Day 28

One of the things I love about Japan is that there is nearly always an event of some kind going on somewhere. Pop concerts, interview, themed events, festivals, conventions. All kinds of crap, some good, some bad, but always worth a visit. So when I heard about the Odaiba Hawaiian Festival, of course, I had to go. I emailed as many people as I could but only Rosanna and Jonna responded (don't get me started on the politeness now) so we arranged a day out at Tokyo's beach resort. Nearly didn't find Rosanna in time but as I opened my door to leave she was there :) Perfect timing^^

We met Jonna at school and got the train to Shinbashi Station and then took the auto train over Rainbow Bridge to Odaiba. First stop was Decks, a shopping mall with a games center called Joypolis inside. We had a walk around the shops and finally I found a new Hello Kitty monkey for my mum. I'm sure she will be pleased^^ There were some crazy shops in there selling odd things like beetles, boob pens, and ass ice cube trays. And then there was Condomania. Only in Japan folks!

We wanted to go to the Honey and Clover cafe but either we couldn't find it or it doesn't exist anymore which is a shame :( We were getting a bit hungry though so we made our way to the Venus Fort. This is where the majority of the Hawaiian stuff was going on. Venus Fort is a cute upscale shopping centre with upscale prices. It's all indoors but they've painted the ceiling to look like the sky so it's an odd feeling walking through there. Unfortunatly all the food places in there were waaay to expensive for us bimbo gakusei so we ended up in Mcdonalds. Yeah ok, not where you should eat when in Japan but I've heard so many times how it's different and better than the McD's in the rest of the world and we had to try it at least once. I went for an ebi seto with zero (zero love). It was ok I guess but I didn't find it any different to any other golden arches I've visited before. They do, however, do a nice green tea McFlurry so maybe I'll go again but only for that.

With lunch munched we walked over to the ferris wheel which is cool. We all prefered to ride it at night so we didn't go on just yet. Went in to some kind of technology museum (sorry can't remember the name) where they had a funky trumpet playing dancing robot. He was extra cool because he played Disney songs^^ There were other random things in there like cars with relax centers in the back seats and those cool chair things that they featured on Top Gear one time.

While I'm on the subject of Top Gear I just wanted to say how much that programme annoys me. Because they did their little race to Tokyo thing everyone now thinks that the trains are never late in Japan. Either I'm really unlucky or it's just bullshit. The trains are late, quite frequently, and most stations wont give you a "late note" unless the train has been delayed by 10 minutes or more, not the 10 seconds or whatever it was that they claimed on Top Gear. I guess it wouldn't have sounded good to say that the trains are usually not late apart from when they have the weekly (yeah weekly) suicide on the Chou or Yamanote line. I've been in Japan for 4 weeks and I know of at least 3 suicides on those 2 lines. Maybe there were more but they don't publicise them so I only heard through word of mouth. So I implore you to not believe Top Gear for they talk crap.

Back to the story...we left the museum and headed down to the beach. It was pretty packed due to it a) being Golden Week b) being Hawaiian festival with all stalls and c) there was a band playing so we just wandered along, browsing the over prices merchandise and admiring the view of the Rainbow Bridge. Found the mini Statue of Liberty, something I missed on my last trip to Odaiba. We were passing the Fuji TV building so we headed inside. There was a nice little shop which I could have spent all my money in but once more I resisted. I will not spend money friviously until June! There was a little Fuji TV museum type thing that some lady ushered us in to. It was free so we went in anyway and I pointed at all the people I knew, much to Rosanna-sans disgust. Apparently it's rude to point with one finger in Japan. Makes me want to do it more >:)

By this time is was coming close to 5pm so we went back to the Venus Ford for the Hawaiian Show. That was pretty cool, hula girls and polynesian fire dancers. I filmed a little for you to see even though there were signs everywhere saying "No photo". Gaijin Powa!

The sun was now setting and the hour of the ferris wheel was closing in. We had a little more time before it got dark enough so we got an ice cream (green tea for me) and then we took a stroll through the Leisure Land. It's just an arcade type place but it was fun to see the random games, like the one where you have to pretend to start a track race and run in to a wall. The poor boy we saw do that looked pretty shaken. The one thing they have in Japanese arcades that they don't have at home are purikura machines. It's not a day out unless you come home with purikura. It cost 400yen but it was such good fun. Just have to decide what to do with the stickers now.

