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

Japan 2012 - Day 7 - Temples, arcades and Yodobashi

Straight off to the mall for breakfast/lunch, got there just before they were all opening and got to experience the Japanese staff pep talk, lots of shouting and manly osu! noises were made, and then we got to try using a vending machine to order our food.

Basically, you put your money in, select your food (ticket comes out) and then when you're done ordering they welcome you in and they have already prepared a table for you whilst you was ordering. Sit down, food arrives, and is amazing.. We were in a ramen shop, with shredded beef and a marinated boiled egg or something, you also crack a raw egg over the top of it, and it semi-cooks whilst you're eating, its nicer than it sounds.

Next up, a bus to the golden temple, which took what felt like an eternity. It was stupidly hot again today, around 38 degrees id imagine, with hardly an breeze. Had some shaved ice as soon as we entered the temple area, strawberry milk ice with some mochi, very nice and refreshing after trudging around in the heat.
The temple itself was pretty nice, with lots of greenery to match the old buildings, not a whole lot I can say other than throw some pictures up.

We planned to visit another temple or 2 afterwards, but it was just way too hot for that, so we decided to head to around Nishiki market to have a little shop around and cool off in the air-con areas. Ended up going off in a seperate direction with brother, and found a nice little arcade to spend an hour in. Brother spent most of his time trying to learn how to play the new Persona4 Arena fighting game (which is visually very impressive, and awesome to watch, plays similar to blazblue from what I could make out).
I headed to the top floor where they had a Bemani section, bought an E-amuse card for a few hundred yen (thought it'd be interesting to experience e-amuse, as well as a nice souvineer). I tried the new 'Sound Booth Voltex' which was pretty crazy, not entirely sure how to describe it, I guess...a 6 button music lane game with 2 knobs for tweaking whilst you're playing, its a pretty nutty game to play well with needing to turn the knobs very precisely, the judgement is pretty strict too - on the plus side, it runs very smoothly, looks impressive, and the cabinet is gorgeous, with see-through patterns on the booth lighting up and flashing as you play. Also played some PopN and Jubeat, flopped the former pretty hard.
Wanted to play some IIDX but the machines were all hogged, especially one of the machines which had a girl going crazy on for all the time I was there, found out later that its a pay 1k Yen, play for 1 hour - Kind of a cool deal if you're trying hard songs and know you're going to fail out I guess.

1000yen for an hour, the girls here play videogames better than I can o_o

Left the shopping area and had a quick trip on the bus to another temple, a smaller one, but it was still very scenic and pretty, bordered one the far side by a forest and mountains, and bordered on the other side by the bustling streets of Kyoto. Have some pictures, im sure you dont need me to tell you what walking around a temple involves.

Moving very swiftly on, we travelled back to the station by bus and spent ages looking through all of the 20-30 restaurants available before settling on the busiest, a Katsu restaurant - Katsu is pretty popular in Japan, a sort of meat/fish breading, its fried with fresh breadcrumbs though (unlike most of the shit you'd get in the UK). I ordered pork fillet with prawns, the meal itself also comes with shredded cabbage, rice, and miso soup (all of which are free refills). The meal was delicious, one of the best we've had here, the katsu obviously being the star of the meal, with a very crisp outer coating, and tender meat inside - the cabbage constantly providing a bittersweet freshness to enhance the flavour of the meat.

Lastly, we had a look in the massive electronics store near the station called yodobashi, a 8 floor beast (inc B1) which is quite literally the size of a city block (the bottom floor is slightly smaller - allowing for other shops around the block, but the higher floors... fucking hell you get sore feet just walking around the place).
For an example of how big the place is, we were on the 2nd floor and mum sent me in search of the brother, pointing in the direction he went off in, it took me 10 minutes of searching (on 1 floor) before giving up.
The music/dvd section itself is easily larger than most HMV's in the UK and obviously doesnt include the phones/cameras/music/tvs/hifis/instruments/games/computers/washingmachines/etcetc that this ultrastore has.
I still find it weird that they have a section for anime music, I also learned that J-pop in Japan is still called J-pop, odd that.
Also, the music area had its own AKB48 section, which was about as big as other entire genres (although the aisle included music/concerts/tvshows etc, not just music)

This entire wall was anime music

Terrifying. Truly terrifying.

Gacha's anyone?

One other thing I found interesting about Japan is the crazy prices on DVD/Music, an audio single for example is averaged at 2000yen, or £18, and albums at 3000-3500 yen, or £27-32. Anime DVD's (for 1 volume, or 3-5 episodes) range between 4000yen to 8000yen, or £35-70, and dont even look at the K-on blu-ray box set, holy shit. I think that thing was like £200 or something.
Speaking of the K-on dvd's, their covers are so good. I was pretty tempted to buy the film until I realised I didn't feel like spending £70.

unblogged: lots of stuff ive already experienced and blogged about, we visited quite a few stores, browsed around an anime figure shop, food basement, etc etc.

