Notes From A Tokyo Trip
Phew. Got in last night and unpacked, but now I need to go off to work again! Ugh. My feet are sore from all the walking, I think I need a holiday from my holiday. Anyway, notes and pictures follow.
Notes from my trip
-McDonald’s Ebi Fillet is really good.
-I’ve discovered pumpkins can taste pretty good, if cooked correctly.
-Japanese females are overly obsessed with their image. I saw one too many ganguros for my liking.
-I was wandering around in Animate when a bunch of ko-gals walked in giggling & saying words to the effect of ‘Omigod, look at all those nasty otaku!’ Well don’t enter the damn store then, idiots.
-Met up with the guys from seiyuu3. They were probably shocked by how quiet the real me is compared to the online me.
-Shibuya street lives are always interesting, I saw this acoustic duo called Hibiki who were pretty good. Hope they make it big one day.
-I got stuck in one of those infamous rush hour train crushes. It’s amazing just how many people can get into one carriage -.-
AmeYoko was my first port of call.
It’s a shopping street between the Ueno and Okachimachi stations on the Yamanote line. Great little place to do some cheap snack food shopping; you can find loads of other things like shoes, clothes & other odds and ends.
I quite liked AmeYoko, too bad it’s about an hour away from Shibuya by train which means an hour spent twiddling thumbs when I could’ve been doing something more productive.
Moving on to Akihabara. I was only there for half an afternoon, and most of the time it was raining. Apparently, I took just one photograph on the streets of Akiba and fittingly, it was of Toranoana - the only shop where I actually bought anything.
A lot of my time was spent wandering around Shibuya, there’s always loads to see if almost nothing I can afford to buy. There was some festival thingy going on when I was there.
Nice bum, mate.
Some girl group called Vanilla Beans was promoting their new single, sitting around in a glass case on a truck outside Tower Records.
Saw this in some Okinawan shop, and I was thinking Who on earth can eat all that without puking??
I was sitting in Ishimaru, an electronics goods store and staring at this picture. It took me a while to figure out that it wasn’t a lady vomiting into some bucket, but it was a woman doing laundry -_-
Woah, fantastic bright pink dil…. hang on. It’s a portable banana case (this was in Daiso, one of the 100 yen shops).
Stuff I bought. All the Kyoran Kazoku Nikki light novels released so far (9 + 3 extra chapter books), the Mizuki Nana Live Formula DVD, the ARIA Stella artbook plus a whole bunch of CDs. The CDs are mostly indie stuff; the list for anyone who’s interested - The Miceteeth’s 07, Morry Taylor’s NEW TOWN BOY, Hako’s long conte, Bebechio’s JAPANESE SPOON, Superfly’s self-titled album, two suzumoku albums, dew’s Croquis, Kirinji’s 7, a Tokyo 60Watts album and Kobayashi Yu’s YOU&YU. I ended up passing on the Toshokan Senso novels cos they were too bulky.
Uniqlo UT sell limited edition T-shirts including some designs from famous manga & anime. The three I got were (from L to R): Patlabor, Major & InuYasha. There were others like Yaiba, Gegege no Kitaro, Gundam, Kyojin no Hoshi etc etc.
Oh, here’s something a little more seiyuu-ey. I got this poster when I bought Seigura at Animate, and I tried to preserve it in good condition all throughout the journey but as soon as I got home & attempted to get in my car, I smacked the poster against the door and it got bent in half. At first I was aghast, worried that I’d defaced Tomacchan or Uryocchi’s faces but when I opened it up there was only a big crease across Hirano Aya’s face so that was OK ^^;;; Incidentally, I asked my family members (who know next to nothing about seiyuu) who they thought was the most physically attractive in the poster. My brother said Tomatsu Haruka, my mum said ‘The one on the right’ (Shiraishi Ryoko) and my dad said ‘Not the one in the middle’, xD. He plumped for Shiraishi in the end too.
And…look at all that food I dragged home 0_o I could feed the whole of Myanmar with that -_-
EDIT: Hey jouttex/danie & townberry, if you’re reading this I wonder if you’ve finished haggling over the Live Formula photoframe & photo ^^; Have you calmed down a bit since making all those ginormous bids over it and let reality sink in yet? Get in touch if you’re still interested.
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:14 am
You know, I was about to say good things, but that insult toward Hirano Aya has made me angry. I hope all of your stuff randomly blows up. Good day, sir.
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:32 am
lol I thought that thing was a pink dildo too >_>;;
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:57 am
LOL @ ur comment about Aya Hirano XD While she’s not one of my faves, I hafta admit she’s improving though (at least her voice acting is… I’m not so sure about her singing career =_=;;).