Finally it was dark enough to ride the wheel. Alas, the temperature had dropped significantly and the queue had risen. We thought about going on the clear gondola but the wait was at least 45 minutes and it was really too cold for that. When we got near the front of the queue there was a sign saying "You cannot chose the colour of your gondola". So my response jokingly was..."aww but I wanted to go on a pink one". LOL, guess what colour we got? Discovered that Jonna is a KAT-TUN fan. Luckily for her she told us this when the wheel was almost back down otherwise I'd have kicked her out at the top ^_~ We did a lot of talking about the Johnny's Jimusho today. It's good to find fellow fan girls.

And that was all we had time for. Apart from calling in the supa on the way home and finding Green Tea Kit Kat.

Day 27

Didn't get to Nikko unfortunatly. People were chatting in the corridor outside my room again so I didn't actually get to sleep until 02:00 which is not a good thing when I need to be on a train at 06:00. So I turned my alarm off and decided I'd do something else today.

The plan was this....go to Ikebukuro and buy a Metro day pass. Visit Ueno Park including the Zoo, Ginza, Rainbow Bridge, Shibuya for a pint in a British/Irish bar and then back up to Tokyo Dome City before heading home for a Mos Burger dinner. It didn't quite turn out that way but it wasn't far off it.

Getting to Ueno via Ikebukuro was pretty much hassle free. Some guy stopped me asking for charity money so I was 200yen lighter before I'd even got in the park. It was for charity I hope and I got to practice a little Japanese. I told him I was from Igirisu and I was here for san gatsu (or however you spell it) and I was nana-sai desu. At the very least there was one benefit from giving to charity ^_~ Then in to the park where I watched a few street performers doing magic and playing music and some odd guys with big tall hats doing a rice cooking skit of some kind. Crazy Japanese at it's best.

The zoo itself was good. Not a lot different from any other zoo. Some parts made me sad as the animals clearly looked unhappy or to be in enclosures that were clearly too small for them. i couldn't even bear to look at the polar bears because they just shouldn't have been there :( But there were animals that looked happy enough and some had fantastic places to live. I didn't see much about conservation in the place but then it could have been stamped everywhere in Japanese but I just couldn't read the kanji. Best thing about the place was the 600yen price tag. Bargain I say. I spent a good 2 hours in there so for the equivalent of £4, I was very happy. A lot of the people in there were annoying though. Some Japanese woman kept banging on the glass of the Tiger pen and some American guy kept saying to her "NO! You can't do that" and she would bang again and he would shout again. She went off to bang something else eventually I'm sure.

Here's a couple of video's I filmed at the zoo.







I'm not going to post all my pictures of the zoo because it'll take all night so I'll just select my favourite 5. You can check my Facebook page for more.

After the zoo I decided as I was only a couple of stops away I'd pop over to Asakusa and see the market. It's the same crap as always and I found the same mug and keychain that I saw last time but decided not to buy. I'll definitely go back to get them one day but there's no rush, as I proved today. Picked up a green tea azuki bun thing as I was feeling hungry. Om nom nom :) Forgot to take a picture though, my apologies. It just looked like a green blog anyway.

