Tokyo 2013 - Part 1
If no-one heard about this, In August I was staying in Akihabara, Tokyo Japan!
This was a treat for myself for working hard all year, plus a treat for my workplace closing and me losing my job in early August.
This was my first ever vacation alone, and to go so far, to a destination I've always, always wanted to visit was a really big thing for me, and I'm so glad I went.
As I'm writing this after the fact, I'm probably missing out on a lot of stuff, but I'll use lots of pics to help out :D The entry is long, so feel free to skip via the LJ cuts!
(click on pics for full versions)
Day 0 - Travelling
Glasgow doesn't have direct flights to Tokyo, but it does have direct flights to Dubai, which worked out MUCH cheaper and allowed me to get a much better hotel for around the same price. The major downside to that is the flight time is around 17 hours, 7 to Dubai and and then 10 on to Tokyo.
After a lot of unprepared panicky flailing around, I flew out to Dubai on a Boeing 777 300, which is the largest plane that lands at my home airport regularly, so to get to travel on THE big plane that flies near my house was really fun :D
My plane arriving at Glasgow.
The flight was really comfortable too, plus I got a whole row of seats to myself which made it even better, and the food was really delicious.
We flew over a lot of cool countries at night (I left at 9:30pm), and they looked so beautiful, plus we were at 35-40 thousand feet so they looked like golden spider webs with roads connecting them. I really wish I got pics of this, but it just wasn't captured when I tried :(
Berlin was particularly beautiful like this, as was the towns in Poland. Warsaw was having a violent electrical storm, and you could see the bright orange and purple flashes from far above, it was so pretty *__*
I watched 3 movies on the journey, Good Day to Die Hard, Dark Skies & ... uh... I forgot haha. They were OK, but I hated Dark Skies, lol.. Do not watch.
We went on flying through the Ukraine and over the Black Sea, we then went to Turkey and ... dun dun dun... flew over Iran! We flew over the whole country, and for such a 'dangerous' place it's pretty.. dull lol. It's very brown, a lot of it is farmland and mountains, that's it!
Sunrise over Iran.
Dubai is... Haha it's really hard to describe, it's all new and extravagant, but also seems extremely fake and forced, I really didn't like it for some reason, maybe it was because I didn't want to buy any of the stuff from the most high end duty free in the world or because I had to rush to catch the next flight... I don't know lol. I was only in the airport (is it the biggest in the world?) so I can't really judge the whole country by that.
After running through 2 entire (massive) terminals I was early and so I got a tropical ice thing from a Costa...... THIS WAS A BIG MISTAKE D:
[TMI Warning (click to open)]I went to the bathroom for a no.1 before this, but I really should have no.2'd while I was there, I wanted to, but I was too shy to go back into the bathroom after already going in once, which then caused me to have one of the most uncomfortable and long plane journeys of my entire life, my guts were going crazy and I knew from previous experience that what was going to happen was way too bad for an airplane bathroom so I held it in..... FOR 10 HOURS. By the end my guts were audibly making a lot of noise through the whole flight and I was so paranoid that someone would hear me D:
Apart from that the flight was quite nice, I think we may have even flown over Afghanistan, and a large part of Nepal and China which was really pretty from the air. By the time we got to Korea it was dark so I could see Seoul at night which was so, so pretty! The way into Haneda airport took us past Osaka, and then Mt.Fuji, but it was dark so I couldn't see Fuji-san :(
We also flew in to the airport via Tokyo bay which was really nice, you could see lots of things very clearly, and we landed right next to Odaiba too.
Nepal/China
So, we touched down, and all the windows fogged up on the outside, lol oh dear. Haneda was EXTREMELY humid, even at 1am, when I stepped outside it was kind of like being in a tumble drier.
After some panicking and wandering around, I followed other foreigners to the Taxi rank (struggling with my ridiculous case) It wasn't so much that they were helping me, but they were helping a French lady, so instead of talking to them I just kind of eavesdropped and followed them. There was a dispatcher guy who helped me got in a taxi and headed for the next terminal. I had hastily booked a room here the week before for the night because I was afraid that I couldn't check in at my main hotel since I was arriving so late.