AH I want Nana’s Live Formula DVD too… but I’m incapable of ordering online and I’ll probably never fly to Japan…
Anyway, glad you had a nice trip =) Looking forward to your updates again =)
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:35 am
Hey, babe. Welcome back. Fun pictures, even funnier stories. Glad you had a good time in Tokyo.
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:40 am
Welcome back home! I think the most interesting haul you have is the food… are those green boxes Japanese green tea? And wow with all those packets of snacks…
Kyouran’s got me interested in it, great choice of getting those novels.
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:50 am
Well I can certainly see where your family’s opinion would come from. Tomatsu Haruka is currently in the forever popular young innocent cutie look that would appeal to (or at least not offfend) a wide varity of guys of any age groups, and Shiraishi Ryoko is now settling down towards the more matured beauty type (kind of like Minorin) along with her age such that the older generation with kids our age would appreciate (looking for daughter-in-law quantities dare I say?). Hirano Aya’s appeal is now pretty focused on the young-hip-wild teenagers type which unless you have younger brothers or cousins I don’t think they would find attractive.
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Always full of wit, your posts. Sounds like a lot of interesting things you encountered.
Hirano comment made me lol. Unfortunately, I can’t see the crease in the photograph.
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Did you try the mc pork burger? i like it better than ebi’s, since the price was only 100 yen when I was in Japan.
and that’s a very big pink di.. banana case. and what’s with the bum service shot haha.
May 23rd, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Thanks all for the welcome backs. I’m still out of the loop a bit & have tons of work piled up on my desk so it’ll be a few days before I get back in the groove.
>Icystorm
Good day to you too, sir! I’m a madam by the way. No need to get so heated up about this kinda stuff y’know, it’s not good for your health.
>rain
Yeap, it’s green tea
>houkoholic
D-I-L qualities, heh! I’m trying to think of others who’d fit in that category, and Tanaka Rie is the first that comes to mind
>ron~
Yes I did try the McPork but I can’t remember what it tasted like (and it’s still 100 yen). Probably didn’t help that I’d already had half an ebi fillet & a bacon/lettuce by the time I got round to it.
May 23rd, 2008 at 4:53 pm
Lol…welcome back j1m0ne! Yes, somehow, reality sank in and I realised..Holy sh*t! What the hell did I do??!!! Then I went and knock my head on the wall hard. Lol. But yeah, my decision stand. I hate pulling out of my words, so yeah, my offer stands. If there’s no higher offer than mine then we can exchange details soon. \o/
P.S: Yes, you can feed lots of people in Myanmar with that amount of food.
P.S.S: Woohoo. Nice hit on your poster leaving a line on Hirano Aya’s face. Lol.
May 23rd, 2008 at 8:31 pm
You had me at ebi fillet.
Joking aside I am impressed by your indie cred.
May 24th, 2008 at 3:53 am
Welcome back! This post just fuels my dream of going to Japan even more. Akihabara looks so shiny and that banana case looks…questionable. My guy friends would get a kick and possibly go “WTF?” from that. I wish I could stick my hand in my computer and take one of those snacks, but feeding them all to Myanmar is a better idea.
There’s Spam in Japan, too? Wow…
May 24th, 2008 at 4:18 am
wow, must be one hell of a journey to buy all those things XD
good job!
the vomiting and dildo got me laughing ^-^
nice poster, aya actually looked kinda cute in that one
May 24th, 2008 at 10:37 am
O-kaeri, J1m0ne!
You’re right about Hibiki… I can’t wait for them to become big
May 24th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Tomatsu~~~!! <3 <3 <3
@Nana photo:
Sorry I was quite busy during the week. I hate to say this but townberry can have it. I have a big bid to make for Animelo’s front-seat ticket (the highest price I saw in Yahoo! Auction was 70k –how the hell am I going to pay that?). Saving every penny I can now.
(and I might be lucky to get whatever bonus from Nana Clips 4 when I buy it in Japan :P)
May 24th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
I was told that most of the things in AmeYoko are actually more expensive than in the department stores right next door, so it takes a lot of skills to identify the bargains. Also, the trick to get to Shibuya from Ueno is to take the subway (the grey line).
May 25th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Welcome back! I so envy everything you got to do and see and (most importantly) buy in Japan. And to quote your father, “Not the one in the middle!” Your dad’s a smart man.
June 4th, 2008 at 8:18 am
“Nice bum, mate.”
I LOL’D AND THOUGHT THE SAME THING
Oh my god, I thought ganguros were extinct in Japan. *SOB* And I think Aya is the cutest :3