The Galavanting Andrew U

off to nagoya~

we (leon) called up rina (a fellow ysdn’er) a couple times on the 9th night because we knew she was staying near nagoya with her aunt and uncle, so our plan was to meet with her at around 2 at the nagoya tv tower. after figuring out how to get there as well as lounging around, we left for the JR station to buy some lunch and eat it on the shinkansen. rainy day 🙁

the first stop was a cool looking building that turned out to be Oasis 21, a small shopping centre. where the best shop was. The Jump Shop. lol… although pretty expensive at the same time, i bought a couple ‘surprise’ one piece collectables. there was like… no HxH stuff anymore but still dbz, dgrayman, naruto, bleach, deathnote, etc… i got a duplicate sanji 🙁 but the rest were different… whee.

in the main area of the small mall, there was a bboy competition, a bunch of groups breakdancing and 3 judges eliminating them one by one. we stayed to watch a couple then kept walking… there was also a pokemon centre, nagoya, a couple doors down from the jump shop. there’s new pokemon!… again

our next destination was an orchid garden. trudging through the rain, and getting our socks soaked in a mischievous puddle, we arrived at the garden which was actually pretty nice, even in the rain. we all took a LOT of pictures, cause it was a great place for nice pictures with the nice flowers 😛 there was a small wedding ceremony being held at the same time, we didn’t see much of that tho, just tried to stay out of the way. rina had a dslr to play with, no fair :@.

after that, we tried to head over to the international design centre cause… we’re designers 😛 after getting a bit sidetracked by the music festival, and random shops, we ended up in a larger random shop, LoFt. It was like… ikea but less furniture, more random items. michelle was having a blast in there. and i have yet to find a new bag that is a decent price and that i like 🙁

LoFt was in the same building as the idc so it was okay, too bad most of it was closed or needed card access. the one place that was open was the gallery, exhibiting several chair designs. the coolest thing about that place was the mechanical rotation of pieces within a box. the same mechanism is used for cars all around japan, press a couple buttons and your ‘block’ is rotated into the right space and then u park it and it can be rotated back up into the tower, preeeetty cool.

then we were off on a journey to find some shabu shabu for dinner. mm. shabu shabu is like…. hotpot, but i guess less random. the food was pretty good, lots of veggies, not enough meat for me… but also noodles + rice cake, and dessert. we were trying to figure out the prices and if the food would actually satisfy all of us, with not much success. rina ended up calling her aunt and she and the waitress talked on the phone, they ordered for us! hahah, that was a pretty funny experience… lol. the waitress was nice about it though 😛 the dinner ended up being pretty pricey… reflects the atmosphere i guess T_T… but somehow, rina’s uncle ended up paying for it! crazy, he’s too nice. lol

we then headed out, wandering, trying to figure out what to do… but we fail. and decide to head back. first we’d wait for rina’s uncle to pick her up tho. and find out we’re about to miss our last train back to kyoto o.o… it’d leave in about 15 minutes, and we’re still a bit far from nagoya station. yikes. as we waste more time, rina’s uncle has shown up and… we were gonna get a ride to the station instead. but then… we end up agreeing to go back to rina’s place in kamaki (or somethin) and stay with them for the night, since we’re gonna meet up with them the next day in kyoto anyways. haha.

her uncle speaks some english, its pretty funny, he’s cool about it. the whole time in the car rina and her aunt are speaking a mix of english, japanese, and tagalog, which was interesting to hear. she was translating back and forth from her husband to rina and us, hehe.

their place was an apartment, not -too- small, i guess… the kitchen is separated a bit, the dining and living-rooms are melded and their main bedroom is connected to the living room, separated by the paper wall thingys. rina had her own tv and closet and an actual bed o.o! haha, while she stays over there…

and we all slept in rina’s room. michelle shared the bed and we shared the… floor. hahaha.

the JUMP Shop. wheeeeee.

a lily in the orchid garden lake. don’t let it fool you, it’s still raining

catching up! back to hakone! and on to kyoto~

it was a pleasure to see that our suitcases did in fact fit into the lockers at tokyo station. rather perfectly actually… as we woke up, none of us said a word and packed everything up, cleaned up a bit, cleared out of the room. we were all pretty tired T_T… checking out around 840, and having ohsomuchfun trying to find an elevator down into the subway, we finally arrived at tokyo station around 10 something. i had a small incident on the escalator when my suitcase got caught int he middle of steps behind me and i basically lost balance and almost fell, if not for michelle being behind me. my suitcase is heavy T_T. once we headed back to odawara to take a bus all the way down to motohakone-machi where our boat cruise will start. and this time we’ll be on it.

