Random sakura picture

I keep mentioning the sakura I saw while I was in Japan but haven’t posted any pictures yet.

This is to hold you until I get my trip pictures organized.  :)

I believe I took this in Kyoto, in the Imperial Gardens.

Enjoy.

 

(BTW, the day was rather overcast, which made a lot of the sakura look a bit less colourful than they actually were.  Still, they are very pale flowers.)

Last day first

I had decided to say “Screw the cost!” and brave the train for a fast trip into Tokyo on my last day in Japan.  I arrived at the Narita airport at 10:30am and didn’t need to check in for my flight home until 3:00, so I plunked down 6000 yen and got a round trip train ticket to the Tokyo subway station.  Akihabara is a mere two stops away from there.

Yes, I finally got to go to Akihabara.

First, I’d like to say that the view from the train going there was spectacular.  The sakura trees were in full bloom and would randomly pop out of clusters of apartment buildings and parking lots, or there would be a small grove of them in the parks and schools we passed.  It made me want to step out of the train and sprawl underneath one.  I could really understand why the Japanese people do it, and I was only passing by in a speeding train.

But, my geek moment.  I didn’t have much time in the city (barely two hours) and I was afraid of walking down the wrong street and missing my train back so I stayed on the main drag the whole time.  I found the Animate store pretty easily but Gamers was a little harder.  It was only on my second pass through that area that I finally found it.  I think because I was coming from the other side of the building and it’s too hard to see from there.  Basically, the directions I had said that both stores were to the right if you came out of the Electric Town subway gate.  But… there’s to the right and there’s to the right.  Heh.  The exit I came out of opened onto a small street and I could see a Sega store (I think??) at the end of it.  There was an exit farther off to the right that I only noticed on my way back.  This was the street Gamers was on.  Easily recognizable by the girls in costume handing out flyers and posing for camera crews.  I’m not quite sure how I missed it. 

The main street was busy and I didn’t want to risk getting trampled by playing tourist, so sadly I have no pictures, other than this one of the subway sign.

I ended up not buying very much after all. I picked up a couple of art books and (the first thing I saw when I walked into Animate!!) the Yotsuba&! page a day calendar! That made the trip worthwhile. ;) I have to admit I was a bit leery of wandering into too many of the stores. Quite frankly, most anime posters tend to look rather porn-like and when the stores are filled with only men I can’t tell from the outside if it’s “safe” to go in. I had already gotten off the elevator in Animate on the porn floor and that was enough embarrassment for one day!  It really doesn’t help when you can’t read any of the signs.

My next trip will definitely have more time scheduled for Akihabara! And I’m wandering around more next time!

BTW, the Yotsuba calendar is most excellent.  It runs from April 2008 – March 2009 so I’ll get to enjoy it for a full year.  After puzzling over my completely untranslated Totoro daybook (and the days don’t go from Sunday to Saturday which makes it harder for me to use) I was a bit wary about how useful it was going to be.  But!  No worries! 

Here’s the April 12 page, just because it’s awesome.

 

 

Toy building marathon

These are my newest figures.  I have here a set for Maison Ikkoku, two from Fullmetal Alchemist, Bleach, two from Naruto and finally School Rumble.

This is what my coffee table looks like right now:

This is one sans camera flash.  I can’t decide if it’s easier to see or not.

The figures on the left:

A couple of the Fullmetal Alchemist figures came with little extras, like tool boxes, etc.  The best though, is Al.  He not only comes with an extra head (the little round thing next to him) but his chest plate comes off to reveal his little yellow kitty inside.  Awesome.

(I probably shouldn’t have sweet innocent Al in front of the drunken crew from Ikkoku.  The three in front are definitely wasted!)

And the right:

If you look at the top right corner of this one you can see a little container on the box.  Those are the dreadful salted cherry blossoms that turned out to be tea.  It’s actually not that bad once you rinse the salt off.

Also, my camera kind of sucks.  None of my close up pictures turned out.  I couldn’t even zoom on these ones for some reason. 

Ah well.

I would like to point out that once the figures are moved to their new home I have a lovely tray from Pottery Barn that will be taking up residence where the toys are now.  I try to be grown up about some things.  Not very hard, but I do try….

 

 

And now we must part…

While I was away I ordered volume 23 of Fruits Basket off of eBay and it arrived a few days after I got home.  Now my collection of Fruits Basket is complete.  sniff.  I had such fun reading this one.

I’m not sure if I’m going to keep buying the Tokyopop edition of the book.  Quite frankly, I bought volume 18 when it came out and it’s still in the shrinkwrap.  I didn’t even bother buying their 19.  Maybe someday I’ll get them as trade-ins or if I find them used I’ll pick them up, but I’m pretty much done spending money on the manga I think.

 

I also bought the last volume of Hana-Kimi today.  I don’t always mention this one when a list of my favorites is brought up, but I always look forward to when it comes out in the store.  Along with Fruits Basket and Skip Beat, it’s the only manga I collect that I had to read ahead in scanlations.   I still loved reading the volumes, though.

