Japan 2012 - Day 10 - Odaiba

Our final full day began with breakfast at a local 24h fast food place, and by fast food I mean I had a Katsu Curry with rice, ordered via vending machine and served up within 3 minutes or so. It was pretty good, although their 'curry' is pretty different from ours, being more on the sweet side than having any sort of spice.

The train journey to Odaiba is a long one, requiring Shiinamachi -> Ikebukuro -> Something -> Odaiba (around 1hr total), the area itself is a man-made island, essentially created for the sole purpose of being awesome - kind of made as a theme park island, or it certainly has that kind of vibe about it.
We arrived to loud live music playing, and followed our ears to a stage, where some guy was singing - probably a nobody (since he was advertising his first single / Mini album) but I took some pictures anyway just to make sure.

The Fuji TV building has some crazy architecture, looking like something one would make in Minecraft (and something that I may just have to attempt to try and make in minecraft), the inside is full of themed goods, props, trivia, advertisments and more of a ton of the shows which air on the channel; Being from England, most of the stuff showcased was completely lost on me, although I did spot some cool merch/stuff from a few things I did recognize from the internet (a Perfume signature, and lots of anime merch - turns out AnoHana, C, Tatami Galaxy and a few other shows I have seen were aired on Fuji. There was also a poster for the live action series of Mirai nikki, the girl doesnt look anywhere near psychotic enough though).
Got some taiyaki from a shop downstairs and then continued searching the area, ran into a small Statue of Liberty (because Japan is basically America anyway... or something).

Across the nearby bridge we were lead to another area, again resembling some sort of theme park, lots of smaller stands here selling all sorts of merch for overpriced amounts, and a bag check area past a ticket sales booth.... Now i'm not actually sure what the ticket booth was selling for 1500yen but we walked past the gate area and didnt get stopped, and everyone else was wearing neck passes... I dunno. whatever, past the ticket area was a massive events stage (nobody on it though sadly) and more Japanese related stands selling things which reference things ive never heard of. There was also a massive One Piece area, which my brother was very fond of, giant statues of all of the major characters, themed food shops, a bouncy castle boat thing, some mermaid with massive tits.. etc etc. We spent a while just looking around the area, one of the highlights for sure which I didn't get a picture of was a robotic dude which did a wave like dance when you pushed a button, watching people press the button then gather around in front and behind it to participate in the circle wavy dance was awesome.
Oh yeah, giant turd-gundam too.

Next up, we passed by a park like area holding a 'food world cup', featuring food from 12 different countries, yet mostly cooked by Japanese people, with menus in Japanese, and with Japanese rice.
The England one was the best, with such popular British dishes such as 'Roast beef with rice' and English Curry (which looked strangely similar to the beef curry I had for breakfast).

Around the corner from here, in front of yet another mall, was the famous Gundam (sadly, does not actually fly and shoot things), the level of detail on this thing was pretty impressive, especially the jet engines on its back (un-photographed), behind it obviously is another Gundam Cafe.

We had a little walk around the mall, there wasnt a whole lot of interest inside but on the top floor there was a Maidreamin cafe, now this isnt the first one ive come across, but the rest are usually on their own entire floors in 8 floor buildings, so they arent really the sort of thing you get to see inside of, this one on the other hand is just a 'small' cafe inside a shopping mall, with only a few fences and props hiding the girls. Took a sneaky photo or two, there are a LOT of girls here, holy shit. Like there was only about 10 tables and about 10 girls all dressed up, I dont know the procedure but I didnt think each table got their own girl. The maid outfit they wear is incredibly cute, even down to small details like socks and their bag, one of the girls had an eyepatch though, im not entirely sure if thats a fetish thing or she has actually had some sort of eye surgery *shrug*.