Also, Downtown DX is on TV and verymuch distracting me from blogging, some mentalist is doing mind manipulation and fork bending with Matsumoto and Hamada

Japan 2012 - Day 6 - Osaka, Namba

No breakfast today! D: I know right, what the hell am I going to show you pictures of then?

We headed to the shinkansen in the morning to get a train to Osaka, which didnt really seem a whole lot different to the rest of Japan if im honest, kind of disappointing but oh well.

We went into a department store nearby to Osaka station, a look at the floor guide showed 1) That it had 27 floors, 2) that it had a Pokemon center on the 13th floor. Obviously, that was our first destination.
It was pretty small, yet filled with all sorts of toys, decorations, kitchen ware, toiletries, card stuff, keyrings, jewelery... everything imaginable. There were even some pokemon arcade machines (which i think involve the card game somehow). Brother bought some keyring things and a plushie snivy, I decided against buying anything.
Nearby also was a cooking class kitchen sort of thing, sort of interesting to see as im not aware of anything similar in the UK (not one that takes place in the middle of a department store anyway)

Back wall was completely filled with plushies

Casual cookery class next to clothes shop and pokemon center

We stopped in a clothing shop and bought some summer clothes, I personally didnt pack anywhere near enough shorts and vests as when we checked the weather forecast in the UK it had predicted thunderstorms (and we've had 35~ C weather every damn day). They had some sort of promotion thing going on for the metal gear solid anniversary, so I bought 2 MGS inspired shirts, one with the various outer heaven company logos (foxhound, raven sword, mantis, etc) and one with the quote 'neither friend nor foe' and a exoskeleton style pattern on the back. Bought a dark knight shirt as well, because it looked cool. Picture here

Lunch was at a buffet restaurant, the price was pretty reasonable for Japan, with inclusive drinks for 1900 yen, around £16. They provided some interesting plates ive never seen before, similar to a cupcake tray - which is clever because at a buffet, all you really want to do is have a little of everything anyway.
They had a ton of foods, too many to really name, highlight was probably fresh sliced tuna and the crab legs.

mmmm... crab legs..

Dessert - including green tea cake, mochi, almond jelly...

Afterwards, a trip to the Umeda sky building, via way-too-damn-hot street and too-long-too-many-stairs underpass. On the basement level was what we came for, a pseudo recreation of 20th century Osaka in festival season, with themed restaraunts and workers, it was all pretty cool to see, but a little smaller than we would have hoped for the amount we had to walk to get there.Outside there was some people filming a new haunted house which had just opened, it looked creepy. In retrospect we should have visited it, but at the same time, even looking at the picture advert on their website is creepy as fuck.

Next up, Namba, a district just outside of Osaka, famed for its strip of food shops.

We stopped at a mcDonalds to get our bearings and have a cool down (any excuse to have a sit down in air-con at this temperature), tried their new 'Tropical Soda' McFlurry, it was pretty bad, bright blue and with extremely sour powder candies (a lot of them, way too many of them)
The rest of the area was cool, although not a whole lot I can describe, just lots and lots and lots of food shops and neon lights, the streets (similar to most of japan) just seemed to go on forever and split like a mesh.

Turns out this building was a casino. Including about 4 floors of Pachinko

So bad. Oh god why.

Namba is also apparently filled with its fair share of Pachinko parlours, like a 2 floor one, and then one opposite it, and then 3 more less than 20 meters away. I dont understand how so many Japanese people can spend their money and time on flinging metal balls around for a chance at winning... more metal balls, apparently you cant even trade the balls in for money (legally anyway). I guess its something you need to be japanese to understand. Speaking of being japanese to understand....<insert picture of idol picture shop> saw this shop selling only pictures of bands/singers/idols, fine I guess, but my god they were expensive, AKB48 is great and all, but a small picture of 1 of 64 of the girls for >£50? No thanks.

Unrelated, ice cream lolly vending machine is fucking awesome in a hot country. I bought a lychee one. It was good.

Also unrelated (lots of these today), tried a can of Kirin lemon, expected my life to become all kira-kira (sparkly) like it says in the perfume adverts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9KxMzFkpS0, sad reality is that its a lemonade with 6% alcohol and ends up having a pretty bitter aftertaste :/

Dinner today was at a restaurant called 'Tamago to watashi' (which i translate into English as 'Egg and Me', it is - arguably, more catchy in Japanese. The food is all centered on the Japanese classic 'omu-rice', which is rice enveloped in an omlette, served with... stuff. I got the Hamburger omu-rice which came with a sort of gravy and tomato rice, it was pretty good although a little on the small side.

And thats it for today, seems kind of uneventful compared to the other days, but still pretty tiring.