Tokyo Trip: The Return

Day 4, Part 2
(Austin)

    So, after a train ride of more than an hour and 2 transfers later we arrived at the Tokyo airport. While I really enjoyed Tokyo I was ready to go back to the dorm and relax. We were really worried about taking our stuff on the plane, specifically our posters. The posters were quite tall when rolled up, so they stuck out of the top of our backpacks by a good 6 inches, thus making our backpacks quite big. We considered folding them and other stuff but we were afraid it would mess them up. Luckily, Japan's flight rules are quite lax and they didn't mind the slightly bigger carry-on bags.

    Finally on the plane we took off and headed towards Osaka. We didn't land until later in the evening, so we were racing to get on the last train leaving KIX (Kansai International Airport). KIX is roughly 1.5 hours from our dorm so we were racing against time. The entire time I was fighting the urge to sleep; I was sooo tired.

    To cut a boring story short: We made it to Makino station which is the closest station to the dorm and we walked for 20ish minutes to the dorm. We arrive around 1:30AM, immediately took showers and then went straight to bed. It's been a while since I have felt that exhausted.

    As a note: We arrive in Osaka at KIX on December 31st, but we didn't get back to the dorm until it was already January 1st. Happy New Years :D

No pictures this time, sorry!

Thus the Tokyo trip finished.

Tokyo Trip: Akihabara

Day4, Part 1.

(Austin)

    So the fourth day, our last day, finally came. On this day we planned to do an all day shopping spree in Akihabara. Akihabara is the largest shopping area in the world for anime and manga goods. They also have a ton of arcades and other niche anime related things like maid-cafes. Sadly, I wasn't on my photo-taking-A-game, so I only have a few photos.

    In Akihabara the building were completely covered in all kinds of advertisements. There were advertisements for games, new anime that would be airing, manga sales, pictures of idol groups, band concert advertisements... so much. It was really cool to see all of it. I think anyone who likes anime and manga has dreamed of coming to Akihabara atleast once because of how much of a mecca it is for anime goods. I've seen the place so many times in movies and anime, so it was kinda surreal to finally be in the town myself.

    There are a lot of shops that specialize in selling anime figures. An anime figure is a small statue-like plastic figurine that depicts a character from an anime or manga. There also are figures for some very popular games. Often anime figures depict women due to the fact that a large percentage of the audience of anime that would actually buy figures are males. This however does not mean that there aren't any male figures. Popular games like Metal Gear Solid and movies like Ironman often have figures made of them in stunning detail.

Picture of Hatsune Miku dressed in Kimono, a traditional Japanese dress.

Captain Levi from the incredibly popular anime: Attack on Titan

    We basically window shopping for a few hours, buying a few badges here and there. I did buy a small figure in one shop though. It was super cheap compared to many of the other places I had gone. After wandering around for a while we saw a sign advertisement that had the name of our favorite poster shop on it. The poster shop that we would often go to in Nipponbashi in Osaka was only a branch shop. The actual shop was apparently here in Tokyo, right here in Akihabara! Our wallets knew what was coming as we rode the elevator to the top of the building and stepped out..

   The poster shop was probably twice as big as the one in Osaka in terms of the stock they had. There was so many nice posters and beautiful art. In the back of the shop hung the originals for all of the posts. They put on display the original, hand-painted art pieces that we created and used to make the posters in the front of the store. While the posters were 3000¥ (roughly $30) the original pieces were anywhere from 100,000¥ ($892) to 250,000¥ ($2232). Sooo expensive. After buying a few posters we left the shop satisfied but with much lighter wallets.

   As the day was starting to draw to a close we decided to grab a bento from the local convenience store: Family Mart. We bought our food and ate just outside the store. It was fun to eat and just watch all the different people walk by. Anime, manga, and consequently Akihabara is not just for young people; while people watching you'll notice people from roughly 8 years of age all the way up to 70-80. Sure, most people are children / young-adult age, but the other folks weren't rare either. Unlike cartoons in the US which are very clearly geared towards children, anime and manga have lots of different genres, all geared towards different tasted and ages. There isn't a stigma here for watching or reading them as there might be in the US if an adult stated that they enjoyed watching cartoons or actively debated the latest anime episode as if it were the latest episode of Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones.

   With our bellies full and hearts satisfied, we made our way towards to Tokyo airport.

The full collection of buttons that I bought in Tokyo

Tokyo Trip: Tokyo Sky Tree

Day 3, Part 2.

(Austin)

    So, after we left Shibuya we wandered around and found some where to eat. I don't exactly remember the specific details but I do remember trying to go to a Ramen shop and they were closed at the time and when we walked in they gave us blank stares and we responded with more blank stares. One of the workers finally spoke and basically said "no open".  Embarrassment ensued and we quickly made our way away from the place. That being said, I have no idea what we actually had for dinner, I shouldn't have waited 3 months to write this. Whoops.

    Anyways, we ate dinner and while making our way back to the station we took an odd path and ended up on... "Romance Street". Suffice to say, it was filled with Love Hotels, cheap places that you and your significant other (or random other) could find a place for a nice...night. That being said, it wasn't seedy like you might expect it to be. It was actually a pretty interesting few minutes walking down the street.

