one of the tracks and chose a place serving beef bowls for lunch. Once again we had issues with the language since we didn’t actually know what the beef bowls were called. We did our usual point and grunt at the menu, but the problem came when I asked for another bowl. I think I got that across but there was some confusion over what I wanted another of. She had to retrieve someone from the kitchen who knew a little bit of English before we could complete the order. After that it was a long and uneventful train ride to the airport after collecting our luggage. Getting out of the country was much faster then getting in, although all the interesting shops in the airport were before security which I might have explored a bit since we were still about 3 hours early for our flight if I had known. On the other hand it was nice being able to dump our luggage next to our gate as well. The flight itself was pretty full, it looked like they combined the flight with a Japan Airways flight. We felt dread when we realized we had a young child sitting behind us, but after we took off the toys stopped and the child was quiet. The movies were different, but it was apparent that the system was pretty new since when we boarded they had the movies listed from the flight over and after they were updated, the listed movies different from the ones being shown. S.W.A.T. is the only one I can recall, I didn’t spend much time watching on this flight. The one somewhat ironic part of the flight was after avoiding fish during our stay in Japan, the special meal I had was fish. Go figure. I mentioned to Jared that I might just have to write them and ask them to remove low carb from the special menus list, since they weren’t even close. Once we landed, it was a long walk from the gate to the immigration and customs line, but it went pretty quick and we were soon waiting for our limo to pick us up for the final leg of our journey. We ended up with a white stretch this time, which was nice after a 10-hour flight. Our driver was as quiet as our first one was talkative, and with a few directions from Jared we soon found ourselves at home. Our journey was at an end. | | Wednesday, December 10th, 2003 | | 2:54 pm |
RPG Purity
Your
Ultimate Roleplaying Purity Score | | Category | Your Score | Average | | Hacklust | 44.34%
Will kill for XP | 53.2% | | Sensitive Roleplaying | 54.43%
"But what's my motivation for this scene?" | 54% | | GM Experience | 97.1%
"Um... You guys are in a 10'x10' room..." | 69.1% | | Systems Knowledge | 88.7%
Played in a couple of campaigns | 90.1% | | Livin' La Vida Dorka | 39.08%
Carries dice in pocket 'just in case' | 62.8% | You are 69.22% pure
Average Score: 68.4% | | | | Sunday, December 7th, 2003 | | 8:34 am |
Day 6: Daibutsu (Big Budda)
For our last full day in Japan, we planned to make a full day of it. Jon offered to take us to Kamakura, a temple district not far from Tokyo. I got my usual early start at 6:00am, but it was less disruptive to Jared as we were planning on calling Jon at 8:00am to arrange for a rendezvous anyway. We met up with Jon around 9:30am in Yokohama after getting off at the wrong stop. Jared was just counting stations instead of looking at signs and there were several stations that did not show up on the route map we had been relying on. The miscues didn’t end there either. After collecting Jon we were to board a train for Kamakura, but ended up getting on an express going the other direction. Finally about an hour later then expected we arrived in Kamakura. There are 20 or so temples in the area so we decided to walk from there rather then catch the train one more stop, which would put us closer to Daibutsu. We followed the crowd from the station to the first temple, Engaku-Ji. It was somewhat amusing to see the stereotypical Japanese tourist while in Japan. We felt a little out of place without several more cameras and a tripod or two. Our main concern was running out of memory on our cameras, between Jared and I we only had about 400 shots available (we ended up only taking about 50 each). We wandered the grounds for about half an hour, but the pictures do more justice to it then I would be able to describe. One part of note was the bell, which was donated to the temple in 1301 and is considered a national treasure. It was at the top of a lot of stairs, many of which were hidden around a corner when we started up. It was worth the trip, more for the view from the snack shop then the bell itself. From there, instead of walking along the paths leading between the various temples we followed the main street that led between the stations. We stopped for lunch at a soba shop along the way. Soba is a noodle made out of buckwheat. Jon and I both got the curry soba, while Jared had tempura (seafood) soba. Refreshed, we continued our trek towards Daibutsu. Along the way Jared stopped an got a cookie. It was essentially a frosted rice cake, but much better then any I’d had before. We also passed Café Amish, which featured traditional Amish cooking complete with electrical appliances. The way was lined with shops of various types, which made for some interesting window-shopping. There was one place that I probably should have taken a picture of which had all these little cats in different poses, just line after line of them. Finally we arrived at Daibutsu. It was hard to miss, the statue itself is 11.31 meters tall and there were swarms of school kids posing for pictures on the steps leading up to it. There wasn’t really