[Day 06] That's The Second Most Picture-Intensive Post I've Ever Seen! :O
Greetings! I had a debilitating case of food poisoning and stomach pains that cost me one nights' sleep and 6 hours' worth of food, but I'm much better now! Let's get on with the report show!
We decided we wanted to eat sushi at Tsukiji market! No, not the actual 5AM market with the auction and all (granted the sun would be up, but I don't think the trains would be running), but we got to the next best thing.
First, a stop at Ginza!
OH yeah you can just FEEL the poshness spilling out of the buildings!
The artsiness of Ginza!
The avant-garde punnery of Ginza!
The stylish police stops of Ginza!
This hilarious ad asking Japanese people to buy property in Malaysia! See this is why WE don't get enough property to buy!
OMG KIDDIES! X3
My dad stayed in Ginza when he went to Japan for a study trip almost 18 years ago. I must admit I AM curious how much of Ginza has changed since then.
But enough of being wistful! Here we are!
Now unlike fish markets here, the seafood is still ALIVE and crawling in styrofoam boxes filled with water. No dead fish = no smell = minimal wetness = cleanest wet market EVER.
Went to a place called Sushi Zanmai (the irony!) and had this:
Dear evo7gal, I had an ootoro just so I could say "Hey fatty Tuna, I had a fatty tuna!" *getshot* XD; It was SO good, melted in my mouth like...melted food. Sure it cost me 300 yen (the salmon 98 yen each), but for a piece as large as the distance between my outstretched thumb and index finger? Totally worth it.
I ordered a bowl of miso soup wondering why it cost 400 yen...
...I didn't expect the bowl to be...THIS...huge. I just slurped really slowly. What else could I do?
From there we walked alllllll the way back to Ginza...
What is this I don't even.
Then we passed by the Sony building. I had to go in. It was Sony. Sony comes from Japan. *I* was in Japan. Why would I not visit the Sony building?
Sharks? Not a strong enough deterrent.
Neither are turtles. Don't worry, these fish get rotated periodically (says the sign next to the huge aquarium saying the fish were on loan from somewhere)!
The Sony building, despite its rather tiny size is a mini Sony department store in itself. There's a directory listing what they have on each floor, the Sony shop has a few display units of handphones/mp3 players/Sony stuff and you could buy stuff from the counters (I think there was an area specifically for foreigners who wanted to buy stuff), and the top floor had a 3D theatre. We went there and was just in time for a 3D of THE SEA. That's right, I was sitting in a dark aircond room watching 3D images of fish just swimming about lazily in the blue ocean coupled with ambient music. Good thing I wasn't sitting in a beanbag (they had them towards the front of the room) and there was a couple necking in front of me otherwise I would've just fallen forward and dozed off.
When we went back out into the city, it was so hot and we seriously had second thoughts about our next destination (or the Gazette concert in Luisa & Nads' case). We still had to make the trip though, so off we went to Waseda!
We went there because Nadia had an errand to run at Waseda University. I know Eliar Swiftfire aka Edmund Yeo studies there but I HONESTLY didn't know ONIGIRI was there too until Deru told me on SATURDAY. If I knew I would've called her up to say hi. REALLY. m(_ _)m
Waseda is pretty much a student town; Everywhere you go you see young people in college wear (you know, tshirts and shorts/jeans for guys, nice blouses for girls). For that matter, Waseda has more smaller cafes (so cute and cosy! The romantic dream of those stories where you frequent a small cafe and all the stories that happen! <3) and more foreign food than anywhere else.
Like Italian Curry! Wait what?
And this Nepalese/Pakistani restaurant!
We walked and found ourselves in a campus...
