Jade & Jennings' World Travels

The next day was Sunday. Jade and Alana had decided to go to an onsen, which is essentially a hot spring spa. They have some strange rules about onsens in Japan, in particular you can’t go if you have tatoos (tatoos in Japan being a link to the Yakuza, or Japanese mob) and males and females are separated. We decided that we’d do it that morning because Susan was going to be returning later that day. Unfortunately for Susan, she has a tatoo on her back meaning she’d be unable to go to the Onsen. So the day before, while we were at Lindsay’s we found the closest onsen to our place – which was in the Tokyo Dome. I had never heard of the dome before, but apparently it is the home of the Tokyo Giants, their baseball team. While the dome itself was a big baseball field, it was surrounded by a lot of different things, including a shopping center, an amusement park, and of course the onsen. Jade and Alana went into the onsen, and I decided not to go since I’m pretty sure I would’ve found it incredibly boring by myself.

Instead, I decided to look around the area. The amusement park itself was fun to walk around, since it was free and you only had to pay for the rides – but I didn’t go on any of them. It was a little bit chilly that day and going on fast moving rides just didn’t appeal to me. They did have an attraction called “MagiQuest” which I was intrigued about, but never got the chance to try. I think it was something of a computer interactive screen that would superimpose your image onto the screen and you’d interact with the elements on the screen. It was $10 to enter for the first person who would receive a magic wand, and $5 for each additional person up to 5 people total. I presume the wand is used to control the flow of the game/attraction, but I couldn’t see into the building to figure out what was going on. What I thought was the most interesting (and my biggest deturrant) is that the game lasted for an hour.

I looked around the shopping mall and bought a little cell phone charm from one of the random capsule vending machines that was in the complex. Then after having explored the immediate vicinity quite thoroughly, I still had another hour to kill so I decided to set out onto the street and look around. Unfortunately it appears that I either choose a poor direction, or the dome is the center of all things interesting in that area of town. I saw very little in my hour of meandering, but one place that caught my eye was a shop that made custom dog harnesses – you know, the ones that look like sweaters on the dogs? When I say custom, it looked like you could choose your fabric, your style, and size – meaning they would make the harness to your dog’s measurements. I guess there’s a market for anything.

After I had managed to kill an hour on the street, I returned to the dome and met up with Jade and Alana. We decided to have hot dogs for lunch – we were at a baseball field so it seemed appropriate. They weren’t really all that good, or filling so we left a bit disappointed. Next we went to a Gourmet Green Tea cafe – which served only Green Tea flavored items. Everything from hot/cold tea to ice cream, to shakes and parfaits. It was quite good, but much stronger than what I am used to back home so it caught me a bit off guard.

We went back to Shinjuku to meet back up with Susan, who was returning from Fukuoka. Susan was tired and wanted to go drop her stuff off at Lindsay’s place, so we decided to part ways and meet back up to go out clubbing that evening – which had been previously planned. Jade and I were going to have to go back and change for the night anyway, so we went back to the hotel. Once there we received a text from Lindsay saying that plans had changed and that we did not need to change our clothes. Because people were tired, instead of going out to a club we were going to go out to dinner at an Italian family restauraunt that Lindsay knew about. We hung around the hotel for a little while, then headed back out to Shinjuku station to meet with the rest of the group.

Lindsay first took us to do Furi Kura, which is similar to the picture machines you see in malls, but much more advanced and crazy. Each booth has a green screen in the back, and you can choose from all kinds of crazy backgrounds. I don’t think I can really give an accurate description of it, but it’s a HUGE thing in Japan. I can’t really say it’s my thing, but the girls seemed to have a lot of fun with it. After we had our pictures in hand, Lindsay took us to the family restauraunt she was talking about. There was quite a line, so we ended up having to wait about 20 minutes or so to get in, but the food was really good. Also, the house wine was $10 per bottle so we went for that. The first bottle went by way too quickly, so we decided to get a second.

After the two bottles of wine between the 5 of us, we decided to do another Furi Kura – so that we’d have pre-drunk and post-drunk pictures for comparisions. I don’t think they were that different. After that we parted ways for the 5th time, and headed back to our hotel.

On Saturday Jade and myself met up with Alana at Shinjuku for breakfast again. Lindsay was off doing a flower-viewing with her friends from work, so we were on our own for the day. That was fine with us because we had plans to go to the TIAF. After hoping on the subway train and going over to the convention center. Once we go there we knew we were in the right place because there were anime posters everywhere announcing the up and coming shows. The show itself was not quite what we expected, or at least not what I had expected. I was expecting the show to be a big vendor space, but instead it was really a big trade-show with lots of things being shown, but nothing being sold. There was certainly a section of the show where items were being sold, but we never went in because as the day progressed more and more people were arriving. Eventually it got too full for us and we decided to leave.

Next we decided to go to Akihabara – the tech district of world-renown. Perhaps going right after TIAF was not the best decision because Akihabara was also overly-crowded, but we did manage to see a couple of nifty stores and Jade bought a hot water bottle that looks like a cute purple bean. Unfortunately the area was so crowded that it took us two hours to get through two alleyways and we had run out of time. We had to leave so that we could go meet Lindsay at her place. The three of us hopped back on the subway and went to the district that Lindsay lives in. On the way we picked up some bentos from a little shop on her road and brought one back for her. At Lindsay’s place we ate the bentos which were delicious, and played our new games that we bought in Scottland – Monty Python Flux and Pairs in Pears.