much else to look at here except the Budda and the several souvenir shops that support it. We hung out for a bit to rest up after the walk there. Something they can apparently get away with in Japan, but I don’t think you’d ever see in the U.S. was you could actually walk inside the Budda for a 10 yen fee which was done on the honor system. There was just a sign and a container for the yen. Everyone seemed to be paying (we did as well). Having had just about enough of walking we took the convenient bus back to the station. Our next stop was dinner, which Jon took us to a place he liked that served yakitori. It is basically like a tapas restaurant where you order a number of appetizer style dishes and share them amongst the table. Most of the dishes were chicken based, one of which you dipped in a poached egg to fully enjoy. It was here that I tried the most exotic thing during my stay in Japan – quail’s eggs. They were okay, just vaguely mushy without much taste but I passed on them the second time around. After dinner we said our farewells to Jon at the station and headed back to the ryoken. The week had started to catch up to Jared so he was pretty much done. It was only 7:00pm, so after taking stock of my own condition I decided to head out on my own for a while. I decided to just go to Gotanda, which was an easy train ride away with the thought of checking out a Karaoke bar. We had seen these Big Echo places advertising it all over the place so I went there. Turns out they are not actually a bar, but instead a bunch of private rooms of various sizes you can rent out. Feeling a little silly I sang to myself for an hour before leaving. I wandered around the block after and was approached by a nice young lady offering a massage. Having just read a passage in our phrase book about how the costs can skyrocket to several hundred dollars and not having enough language to determine exactly what was being offered I declined, although a shiatsu massage would have been pretty welcome at that point. I haven’t really mentioned it, but my back was killing me after days without a real chair and riding the train hours each day, most often standing. Figuring I was pretty much done, I stopped and got a piece of cake and returned to the ryoken at a safe 9:00pm where I found Jared sacked out already. | | Saturday, December 6th, 2003 | | 7:58 am |
Day 5: Ghibli Museum (full)
The day started off quite early... again. I was up and about at 6:00am much to Jared's displeasure. Even though I was being pretty darn quite, just my moving about was enough to wake him. The plan for the day was to head out for the Ghibli Museum, which is related to the work of the Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation team founded by Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. We wanted to leave around noon and after exploring the museum, walk around the park that is next to it on the way back to the station as suggested by some great instructions I found via Google at ( http://digilander.libero.it/joe.chip/ghibli_e.htm). I could tell not all was well when I woke and it was raining again. According to weather.com it was supposed to have cleared up by today but unlike the last few days it was still raining when noon rolled around. Jon had expressed interest in joining us so Jared went down to call him. After waking him up (and we thought we had trouble timing calls from the US!) we arranged to meet at Shinjuku at 1:30pm. By this time we could get to Shinjuku in our sleep (just not back quite yet!) so we headed out at 12:30 and caught the train. While we made it there with no problems, our sense of timing was still a little off so we didn't arrive at the rendezvous (Starbucks again) until 1:50pm. Fortunately Jon was just walking up at the same time so it was all good. It being well after lunchtime we decided to grab something to eat in Shinjuku. After several false starts (Jon was having trouble deciding which place to take us to) we ended up at, as Jared categorized places, an everything you could ever want fried shop. They also had the Japanese style hamburger, which I opted to have (with rice of course!). Jared had the fried pork with curry. Shortly after we ordered they brought around the full menu, we got there just early enough to choose off their more limited lunch menu. We got back to Shinjuku about 3:00pm and hopped onto the Chou-Sobu line bound for Mitaka. It didn't take us long to get there, but when we arrived Jon mentioned that another friend of his wanted to join us as well. He called and told him where to meet us and we headed down to the JTB station to buy the voucher with the idea of splitting up and meeting back at the museum. On the way to JTB we went down an escalator, which wouldn't be so unusual except it was outside and still raining. There was some doubt expressed with the instructions leading us to the JTB station and requiring a passport to purchase the voucher. While I did agree it was odd for the museum not to sell tickets themselves, I had seen that mentioned in several locations and by the time they decided it was really silly we were already there so we might as well check it out anyway. Turns out I (and the instructions) were right and we were able to buy our voucher there. Jon hadn't brought his passport and didn't have his other friend's number either, but I guess they were satisfied with Jared's and mine because they allowed us to purchase our voucher. Unfortunately we only got a single voucher for the four