Japan Pictures Day 2: Akihabara

 Day 2: Akihabara!

I am going to switch to Japan time when I talk about where went just because it is easier. We both woke up pretty early because 2 in the afternoon (Utah time) is just too late to be sleeping in, I guess. We stopped by a Conbini (Convenience Store. Too hard to say the whole word in Japanese, so it got shortened to Conbini from Conibiniensu) and got some breakfast.

Onigiri (rice balls), mostly liberated from the fancy
wrapping that keeps the seaweed
from touching the rice until being opened.

We shared some kind of "pan" that a sweet, jam-like filling. "Pan" is the Japanese word for bread, stolen directly from Portuguese and incorporated into their own language. We also each got a different kind of Calpis, a "soft drink" that isn't carbonated. In English, the company is called "Calpico" because "Calpis" sounds too much like "cow-piss".

Drinks, unopened Onigiri, and some
kind of "pan"

The manhole covers in Shinjuku
were very pretty. The colors are
which utilities it accesses?

Then we headed to Akihabara, the "Electric town" and the Male anime/manga fan's place-to-go. We got there so early that nothing was open yet! We also had issues finding the places on Kerri's list, so we ended up asking a Koban, cops in a little room (box?) that are all over the place, and they ended up giving us a map after we came back several more times to find the other places we didn't ask about the first time. XD

Eventually things opened and we started at Super Potato. It covered 3 or so floors of a thin building, and was all about Retro games, with toys from a few more modern games.

Steps on the way up to Super Potato

More steps, but with one full character.

Trying to read what is on each floor off a Mario sign.

On the stairs of the final floor. Can't read it, but obviously
it says "You can't go up here!" D:<

Stolen from Kerri.
From http://www.japan-hotels.ws/tokyo/akihabara/shopping.htm

After Super Potato, we went to the Gachapon store. A gachapon is one of those plastic balls you get from the vending machines in the grocery store that have little toys, or whatever, in them. In Japan, they contained figures, cell phone charms, and more. They cost anywhere from 100Y to 500Y, and are mildly addicting. The place we went to was called Kihabara Gachapon Kaiken, and contained 430 gachapon machines, supposedly. I spent... a lot of money there.

My Gachapon spoils

After that, whenever we saw a gachapon machine in front of a shop or wherever, we were all "Oh! What do they have?!" and would have to run over to find out. A good majority of my souvenirs were gachapons, though once out of their capsules, they don't take up a ton of space, usually.

And Me in the cutout.

Kerri in the Maid Cafe cutout
outside the gachapon store.

I should have bought this headband!

 Next we went to Don Quixote, a place with lots of random stuff, including housewares, bath towels, costumes, umbrellas and more! There were like 8 large floors full of stuff.

After some shopping, where I got a little fold-able umbrella because it was raining a little still, we went to find a restaurant that Kyle recommended to us, called Hamakatsu. It serves tonkastu, which is breaded pork(?) cutlets. At Hamakatsu, you get to crush your own sesame seeds to mix with sauce to get your own preferred flavor. It was DELICIOUS and fun, even though we were still working on understanding the etiquette of eating in Japan.

Tonkatsu at Hamakatsu on the 8th floor of some building.

We also went to a very large Manga store called Mandrake, but since we couldn't read anything, it wasn't very exciting. Oh, and also the Tokyo Anime Center which looked pretty empty, space-wise (lots of empty space) and had a little bit of expensive merchandise. It was starting to get late and kind of cold, so we headed back to the hotel in Shinjuku. When we got there, we stopped for Dinner at a place close to the hotel.

My gyudon (I think) which is a beef
bowl. Came with an egg and separator
so I could add my own yolk.

Kerri got Curry

Then it was into the hotel to organize our spoils and recover from a day on our feet.

The elevator was rather small. You can
see I am touching the back and holding
the door open at the same time, and I
have the Ross raptor-arms.