Where it took us 10 minutes to find an office, and another 10 minutes to explain to them where we needed to go-OMG OWLS! >O<
That was when we discovered we were in another campus, and to get to our destination we had to go further north. Waseda Uni is so huge their campuses are spread all over the town; so you stay on the south side but your campus is northeast? SUCKS TO BE YOU HOPE YOU HAVE A BIKE. Also, for all of Waseda promoting English-language courses they really need to have more english-speaking staff, and I don't mean ONE lady in an office of THIRTY. At this rate you'd need to learn Japanese ANYWAY just so you can decipher your timetable and make sure you go to the right building and take the right class. At least with English-language lessons you know you won't be graduating with a different degree....right?
We passed by this shrine that seemed to be dedicated to the archer/rider guy next to the gate...
Now it looks like we're in the main campus!
I just love the landscaping; I'd study here if they offered medical science...and upped my Japanese proficiency to "Badass"...
I mean, it has a clock tower...
...Bavarian-looking buildings...
...Peaceful-looking roads in town bereft of people...
...And an entire area dedicated to "Scholarly Information" (that's what it says on the signboard really)!! THIS is the university experience I missed out on! *o*
ANYWAY. We did what we went for and headed back to Budokan for Gazette concert Day 2.
That's for Nadia and Luisa and Ayu and Layla btw.
Me, I had loftier goals in mind.
Like GETTING DISTRACTED BY DECORATIVE LADYBUGS ON LAMPPOSTS OMGGGGGG <3
This here is the largeass gate leading to Yasukuni Shrine. Don't know what Yasukuni Shrine is? Wiki it.
Here Maxsterism, have some SCIENCE!
This is going to be a long long long walk.
Have a picture of the Memorial of Thirst!
This guy was SO hard to capture with the sun reflecting EVERYWHERE on it. I hope you appreciate the artiness!
Walking straight from the statue we come to WHAT IS THIS DID YOU JUST CUT OFF THE ROAD WITH ANOTHER ROAD? WHY DO YOU PEOPLE DO THIS IS THIS THE ATOM BOMB'S FAULT TOO?
Well at least there's a blue-mohawked construction worker to take my mind off the road.
At the sides of the other side there were these small monuments with engravings of the Japanese army doing badass things on all sides of the monument (each monument was hexagonal). I'm not putting up all the pics - we've got another 70 more pics to go (not counting Ikebukuro) and I'm not wasting it on window dressing!
Aaaand here's the praying area! There's a guard in case angry anti-Yasukuni activists lob stuff and harass people I guess.
Yasukuni's grounds are pretty humoungous - a garden loops around the prayer area and branches into the other areas.
So lush with greenery it blots out the sun! <3
These Japanese are very creative with their ashtrays.
Stone blocks that said stuff entirely in kanji. One mentioned Siberia so...maybe these are concrete blocks salvaged from war areas?
Koi garden! To my far right was a gaijin couple enjoying the scenery; I just crunched through pebbles RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM to go on. What, me still bitter I don't have any romance in my life? HOW DARE J00.
This is apparently a smelter; I just came here because I was highly attracted by the leaves. LOOK AT THE BROWN JAPANESE LEAAAAAAAAAAAVES 8D
Sumo training area! I heard voices, but the area was restricted. This picture? Zoom function.
Throughout all this I was honestly wondering what was so controversial about the Yasukuni - if you've remotely touched a newspaper you've read at least one incident where Koizumi went to pray and the rest of the world (usually China and Korea and Taiwan) get mighty pissed and you wonder what's all the fuss about. After all it's a shrine for the war dead, is it a crime to remember the people who fought in a war where everyone thought they were on the right side? There were old people praying there whose friends probably died in the war, are you going to deny them the right of paying respects to their friends? There were war criminals, but out of the millions who died, are you going to generalize all Japanese soldiers as war criminals?
First there's the Wiki entry detailing all the controversies.
Then again, there's nothing like seeing it for yourself!
This map shows the areas Japan landed with a nice big battleship and I don't think in a nice way at all. You can see Malaysia on it!