of us. We were expecting tickets of some sort so we didn't specify, but we had time still and it was still raining anyway so we just went across the street to Mr. Donut to kill some time. We headed back to the station to meet up with Niel, whom it turns out was visiting from Seattle. Everyone collected; we went back down stairs and found the gazebo for the special bus to the museum. It was easily seen from the station by the Ghibli characters covering the side; sadly I never got an opportunity to get a picture of it. Riding a bus in Japan is much like riding the trains, only with more stop and go. They packed it with as many bodies in the aisle as they could shove in; fortunately it was a relatively short ride. Finally we had made it to our goal a little after 4:00pm. The first thing that struck me was how many other people were there. I expected more then at the sword museum (which only had two other people while we were there), but nothing like this. It is very much an exhibit intended for children, although there was plenty to interest the adults as well. We started out on the ground floor that had an exhibit, which was a tour through techniques of animation. They progressed from basically a flipbook and ended with a looped projector in which you could see the individual frames as they passed over the light and the moving picture they created when they were put together. The coolest part was this giant display with characters from Totoro. Each was in about 10 different poses placed in a giant merry-go-round. It would spin up with a strobe light and it looked just like they were moving. The cat bus was running, rabbits were popping out of the ground and hopping toward the tree in the center, the bat was flapping it's wings. I was an impressive display and it would stop every minute or two so you could see it was just a bunch of models in different poses. From there Jared and I headed up this circular staircase which was meant primarily for children I suspect from how stooped over we had to be to not brain ourselves on the steps above us. The third floor contained the gift shop and a giant cat bus for kids to play on. Jared wanted to go play on it too, but we were getting looks just being up there without kids in tow. We quickly ducked out on the balcony where we found a slightly less dangerous to our heads circular staircase that lead up to the rooftop gardens. It was dark out in November so the gardens themselves probably weren't all that they could be, but there were two attractions up there. One was a giant robot from the movie Laputa and the other a block of some sort with inscriptions on it, which probably is significant in one of the movies but I can't place it. Heading back down to the second floor we found a line, and not really knowing what it was for but figuring it must be cool we got in it. Fortunately it wasn't just a line for the bathroom, but instead the first of two pieces of animation which is not available anywhere but the museum. It was sadly all in Japanese with no subtitles, but that didn't much diminish our enjoyment of it. It featured Porco Roso and seemed to be a history of flight in the Studio Ghibli movies. Around it was located an exhibit of artwork from a number of movies, mostly dealing with clockwork contraptions and steam level tech. Next-door was a large scale (maybe even life-size?) model of the plane from Laputa. I tried to take a picture of it, but since we weren't supposed to be taking pictures in here I didn't use the flash so it came out really blurry. The other half of the second floor was taken up by what appeared to be a mock-up of the offices used by Miyazaki and Takahata. There were sketches of all sorts covering the walls as well as some scrapbooks. There was a display on how a cell is colored, including what appeared to be a paint by number type arrangement (it showed the sketch, then the sketch with all the parts labeled with the color to be used and then the completed colored cell). There was a shelf with all the paints used, and there must have been several hundred different shades there. It was rather intimidating. That took us back to the ground floor where the best was left for last. The main theater was showing another unique film, this one taken from My Neighbor Totoro that showed that Cat buses come in all shapes and sizes. And that cats apparently like caramel. This was also in Japanese, but was geared more towards kids as we were both able to follow much of the Japanese from what little we knew and the context. After a quick stop at the gift shop we met back up with Jon and Niel and caught the bus back. Since we got such a late start and it was raining we decided to forgo the walk through the park. We were going to do dinner and head out for some nightlife, but Jon's wife called him home because she was sick so we just went out separate ways at Shinjuku. Jared and I stopped at Gotanda and had some beef bowls at Yoshinoya before heading back to the ryoken and calling it a night. | | Tuesday, December 2nd, 2003 | | 4:32 pm |
Day 5: Ghibli Museum
Don't have time this morning for a full post, but I'll just mention we went to the Ghibli museum yesterday and it was awesome. They don't allow photographs there so the few I took came out pretty blurry. They showed a couple short films that are not available anywhere else (and were not subtitled) and had a lot of the history of animation depicted. It was really cool. | | Monday, December 1st, 2003 | | 8:37 pm |
Day 4: Shopping Time!