Back on the train and this time to Ginza. By the time I got there I'd forgotten what I'd gone there for so I decided search for the Kubuki Theatre for future reference. It was pretty easy to find as it turns out so I'd been there and wandered back within 15 minutes. Last time I was in Ginza was two years ago with Cindy. We'd gone to the Sony Building, had lunch and then visited the Imperial Gardens. I didn't fancy that today as it was starting to get cold but I did remember seeing an HMV when we had lunch that one time. Would you believe I managed to find my way back there and to the Wendy's across the street? This is the girl here who gets lost in Shinjuku every time she goes there. I of course celebrated my successful finding of HMV by buying the NEWS CD that I talked about before. I went for the slightly more expensive DVD version which came with...dun dun duuuuunnn....a DVD. It's a 30 minute DVD from the NEW Winter Party Diamond concert in Tokyo Dome. Yes, I've already watched it. I must say, weeeek is by far their best single. Just knocks spots off everything else. And seriously? Why is Shige in NEWS? Other than having the best hair he's crap. He sings badly, dances horrifically and doesn't even have the best face. Yamapi can do the rapping stuff and (with a little help from mr recording studio to "tune" him up a little) can do the lower range parts too. I mean, you have Yamapi who's just cool and handsome, Tegoshi who clearly has the best voice, Masuda who's the best dancer, great singer and has the world's best smile, Koyama (who might be taking Yamapi's place as my fav) is a great dancer, awesome MC and kind of a cute singer, and Ryo who's not the best singer or dancer but he's handsome and he has that dorky bad boy thing going on which isn't that easy to do. And Shige. He has great hair most of the time. It ain't enough boy! Grr!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, got carried away then. So HMV and I depart Ginza and head on down to Tokyo Dome. I had a look in the Baseball shop and nearly bought a shirt but I didn't want to blow all my money so I left it for another day. One day, a #24 Takehashi shirt will me mine. Oh yes, it will be mine. But more important than baseball, the Thunder Dolphin! We'd seen it when we saw the baseball game a few weeks back but it wasn't working at that time. I had to go back because it just looked like the most awesome roller coaster. It cost me 1000yen to ride the thing but it was worth it. Defo have to do that again. The thing goes through walls and though the ferris wheel for crying out loud! Loved it. Spotted a British pub close by but was seriously hungry by this point and didn't fancy finding out the only meat free thing they sell is beer so grabbed the next metro home where I enjoyed bento, potato croquettes and grape fanta (damn you Daniel-san) from the supa.

Tomorrow I will be going to Odaiba with Rosanna (who's taking us to a Honey and Clover cafe^^ Squee!) and Jonna for the Hawaiian festival they're having over there. We'll probably ride the ferris wheel too cos you know, it's Odaiba.

Time to watch some gossip girl now though.
You know you love me...xoxo
Laura

Day 26

Today will have to be a quick entry as I don't have a lot of time. I'm planning a trip to Nikko tomorrow. The train leaves Asakusa station at 07:10 so bearing in mind it'll probably take me 45 minutes to get to Asakusa and then another 10-15 minutes finding where I'm meant to go I'm looking at leaving Warabi around 06:00. I have sent out an email to everyone I have the email address of but no one has gotten back to me so I shall be going on my own. Not that I blame them, who wants to get up at 5am for a day trip on a whim? Me, that's who.

Wendy's! I thought about eating here but I wasn't hungry enough.

So today I didn't really do anything of any worth. I think yesterday was Alberto's birthday and he had said to me that he wanted to go out drinking on Monday night but I didn't hear from anyone at all for the last two days so either they forgot about me, didn't want to invite me :( or just didn't go. I don't think it's the latter so who knows what happened. In all fairness, I wouldnt have stayed out long anyway with this Nikko thing planned and I hate the thought of blowing more money on beer and spending more time sitting around in the streets/park being cold.

Well anyway, Happy Birthday Alberto!

I'm listening to the Oricon Top 20 at the moment. Oh my god, that KAT-TUN song "Rescue" is sooo bad. Dear oh dear.

So yeah, I played some WoW this morning as I had nothing better to do. Headed out around 13:00, quick stop in the supa for a drink and the post office for post office stuff and then on to Ikebukuro. I'd read that it was an ok place to go shopping and stuff. And that's all it was. OK. Same shops they have everywhere really. There was nothing there that I hadn't seen anywhere else. I found the Sunshine building but declined to go in because I didn't want to go to an aquarium or pay to not see the view due to muchos cloudos. Plus that place is built on the grounds where they used to execute prisoners so another good reason in my humble opinion not to go.

Tokyu Hands and behind that, The Sunshine Building

I figured I couldn't go all the way there and just walk past everything so I wandered through a food court which was kinda cool and I went in Bic Camera. Bicu bicu bicu bicu Kamera! I heard that so many times and giggled a little every time. I looked at things I wanted and things I didn't and generally just wasted time. Found a few kids toys that were pretty cool so maybe I'll go back one day and buy one or two or more :)

Taiyaki maker and sandwich cutter....it gives you lunch with a smile^^

Heart and animal shaped sushi machine and a diy pocky maker.