the ship had statues of a pirate captain and a pirate… scout? iuno. wahtever. when we set sail, for a brief minute, we saw mt. fuji in the distance, clouded in the back and then blocked by other mountains closer to us. the breeze on the ship was cold, but refreshing. although the cruise was a bit, uneventful, the ropeway gave us a better view of the mountain, although still heavily clouded. none of the pictures that i took can actually outline the mountain, only visible by eye (or a better camera)…

in the middle, we had a stop at owakudani (i think) it is said to be a volcano/mountain that was formed before christ or somethin. iuno. they’re attraction is the black mountain-boiled eggs that are supposed to add years to your life. 0.o meh. we got a pack of 6, 5$. and just tasted like any other egg, of course. hahaha

back on the ropeway to sounzan, the view of fuji was a lot better (as in, you could see more of it) but it was still rather cloudy. i guess we saw it. o well. and we went back down by cable car and back all the way back to tokyo station to grab our food, luggage, and head off to kyoto.

about 2 and a half hours on the shinkansen, reaching kyoto by 815ish. the first ‘sight’ we see is the kyoto tower, which is actually pretty…. ugly. to me… 😛 we head out of the station to find our hostel, only got a little bit lost, found the place pretty easily actually… there were a couple other groups checking in as well. but our first impression of the place was that it is a lot cleaner than the other place. seemed a lot more professional too.

they have a nice little bar/cafe on the first floor, tv rooms, lounge/computer area, laundry room, kitchen, showers and bathrooms on every floor, and a roof-top terrace. the actual room is a lot bigger, and we have little cubbies underneath the bunk beds for each person (we’re in a shared room with 6 beds) the blankets are softer, and so are the pillows… too soft. hurts my neck soft. the showers are private, and nicer. tokyo had 2 stalls in the same room thing and u had to press the button every so often to get the water flowing again) all in all, the place is a lot nicer, newer, cleaner, 6 floors + rooftop. we’ve seen a bunch of families staying here. and the wireless is -so- much faster, and i can actually stay connected if i wanted to!

we’re rooming with a couple, ross and mary, very nice people. but they are leaving soon, saturday morning. there’s another guy who has been here two weeks and doesnt seem that friendly… owell.

meh. sleep.

the pirate ship cruise

a picture of michelle and leon taking a picture of the sunset on our way to kyoto on the shinkansen, goodbye tokyo!

ngaaaaaah. computer died this morning and my post that was saved as a txt file got erased, gotta write it all over again, pissing me off. anyways. this might be shorter than the others cause i lost a day :@

we woke up a bit earlier than usual cause we had to do one essential thing. laundry. yea… blah. the machines and their dispensers were oooold.ish. 50¥ for detergent, 200¥ for a small washing load, 300¥ for a larger, and 100¥ for dryer for 10 minutes. cost us quite a bit T_T the laundromat is a minute or so walk away so it wasn’t bad at all. we just threw all of our stuff together, old clothes and new! so it took 2 large loads and 1 small but only 2 dryers to do everything. not bad not bad. but we still ended up hanging stuff up to dry around our room. since we have bunk beds, there happened to be a lot of places to do so 😀

our destination: ghibli museum.
the actual place is pretty far off from tokyo and not much is around it… stupid mitaka. it was pretty close to the station we got off at and once you set your eyes on the place, it’s so creative and nice. the gates, the doors, lampposts, kills me that we weren’t allowed to take pictures inside. the windows, the buildings, the stairs, the washrooms, amazing.

the first thing we did at ghibli was watch their original short animation, this season featured goro, somethinsomehtin, about a dog who wanted to follow its master to school, and ended up outside of the gate and lost, going through several scenarios to find its way back home. it was really cute and nice. the theatre had a submarine feeling, intended, as the windows were submarine shaped and even closed like one! great place. i wanna go back.

the next room was about animation and frames and frame-by-frame-motion. but before that, a small white model house held pictures of several movies that ghibli has released such as kiki’s, totoro, howl, spirited, fireflies, poco rosso, etc… and inside two of the windows were 3d dioramas of characters and rooms, very detailed. around the house sat the white forest creatures from spirited away. i WANT one but they didnt sell them at the souvenir shop :@ anyways, the first room was my favorite. using glass and wahtever medium used, the created layers for 3d effects and animation. the robot from some movie stood in the middle of an endless number of birds flying around it. three tubes spun around the robot creating an amazing effect. there was also a larger centerpiece that stood still for a while, holding an immense amount of models in various positions so when it is spun, it creates an animation out of 3d models. the characters jumped, skipped rope, bounced around, it was great.