Also in the mall was an arcade... and it was surprisingly up to date, moreso than the ones in akihabara infact, with an Operation ghost cab (the sequel to my personal old favorite lightgun game, Ghost Squad) and, more importantly.... Gunslinger Stratos.
Holy fuck this game.
This fucking game.
I believe I have talked about it before with some of you, but it is an online/local 4v4 team shooting game, played like Gunz Online or I guess a deathmatch version of Monday Night Combat (it is a 3rd person shooter deathmatch game), the main difference however is that the game is played with 2 lightguns, both with analogue sticks, a jump button, and magnetic strips on the guns for 'switching' weapons.
So for example, the game starts, you strafe left with Left analogue stick on your left lightgun, you empty your dual pistol clips, and then you put your right lightgun on top of your left one, the gun locks ontop of the other and your ingame weapon is now a rifle, you take your right gun and put it beside your left, and the guns lock and ingame becomes a shotgun... All this done whilst jumping around, airdodging, and shooting enemies.
You select characters at the start, and each chara has different weapons too, I played twice and got a girl with an uzi/flamethrower,shotgun,RPG and then again and picked a dude with dual pistols,assault rifle,shotgun. Other charas get giant lazers, sniper rifles, dual shotguns, swords, shields, grappling moves... all sorts. All in all, this was probably the most badass arcade machine ive ever played (though not the most fun one.....)

We exited the mall and kept walking along the pathway towards a giant ferris wheel we could see in the background. This lead us to another mall (because Japan.), this one was called Pallette town and featured a car showroom thing, a hello kitty world, another arcade, and a bunch of petshops - this is the only mall ive seen where you're allowed to bring pets in, and it shows, as designer pets were everywhere, with their owners shopping amongst the many petshops here - dog pushchairs and dog clothing was a normal sight by the end of the hour.
The arcade had a fully encaged machine with a table tennis style table thing, we gave it a try, the 'manic mode' proved to be exactly that, it starts up giving you a little warm up, shooting table tennis balls out which you have to return - aiming for targets for points, after 30 seconds the timer refills and the machine goes all out on, throwing out as many balls as it can for 2 minutes. It was so much fun, ive never played table tennis before because I suck at controlling my strength, but hitting a moving target? So awesome, and gets awarded with the most fun game i've played in an arcade.

We passed by 'Zepp tokyo' on the way to the station, a venue of some sorts, turns out 'vamps' is playing today, and as such there were a fuckload of goths around (turns out Vamps is a heavy metal japanese duo).

Here are some more random pictures which didnt fit in anywhere else...

Bookshop

Headed back to Ikebukuro to find dinner, where after a few laps of the place, we settled on a Yakitori place, a costly meal, but a good one for our farewell dinner. They brought over a burning grill and lots of meat (including various cuts of beef, pork, chicken, squid, some veg), and we grilled it and it was fucking tasty.

The parents headed home and me and Gavin (brother) went for one last trip to the arcade, to play our hearts out before we head home - Reflec beat, jubeat, Drummania GX3 (my god so many fucking buttons - 3 hi-hats, 4 pads, 2 pedals), I really sucked at Drummania, then again im only used to the old version, not this new extreme version with double the buttons.
Back home at around 11:30pm, and now typing this before I start to pack, and we have a lot of pack...

Flying back tomorrow in the morning, and the long flight means I'll be back Monday evening UK time. Hopefully then I can start to upload some of my photos and will go back and clean up the blog posts to make sure everything is readable (because I'm sure there are a ton of spelling/word errors)
Thanks for reading, at least this blog will always be here for my holiday posts eh? :D

Japan 2012 - Day 9 - Return to the capital, Shibuya and Shinjuku

The first portion of our day was spent heading to Kyoto shinkansen to head back to Tokyo, A quick pop down into the B1 floor of the Isetan mall underneath the station to pick up some lunch (sushi) and then a 2.5hr journey by bullet train.

Nothing particularly eventful whilst in transit, and then from Kyoto, journey back to Ikebukuro -> Shiinamachi and checked back into our hotel (which, for reference is 'Family Inn Saiko' - good sized rooms, good air-con, clean, friendly english speaking staff, very good in general but a little far from everything (10m walk to station, 10m walk to station platform from Ikebukuro). We had a little rest before heading back out, then headed via train to Shibuya.