Everything was shut here, like even more so than the international terminal and I was a little worried about this... weirdly I did see a large cutout of an Espeon in the closed terminal... anyway I finally figured out where the hotel entrance was and I got in there, there was an Australian lady there who smiled at me at the desk that was also checking in, so for some reason this made me calm down, plus I could hear them speaking English so I knew I wasn't in trouble.
When she was checking in her clerk asked her if she wanted the wi-fi password... she said yes ... but my clerk didn't ask me so... ...... .. 8D aren't I clever?
Adding to my cleverness I didn't let the bellboy help me with my bags, so I got up to my floor.. and..couldn't find my room, hahaha I kept wandering around the floor until I finally found it and then... I couldn't get my door open. The dumbest part about this is I knew about these type of doors and that you just need to put the card in for a sec then the door opens, but hey! I'm an idiot so I couldn't figure this out. Luckily for me, a super nice Japanese man suddenly appeared out of nowhere and let me in \o/
Finally! I got into the room and could rest properly after the 20+ hours of travelling!!!!
After 5 minutes with the best toilet in the world, I already knew I was coming back one day.
Day 1 - Akihabara
So, after going to bed at 2am, I woke up at.... 4 lol. Which means I was running on very little sleep as I got next to none on the plane. I hadn't paid the extra 1100Y for breakfast because I figured there would be a ton of places in the terminal, which was true but I didn't want to leave my room until it was time to check out... and I was getting extremely hungry and thirsty by this point. The room did have a minibar with some nice drinks in it, and they were only like 200Y each, but you had to fill out a little form and give that to the desk on check out but..I spent over 2 hours trying to convince myself to take something, but I was too shy to do so, so I had a little drink of water from the sink a few times :(
I had a fantastic shower (why don't we have showers this good back home?) and I watched some Japanese TV until it was time to check out at 11am.
I was at terminal 2 at this point, which was the national terminal for domestic flights, so walking through here was... hahaha... the entire terminal was staring at me!! I was the only non Japanese person in there and this was pretty intimidating, considering there were 100's of people walking around, and I arrived at night, so this was my first time seeing so many people, I kind of forgot about being hungry (and I was far too scared to buy anything from any of these food places, lol) and made my way to the Tokyo Monorail. There was even more Pokemon around when I got there, and some guy with a stall screaming about the large array of Pokeballs he was selling, I didn't know what was going on, or if I wandered into the wrong Kanto, but later I would find out it was to do with the Pokemon stamp rally they were having at a bunch of stations at the time.
I think I might of walked down these stairs, I'm not sure, because I turned around and Pikachu wasn't there, lol.
I took the monorail to Hamamatsucho station and walked out to a familiar sight, so I knew I was in the right place. Actually the Pokemon Centre is right here too, so I made a mental note about where I was for later :)
Tokyo Tower in the distance
I then had a rather complicated journey on the Tokyo Metro.... now as you can see, the Metro is very simple and easy to navigate!!!!
....... :|
This is the copy of the map I had, so as far as I could see, the easiest way for me to get to Akihabara was to get on the Asakusa line at Daimon, change at Nihombashi to the Ginza line, then travel up to Ueno-Hirokoji, which on my map was the closest to Akihabara.
Now, looking back, this was fucking stupid. Hahaha. All I had to do was get on ONE Yamanote line train and I would of arrived in like 20 minutes.
So instead I had one of the most confusing, tiring and crazy journeys with a massive case, struggling with stairs, stairs with escalators going DOWN and stairs going up, and ticket machines that didn't know what the hell I was talking about, plus some crazy heat that I was not used to at all... yay :D
And! Ueno-Hirokoji was NOT the right station, good job Russell!!! so after I walked down the street with my case which seemed like forever in the heat, I was convinced I was completely lost and I was either doomed, or I would have to walk all the way back up the street to the station and try to find another way.