    We arrived at the station and took the 40ish minute train ride to Tokyo Skytree. Tokyo Skytree is the tallest building in all of Tokyo, taller than Tokyo Tower. Tokyo Skytree reaches a max height of 634m or 2080ft. Of course, this it the very highest point. The viewing deck is significantly below the height but you still get an amazing view... which we have almost no pictures of. My phone was dying / dead, so elijah took the other pictures, and as I mentioned earlier his phone broke so we lost those pictures. You'll have to settle for the blurry one, sorry!

    After Skytree we headed back to the capsules to sleep again. I took some pictures of the hotel's mascot that was on the posters around the hotel. We got back and collapsed. 

My capsule above to the left and Elijah's below to the right.

Tokyo Trip: Exploring Tokyo

Day 3, Part 1

(Austin)

    Considering the craziness of the previous day, we decided to adventure around Tokyo with no real schedule in mind. We wanted to go see a few of the famous towns in Tokyo while we were here, so we decided to do that this day. The first place we decided to go was Ikebukuro. Ikebukuro is a very famous entertainment district in Tokyo. It is also the setting of a few Japanese TV shows and anime. A very famous anime named Durarara is set in Ikebukuro. Of course, before we headed there we ate breakfast at Yoshinoya again.

    After breakfast we grabbed a local train and headed towards Ikebukuro. The train ride was maybe about 10 minutes. Coming out of the station we found a map. I have watched Durarara so I wanted to try and find some of the places and landmarks shown in the show while we were in Ikebukuro. We found the parks on the map and headed towards them as I was sure I would recognize something.

    We found some local parks that I had seen before and we also took pictures of other statues. Sadly, the pictures that we took with Elijah and I in front of some of the statues were lost because Elijah's phone broke :/  Before leaving Ikebukuro we went to the local Animate store. On the very top floor they had an entire display "museum" setup for the anime/manga called Shingeki no Kyoji (Attack on Titan). Really cool.

   

     On our way back to the station we grabbed food at a fast-food restaurant called Auntie Anne's. This is actually a restaurant that exists in America as well. The specialize in pretzel based food; It was really good. We ate and went back to the station. From there we headed to Shibuya. 

    Shibuya is world famous its "Shibuya Crossing", the largest and most busy pedestrian crossing in the world. During peak times upwards of 2500 people might cross during a single light change.

It's nuts.

    After we crossed we walked around and found a game arcade. If you didn't know it already Japan is pretty famous for its game arcades. Tokyo is of course no exception to this and Shibuya had quite a few. After playing games for a while we walked down the street and found the Disney store. The outside of this build is crazy to say the least. From the outside it looks like a giant metal fortress. The inside was stuffed with Disney related stuff from mugs to stuffed dolls. I bought a few buttons and Elijah bought a mug. 

It was late afternoon so we decided to head towards or final destination... which is in part 2!

Park in Ikebukuro. Featured in anime: Durarara

Ikebukuro is the tall building on the right.

These are right in front of the Ikebukuro station entrance.

Attack on Titan museum in Ikebukuro Animate

Disney store in Shibuya

Tokyo Trip: Comiket

Day 2

(Austin)

    After going to sleep quite early the previous night we awoke early with lots of energy (rare for me), ready to go. Today we were going to Comiket!

    We left the capsule hotel and walked to a near by Yoshinoya. Yoshinoya is a restaurant that specializes in Gyudon. Gyudon (Gi-yew-don) quite literally means "beef bowl". Gyudon is a bowl of white rice topped with beef and cooked onions. It also is usually flavored with a bit of soy sauce or other sauces depending on the restaurant.

A picture of Gyudon from Yoshinoya

    However we didn't get Gyudon. Instead we had Butadon (boo-ta-don). Butadon means "pig bowl" and quite similar to Gyuodon, but it uses pork instead. It also has stronger tasting sauces to help bring out the flavor of the meat at the expensive of making the rice less sticky (harder to pick up with chopsticks). However, it is extremely delicious.

    After our "breakfast" we went to a convenience store, bought bento (premade lunch) for later, and headed towards the train station. The train tracks in Tokyo are packed together tightly and a station can service many different lines at the same time. The station we went to services 6 different lines (12 tracks). We took the train to another station where we switched to a monorail. The monorail traveled over Tokyo bay towards Tokyo Big Site, the location that Comiket is held.

    Tokyo Big Site is famous for its rather odd appearance of 4 upside-down pyramids at the entrance.  It also is world renown for the large conventions that it holds, one of the most famous being Comiket.  Comiket is the largest convention for Doujinshi (doe-jin-she) which is fan made content relating to Anime and Manga. When we went they had a total attendance of ~600,000 people. This convention is NOT for people who are bad with crowds. Luckily, Elijah and I have both been to conventions before so we didn't have much of a problem.

    We walked the convention floor for hours looking at random stuff and buying stuff. We also collected a lot of free stuff.  "best part" - Elijah, 2016.  Almost everything we knew was extremely expensive but it was a lot of fun to look at. I bought a few badges and also a special limited time mug. Elijah also bought a small cloth case that he uses for his PS Vita. 

    Around 5 we left because Comiket was closing for the day. We sat down on benches right outside of the Tokyo Big Site building and ate the bentos that we bought earlier that morning. We hadn't eaten lunch so it was really nice to finally be able to eat something. We should've ate them earlier..

    We were exhausted at this point so we headed back to the hotel...

... and promptly fell asleep around 7:30.