Shibuya is home to the infamous batshit insane crossing that is always shown when people talk about overpopulation, a manic crossroad which is also surrounded by a station, and a few grottos - making for a serious amount of people, waiting for the lights to turn green felt very similar to participating in a mosh pit, the green light replacing a guitar solo (or that guy from disturbed or something i guess, if you're into that sort of thing). Shibuya is serious city stuff, highrise buildings everywhere and shops everywhere. We walked past the Shibuya club sega but decided to give it a miss as we had already been to the 6 floor one in Akihabara the other week.

Moshpit about to happen

Ohjesus

We ran across a 'gari gari festival' in the middle of the city, Gari Gari is the brand of ice lollys most famous in Japan, a massive happyfacesquarejaw guy being the mascot, you usually only see Soda/Pear flavours in convinience shops, but this hut had around 6 flavours to try - Melon obviously had to be eaten.
Only problem is that it was still crappy weather from the other day, and the freezer keeping the ice lollys was obviously designed for what can only be described as 'more extreme' conditions. Resulting in...

Worst idea. My tongue felt weird for 2 days.

We went into a few various shops around the area, the disney shop was particularly impressive - the level of decoration on par with disney land itself. We also went into tower records (a large music shop), I still maintain that the prices for music there is way too expensive, their methods of advertising the music however is awesome - big fans of little screens, handwritten cards next to albums, drawings of anime characters next to 'we recommend' tags, and lots and lots of listening stations.
They seem to be pretty big fans of western music, with a big display for the new Offspring album which just came out apparently (and is pretty good from what i heard of it). They have a fair section for K-pop and crazier stuff like J-reggae as well though

Music is very well advertised inside shops

We went into an arcade or 2 during the day, registered my card on PopN 20 and finally got to try Reflec Beat Limelight (this game), played on a beautiful gigantic vertical touchscreen - the game is a music game with a visual style similar to Pong (on crack), you play by touching the bottom line or top left/right circles to hit back the balls. The game can be played against a friend on another machine, or can be played against AI or Online (if you're using E-Amuse, like I now am). One of the cooler features is that it also cross-levels with IIDX Lincle (what IIDX are we on now? 19? I dont even fucking know anymore), playing/leveling up in Reflec Beat will also get you new songs in IIDX and vice versa.
The game itself is SO much fun, easy enough to start playing, (im currently at around a level 6, out of I think 12 or so) . On my first play when i was trying to place my skill level - I did my usual procedure - start on a hard easy song, then medium medium song, then hard song and see what happens. Hard mode fucking raped me, the bottom line wasnt tooooo bad, but the higher circles (turns out there are 3 of them on hard mode) was just too much to keep track of, I tried using my brother and father to help out with the higher notes, and still failed.

Dinner was in a ramen shop, and ordered by vending machine, because we're lazy like that. I had a Pork ramen, with fried chicken balls and onigiri.. Was yummy.

Headed to Shinjuku next, which seems to be the nightlife capital of Tokyo, filled with maid cafes, karaoke, hostess bars (and other dodgy stuff), and a fuckton of pachinko arcades (and a few normal arcades too). The amount of restaurants and bars here was insane. not a whole lot else to say about Shinjuku, have some pictures instead.

Nightlife in Shinjuku

Alley of food

Petshop, approved by Paris Hilton according to picture and signature on the wall

Japan 2012 - Day 8 - Inari Shrine, Thunderstorms and Shopping

Woke up just in time to see the rain begin to pour, the next few days here are predicted for thunderstorms (infact, they have been predicted for the past week, but I guess they were moved back a week), we waited for the rain to die down a little and then headed out in search of some brunch. A travel around 1 of the 3 malls near Kyoto station lead us to an okonomiyaki restaurant, Okonomiyaki is a plate fried mix of egg, cabbage and other mysteries, the place we were at had a hotplate embedded into the table and after ordering, the waitress comes and cooks your meal from scratch in front of you on the table. Starting with mixing up the cabbage, egg and meats, and then frying it on the table, flipping it, and then adding fish flakes and finally some mayonaise and special sauce (process taking about 20m), once done, you eat it fresh off the hotplate using a spatula and chopsticks. It was pretty damn good, we had a pork and prawn one, a squid and pork one and a potato and cheese one, all very nice. Im glad we got to experience this famous Japanese dish before leaving Kyoto.