One of the idiosyncrasies I've developed recently is an inability to sleep after a certain point. This is typically about 6 hours. Only because I woke up at 2:00am to drain some of the Pocari Sweat I had drunk was I able to sleep until 5:00am. To entertain myself until Jared was up an about I turned to FFXI as being the quietest thing I could do in the dark. I had expected something like this to occur so I had tried to convince Jared to take the futon closest to the door where my turning on the far light wouldn't really bother him, but he already had his heart set on the one in the middle of the room. It was still pouring out when Jared finally woke up, but we really didn't want to lose another day sitting in the ryoken so we got ready to go. By the time we got outside the rain had more or less stopped, but we brought our snazzy new umbrellas because weather.com seemed to indicate it wasn't over. As it turned out that just left us lugging around umbrellas all day that we never used. Since we were expecting rain much of the day anyway, we thought we'd hit some of the centers of shopping which in theory would keep us mostly indoors anyway. Our first stop was Tokyo station which is basically the equivalent of Union station in Chicago. As it turns out we could have spent much of the day just looking at shops in the station, it was that sprawling. We decided to exit and look around outside, but before we got there we ended up inside a giant mall. It was twelve stories tall and looked to include just about everything. We didn't really spend much time there, but we might kill some time there Wednesday on the way back to Narita. We scoped out some lockers in the thoughts of ditching our luggage there. Our checkout time is 10:00am, but our flight isn't until 7:15pm and we don't look forward to lugging our stuff around all day. We ended up in a food court of some sort and ate lunch at a German themed restaurant of all things. I got a steak that was butter battered with rice, a salad, and miso soup. Jared got one of the Japanese style hamburgers and a rice-stuffed omelet. It came with a cute little shrimp garnish with beady little eyes. He didn't eat that. After that we headed outside to wander around a bit. Perhaps because it was Sunday, or maybe it's just like that we didn't find a whole lot going on outside of Tokyo station. It seemed to be surrounded mostly by bars and karaoke places, there weren't many shops about. The highlight was passing by a giant yellow arch that turned out to be Pokemon Center Tokyo, which explained the throngs of children milling about outside. We also checked off the first item on Becky's wish list ( http://www.kheryn.com/japan-wishlist.html) at a large bookstore we came across. By this time we had mostly circled back around to the station so we decided to move on to our next stop. Akihabra is the place to go to buy eletronics in Tokyo. While we weren't buying any, I wanted to at least experience it first hand and it was only two stops past Tokyo. Getting off the train the difference was immediately obvious. There were signs pointing the way to Akihabra Electric Town, not that it would have been possible to miss leaving the station anyway. It consists of several blocks of eye rending displays, hawkers, and throngs of people. Akihabra probably has one of the highest concentrations of foreigners in Tokyo, if not all of Japan. Diving right in we chose a shop at random and started browsing. The way they are set up is they have an escaltor going up and each floor focuses on a different product or two. The first floor we went to had translators (just Japanese to English) and flat screen tvs. Next was a floor with regular tvs, followed by one with DVD players, VCRS, and computers, then sound systems at the top. Taking the elevator back down we walked out through their ground level display which focused on portable electronics - cell phones, mp3 players, and the like. Most of these seemed pretty much the same and since we weren't looking to buy we didn't need to compare prices or haggle, we thought one was plenty. We did go into a couple stores that were focused on anime and games, the first was called Gamers and the second Comic Toranoana. There was a lot of anime we would have liked to pick up, but it was all region 2 and lacked English subtitles so we resisted the temptation. I did pick up a couple cds at the second place, mostly just to buy something here - I probably could have picked up both of these albums at conventions pretty easily. The first was Refrain of Evangelion and the other was the Emotion 20th Anniversary Theme Collection. In between these two stores we stopped at Cafe Sega, which was a 6 story arcade. Many of the games are versus with the machines sitting back to back rather then side to side like we're used to. They even had tournament brackets up for several games. I tried a few games