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Game Centers
Japan has an equivalent to Canada's Arcades, and that is geemusen (short for geemu sentaa, which is Engrish for Game Center) These places sport much more than just arcade games- they ALWAYS have a variety of "crane games" (you know, control the grabby-thing to pick up a prize), and often have purikura (short for purinto kurabu, Engrish for Print Club), which are booths where you can climb in and take a series of photos of yourself (and friends!), then draw on them, or stamp cute flowers/hearts/stars on them as you see fit, then have them printed out in a variety of sizes. All for 3 bucks. Girls love these things. You have _NO_ idea. Want an ego boost? Be me, the other day, walking in Shinjuku. I was just walking along, wearing some of my new clothes and sporting some fancy hairdo I'd made up for the day, and I walked by an entire class of high school students. As was fairly typical fashion even for us in high school, all the guys were in 1 group, and all the girls were in another. The girls' group was in the front, and as soon as I was close to them, (they weren't even out of my vision yet!) I saw at least 3 of them gasp and quickly lean over to their friends, whispering loudly "Kakkou ii! Kakkou ii!", and I continued hearing it a LOT after they passed by me. I glanced back over my shoulder, and I counted no less than 6 of the girls looking back, who immediately turned red and quickly turned back around, continuing with their "Kakkou ii!" mutterings. ("Kakkou ii" in North American dialect is something like "He's hot", "He's cool looking", or "He's -really- good looking"). That made my day. I haven't ever gotten the attention of an entire class of girls before quite like that^^
Horse Racing
This is a game we found in the game center, it's a horse racing game, where you bet on horses just like the real thing.. and additionally, these little horses actually run around the track- it was pretty cool. Whew~ Okay, Sunday was probably my biggest day while I've been here. I had massive plans (some of which fell thru), and I did a LOT. Sunday, I had plans to meet Hikki, a guy I'd gotten into contact with thru a language exchange bulletin board online while I've been staying in Japan. I'd have to say that making friends with him is probably one of the best things I've done out here. He is a pretty dern cool guy, and we have a lot of interests in common. He's also pretty good with his English. Additionally, he brought along a friend of his, Shigeru, who also has a respectable level of English skill. Kinda interesting, they met thru an online MMORG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game, for the uninitiated...) called Lineage II. Anyways, I'd informed him previously that there was a couple of places that I'd still like to visit while I'm in Japan, 2 of which were tho Tokyo Tower, and the Square Enix building (if nothing else, just to SEE it, since I knew they don't do tours.. DEMMIT><) Square-Enix (Heretoafter referred to as "Squenix", is the company that made Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior/Quest video games).
An interesting type of game
(first off, blame all these crappy game center photos on Kurt, another guy who's staying in the house I'm at in Yokosuka)
This is a -really- cool idea for an arcade game style. The idea is that you go to a vending machine type box and buy some random "cards" (they're called "IC cards" because they have some microchip in them that reacts to specific sensors. IC cards are big here).. These cards will represent something to do with a specific arcade game. For example, baseball players. You place these cards on the "field" deskspace in front of you, in the positions you want the players to be. The game is then based on you having these players in these positions. A pretty dern cool idea. Hikki took care of carefully planning out a long arduous day for us. Most of which we managed to do, but because of a couple of things we took our time with, we didn't manage to do ALL of it. But we got the hilights anyways^^ The first thing we did after meeting (around noon) was go out to have something to eat. As par for course, I requested something Japanese, so they took me to a place that they described a place that foreigners almost never go to, on account of the fact that it's a little outta the way, and has no english whatsoever on the outside (or, for that matter, on the inside!). It was very good food- we all ordered "sets" (we call them "combos" or "meals" in Canada...) that included rice, tea (they drink it like water here, literally!), some small dishes with pickles and something else I don't know, and a plate of tongue. Damn is tongue ever good. I've had it 2 or 3 times since coming to Japan, and I -really- enjoyed it! After eating something, we decided to make our way out towards the Squenix building, which is in walking distance
Another take on it...
This is another shot of the same "IC Card Game" style arcade game... There's 2 guys playing this game, and it's some kinda roleplaying/adventure game that I couldn't make heads nor tails of how it works... But they were constantly moving their cards around on their respective boards.. and they also had the standard joystick + buttons, but on top of that, the screens they were looking at were touch sensitive-- talk about multi-tasking! I wanna play one dammit! If for nothing else, because it looks freakin' impressive^^ from the Shinjuku station, where we met. (Well, we actually met at Yoyogi station, 1 stop away, because it's smaller and easier to find each other at..) The Squenix building has a giftshop that's only open on weekends (and holidays?), and since it was a weekend, it was open, so we made our way in. The front was filled with shelves with various stuffies, a rack of every game they've made that's still in print, a display case filled with various action figures etc that you can grab a box of to purchase, etc.. I was tempted to get the Dragon Warrior board game, but seriously, it would take me forever to translate the rules. But I still might go back and get it anyways, hehe ;p It's cool tho, it's grid based, and has little blocks the size of 1 grid square (about the size of a regular dice, to use non-gamer lingo), but it looked like it was made of tiny bricks. cute! But the -really- cool part of the shop was upstairs. All 3 of those stairs. And it was FSCKING COOL! What really bothered me is that they had a sign up saying that we couldn't
Yay Square-Enix!