Then I saw this :D
Yodabashi Akiba at night
I was going the right way!!! :DDDD yeahh!!! Yodabashi is actually across the street from my hotel so I was no longer lost..... however, I was still very, very early (it might not have even 12pm yet). I was supposed to meet up with my friends twissie and bie at my check in time at my second hotel (14:00) but because of my failure at getting wi-fi earlier, communicating with them proved difficult, I had to use 3G internet, which I would only use occasionally (8MB in total), but I still managed to burn through my allocation, which was tiny when roaming apparently, so my phone was now useless!!
I didn't know if they were going wait outside before or meet me before, but I couldn't speak to them anymore until I got access to wi-fi, which wasn't going to be until I checked in.... which I was afraid to do until the right time ... so I found a vending machine and just kind of hung out under a bridge for a while to hide from the heat and drank my drink (so good after drinking like nothing since the sink and being so hungry)
I was hiding under the footbridge here, haha
I wandered around Akiba a little bit, but there was only so far I could go with my huge case, I'm sure I could of dropped the case in at my hotel, but I was too busy being scared of everything and talking to no-one :)
I ended up waiting for a good long time at the central exit of Akihabara station, getting lots and lots of streetpasses and playing the games to pass the time, I've never experenced getting so many at once before, it was crazy!!
Filled up with 10 passes every time I checked!
I was also watching the front door of the hotel at the same time, just in case my friends showed up early, but they didn't, so I waited until just before 14:00 and went in. The front desk for the hotel is on the 6th floor so you go up in a lift before you even get there, but the staff were nice and after some confusion about my booking (my fault, really) I got into my room!! woo \o/ wi-fi was super easy to set up, which was good because twissie was standing right outside, haha. So I scrambled to find where I left their gifts, put another shirt on and ran out. I was in my hotel room for about 3 minutes, haha.
(if you're interested in what my hotel was like: http://www.japanican.com/hotels/review.aspx?st=4019089)
Finally!! I could meet my friends :DD and my first impression was "wow they're so attractive" xD and we went first to Yodabashi and they showed me all the cool things in there (it's amazing) I spotted a few things like the Fig-Arts Sailor Moon (I got this later for a friend) and some Rei Ayanami entry plug chopsticks (which I got later!) and all sorts of amazing toys (it's the best floor!!!!)
After a good while of looking around bie asked me if I was hungry, I said yes but in my head I was thinking I LOVE YOU, THANK YOU SO MUCH because while I was forgetting I was hungry all day, I hadn't eaten since the plane, which was at least 17 hours before this and sudddenly I felt super hungry, so thank you :)
Yodabashi has a whole floor filled with restaurants on the top floor, and we all had ramen at this great place where you can order via a vending machine and get tickets, I got the Tokyo special at Twissie's suggestion with an extra egg and it may partially have to do with being so hungry but it was sooo good <3 I'm sad I was too shy to go back on my own after that. Oh and I had 2000Y notes with me and they had never ever seen these before, I had no idea they were even rare, lol.
Next! this whole part is kind of a blur of shops and different things, but what I do remember is after this they helped me buy a Suica card which was soo handy and helped me a lot, then we all went to the legendary SUPER POTATO which you can see from all the pics on that link is an amazing place, especially for a retro game collector like myself :DDD I think we were there for an hour or more, the only bad thing was it was SUPER hot in there that day, I was sweating so much I was afraid to touch anything, I came back here about 5 or 6 times during my trip :D
Next was another blur of shops arcades, general walking around, maids, more arcades, even more maids, haha. I think this is when we went to a cafe and got a drink and talked and compared 3DS's :D I then ordered this drink every time I went to a cafe because I knew how to pronounce it \o/ then they took me up to a store that sold lots of old idol stuff in it, which was really cool! .... I totally couldn't read anything though, but we did see some old H!P stuff, which was cool :DDD I was touched that they thought of me so much to find this place for me, thank you ;___; !!!