Mid cooking, before flip

Okonomiyaki! Ready to eat!

After our brunch, we headed off to Inari, to see the famous Inari shrine, you may also know this as 'that shrine with a thousand red gates', it starts off as a pretty normal shrine, then goes uphill via stairs and leads to smaller temples, then smaller temples, then the uphill path with the many many red gates. The gated pathway goes up the mountain and curves around, I think the map said a few kilometres of it. We were progressing upward when the rain hit, and it really hit. Possibly the loudest thunder I've ever heard made us all jump and decide to call it quits, we were holding umbrellas and didn't really fancy being electrocuted on the side of a mountain (saying that, dying on a shrine path is probably one of the ways to ensure your progression to a favourable afterlife).

We were kind of lost after this, we had originally planned to head to another shrine or the Nara region but the heavy rain had kinda shattered that plan. We decided to head back to the station and just shop around, we head to Avanti, another shopping mall intended mostly for women, mum had a browse around for clothes, we found a few cooler shops on the top floor, a shop selling trading cards (so many fucking cards. forgot to take a photo) - the back room of the card shop had a battle area, which was filled with trap card activating kids/teens. Also on the top floor was an anime shop, where I ended up buying a Panty and Stocking Belt (pic already uploaded on twitter) - mostly because where the hell else in the world am i going to find an anime belt, let alone one of a series that is relatively unheard of, Helps that it was at a decent price as well (cheaper than most plain belts). Also, Ika musume pasta set (amongst over anime food items)

Down to B1 for the usual food browsing, bought some crepes, chocolate ice cream with banana and a strawberry/banana one, yum.

Travelled back to Yodobashi next (the city block sized department store), we only really got to explore it for a little while last time because it was closing, but we spent a full hour or 2 in there this time (and still didnt cover everything).
Highlights include bladeless,quiet fans (the crazy circle ones as seen in KoreZombie), the gundam toy section (and figurine collection in general, which was huge), the fridges (massive, and so advanced - a few had a camera on the front, felt very HAL), video game section (was demoing the new 3DS LL,. verrryy very nice, if they have found a way to bypass region locking I may pick one up - assuming the console gets some good games), also the Puzzles section - after browsing anime puzzles for ages, ended up buying a Ghibli Spirited away 1000 piece puzzle (around £20) - I have a pretty big space on my wall at home and figure i'll get a frame and stick it there, expect another blog post when/if I finish it and get it up.

Mind blowing fanless fans

Dinner was another conveyer belt sushi restaurant, this one was better than the last though, with way more variety and chefs, the belt being constantly refilled with fresh sushi of types I had never even seen before. For example they had one with grilled sweetcorn on the top - so delicious. My brother and I had around 25 plates between us, thankfully all plates were around 130yen each (or £1 per plate, a pretty far cry from London where yo-sushi will charge you between £2.50-£5 per plate)

Would have cost a fortune in England, yet this was only around £12 per head

Finally, a trip to an arcade we discovered earlier - Me being keen to get the most out of my new E-amuse card, played some more Sound booth and IIDX, my brother went to challenge people in persona 4 (and subsequently get raped), he apparently beat someone at SSF4 though. Bought some of our favorite drink on the way home - the awesomely named Suika Cider 500 (reminds me of super cider squeezy 6000), its a fizzy watermelon drink (and isn't actually alcoholic, despite its name)

Steel chronicle, a mix between PSO / Monster Hunter and Gundam

Suica Cider 500! Drink of choice in Kyoto

That concludes our visit of Kyoto, tomorrow we are checking out of here and returning to Shiinamachi in Tokyo