*speechless*

I’ve got to start updating more often >.<

Sunday had an early start, grabbing the Tsukuba Express on its 45 minute journey straight into what I shall now dub “heaven” – a.k.a. Akihabara.

Where do I start?

We went straight from the station to (okay, a Starbucks, but after that) Kotobukiya, a famous shop in Akiba. It has 5 floors of pure awesome. We started from the bottom and worked our way upwards. I can’t think of any other way to describe it but in convention terms. The biggest con I’ve ever gone to is Ohayocon. If I took the dealer’s room from there and then multiplied it by 5, it might equal the sheer amount of otaku goods for sale, but would still probably come short. There were figures, keychains, toys, plushies, wallets, jewelry, bags, manga, photobooks, and even life sized figures. I’m sure I looked like a nut because my mouth kept gaping wide open (also because I was looking at the Kamen Rider stuff, but whatever.) There were so many figures, and the manga section was at least as big as the first floor of my house, if not bigger. I kept getting distracted by shiny things and didn’t even notice the time going by. I bought probably too much, but the vast bulk of my purchase was a new camera, which I shall upload pictures from tomorrow. Unfortunately, it only has Japanese installed on it, so I’m going to just have to learn as I go. It was a fairly good deal though, and with 12 megapixels, the quality is quite excellent.

We probably spent 2 or 3 hours just in that store alone. Laura wanted to leave to go somewhere else, (otaku overload, I think), though I would be happy to just explore Akiba for the rest of my life. Before we went though, I noticed that I recognized the area we were in. And then I found it. There’s a certain area in Akiba that has a small bridge over a river, which is right in front of the main drag. It is a major setting of the dramas Akihabara@DEEP and Densha Otoko, two of my favorite shows. I’d seen that place so many times, it was kinda weird seeing it in real life, because it felt like I’d been there before. I’ll post the pictures later, I’m sure other people will remember the place I’m talking about.

After a brief realization that we did not know what particular stop Tokyo Tower was at, and subsequent asking of the information desk, we got off the train at Hamasomethingorother. There was, and we had no idea of this until we got there, the Tokyo Pokemon Center there. Not like in the game where they heal your Pokemon, but a decently-sized retail shop of Pokemon goodies for every occasion. Laura bought the new game that had come out the previous day and I bought a Vulpix cell phone charm and a Mudkip figure (because I liek Mudkips).

It was about a 20 minute walk from there to Tokyo Tower. It’s a good thing it’s so recognizable because otherwise we might’ve gotten lost. Yes, I did the Kabuto hand gesture and there are pictures. We paid about 8 bucks to go up to the observation deck at sunset, which was incredibly pretty. There’s such an amazing view from up there. Next time for sure, we’re going to the upper deck which is about 100 or so more feet up. We took our first purika up there (ouch, 500 yen) which turned out pretty good, only we had no idea how it worked at first and there was a timer. >.> There are actually quite a few shops and such in the base of the tower, but Laura wanted to go to the Square Enix shop, so we decided to save them for another time.

To get to the Square Enix shop, we needed to go to Shinjuku and walk about 15 minutes, but the instructions said we could take the Keio line and get there with only a 5 minute walk. We decided for that, as neither of us really wanted to walk much more, but when we got off at Shibuya station, there wasn’t any apparent line change, so we decided to just stay in Shibuya for a while.

Wow. That is all I have to say. We saw the famous statue of Hachiko, and I had a minor geek out over the Shibuya 109 building, which we went in for a minute, but I felt too tragically un-hip (and un-rich) to continue looking over the clothes. The coolest part was probably the crosswalk, which runs through the entire intersection. Once the crosswalk sign is lit up, you may go across the street in any direction you want. Straight, sideways, backwards, diagonal, figure eight, it doesn’t matter, the whole intersection is your domain. The whole of it was just so big and bright and we couldn’t decide where to go. We ended up looking through the Adidas store quickly and then rummaging though 7 floors of Loft, which is the most awesome stationary store in the world. It makes Office Max look like a 7-11 in comparison. There are pens, paper, stickers, watches, jewelry, furniture, decorations, and all sorts of stuff that now I’m kinda wondering what they were doing in a stationary store.

After Shibuya we went back by train (about 30 minutes) to Akihabara. I sat next to this guy who struck up a conversation with me when he realized we were American. Apparently he’s a Navy guy from Texas stationed somewhere I don’t remember. He was interested to hear that we were from “the North.” I get the feeling he doesn’t see many Northern people in the Military.

Rushing back to the Tsukuba Express line (TX for short), Laura and I managed to figure out (okay, the instructions were in English, but it still counts as figuring out) how to get a PASMO card, which you load up with cash and then just swipe it Den-O style across the turnstile to ride the train. Again, minor geek out. Next time I’m totally saying “Henshin.”

Monday there was class. Fairly routine. Went out for curry that night, drank about 8 glasses of water because I ordered it a bit too spicy, and bought two donuts from Mister Donut. I was disappointed in the taste – I’m not buying a donut in Japan again… it tasted pretty bland and not like sugary fried dough at all. The local cats that hang out by the garbage house seem to now know it’s me that’s feeding them, so when I came back, they practically mobbed me for food. I left my donuts in the bike basket, so it’s a good thing when I came down to get them, I had the cat treats because one came within 6 inches of me because he knew I had food. They kinda settled a bit and chowed down after that. I’m calling them: Mommy (calico), Daddy (tabby), Orenji (orange kitten 1), Yuzu (orange kitten 2), Kahuda (tabby), and Mikkusu (weird calico/tabby sort of mix).

Today as well, it was pretty much routine class. I managed to make garlic and cucumber yogurt to put on the naan I bought, though through a misjudgement of how strong the garlic powder and fresh garlic clove I put in, it tastes so strongly of garlic I can feel my taste buds crying out in pain. Fortuntately, I love garlic, although I think it’s a judgment of how used I am to the flavor when I can still taste it in my mouth 4 hours after I’ve eaten it… I clearly need to eat this stuff before I go to the dentist.

Pictures tomorrow, after class.