Next we had some Taiyaki from a vendor on the street, twiss asked me if I wanted red bean or custard, but as anko-kun I felt like I was obligated, haha. She was also teaching me lots of useful things to know while we were walking around, which really did help me out!! like how most people eat food where they buy it because there are no trash cans anywhere else, and also why this happens (it's 5pm):
We headed back to the main street of Akiba, and did some more arcades and went to a cosplay/gatcha shop after some help from a maid xDD lots of cool stuff in here, and some stuff I wanted to get later for a present, but ahhh I couldn't find it again, haha. twiss got a cool costume of this character from steins;gate and we waited around for her to try this on :D
Makise Kurisu
twiss also got a token for a free gatcha and she got me this, thanks!!! :D
Speaking of steins;gate, being in akiba and watching this show right afterward has locked it into my memory forever! but I'll get into that later :D
After that bie & twiss asked if I wanted to go to a maid cafe and this was really late and we'd been so busy, I was really really super tired and worn out, plus I had seen myself in the mirror in the cospa shop and felt really self concious so I didn't really want to D:
I feel really bad now because I know they really like maid cafes and I probably would of had fun there.
But then bie asked if I was hungry again ;__; OH GOD YES so he took us all to Gogo Curry and this is Japan, so this was not spicy in the slightest, but very good! and had meat on top :O I got a normal one, but twiss got a Cutey Honey special with a love heart and bie got a gigantic one for some reason, and barely finished it, haha.
We said bye outside of my hotel and that was it! what a day :DD
I went back up to my hotel room and got cleaned up and went to bed, big day tomorrow ;D
(it may be a friends only entry, I'll see what I write!)
Full Gallery of Akihabara pics
I really do get the feeling that these entries are going to end up as a record of my series of failures due to my shyness/anxiety and constant worrying and lack of Japanese.
The worst part is that I knew a lot of what I had failed to say but I just got shy or just forgot entirely.. anyway, I hope the next entry won't take 2 months to write!!!
This was a treat for myself for working hard all year, plus a treat for my workplace closing and me losing my job in early August.
This was my first ever vacation alone, and to go so far, to a destination I've always, always wanted to visit was a really big thing for me, and I'm so glad I went.
As I'm writing this after the fact, I'm probably missing out on a lot of stuff, but I'll use lots of pics to help out :D The entry is long, so feel free to skip via the LJ cuts!
(click on pics for full versions)
Day 0 - Travelling
Glasgow doesn't have direct flights to Tokyo, but it does have direct flights to Dubai, which worked out MUCH cheaper and allowed me to get a much better hotel for around the same price. The major downside to that is the flight time is around 17 hours, 7 to Dubai and and then 10 on to Tokyo.
After a lot of unprepared panicky flailing around, I flew out to Dubai on a Boeing 777 300, which is the largest plane that lands at my home airport regularly, so to get to travel on THE big plane that flies near my house was really fun :D
My plane arriving at Glasgow.
The flight was really comfortable too, plus I got a whole row of seats to myself which made it even better, and the food was really delicious.
We flew over a lot of cool countries at night (I left at 9:30pm), and they looked so beautiful, plus we were at 35-40 thousand feet so they looked like golden spider webs with roads connecting them. I really wish I got pics of this, but it just wasn't captured when I tried :(
Berlin was particularly beautiful like this, as was the towns in Poland. Warsaw was having a violent electrical storm, and you could see the bright orange and purple flashes from far above, it was so pretty *__*
I watched 3 movies on the journey, Good Day to Die Hard, Dark Skies & ... uh... I forgot haha. They were OK, but I hated Dark Skies, lol.. Do not watch.
We went on flying through the Ukraine and over the Black Sea, we then went to Turkey and ... dun dun dun... flew over Iran! We flew over the whole country, and for such a 'dangerous' place it's pretty.. dull lol. It's very brown, a lot of it is farmland and mountains, that's it!