Memorial to an Indian man who defended the Japanese during a WW2 Crime Tribunal. I quote parts of the handout at this memorial:
Dr. Pal detected that the tribunal, commonly known as the Tokyo Trial, was none other than formalized vengeance sought with arrogance by the victorious Allied Powers upon a defeated Japan... ...With, as the concluding part of his judgement foresaw, the Allies' craze for retaliation cooling down and the biased outlook on history being corrected, the insightful view presented by Dr. pal has no gained recognition which it should deserve in the academic circle of international law."
So the Allies were liars, bullies, and lynchers. Got it.
Let's go into the Yushukan (War Museum)! The first floor is free after all!
Airplane sometimes used for kamikaze missions!
Steam engine retrieved from the Thai-Burma railway! Wait, what?
Do you like your Death Railway map with picturesque holiday spots? I hope so, because that's ALL you're gonna GET. What? People died? Nooooooo. We were all honourable people who needed supplies! We just took it out of imperialist hands and liberated everyone using this railway!
At the corner of this map was a documentary about the noble spirits (soldiers) who died for Japan. Now I'm all for Japan having a war memorial since they got atomized and all and they did play a major part in WW2 and they suffered war like everyone else at the time but if they're going to say everything they did was really awesome and disregard the fact that they DO have war criminals just like every other country then they deserve every shred of anger and poison everyone's directing at them. There's sentimentality and there's rewriting history so you look MORE victimized than before. You know why sometimes your grandparents get pissed at you loving all that anime and Japanese stuff so much? THIS ENTIRE AREA is why.
I do find it ironic that while the Japanese regard the chrysanthemum as a royal and sacred flower, the Chinese use it for funerals. Combine the two and we get...royal zombies? '__' Some people actually turned around here to bow back to the shrine before leaving.
It was about 5.30 and they were closing down the museum and all the construction work wasn't really serenity-inducing, so I decided to hunt for ramen back in Ikebukuro. The thing about travelling with Nadia is that she can't eat pork and I can't eat beef, so eating ramen is something I have to do myself since it's cooked in pork broth and all. I'm thinking Japan's not Jew-friendly what with the mass slaughtering of cloven animals and all. Unless you don't mind eating fish every day every meal; They're not very good at cooking chicken.
Before that, a brief lesson in dichotomies:
The road leading to Yasukuni Shrine - Quiet, properly-dressed schoolgirls in uniform, people dressed normally. Normal Japan is normal.
ACROSS THE HIGHWAY - Nippon Budokan, where the motherlode of weirdly-dressed subcultures are gathering.
And then I had to take a picture of THIS GUY. He was very shy but he did allow me to take a pic! He and his friend went WHOAAA DUDE LOL.
I couldn't ask him about his hair because I don't know what the Japanese word for hair is. WHAT? >_>
And now, West Ikebukuro! In further detail this time! It's starting to look a lot more like Durarara!! now!
Part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space near the park! And...what's going on in the park?
HULA FIESTA YEAH BABY fry in the heat in your hawaiian shirts whydoncha.
This kid just wouldn't budge from the fountain. Smart kid.
The fiesta had this Malaysian food stall with WHAT IS THIS COCONUT CHICKEN CURRY and WTF 200 YEN FOR A CURRYPUFF 500 YEN FOR FRIED RICE SCREW YOU MAN IMMA HITTING THE MAMAKS WHEN I GET HOME. And they'd taste 10000x better too! >(
Inside the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space, I found my first encounted with chocolate milk in a vending machine. You have NO IDEA how hard it was to look for it! And now, for some arty pics!
Umbrella stand!
Angsty sculpture!
Sculpture with people standing around it OI.
Calligraphy exhibit!
A ceiling!
The roof!
Sculptures wearing 80s fashion!
Ok time for look for dinner.
LIES! I saw no romance on this street! T__T
I went to 3 shops: The first had tauge in ALL their ramen (but had 100yen gyoza uuu). The second shop had no trace of a freaking MENU and I didn't want to be communication limbo again. The third shop worked via vending machine and you could choose what noodles you wanted (different noodles different cooking time - from 10 mins to EIGHTY MINUTES). Took a normal Daruma Ramen (I think I stumbled on a franchise shop...sad).