Japan Pictures Day 1: Traveling

Okay, I am not sure how to do this blog thing, so here goes nothing! Kerri started with the "why" so I guess I can start there, too.

So why Japan? The main reason is like Kerri's: Why not? Really, though, it probably goes back to the beginning of College. I wanted to take a bunch of different languages, including Italian, German, French and Japanese (I had taken some French in Middle and High School). When I started at the Y, I decided to start with Japanese because I had been watching some Anime (Japanese animated shows. Like cartoons, but more mature sometimes). Well, after 3 semesters of Japanese, I had to stop taking because it wasn't part of the CS major, and I managed to get hit by a car, making it hard to keep taking. Unexpected fallout was a settlement that gave me a bunch of cash, that I immediately portioned some out to go to Japan sometime. I had never traveled anywhere, so "free" money was a perfect chance!

Well, I didn't go during school, then graduated, had no one to go with, Kyle said I cold go with him and Sarah, and then they had a baby. But the money still sat there untouched. Well, I had mentioned this to Kerri, and she was all, "I'll go with you!" and I was all "Yeah, right" and she was "Really!" and got a job to save money and here we are!

Now for more pictures and less talking, hopefully.

Stolen from Kerri who stole it from her mom who took it.

First leg was to Denver in a cute little plane that had like 13 rows with two seats on each side of the aisle.

"Little" plane wing from my seat. I haven't flown in forever, so
my head was plastered to the widow almost the whole time

Kerri's teeth-bearing smiling face on our little plane

When we got to Denver, we found out our flight to Japan was delayed 2 and a half hours! Bah! So we ate some food (Chinese) and hung out at the gate.

Took a nap in the sun and had
these fun marks afterward

Bright-Sun-Selfie

Our plane finally arrived! It just kept
getting bigger and bigger as it came
towards us. It was huge!

The plane was nice, with personal entertainment centers in the back of each seat so you can watch whatever movie you want. Or listen to music, or play little games, or whatever. Which was good because I watched a whole episode of Phineas and Ferb as we had to wait after taxi-ing to the runway, then go ALL THE WAY BACK to the gate because there was some "Hazardous material" that had been loaded without the right paperwork. They took it off and we finally started the 12-hour flight to Japan.

I watched three movies (The Croods was pretty good actually; and Iron Man 1 and 2), napped an hour or three and tried reading a little.

On the NEX, Narita Express, to Tokyo. Humidity having fun
with my hair. It was like drinking the air!

We finally arrived in Japan, had to go through Immigration, which took FOREVER, and Customs, exchanged our dollars to Yen (almost 1 Yen = $0.01 more like $1 = 94 Yen, I think), rented cell phones to talk to each other, exchanged our JR Rail Exchange Passes for real train passes, and took the train to Tokyo.

We arrived in Tokyo and headed to Shinjuku (largest station in the world, Kerri says?) where our first hotel was. Because of the flight delay, it was pretty late by the time we arrived. Kerri looked up how to get to our hotel, thank goodness, and we only got a little lost when we turned down the wrong road.

Our hotel room, complete with Yukatas for
pajamas and hanging out in.

Interneting in my Yukata. I'm not addicted, I'm a CS major.
There is a difference... >.>

Great face, Kerri. XD

I have never felt so... not-short. :D

Our teeny bathroom, complete with Bidet toilet.
Made of plastic, except the sink. Even the floor.
It was raised about 6 inches off the ground.

Vending machines outside our hotel.

It was like 11pm by the time we got to bed, which was about 2pm Utah-time, so we had been up for almost 26 hours, or something (math is hard when you are tired, so I don't remember what we decided. 26 just sounds good to me).









I didn't take many pictures, especially at the beginning, so I will be stealing a lot from Kerri. You can tell which are hers from the Date Stamp on the pic. I am planning on keeping it to one post for each day in Japan, but some places have so few pictures it might have to get combined with another day. Maybe, we'll see.

If you have any advice on how to make the blog better or more interesting, let me know, as this is the first time I have attempted to do anything like this. <3 br="">