Sunrise over Iran.
Dubai is... Haha it's really hard to describe, it's all new and extravagant, but also seems extremely fake and forced, I really didn't like it for some reason, maybe it was because I didn't want to buy any of the stuff from the most high end duty free in the world or because I had to rush to catch the next flight... I don't know lol. I was only in the airport (is it the biggest in the world?) so I can't really judge the whole country by that.
After running through 2 entire (massive) terminals I was early and so I got a tropical ice thing from a Costa...... THIS WAS A BIG MISTAKE D:
[TMI Warning (click to open)]I went to the bathroom for a no.1 before this, but I really should have no.2'd while I was there, I wanted to, but I was too shy to go back into the bathroom after already going in once, which then caused me to have one of the most uncomfortable and long plane journeys of my entire life, my guts were going crazy and I knew from previous experience that what was going to happen was way too bad for an airplane bathroom so I held it in..... FOR 10 HOURS. By the end my guts were audibly making a lot of noise through the whole flight and I was so paranoid that someone would hear me D:
Apart from that the flight was quite nice, I think we may have even flown over Afghanistan, and a large part of Nepal and China which was really pretty from the air. By the time we got to Korea it was dark so I could see Seoul at night which was so, so pretty! The way into Haneda airport took us past Osaka, and then Mt.Fuji, but it was dark so I couldn't see Fuji-san :(
We also flew in to the airport via Tokyo bay which was really nice, you could see lots of things very clearly, and we landed right next to Odaiba too.
Nepal/China
So, we touched down, and all the windows fogged up on the outside, lol oh dear. Haneda was EXTREMELY humid, even at 1am, when I stepped outside it was kind of like being in a tumble drier.
After some panicking and wandering around, I followed other foreigners to the Taxi rank (struggling with my ridiculous case) It wasn't so much that they were helping me, but they were helping a French lady, so instead of talking to them I just kind of eavesdropped and followed them. There was a dispatcher guy who helped me got in a taxi and headed for the next terminal. I had hastily booked a room here the week before for the night because I was afraid that I couldn't check in at my main hotel since I was arriving so late.
Everything was shut here, like even more so than the international terminal and I was a little worried about this... weirdly I did see a large cutout of an Espeon in the closed terminal... anyway I finally figured out where the hotel entrance was and I got in there, there was an Australian lady there who smiled at me at the desk that was also checking in, so for some reason this made me calm down, plus I could hear them speaking English so I knew I wasn't in trouble.
When she was checking in her clerk asked her if she wanted the wi-fi password... she said yes ... but my clerk didn't ask me so... ...... .. 8D aren't I clever?
Adding to my cleverness I didn't let the bellboy help me with my bags, so I got up to my floor.. and..couldn't find my room, hahaha I kept wandering around the floor until I finally found it and then... I couldn't get my door open. The dumbest part about this is I knew about these type of doors and that you just need to put the card in for a sec then the door opens, but hey! I'm an idiot so I couldn't figure this out. Luckily for me, a super nice Japanese man suddenly appeared out of nowhere and let me in \o/
Finally! I got into the room and could rest properly after the 20+ hours of travelling!!!!
After 5 minutes with the best toilet in the world, I already knew I was coming back one day.
Day 1 - Akihabara
So, after going to bed at 2am, I woke up at.... 4 lol. Which means I was running on very little sleep as I got next to none on the plane. I hadn't paid the extra 1100Y for breakfast because I figured there would be a ton of places in the terminal, which was true but I didn't want to leave my room until it was time to check out... and I was getting extremely hungry and thirsty by this point. The room did have a minibar with some nice drinks in it, and they were only like 200Y each, but you had to fill out a little form and give that to the desk on check out but..I spent over 2 hours trying to convince myself to take something, but I was too shy to do so, so I had a little drink of water from the sink a few times :(
I had a fantastic shower (why don't we have showers this good back home?) and I watched some Japanese TV until it was time to check out at 11am.