With noodles that looked like WAN TAN MEE. D8 But the soup was really good!
Reading magazines about RAMEN! DD8
And plonking my bag in a basket on the floor where NO ONE even THINKS of stealing. Sometimes I do love Japan.
Walking back to my inn I sorta noticed what sort of area we were living in. Remember how I said there were night clubs and stuff? Well there's also hotels. A lot of hotels. Wonder why Nads chose the place we were staying in...
Go onnnn, take a guesssssss.
While walking around I saw a lady sitting in the backseat looking out the window smoking a cigarette and her tattooed driver saiting patiently. At that time I thought she might've been yakuza what with the hairdo and all and I was probably right. She was staring at this old lady and her poodle and an old man was cooing at the poodle and exclaiming how cute it was. So no, I don't have a pic of yakuza lady. That would be just SUICIDE.
Hugeass Eva pachinko place.
In case the Japanese don't know what "Repo Man" is, they have to spell out "RePOSSESSION Man" XD
Walking about 200m around my inn, I saw...
Barbershop!
Pink bike!
Quaint bakery!
RICE SHOP!! The old lady who was the owner just stared at me going wtf. XD
Very clean alleyway!
A really small bungalow (lots of these) with satellite dish that reminds me of Malaysia!
ROAD SIGN!!
Car that I dunno HOW it got onto the horribly narrow road!
ALLEYWAY WITH A TRUCK!! STILL SO SAFE!
Ok fine I stop spazzing.
And then I went back all exhausted, but not as exhausted as Nads and Luisa because I still had energy to go online. Back at the inn I met this French lady who was getting ready to go out for dinner. She was all, "I'm waiting for a friend WHO'S NOT MY BF but he has a gf in Tokyo and he went to meet her and they've been talking for a month or so so anyway I'm alone tonight and I think I'm gonna bathe and get ready for dinner bye!". But she was really sweet ^^
And that concludes probably the MOST. PICTURE. INTENSIVE. REPORT. EVER. Thankfully the next update will be a LOT shorter. Like 50000 pictures less shorter. x____x
Thank God for Photobucket and Fotosizer.
We decided we wanted to eat sushi at Tsukiji market! No, not the actual 5AM market with the auction and all (granted the sun would be up, but I don't think the trains would be running), but we got to the next best thing.
First, a stop at Ginza!
OH yeah you can just FEEL the poshness spilling out of the buildings!
The artsiness of Ginza!
The avant-garde punnery of Ginza!
The stylish police stops of Ginza!
This hilarious ad asking Japanese people to buy property in Malaysia! See this is why WE don't get enough property to buy!
OMG KIDDIES! X3
My dad stayed in Ginza when he went to Japan for a study trip almost 18 years ago. I must admit I AM curious how much of Ginza has changed since then.
But enough of being wistful! Here we are!
Now unlike fish markets here, the seafood is still ALIVE and crawling in styrofoam boxes filled with water. No dead fish = no smell = minimal wetness = cleanest wet market EVER.
Went to a place called Sushi Zanmai (the irony!) and had this:
Dear evo7gal, I had an ootoro just so I could say "Hey fatty Tuna, I had a fatty tuna!" *getshot* XD; It was SO good, melted in my mouth like...melted food. Sure it cost me 300 yen (the salmon 98 yen each), but for a piece as large as the distance between my outstretched thumb and index finger? Totally worth it.
I ordered a bowl of miso soup wondering why it cost 400 yen...
...I didn't expect the bowl to be...THIS...huge. I just slurped really slowly. What else could I do?
From there we walked alllllll the way back to Ginza...
What is this I don't even.
Then we passed by the Sony building. I had to go in. It was Sony. Sony comes from Japan. *I* was in Japan. Why would I not visit the Sony building?
Sharks? Not a strong enough deterrent.
Neither are turtles. Don't worry, these fish get rotated periodically (says the sign next to the huge aquarium saying the fish were on loan from somewhere)!