other rooms included the three bears, artist studio, sketches, inspirations, storyboards, books, a small hallway about a panda animation, a catbus playground room for children to play in, the straw hat cafe, and up on the roof, the robot from some movie :P… the place was sorta placed in the middle of nowhere but it was well worth the trip.

next, we went to roppongi hills. their logo for their area was very interesting and followed throughout. in this area, we visited the mori art museum which included a bmw exhibition ‘transparent speed’ about painted race cars from a long time ago. bleh. sky deck, 55th level, we had great timing. we saw the sun set behind large mountains and we saw the tokyo tower start lighting up. city view, basically…. a city view of tokyo. and finally, the turner prize exhibition. the turner prize is awarded to artists every two years (i think…) although those were interesting and unique, the piece i remember the most was afterwards, a video called placebo. the narrator has fallen in love with a ‘phantom doctor’, a doctor who says that he works here, or there, or performed this operation… and has a wife and child. but as those lies are revealed, he becomes less and less free for her. she’s blinded by love and hasnt realized. but when she does, it’s already too late, she’s in a hospital bed from his double-suicide attempt.

and off we went to find some food. after walking around a bit, we decided on soup stock tokyo. and somehow, leon got the -last- of the rice. michelle and i had yet to order 🙁 lol… crazy.

we wanted to head down a couple streets in roppongi something like gaien higashi dori… but before we even got there, we stopped at the aoyoma bookstore to find several art and design books for sale. lots. i couldn’t really find a book i really wanted myself, and ended up grabbing the kid robot book at the last minute. oops. and we just headed back to the hostel after spending so much.

the robot on top of ghibli museum

tokyo tower from the city view

odaiiiiiba.
so in the morning we decided that we would take the special direct boat to odaiba from asakusa… only to be surprised by the long line-up and the tickets actually being sold out anyways – -; so we went up into the department store complex thingy to find food. we ended up on a floor that was giving out samples and stuff, pretty interesting and tasty 😀

we then proceeded to subway to shimbashi station, to connect to the yorikomone line, that would lead us to odaiba. since there are several train companies in tokyo, they aren’t really that convenient… but whatever i guess… the ticket system is pretty cool though. you find your station, u get a price, it depends on how far it is, within a number of stations, its a certain price as so on. you put your ticket through a slot, walk through, and the ticket comes back to u! and when u get off at your stop, you put the ticket in and you are allowed through. it will close by sensors if you are at the wrong station or screw around with it, it’s amazing.

we first stopped at tokyo big sight which looks cool from the outside but turned out to be a place of large conference areas, and nothing interesting was happening. one weird thing was a ‘comic city’ event that attracted mainly females… we didn’t go into that. headed towards palette town and deckss tokyo beach instead. this area was full of shops, games, food, leon described it as a souped up ontario place. although not in those exact words 😛 it had a lot of candy shops, a sega ‘joypolis’, old old old arcade games, and a game that you shoot your prizes to win them, it was like a shooting gallery, pretty cool. and deckss’ logo was just like the docks – -; in palette town, we went to a huge toyota car show thing. exhibiting the latest cars and futuristic ones, if i gave a damn about cars, it wouldve been cooler 😛 they also had a small place for new designs for robots, and other random items like pens and stuff. there was a lot of kid stores and souvenir shops of food… and a miniature statue of liberty.

we walked around a bit to find somewhere to eat, and we ended up in a quieter building with a couple restaurants. it was an udon and tempura place. ordering food is always so challenging 🙁 lol… there was no english on the menus so we were like… can we show u outside? because several stores have plastic replicas in the front windows… so we all got up and went outside. apparently they were going to close soon, not accepting any more new customers after we got in there. haah. i chose, but there was no beef left in the shop – -;… so had to choose something else. owell. our waiter knew some, random english, and asked if we speaked anything else. when leon said cantonese, he looked blankly and laughed, sorry sorry. hahah… and when he came back to confirm our orders, he had a menu with pictures – -; aiya. next time we walk into a place with no english menu, no picture menu, we’re gonna randomly choose :@!

anyyyways. our last stop for the day was the oedo onsen place that ashley recommended. we go in, and it was pretty busy. throw our shoes into a locker, line up to pay. choose a yukata style, change, and meet up on the main street. under the yukata u wear nothing but your underwear and tie the yukata around you. as we walk into the main street, its like a small market full of souvenir shops, food, drinks, games, it was amazing! when we paid, we were given a tag that had our locker keys attached to it. we use that to buy stuff too, no cash needed, we would just pay when we checked out of the onsen. they even had the system within the vending machines, pretty elaborate.