but at 100 yen a pop and not lasting very long I ended up just watching the pros play for the most part. They had all sorts of games including some baseball and football arcades, but the traditional fighting games took up most of the floors. There was this one game I tried that I had seen a video for online. It is basically a lot like Frequency for the Playstation, notes come down and you need to time hitting the button for when it passes a line. You can play it using up to 9 buttons but I chose the option to use 5 and I may have been able to handle three respectably. It was insane and I was only playing on normal. After making my purchases we stopped at Mr. Donut for a snack before heading back to the train. I had a couple normal donuts and a vanilla shake which was tiny, maybe an 8 oz cup or so. Our final destination was Shinjuku where we seem to be ending up more often then not. We were planning to meet up with Brenda, whom Jared had met on his first trip to Japan, and is in frequent communication with his mother. We were still a couple hours early so we decided to wander around and look at some more shops. We hadn't gone very far when we happened across what was basically a doorway with a kimono out front. Having the bulk of Becky's list still to locate we wandered in and went up to a tiny little shop on the third floor. The staff were very helpful and when we started asking about specific component's they pulled them out and showed them to us. We were looking at some geta (shoes) and handbag sets and asking about sizes when they understood what we were after and told us they were a rental place. Oops. They were very nice about it and not only gave us the toushi (kimono paper) we asked for, but one of them led us around the next corner and explained to the shop owner what we were after. Having had to look up many of the names for different fabrics and sizes already it went much smoother this time and we were able to complete most of the rest of Becky's list in this single shop. We still had an hour to kill so we went into a bar called Mixing. We got there about 10 minutes before they opened but they didn't say anything when we sat down and we didn't know what the issue was until I noticed a banner with 17:00 on it. That's okay, we weren't in a hurry. I tried an Asahi which is one of the local brews (they actually have a brewery in Tokyo) and Jared just had Ginger Ale. They turned out to be pretty expensive drinks as most bars in that area tend to charge a cover fee, in this case it was 300 yen each (I should mention that 100 yen is roughly 1 dollar for those unfamiliar with the currency). No biggie, we nursed our drinks while watching what seemed to be a French movie without sound and Japanese subtitles. It was a very MST3k moment for us. MST3k stands for Mystery Science Theater 3000, which was an old show that took movie that were old or bad or old and bad and made fun of them. This would have been a perfect candidate from what we could make out. We met up with Brenda successfully just outside one of several Starbucks Coffees in the area. She is a New Zealander who has been living in Japan for more then ten years teaching English. She took us to this interesting cafe which had a river through the middle of it which we had to cross over on stepping stones to get to our table. It was pretty much just a snack place so I got this toast which pretty much reminded me of pizza bread without the cheese and sauce on top. Jared got a muffin and we all had tea. We chatted for about an hour before deciding to check the movie listings - she had some friends who couldn't get in to see The Last Samurai, but it must have been a sneak preview because it doesn't open until next week. Nothing else caught our eye that wasn't too violent or that we hadn't already seen so we just decided to head to a bar. After she consulted with a friend of hers who knew all the hot spots we ended up at The English Pub Hub, which was a fair imitation of an English Pub and had all the brews you would expect including Guinness and Bass. Since we can get those back home we decided to try some of the mixed drinks instead. I had a Dolce, which is a tri-color drink which has a couple differnet kinds of liqueur (banana and something else) topped with a red wine, and a Blueberry Cassis, which was supposed to be an ice cream drink, but was a little disappointing. I also tried the shepard's pie, which is my favorite dish at Nevin's pub back in Evanston the few times I go there to eat. It was ok, but not quite the same being much thinner and covered with cheese. We headed out after only two rounds, not wanting to chance missing the last train again. This time we went the proper way at the Gotanda transfer and made it to the ryoken without incident. |
[ << Previous 20 ]
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=88.8){kind=small}
drubar's journal