The Sony building, despite its rather tiny size is a mini Sony department store in itself. There's a directory listing what they have on each floor, the Sony shop has a few display units of handphones/mp3 players/Sony stuff and you could buy stuff from the counters (I think there was an area specifically for foreigners who wanted to buy stuff), and the top floor had a 3D theatre. We went there and was just in time for a 3D of THE SEA. That's right, I was sitting in a dark aircond room watching 3D images of fish just swimming about lazily in the blue ocean coupled with ambient music. Good thing I wasn't sitting in a beanbag (they had them towards the front of the room) and there was a couple necking in front of me otherwise I would've just fallen forward and dozed off.
When we went back out into the city, it was so hot and we seriously had second thoughts about our next destination (or the Gazette concert in Luisa & Nads' case). We still had to make the trip though, so off we went to Waseda!
We went there because Nadia had an errand to run at Waseda University. I know Eliar Swiftfire aka Edmund Yeo studies there but I HONESTLY didn't know ONIGIRI was there too until Deru told me on SATURDAY. If I knew I would've called her up to say hi. REALLY. m(_ _)m
Waseda is pretty much a student town; Everywhere you go you see young people in college wear (you know, tshirts and shorts/jeans for guys, nice blouses for girls). For that matter, Waseda has more smaller cafes (so cute and cosy! The romantic dream of those stories where you frequent a small cafe and all the stories that happen! <3) and more foreign food than anywhere else.
Like Italian Curry! Wait what?
And this Nepalese/Pakistani restaurant!
We walked and found ourselves in a campus...
Where it took us 10 minutes to find an office, and another 10 minutes to explain to them where we needed to go-OMG OWLS! >O<
That was when we discovered we were in another campus, and to get to our destination we had to go further north. Waseda Uni is so huge their campuses are spread all over the town; so you stay on the south side but your campus is northeast? SUCKS TO BE YOU HOPE YOU HAVE A BIKE. Also, for all of Waseda promoting English-language courses they really need to have more english-speaking staff, and I don't mean ONE lady in an office of THIRTY. At this rate you'd need to learn Japanese ANYWAY just so you can decipher your timetable and make sure you go to the right building and take the right class. At least with English-language lessons you know you won't be graduating with a different degree....right?
We passed by this shrine that seemed to be dedicated to the archer/rider guy next to the gate...
Now it looks like we're in the main campus!
I just love the landscaping; I'd study here if they offered medical science...and upped my Japanese proficiency to "Badass"...
I mean, it has a clock tower...
...Bavarian-looking buildings...
...Peaceful-looking roads in town bereft of people...
...And an entire area dedicated to "Scholarly Information" (that's what it says on the signboard really)!! THIS is the university experience I missed out on! *o*
ANYWAY. We did what we went for and headed back to Budokan for Gazette concert Day 2.
That's for Nadia and Luisa and Ayu and Layla btw.
Me, I had loftier goals in mind.
Like GETTING DISTRACTED BY DECORATIVE LADYBUGS ON LAMPPOSTS OMGGGGGG <3
This here is the largeass gate leading to Yasukuni Shrine. Don't know what Yasukuni Shrine is? Wiki it.
Here Maxsterism, have some SCIENCE!
This is going to be a long long long walk.
Have a picture of the Memorial of Thirst!
This guy was SO hard to capture with the sun reflecting EVERYWHERE on it. I hope you appreciate the artiness!
Walking straight from the statue we come to WHAT IS THIS DID YOU JUST CUT OFF THE ROAD WITH ANOTHER ROAD? WHY DO YOU PEOPLE DO THIS IS THIS THE ATOM BOMB'S FAULT TOO?
Well at least there's a blue-mohawked construction worker to take my mind off the road.
At the sides of the other side there were these small monuments with engravings of the Japanese army doing badass things on all sides of the monument (each monument was hexagonal). I'm not putting up all the pics - we've got another 70 more pics to go (not counting Ikebukuro) and I'm not wasting it on window dressing!