the first onsen stop was the foot bathing area, where we could all go together. the main path for the foot bathing was walking on several rocks in a path of hot water, it was very relaxing and massaging. since this was outdoors, it was a cooler weather filled with a beautiful atmosphere of wooden buildings, lights, bridges, trees, and rocks. (i put my camera in my bag, in a locker outside. only michelle has pictures…) either way, it was really nice. there were other foot baths, the best one was a… marble pit type thing… u stepped into the bath and there were millions of small balls at the bottom that would get between your toes and you could sink your feet in and massage them, that was niiice.

we then decided to breakoff with michelle and go to the main onsens. i think this was pretty awkward for canadians like us, when japanese are apparently more comfortable with nudity. in the change room you grab a small towel, and even a toothbrush that magically has toothpaste when you wet it, and razors if you wanted them. it’s basically a public bath. at this point, you are given another locker to put your yukata and underwear in as you walk around naked, that was a lot of naked males… i guess you get used to it after a while, they don’t seem to give a damn, y should i, sorta thing. it was also pretty common that people covered themselves with the small towel that they provide, so… yea. haha

the interior of the baths was also very nice, rows of cleaning areas on the side, where you sit and they provide soap, shaving cream, body wash, and hot water. they had one shampoo that was like… menthol-ized, that was pretty refreshing 😛 there were also saunas, and other baths at different temperatures. but they were pretty hot, the japanese seem to be accustomed to hotter climates than us so the sauna almost killed me, i could barely breathe in there, had to leave after a minute or so. there was also an outdoor area where you are cooled with the weather and heated with the water, nice and relaxing but a bit awkward when the only thing you can look at are other people or… up into the sky. awkward for me anyways. they really arent embarrassed at all, it was an interesting experience. i think i got to know leon way too well, hahahaha… nah not really.

anyways. when we came out after an hour or so, (none of us had watched to know the time we went in or out…) but we found michelle already outside. apparently she was rejected because of her small tattoo :S… i felt so bad for her. hope that other places aren’t as strict on her. she walked around a lot, and took a lot of pictures. according to her there were several massages you could pay for, sand areas, ‘relaxation’ areas where you would just go in and sleep. and… we left not too long afterwards. although we didnt really want to. leon went to check the time, i sorta lost track of him but michelle apparently thought he walked back into the changerooms, cause she was blindly, -blindly-, following him into the male changeroom – -;… lol but leon didnt go in there, and michelle went out to hers, so we were a bit forced to leave 🙁 although that turned out to be good because our day pass was about to expire at midnight, we had to run to the station to catch the train!

when we got back to shimbashi station, to transfer back to ueno, the smaller subway lines were already closed, it was around 1220/30. but the JR was still available luckily. but then we had to walk from ueno back to our place which takes about 25-30 minutes. what a waste of the onsen relaxation 😛 haha… although tokyo is a very clean city, there are several homeless people sleeping on the streets at night with cardboard houses and tarps, they disappear during the day and setup camp at night, some look like they have jobs and stuff, but they end up sleeping outside… a bit creepy.

a futuristic car, reminds me of something from chuck

our day-pass that would expire at midnight…

i just realized several of my pictures are blurry up close. but i hate using flash. o well. next stop, mt fuji and hakone area!

our main destination was ginza and area.
leon started using his 2-week JR pass so when he went to exchange it, he was gone for like… a long time 😛 so we just sat there waiting for him to get back. we (michelle and i) are starting our 3-week tmr (today). we bought buns and fast stuff for breakfast and walked to ueno station, about 15-20 minute walk? or longer. iuno. so much exercise for my legs this trip. gonna be covered in calluses by the time we get back.

anyways. our first stop was the imperial palace garden which would lead into the actual palace. however. it was closed – -;… it was still nice though, we tried T_T. still ended up taking a bunch of pictures there. hahaha. this palace holds the pinetree corridor as i mentioned before, too bad we couldnt go see it 🙁 there were like 4 gates and we expected one of them to be open to the public. there was one that was open… but it led to the other gate – -; what a tease.

we then headed randomly towards… hibiya park, eventually. was just a small park for business people to gather at lunch time and stuff. turtles! and the pond had another bird statue.