After a day of so many people, Jade and I were completely exhausted, so grabbed the subway back to our hotel and went to bed.

On our third day in Tokyo, Susan was due to leave us so that she could get on the Shinkansen to Fukuoka where she used to work during her time in Japan. So we all met again in Shinjuku station and had some breakfast (aka coffee) at the Starbucks. Jade and I declined to eat the Starbucks breakfast because neither of us drink coffee, and sugary sweets in the morning don’t really work for us.

After breakfast Susan went off towards the train and Lindsay took us to the Municiple Building. This building is actually quite tall and has a free observation deck from which you can see quite a lot of Tokyo. It was quite a view and while we were up there we got a sense of just how big Tokyo is – and how little vegetation there was. We all noted a few parks, and one very large park although we did not know the names of them – but apart from those parks there was very little green to be seen anywhere. There were quite a few roofs however, that had roof-top gardens, and that helped to make the city look at least a little bit greener.

Once we had finished our observation tower trip we went back down to the ground floor in an attempt to find the visitor’s information center. It was here that we were to purchase our Tokyo International Anime Fair (TIAF) tickets. We found it without much effort and had no problem buying the tickets. On our way out of the bbuilding we found a group of Japanese people sitting behind a banner. It took us a little while to realize that this was a protest because they were so orderly and calm, and they were just sitting there. We’re not really sure what they were protesting, but we think it had something to do with schools and teachers.

Next we went to Shinjuku and got some food for breakfast/lunch. Then we decided to go wandering around the Shinjuku area. Something that I haven’t brought up until now is the vending machines. They are everywhere. Every street block there is between 2-4 vending machines selling you all kinds of drinks – hot, or cold. Sometimes you’ll see the occasional vending machine selling hot ramen, or even ice cream. During our wandering of Shinjuku I bought a Calipis drink from one of these vending machines which was really quite tasty. Eventually we came across the National Gardens and decided to go in. It was gorgeous. The garden was incredibly well maintained and clean. I can honestly say I had never been to a park that had absolutely NO garbage anywhere to be found, but I have now. We walked around this park for quite a while enjoying the green grass and the Sakura (Cherry Tree) blossoms, and even layed down and soaked up a little bit of sun.

Next Jade, Alana and myself all went to Ikibukuro in an attempt to find the natural disaster safety training facility. This was something that Susan had drummed up as different and it sounded like a lot of fun. It’s basically a place where the Japanese teach their children how to react in the event of a natural disaster. According to Susan, they have simulated disasters such as fires and earthquakes. We did find it, and it turned out to be a part of the fire department’s fire house, but one of the signs told us that all instructions would be in Japanese, so we decided not to go in. On our way out we found a place that looked like it was an art gallery. I believe it was called Tokyo Media Center, or something similar. We went in and looked through the lobby which was filled with lots of anime-related pictures. Eventually Alana asked the receptionist if we could go up and look through the gallery, and she laughed and told us it was a school. We chuckled a bit as we left, saying that they should take it as a compliment that we thought it was a gallery.

I don’t recall what happened for the rest of that night, but perhaps I will later.

Our second day in Tokyo, we met Susan at the Jimbocho station near our hotel since Lindsay had to work that morning. We wandered around looking for a good place to have breakfast, but didn’t have much luck so we decided to go to Shinjuku instead to look for a breakfast place there. We found a place called “Bagle and Bagle” which worked out quite well. They had lots of different bagles and cream cheeses, for example I had a green-tea and white chocolate bagle with almond cream cheese.

After breakfast we went to Shibuya in search of an arcade and the “Shibuya 109″ which is a famous shopping center. We did not have much luck finding the 109 because Susan got turned around and we ended up going the wrong direction, but we did pass an arcade while we were looking. Just when we had spotted the 109, we got a call from Alana that she had just arrived in Tokyo. Alana works in Japan as an Alternative Language Teacher (ALT) in the southern part of Japan and had to take the Shinkansen into Tokyo. So we took the subway back to Shinjuku to meet up with Alana.

Upon meeting up with Alana, we returned to Shibuya and went to the arcade we had found in order to kill some time until we were to meet up with Lindsay. In the arcade Lindsay and I discovered the Taiko Drum game, and the Table Flip game. The Taiko drum game is a rythm game (think Guitar Hero) based around playing a Taiko drum which is a traditional big drum in Japanese culture. The Table Flip game is amazing, but perhaps a bit hard to describe. It consists of a table sitting in front of a screen. The goal of the game is to slam the table, and eventually throw it by flipping it – attempting to cause as much damage as possible.

We left Shibuya a bit late because we lost track of time playing the table flip game, but Lindsay understood once we explained what we were doing. Lindsay took us somewhere – I don’t remember the name of the area – and we did some shopping. Jade bought some socks (three pairs for $10), and a finally found a hat that fit her. After the shopping Lindsay took us to what I will call a pub where all items (drinks and food) were 399 yen. Also for every item you order you get a Bingo letter/number to go with the Bingo pad you received when you walked in. Thus, the more things you order, the more likely you are to win. A winning Bingo ticket is worth 5000 yen, so it’s a pretty good incentive to keep ordering. We all had a blast, and so did the table next to us that was full of drunk Japanese guys practicing their English towards us. We decided that most of their English was learned from 1980′s movies when they used phrases like “What’s happening pussycat?”. After that, we parted ways for the evening and Jade and I went home and called it a night.