I don’t think Hana-Kimi is a flashy series and to be honest I didn’t even like the art very much when I first started.  Now I think the guys in the books are beautiful, and I appreciated reading a shojo series that didn’t have a heroine breaking out in tears every other chapter or the constant break-ups and angst of the more “romantic” series.  It had a big enough supporting cast and mix of characters that the story could veer away from the Mizuki-Sano-Nakatsu triangle and still be interesting.  There were family issues to be dealt with, sports conflicts, broken hearts, dorm rivalries….  and with Nakatsu’s psychic roomate thrown in (my favorite character!) they could even have the odd ghost story pop up.

I think my next lazy day/rainy day is going to be spent curled up on the couch rereading these two series.  I can read 46 volumes of manga in one day, I’m sure!

Edited to add: I just read the last volume of Hana-Kimi and Viz made an odd omission.  There was a wedding special published that didn’t make it into the book.  Weird. 

Well at least the snow was gone…

Yes, I made it back to Canada. I’ve just been busy readjusting my first week back. My flight was relatively uneventful – I watched No Country for Old Men  (what was up with that ending?) and P.S. I Love You. I started to watch Atonement  but didn’t have enough time to finish. Since I was kind of bored during the hour I did get to watch I wasn’t overly depressed about that. Most eventful moment of the flight was when a flight attendent dumped a glass of water all over my feet and legs. My “apology” was “Well, at least it was only water, ha ha!” and that wasn’t even from the person who did it. Considering Air Canada staff has actually spilled hot coffee all over my mother on one flight and didn’t bother apologizing, I guess expecting one from a mere drenching was probably unrealistic.

I have been catching up with work both at the library (new fiscal year! shiny new spreadsheets!) and at the bookstore (someone might actually care about security and I’m going to concentrate on organization for a while) as well as running to get my comics and manga. The comic store where I buy my manga has a new staff member which is always vaguely annoying. I have to put up with them being overly helpful and trying to explain the specials and new releases to me until one of the managers sees them doing it and tells them I’m a regular.

Saturday night and Sunday afternoon was spent putting together my new gashapon figures from Japan (some of which lean rather alarmingly, and one character’s left arm and head keep falling off) which was kind of fun. One of my Roy Mustang figures is missing a hand, but it’s not like I can go back to Osaka to make an exchange. Fortunately he’s holding an arc of fire which covers the missing hand quite nicely. I’m never going to see it once it gets on the shelf anyway. Right now they’re all in one big crowd on the coffee table so I have to get in gear and start the migration to where they’ll actually be displayed.

I’ve been handing out the odd chocolately souvenir here and there but have yet to inflict a soy sauce flavoured Kit Kat on anyone. I’m waiting for the right crowd, I guess. :) I’ve tried the strawberry Kit Kat (good, but nothing special), the melon (tastes just like cantalope!), the pudding (caramel-like) and the “Tokyo Exclusive” patisserie flavour that had me puzzled until I ate one. It kind of tastes like a Big Turk chocolate bar, though I can’t quite place the red filling inside. Still, it deserves the lofty name. I have yet to eat one of the Sakura ones, for some reason. I think because I don’t have many and I’m saving it for a special occasion.
 

So sad to be leaving

I’m coming to the end of my last full day here in Japan. I’ve had such a wonderful visit, it’s making me not want to leave! (I acknowledge that visiting a foreign country for a couple of weeks is a lot different than working here, so no, I won’t be moving.) :)

Amy (as usual) has been a wonderful tour guide. It’s been interesting to see as well what a difference a month makes. Last year I was here in May, and the rice fields were newly planted but right now they’re just muddy plots of land. Last time the only sakura I saw were a few lonely blossoms on the ground, this week I got to see trees in full bloom as well as ones that were just starting. The trees in Kyoto were much farther along.

I did a lot more travelling around this time. I went to Nara, Kyoto and Osaka with Amy last week, and this week I had a day trip to Kyoto with one of the other English teachers. I saw a lot more temples this time around as well. :) I’ll talk more about what I saw when I upload my pictures to Flickr. I suppose if you’re going to read about someone’s vacation it’s slightly more interesting with pictures…

I did discuss with one of Amy’s classes that one of the things that I would recommend to people coming to Japan would be to travel. Living in Canada I had a very different idea of how long it would take to travel from place to place. Taking the train from Tokyo to Kyoto would be rather fast (I think between 3 and 4 hours depending on which way you went) and I really never thought I’d be able to do something like that. In one day we took an express train from Kanazawa to Kyoto, transferred to go to Nara for the afternoon, came back and checked into our hotel in Kyoto, then hopped on the train to go to dinner in Osaka. Wow.

I did find out though, that the quick jaunt I was going to take to Akihabara tomorrow was complicated by the fact that I looked up the information for the wrong airport! Haneda airport has a shuttle directly to Akihabara, not Narita which is where I will be. Oops! Big oops! I’m going to take the Narita Express train to the Yamanote line and transfer there. I won’t have long though! Narita is pretty far out of the way and I think it’s going to take me over an hour to get to Akihabara. I’m probably only going to have a couple of hours there. That’s okay though. If I find the right store I’m sure I can do a lot of damage to my Visa pretty darn quickly! I’m going to try to find either Animate (so… many… floors…) or Gamers since I seem to like buying figures.

Ah, wish me luck. I think it’ll all be okay. I’ve got to go finish packing now and make sure all of my new treasures are cushioned properly or at least aren’t going to break anything else. (I think the only thing I’m really worried about is my Kyoto Starbucks mug. The Totoro mug is bubblewrapped and in a box…)

Next post will be from Canada! sniff….