Aaaand here's the praying area! There's a guard in case angry anti-Yasukuni activists lob stuff and harass people I guess.
Yasukuni's grounds are pretty humoungous - a garden loops around the prayer area and branches into the other areas.
So lush with greenery it blots out the sun! <3
These Japanese are very creative with their ashtrays.
Stone blocks that said stuff entirely in kanji. One mentioned Siberia so...maybe these are concrete blocks salvaged from war areas?
Koi garden! To my far right was a gaijin couple enjoying the scenery; I just crunched through pebbles RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM to go on. What, me still bitter I don't have any romance in my life? HOW DARE J00.
This is apparently a smelter; I just came here because I was highly attracted by the leaves. LOOK AT THE BROWN JAPANESE LEAAAAAAAAAAAVES 8D
Sumo training area! I heard voices, but the area was restricted. This picture? Zoom function.
Throughout all this I was honestly wondering what was so controversial about the Yasukuni - if you've remotely touched a newspaper you've read at least one incident where Koizumi went to pray and the rest of the world (usually China and Korea and Taiwan) get mighty pissed and you wonder what's all the fuss about. After all it's a shrine for the war dead, is it a crime to remember the people who fought in a war where everyone thought they were on the right side? There were old people praying there whose friends probably died in the war, are you going to deny them the right of paying respects to their friends? There were war criminals, but out of the millions who died, are you going to generalize all Japanese soldiers as war criminals?
First there's the Wiki entry detailing all the controversies.
Then again, there's nothing like seeing it for yourself!
This map shows the areas Japan landed with a nice big battleship and I don't think in a nice way at all. You can see Malaysia on it!
Memorial to an Indian man who defended the Japanese during a WW2 Crime Tribunal. I quote parts of the handout at this memorial:
Dr. Pal detected that the tribunal, commonly known as the Tokyo Trial, was none other than formalized vengeance sought with arrogance by the victorious Allied Powers upon a defeated Japan... ...With, as the concluding part of his judgement foresaw, the Allies' craze for retaliation cooling down and the biased outlook on history being corrected, the insightful view presented by Dr. pal has no gained recognition which it should deserve in the academic circle of international law."
So the Allies were liars, bullies, and lynchers. Got it.
Let's go into the Yushukan (War Museum)! The first floor is free after all!
Airplane sometimes used for kamikaze missions!
Steam engine retrieved from the Thai-Burma railway! Wait, what?
Do you like your Death Railway map with picturesque holiday spots? I hope so, because that's ALL you're gonna GET. What? People died? Nooooooo. We were all honourable people who needed supplies! We just took it out of imperialist hands and liberated everyone using this railway!
At the corner of this map was a documentary about the noble spirits (soldiers) who died for Japan. Now I'm all for Japan having a war memorial since they got atomized and all and they did play a major part in WW2 and they suffered war like everyone else at the time but if they're going to say everything they did was really awesome and disregard the fact that they DO have war criminals just like every other country then they deserve every shred of anger and poison everyone's directing at them. There's sentimentality and there's rewriting history so you look MORE victimized than before. You know why sometimes your grandparents get pissed at you loving all that anime and Japanese stuff so much? THIS ENTIRE AREA is why.
I do find it ironic that while the Japanese regard the chrysanthemum as a royal and sacred flower, the Chinese use it for funerals. Combine the two and we get...royal zombies? '__' Some people actually turned around here to bow back to the shrine before leaving.
It was about 5.30 and they were closing down the museum and all the construction work wasn't really serenity-inducing, so I decided to hunt for ramen back in Ikebukuro. The thing about travelling with Nadia is that she can't eat pork and I can't eat beef, so eating ramen is something I have to do myself since it's cooked in pork broth and all. I'm thinking Japan's not Jew-friendly what with the mass slaughtering of cloven animals and all. Unless you don't mind eating fish every day every meal; They're not very good at cooking chicken.
Before that, a brief lesson in dichotomies:
The road leading to Yasukuni Shrine - Quiet, properly-dressed schoolgirls in uniform, people dressed normally. Normal Japan is normal.