They have a sign inside saying we can't take any pictures, but nobody said anything about taking pictures on the outside of the building! Bwahahaha! take pictures >_<; The upstairs portion was seperated from the rest by glass, and it had display cases around the perimeter (and some couches!) with all the custom jewellery you can purchase from them. Things like the pendants that hang from character's weapons, to rings/necklaces that the characters wear, to custom designed zippos with emblams from their games, etc.. The best part about this display area tho (in addition to the fact that you can actually purchase these jewellery items!), was the not-for-sale displays they had there. Right at the top of the stairs (you can NOT miss it!) is the actual outfit worn by Gackt (really famous Japanese singer/actor/idol/insert title here) during his part in the ending sequence of one of the Final Fantasy games, Dirge of Cerberus, all in a glass display case, of course. Once you're up the stairs, and turn to your right, most of the floor extending out to the far wall, between the wall on your left, and the display case on your right, was glass. Under the glass was room for any sorta display they wanted. In this case, they had a KICK-ASS life-sized sculpture of Sephiroth (main bad guy from Final Fantasy
From Tokyo Tower, with love
This is a shot from the Tokyo Tower main observation deck (halfway up), looking down at all the greenery that surrounds the area- it's very pretty. 7) in some kinda frozen state, which green crystals protruding from the walls towards him, and all sorts of cool stuff. I -REALLY- wish I could take a picture of it! *mads* It was the coolest thing ever! I looked on their website, and (at least in the Japanese website) you can see the layout of the store, as well as some pictures, but the 1 picture that shows the glass floor shows it empty! That sculpture is something that I'm never going to forget. It was just THAT fscking cool. That, and the outfut worn by Gackt. Man, I -so- wish I could meet him while I'm here. (I hear he lives in Kyoto, which is near Osaka). I didn't buy anything there (I was short cash at the time...), but Hikki, and his friend, who are both fans of Dragon Quest video games, spent about 5 minutes feeling up these "grab bag" keychains to try and find the ones that had a King Slime monster keychain in it. They each purchased one, and Hikki's had a King Slime (although he was hoping for a King Metal Slime...), but Shigeru's had a Skeleton Warrior, which he gave to me
From Tokyo Tower, with love (part deux)
Another shot at the same angle, but this time showing the city horizon. as a gift.
After leaving the Squenix building, we started making our way over towards the Tokyo Tower, which meant a train. At the station, I put the last of my cash into charging my Passmo (like a debit card for trains), and we rode the train out to Tokyo Tower. I had enough change on me to pay for tickets etc to get up Tokyo Tower, but I didn't have enough for omiyage (souvenirs), so we went out on a quest to get me money. Unfortunately, this didn't involve me standing on the street corner- they had this silly idea about trying to convince a machine to spit money out at me. I was aware that this could be done at either a Citibank, or at the majority of Post Offices (weird ne?), so we set out to find a post office, since all the banks on the station maps are just marked as "banks", not telling us which is which, and as it turned out that Post Office was closed, but right next to a Koban (police box, which is, to my knowledge, primarily used by civilians to get directions since Japan has no logic way to
Straight down from the tower!
On the main observation deck of Tokyo Tower, they have these little glass panels every once in a while on the floor, thru which you can look straight down. find anything. I'm serious). So we stopped off there to ask the nice policeman where we could find either a Citibank, or an open Post Office. After talking (and looking at his map) for about 5 minutes, he pointed us in the direction of the main branch of Post Offices, and we headed on our merry way. Lucky us, it was open on a Sunday, so I went in and convinced the machine to give me money. I don't know if this method was -easier- than standing on the corner of the street, but it certainly was -quicker-. Cash in hand, we made our way to Tokyo Tower. It hadn't occurred to us until we got there that this was GW (Golden Week) in Japan, which meant that the majority of people had a week off of work. Which meant A LOT of people at Tokyo Tower! The lineup was stupidly long! About 1hr (or so they told us) just to -buy tickets- to go up. There was a guy on a megaphone advertising various things in Japanese that I pretty much completely didn't understand, but 1 thing Hikki translated for me was that if you walk up the tower,
I can see the curve of the earth from here~
My first picture taken from the "special observation deck" of Tokyo Tower, which is the highest they'll allow tourists to go. you get a little certificate for it. So I did. And I made Hikki and Shigeru come with me^^ The steps, unfortunately, only go up to the main observation deck, roughly halfway up the tower. I guess any higher than that is too thin to put stairs on, or uhm... something. No excuse! I want stairs dammit! But yah, 600 stairs. They even number them for you, at the top and bottom of each flight is the number of that particular stair. I guess some people do time trials to see how fast they can get up there. The stairs took us to 150m out of the 333m of the height of Tokyo Tower. The certificate says so *nodnod* The main observation deck is made up of 2 floors, the bottom floor has a cafe and such, and the top floor is pretty much just to view outside, and/or buy another ticket to allow you to go up to the "special observation deck" at the highest point a tourist can go on the tower, almost the top. I figured there's no sense in doing it halfway, to we bought the extra tickets and went the rest of the way up.