I was at terminal 2 at this point, which was the national terminal for domestic flights, so walking through here was... hahaha... the entire terminal was staring at me!! I was the only non Japanese person in there and this was pretty intimidating, considering there were 100's of people walking around, and I arrived at night, so this was my first time seeing so many people, I kind of forgot about being hungry (and I was far too scared to buy anything from any of these food places, lol) and made my way to the Tokyo Monorail. There was even more Pokemon around when I got there, and some guy with a stall screaming about the large array of Pokeballs he was selling, I didn't know what was going on, or if I wandered into the wrong Kanto, but later I would find out it was to do with the Pokemon stamp rally they were having at a bunch of stations at the time.
I think I might of walked down these stairs, I'm not sure, because I turned around and Pikachu wasn't there, lol.
I took the monorail to Hamamatsucho station and walked out to a familiar sight, so I knew I was in the right place. Actually the Pokemon Centre is right here too, so I made a mental note about where I was for later :)
Tokyo Tower in the distance
I then had a rather complicated journey on the Tokyo Metro.... now as you can see, the Metro is very simple and easy to navigate!!!!
....... :|
This is the copy of the map I had, so as far as I could see, the easiest way for me to get to Akihabara was to get on the Asakusa line at Daimon, change at Nihombashi to the Ginza line, then travel up to Ueno-Hirokoji, which on my map was the closest to Akihabara.
Now, looking back, this was fucking stupid. Hahaha. All I had to do was get on ONE Yamanote line train and I would of arrived in like 20 minutes.
So instead I had one of the most confusing, tiring and crazy journeys with a massive case, struggling with stairs, stairs with escalators going DOWN and stairs going up, and ticket machines that didn't know what the hell I was talking about, plus some crazy heat that I was not used to at all... yay :D
And! Ueno-Hirokoji was NOT the right station, good job Russell!!! so after I walked down the street with my case which seemed like forever in the heat, I was convinced I was completely lost and I was either doomed, or I would have to walk all the way back up the street to the station and try to find another way.
Then I saw this :D
Yodabashi Akiba at night
I was going the right way!!! :DDDD yeahh!!! Yodabashi is actually across the street from my hotel so I was no longer lost..... however, I was still very, very early (it might not have even 12pm yet). I was supposed to meet up with my friends twissie and bie at my check in time at my second hotel (14:00) but because of my failure at getting wi-fi earlier, communicating with them proved difficult, I had to use 3G internet, which I would only use occasionally (8MB in total), but I still managed to burn through my allocation, which was tiny when roaming apparently, so my phone was now useless!!
I didn't know if they were going wait outside before or meet me before, but I couldn't speak to them anymore until I got access to wi-fi, which wasn't going to be until I checked in.... which I was afraid to do until the right time ... so I found a vending machine and just kind of hung out under a bridge for a while to hide from the heat and drank my drink (so good after drinking like nothing since the sink and being so hungry)
I was hiding under the footbridge here, haha
I wandered around Akiba a little bit, but there was only so far I could go with my huge case, I'm sure I could of dropped the case in at my hotel, but I was too busy being scared of everything and talking to no-one :)
I ended up waiting for a good long time at the central exit of Akihabara station, getting lots and lots of streetpasses and playing the games to pass the time, I've never experenced getting so many at once before, it was crazy!!
Filled up with 10 passes every time I checked!
I was also watching the front door of the hotel at the same time, just in case my friends showed up early, but they didn't, so I waited until just before 14:00 and went in. The front desk for the hotel is on the 6th floor so you go up in a lift before you even get there, but the staff were nice and after some confusion about my booking (my fault, really) I got into my room!! woo \o/ wi-fi was super easy to set up, which was good because twissie was standing right outside, haha. So I scrambled to find where I left their gifts, put another shirt on and ran out. I was in my hotel room for about 3 minutes, haha.