And then I came home. Supa again for dinner and breakfast stuff. Bread, milk, instant noodles and the like. Watched a bit of telly (some random quiz show which was pretty funny), watched some Bleach for Ken-san and now I'm playing a daft game called 3 Days Zoo. Great way to spend the evening but I need an early night so this is probably the best way to spend my time.

I don't know what this building was but seriously, look at it haha!

Day 25

I have to say, today was probably my best day in Japan so far and all I did was walk. I had a late start mostly because I was being lazy and decided to sleep late and then I couldn't decide whether to go out or stay in or whether to do laundry or clean or where I'd go if I did go out. In the end I rearrange my room a little bit, did a little cleaning and went out anyway.

The destination of choice was....Warabi! That's right, despite toying with the idea of Ikebukuro I figured that Warabi was good enough. Plus I really wanted to go to Don Quixote and I didn't know if there even was one in Ikebukuro (there's actually 2 as it turns out). So off I went in search of the crazy shop of doom in a direction I'd never headed before.

Finding the place was pretty simple as it turns out. I nearly gave up for about 30 seconds because I got the buildings confused but then I noticed the place I was actually looking for and headed inside. I was probably in there about an hour taking pictures of costumes and NEWS Happy Bathday stuff. Had a wander through the food section and found strawberry KitKat. Bought it of course. Also spent a while looking at hair stuff. I'm tempted to buy a curling iron. It would be nice to do something different with my hair but do I really want to blow 4000yen on something I can only use for the next 2 months. I could bring it home but it probably wouldn't work properly even with a power converter. But then if I wait til I'm home I'll be back at work and I'll never have the opportunity to do anything interesting with my hair so maybe I should buy something after all. I'm going to Ikebukuro tomorrow I think so maybe I will buy one.

Up until this point I was having a reasonably nice day but it was after I left that things got great. So I'm outside the shop and I look in the direction of the guesthouse, plug in my ipod, turn around and walk in the opposite direction. I believed that road would eventually take me to a river but I had no idea how far it actually was. So I walked listening to Metro Station, Flo Rider and all the other crap that came on the ipod until eventually I came to water. I'm so sick of the people and the buildings and ugliness of Tokyo so it was nice to be at this place. But wait, this isn't the river I wanted. I look up and I see a far bigger bridge which I'm pretty sure is the destination I was searching for.

(I've bookmarked this spot as a future picnic and a book day out)

I make it to the bridge and it was like reaching paradise. Water, grass, open space, dogs running about, quietness and in the distance a horizon of mountains. After spending the last 3 weeks looking at concrete this most definitely was heaven to me. So I wandered along the rivers edge, soaking up the sun and watching the kids play baseball, the old men walking their dogs and the rich folks water skiing. It was just so pleasant, I'm going to definitely spend more time here when I can. The good thing is I can walk there in around an hour or I can get the train for free. No excuse not to go really. Beats any park I've been to so far.

So I'm in heaven...but there was still more to come. When I first reached the river I'd stopped and looked at the view of the mountains in the distance. It was great to see something other than sky scrapers. There's only 1 tall building in Swansea, maybe one and a half if you count the BT tower, so having all these things towering around you all day long is very claustrophobic for me and thus seeing the mountains all that distance away was like being free again. Occasionally I would turn and look back to see the mountains again, but wait, what's that? No, it couldn't be. Oh yes it is....it's Fuji-san! Yeah! With snow and shit! YEAH! Ok, so maybe it wasn't Fuji but I'm about 95% sure it was. I couldn't see the top due to a bit of cloud that was hanging over it and refused to move despite my pleas. But wow, I'd been thinking on the way there that I might make it a goal of Golden Week to see Mount Fuji WITH snow. Won't be all that long until the snow melts and I really wanted to see it snow topped.

(Click on the picture for a better look cos it just looks like a cloud when the picture is this small)

And then I started my long trek home. I think it took twice as long to get back as it did to get there in the first place. Don't know how, or why, but it did even though I walked back parallel to the train tracks. Called in the supa when I got to Warabi and bought myself what turned out to be the best instant noodles I've ever eaten (om nom nom), a bottle of pepsi nex which came with a free coaster and a soda flavoured ice lolly with a monkey on it.