Some special building that isn't special enough to be named...
Another shot taken from the top of Tokyo Tower only for the fact that there was an easily recognizable building in it to use as a landmark. It was only a 45 minute wait in line on the main observation deck to buy tickets too- what a bargain! After that it was only a 15 minute wait (after a couple more flights of stairs up to the elevators) for an elevator up. There's only 1, and it has a long way to go, the poor thing. Slave labor! The special observation deck was quite noticably smaller, but wow could you ever see far! And Grant, yes I did see you sunbathing in the nude in our backyard! The lineup for the elevator to go down was actually worse than the one to come up. Maybe 20 minutes. At least there's a bathroom up there, which is good, cause Hikki made use of it^^ We took the elevator down to the bottom of the tower, then walked up to the 2nd floor where the big Omiyage (souvenir) store was at. It was pretty much a collection of the kinda kiosks you'd find in the middle of the aisles in a mall, all in 1 area, but each kiosk also has lots of racks to put their stuff on. TONS of cool stuff, but we were tired of being
That's a lot of trees~
A shot taken from the top of Tokyo Tower again, looking down at all the trees that surround the area. on our feet for so long, so we made it quick and just bought a buncha souvenirs without browsing the whole place, unfortunately. Afterwards, we went down to the main floor to a crepe shop that was setup right beside the (still incredibly long) lineup for tickets, and bought some crepes to eat on our way to our next destination.
From Tokyo Tower, our plan was to get to a boat that'd take us across some water to Obaida, which is, as I've heard, a very famous area, for 1 reason or another. I really don't know why, but Hikki wanted to show me. Unfortunately we didn't make it on time for the last boat, but since we didn't make it, we decided to hop onto the subway closeby to quicken our movements as well as give our feet a rest they much needed. Our plan now, was to hit up another area that's incredibly well known for being "Old Style" in Tokyo, Asakusa. It has some really famous old Japanese temples and such there, and I wish it was a little lighter outside so I could've taken some nice pictures. (I didn't have my digicam with me since
Artistic Merit + 2
I felt like being an artist in this shot, and took a photo of the ground centered on the shadow cast by the tower I was taking the photo FROM. I never made it back to Yokosuka saturday night like I'd originally planned) We walked until this HUGE lantern thing into the "old style" streets and shops. All the shops had these bright white signs, and it was to the point where it actually felt like it was noon, it was so bright on those old street. I wanted to take pictures, but it was too bright for my keitai camera... For the most part, there was only 1 main street like that, and at the far end of it was a shrine where you could make wishes, cleanse the evil from yourself, etc.. We just went to look tho haha^^ After making it to the far end, we started on our way back, and Hikki pulled out another printout he'd made with a map to a restaurant they wanted me to go to with them. Apparently it's a really good one for eating usagi (rabbit), but when we got to it, we saw that it was already closed.>< So we wandered around to a building that had an information center in it, and asked for a map, and directions to restaurants that specialize in usagi. We wandered around a
Big lantern!
This is the rather massive lantern I saw at the entrance to the "old area" of Tokyo. bunch, finding the various restaurants, but they all were either closed, or had MASSIVE lineups. And we really didn't wanna wait to eat, so we decided to just hit any restaurant that looked good and had a minimal lineup. We eventually decided on this nice little place .. a very old Japanese style place, where we again had to take our shoes off at the front, and were given bags to put them in, as we had to take them with us. It was an okonomiyaki (Translation: okonomiyaki) restaurant, which is basically like a pancake made up of cabbage and LOTS of other stuff, like egg, sprouts, asparagus, whatever. And lots of fun sauces too. There's many types of okonomiyaki so it's hard to describe it in a general sense. Some of them have noodles instead of half the cabbage, etc... Anyways, we sat there (low Japanese style tables, yay!) and chatted while eating okonomiyaki (I really hope there's an okonomiyaki restaurant back home!) and drinking alcohol for a few hours before we decided we had to take off to make the last trains and get home.
By the time I got home, my feet were SO sore! When
Final destination
After passing the big lantern, and working your way thru all the stores in the old area of Tokyo, you finally come to this place, where you would wash the evil out of your body using incense, and make wishes and whatnot... none of which we did, but we saw others doing it! having days like that, the one phrase you really need to know in Japanese is "otsukaresama", which doesn't have a direct translation, but can be something along the lines of "Good job!". Lucky me, the next day I got to wake up and go to Osaka!
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