(if you're interested in what my hotel was like: http://www.japanican.com/hotels/review.aspx?st=4019089)
Finally!! I could meet my friends :DD and my first impression was "wow they're so attractive" xD and we went first to Yodabashi and they showed me all the cool things in there (it's amazing) I spotted a few things like the Fig-Arts Sailor Moon (I got this later for a friend) and some Rei Ayanami entry plug chopsticks (which I got later!) and all sorts of amazing toys (it's the best floor!!!!)
After a good while of looking around bie asked me if I was hungry, I said yes but in my head I was thinking I LOVE YOU, THANK YOU SO MUCH because while I was forgetting I was hungry all day, I hadn't eaten since the plane, which was at least 17 hours before this and sudddenly I felt super hungry, so thank you :)
Yodabashi has a whole floor filled with restaurants on the top floor, and we all had ramen at this great place where you can order via a vending machine and get tickets, I got the Tokyo special at Twissie's suggestion with an extra egg and it may partially have to do with being so hungry but it was sooo good <3 I'm sad I was too shy to go back on my own after that. Oh and I had 2000Y notes with me and they had never ever seen these before, I had no idea they were even rare, lol.
Next! this whole part is kind of a blur of shops and different things, but what I do remember is after this they helped me buy a Suica card which was soo handy and helped me a lot, then we all went to the legendary SUPER POTATO which you can see from all the pics on that link is an amazing place, especially for a retro game collector like myself :DDD I think we were there for an hour or more, the only bad thing was it was SUPER hot in there that day, I was sweating so much I was afraid to touch anything, I came back here about 5 or 6 times during my trip :D
Next was another blur of shops arcades, general walking around, maids, more arcades, even more maids, haha. I think this is when we went to a cafe and got a drink and talked and compared 3DS's :D I then ordered this drink every time I went to a cafe because I knew how to pronounce it \o/ then they took me up to a store that sold lots of old idol stuff in it, which was really cool! .... I totally couldn't read anything though, but we did see some old H!P stuff, which was cool :DDD I was touched that they thought of me so much to find this place for me, thank you ;___; !!!
Next we had some Taiyaki from a vendor on the street, twiss asked me if I wanted red bean or custard, but as anko-kun I felt like I was obligated, haha. She was also teaching me lots of useful things to know while we were walking around, which really did help me out!! like how most people eat food where they buy it because there are no trash cans anywhere else, and also why this happens (it's 5pm):
Click to viewWe headed back to the main street of Akiba, and did some more arcades and went to a cosplay/gatcha shop after some help from a maid xDD lots of cool stuff in here, and some stuff I wanted to get later for a present, but ahhh I couldn't find it again, haha. twiss got a cool costume of this character from steins;gate and we waited around for her to try this on :D
Makise Kurisu
twiss also got a token for a free gatcha and she got me this, thanks!!! :D
Speaking of steins;gate, being in akiba and watching this show right afterward has locked it into my memory forever! but I'll get into that later :D
After that bie & twiss asked if I wanted to go to a maid cafe and this was really late and we'd been so busy, I was really really super tired and worn out, plus I had seen myself in the mirror in the cospa shop and felt really self concious so I didn't really want to D:
I feel really bad now because I know they really like maid cafes and I probably would of had fun there.
But then bie asked if I was hungry again ;__; OH GOD YES so he took us all to Gogo Curry and this is Japan, so this was not spicy in the slightest, but very good! and had meat on top :O I got a normal one, but twiss got a Cutey Honey special with a love heart and bie got a gigantic one for some reason, and barely finished it, haha.
We said bye outside of my hotel and that was it! what a day :DD
I went back up to my hotel room and got cleaned up and went to bed, big day tomorrow ;D
(it may be a friends only entry, I'll see what I write!)
Full Gallery of Akihabara pics
I really do get the feeling that these entries are going to end up as a record of my series of failures due to my shyness/anxiety and constant worrying and lack of Japanese.
The worst part is that I knew a lot of what I had failed to say but I just got shy or just forgot entirely.. anyway, I hope the next entry won't take 2 months to write!!!