after that we walked to tokyo tower. walked. lol. wasn’t -too- bad. along the way we stopped by two shrines. the first was a crazy set of stairs that HURT as we went up them the stairs were so steep. up at the top were some small stuff, meh. but the way back down was a lot easier, ahahah…

the second shrine we stopped at was very clean, it had four statues within glass cases. the highlight of this shrine was the hidden dragon water fountain thing that michelle found. it was mostly green and gold-colour 0.o plated and coming out of the wall, it was pretty crazy.

and we finally arrived at tokyo tower. it’s not bad, the actual tower doesnt really compare to the CN tower, but we spent a bunch of time in the gift shops after eating some soba. apparently this time, we had to order from the plastic food ‘models’ outside and pay before we sat down. interesting 0.o… the tower had an aquarium, wax museum, space wax museum 0.o, trick art gallery. we didnt really go see any of them… but… yea 😛 owell

and then we headed back to…. the JR line, sorta. we got to it, then kept walking towards the next one. arrived at a small port area where it was setup like a small stadium. hmmmmmm battery’s dying. brb o.o…

finally back. morning now. well, not anymore. around 11. so we kept walking to the next station along a nice bike path beside a large street and the overhanging JR line until we came across shiodome plaza. they had several outdoor tvs setup and they were promoting a bunch of movies and gokusen… 3! chronicles of narnia: prince caspian, and leon’s favourite, speed racer. hah. i noted chronicles of narnia because i brought the whole set (7 books) to read during this trip and i’m still in the 2nd, which is coming out in theatres. the wayfinding map was placed on a transparent pink glass, so that was pretty cool…

we continued on towards the next JR station and we decided to hit up shibuya! went into bathing ape, which was mad expensive, and went to uni qlo, where the prices were so good! finally bought a bunch of shit for myself. finally. actually, got 2 shirts for rosanna and 1 for eric. i could keep the rest or give some away… i need to get kev somethin. haha… but yea, that was the most i’ve spent at one place… so far. got separated from leon and michelle for about 15 minutes, yikes.

when we were deciding on dinner, we walked through shibuya food show, which turned out to be a lot of food vendors set up in an underground area like a supermarket and it was just full of people and ingredient stuff, interesting. leon didnt wanna eat over the subway again, it was pretty crazy in the sushi place we ate at, the trains passed once in a while and the whole place just shoooook, hahaha. so as leon, the decision-maker, he pointed at some random place in the buildings and thats where we went. haha. it was a bar/drink place thing, the food wasn’t bad though, the atmosphere was….. blah. o well.

as we left, we got a bit separated again since leon could enter from a different entrance since he started the JR pass and shibuya was the opposite side from Ueno so we could have taken either north or south trains, since it goes in a circle on the yamanote line. we went to both and couldn’t find him… and then finally did. hahaha, cell-phones would be nice but… we could just be more careful instead. the trip back was… blah. the weather was already pretty messed up, scattered showers, hot times, cold winds, so in the train, i was sweating. everyone else seemed fine… lol. blahblahblah, got back to our hostel.

for some reason the hostel was holding a ‘party’ that started at 10, and special price till 11, and a free cocktail + snack… with entertainment… and we missed it. hahaha… but we went down anyways, although i was feeling a bit lazy. met up with phil, an vietnamese australian, masaki, a square enix translator! and his friend, akihiko, a producer of some sort 0.o… and we talked for a bit and masaki’s like… 31 and akihiko’s 33, we’re so young~ wakai yo! there was a floating idea and then we ended up going to karaoke. hahaha just the 6 of us.

it was actually a lot of fun, the place wasn’t that far away, walking in the rain, and we learnt a lot about leon’s music tastes.. haha, he’s nothing like the ysdn leon! we sang a lot of english songs, which was a first for me at a karaoke place… masaki and akihiko’s english singing was pretty good, they both still had the japanese accent and pronunciation tho. phil’s aussie accent just carried through too, lol. akihiko’s like…. crazy. good singer too. think, ronnel-type-crazy but at karaoke, i’m not sure who could be crazier though 😛 so that was pretty cool and entertaining. whatever beer we had, went down smooth for me… and we ended up staying until… 5. fuken insane. so thats why we’re waking up at like… this time…

i should brought a different bag. when i went to try on clothes at uni qlo, u could see the redness or where the strap usually is. ow :(… and i’m burning through batteries like mad. might end up buying a charger and batteries (eneloop) the next time i see them. and… i think we’re gonna head over to odaiba today, whenever we all get ready. this writing is slowing me down! we only have one outlet so the comp went on forced standby from lack of battery power.

the dragon fountain

as per stine’s request… a blurry pic from my cam of me leon michelle phil and masaki