Honestly, fabulous day :)

Day 24

So it rained today. A lot. And it still is....Maybe it'll never stop and we'll all be washed away. Maybe Japan is crying for the loss of Chibiusa-chan Daniel ;_; Who am I going to sing Gaga and Britney songs with any more? Gimme gimme......*silence* GAH! *cry*

Despite the loss of "the Polish" as Nino calls him, life goes on in Japan and on it went, only this time it was in Yokohama with Rosanna-san. I think we picked the worst day to go as it's been raining very heavily since about 23:00 last night and it's still much the same now, 22 hours later. But we decided a bit of rain wouldn't hurt and off we trundled to Yokohama, home of the world's biggest clock, a funky China town and lots of sea and boats and stuff.

We had this great plan that we would walk around rather than take the train and pretty much wing it. We won't melt if we get wet and walking is good. Ha! Well walking is good and I would have enjoyed the treck across town if it had not been for the gallons of water falling on us constantly. The weather report said something about 90% chance of precipitation. Seriously, it didn't let up all day so I think that's more like 100%. By the time we'd made it to China town we were so wet and cold I think it totally dampened our spirits. Didn't stop us however sampling the yummy food in a Chinese restaurant. I went for rice gruel which is not as disgusting as it sounds, honest. It was warm and reasonably priced and tasty. After lunch, and even though I was totally full from gruel I still managed to squeeze in a panda steamed bun. Made with real panda :)~~

While we were eating the rain continued to get worse so out plans to walk everywhere soon disappeared and we decided to take the subway back to the ferris wheel, skipping Yamashite Park altogether. They usually have street performers and things there and a great view of the bay but I doubt we'd have seen either of those with the weather the way it was. It was nice to get of the rain too. The ride on the Cosmo Clock was actually quite nice. It was enclosed so we didn't get wet (...more wet) and was a pleasant 15 minutes or however long it took to go around. Didn't see much of the view but as I've always wanted to ride that particular ferris wheel ever since I knew of it's existance I was happy enough.

And then it was back to the station and back to Warabi. Rosanna-san showed me the supermarket that was right by the guesthouse that I didn't know existed even though it was huge and had a huge sign. Bought some cheetos, green tea ice cream and chocolate milkshake and settled in for the night to watch CSI and Private Practice. I would have watched Supernatural but I haven't managed to find the episode online yet but I'll have a look once I'm done here. I'm listening to my new Kanjani8 album at the moment. It's not as good as the one I have at home but I'm enjoying it. I think maybe I'll enjoy the NEWS single more though because I'm such a total fangirl.

Speaking of things fangirl, I was browsing on the net for theme restaurants in Tokyo and I came across a reference to Butler Cafes. Now I knew about Maid Cafes but not butler ones. They're basically for girls to go and perv over pretty waiters dressed in tuxedos. I'd love to go but other than Nino I don't know who would want to come with me. Maybe I'll ask Jonna or Rosanna or Katharina. It's a shame that most of these places employ non-Japanese waiters because I think all of us girls would prefer Japanese boys to perv over^^ Ikebukero is the place for female otaku to hang out apparently and this is where most of these places are so maybe next week when I'm exploring I'll spend the day there and maybe track one down.

So tomorrow I'm planning on spending the entire day in Warabi. Rosanna says that there's a Donki shop here (which I've found online) so I'm gonna go have a wander around there. They sell funky costumes so I'm gonna go seek out something silly and next weekend Rosanna and I are going on a cosplay challenge. Oh yes I'll be the cosplayer, she'll be my camera man and we're gonna hit Harajuku and Yoyogi park to see hwo many random people want a picture with me. Care bear stare! Tomorrow I'll just take pictures of the costumes I like and you can all vote on which one I should go for. I'm also planning on cooking a J&F style Sunday dinner. There's no oven here so it'll be Sunday dinner with whatever strange vegetables I can find, minus anything interesting like stuffing or yorkshire pudding. Just vegetables that taste of vegetables would be nice though.

By the way.....peach kitkat :p