ACROSS THE HIGHWAY - Nippon Budokan, where the motherlode of weirdly-dressed subcultures are gathering.
And then I had to take a picture of THIS GUY. He was very shy but he did allow me to take a pic! He and his friend went WHOAAA DUDE LOL.
I couldn't ask him about his hair because I don't know what the Japanese word for hair is. WHAT? >_>
And now, West Ikebukuro! In further detail this time! It's starting to look a lot more like Durarara!! now!
Part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space near the park! And...what's going on in the park?
HULA FIESTA YEAH BABY fry in the heat in your hawaiian shirts whydoncha.
This kid just wouldn't budge from the fountain. Smart kid.
The fiesta had this Malaysian food stall with WHAT IS THIS COCONUT CHICKEN CURRY and WTF 200 YEN FOR A CURRYPUFF 500 YEN FOR FRIED RICE SCREW YOU MAN IMMA HITTING THE MAMAKS WHEN I GET HOME. And they'd taste 10000x better too! >(
Inside the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space, I found my first encounted with chocolate milk in a vending machine. You have NO IDEA how hard it was to look for it! And now, for some arty pics!
Umbrella stand!
Angsty sculpture!
Sculpture with people standing around it OI.
Calligraphy exhibit!
A ceiling!
The roof!
Sculptures wearing 80s fashion!
Ok time for look for dinner.
LIES! I saw no romance on this street! T__T
I went to 3 shops: The first had tauge in ALL their ramen (but had 100yen gyoza uuu). The second shop had no trace of a freaking MENU and I didn't want to be communication limbo again. The third shop worked via vending machine and you could choose what noodles you wanted (different noodles different cooking time - from 10 mins to EIGHTY MINUTES). Took a normal Daruma Ramen (I think I stumbled on a franchise shop...sad).
With noodles that looked like WAN TAN MEE. D8 But the soup was really good!
Reading magazines about RAMEN! DD8
And plonking my bag in a basket on the floor where NO ONE even THINKS of stealing. Sometimes I do love Japan.
Walking back to my inn I sorta noticed what sort of area we were living in. Remember how I said there were night clubs and stuff? Well there's also hotels. A lot of hotels. Wonder why Nads chose the place we were staying in...
Go onnnn, take a guesssssss.
While walking around I saw a lady sitting in the backseat looking out the window smoking a cigarette and her tattooed driver saiting patiently. At that time I thought she might've been yakuza what with the hairdo and all and I was probably right. She was staring at this old lady and her poodle and an old man was cooing at the poodle and exclaiming how cute it was. So no, I don't have a pic of yakuza lady. That would be just SUICIDE.
Hugeass Eva pachinko place.
In case the Japanese don't know what "Repo Man" is, they have to spell out "RePOSSESSION Man" XD
Walking about 200m around my inn, I saw...
Barbershop!
Pink bike!
Quaint bakery!
RICE SHOP!! The old lady who was the owner just stared at me going wtf. XD
Very clean alleyway!
A really small bungalow (lots of these) with satellite dish that reminds me of Malaysia!
ROAD SIGN!!
Car that I dunno HOW it got onto the horribly narrow road!
ALLEYWAY WITH A TRUCK!! STILL SO SAFE!
Ok fine I stop spazzing.
And then I went back all exhausted, but not as exhausted as Nads and Luisa because I still had energy to go online. Back at the inn I met this French lady who was getting ready to go out for dinner. She was all, "I'm waiting for a friend WHO'S NOT MY BF but he has a gf in Tokyo and he went to meet her and they've been talking for a month or so so anyway I'm alone tonight and I think I'm gonna bathe and get ready for dinner bye!". But she was really sweet ^^
And that concludes probably the MOST. PICTURE. INTENSIVE. REPORT. EVER. Thankfully the next update will be a LOT shorter. Like 50000 pictures less shorter. x____x
Thank God for Photobucket and Fotosizer.