Saturday in the city
Instead of venturing out to Yaoicon, we ended up skipping out all together and wandering around San Francisco. Friday, I managed to drive around Millbrae by taking every single wrong turn possible, staying in all the wrong lanes, and basically making a general nuisance of myself. So, when we took the BART into the city, I felt much better, given that it runs on a track and it's very difficult to go wrong. Unfortunately, we were having so much fun talking that the next thing I knew, we were in West Oakland, which is most definitely NOT the Ferry Building. I apologized profusely to rachelmanija, and we took the BART back. Of course, by the time we actually arrived, it was around 2, and we were both starving.
I had also advised Rachel to bring a jacket, since the city is nearly always cold. But we emerged from the BART station to sunshine and warmth. And of course, the Ferry Building was insanely crowded, despite it being 2 in the afternoon. We went to the little Japanese deli at the Ferry Building and got wasabi mashed potatoes (mixed with sugar snap peas, vegetables, and etc.), which was green and had just enough wasabi for a bit of a bite; roast beef sushi, made nigiri-style so that each piece had a lovely red piece of roast beef on top; kakiage tempure, a giant fried mixture of teeny whole shrimp, onion, and other assorted veggies; tonkatsu; and salmon onigiri made so recently that it was still warm, with little salmon bits scattered all through the rice. It was delicious. There were no seats available at the time, so we just parked ourselves next to a bookstore sale cart and watched the bay.
Well, until we started looking at the sale cart (this didn't take too long). I will let Rachel write up the unbelievably insane book God Is Gay, which purports that, among many things, we are androids who need to pay more attention to our basic programs (I think... it's hard to tell because the prose is so bad), and randomly flipping through a Terry Goodkind to find mention of a killer chicken. Alas, no sense of irony there, but since it went on for five pages, I think it may be the top Manga Fowl of DOOM, despite not being manga.
We also visited two anime/manga merchandise stores (one of which was extremely awesome and organized and had manga for 60% off), in which we both walked out with much less money, but a lot more little ninja figurines!
On the way back, to continue with various transportation woes, the BART ended up stopped at a station for fifteen minutes or so. Normally, this wouldn't cause that much woe on my part, but the conductor announced, "We're stopped here for I'm not sure how long. I really don't know what's going on, but apparently police are stopping all trains in [station name I forgot] to look for someone. They aren't letting any trains in or out. I'll let you know more when I do."
Rachel and I looked at each other.
"Did she really say something about the police?"
At which point, Rachel relayed a story about her friend, who ended up with an escaped convict under her house one bizarre night, which really didn't make me feel better.
Thankfully, we made it back home alive, without any such run-ins with convicts, escaped or otherwise, and celebrated by watching a lot of Fullmetal Alchemist.
I had also advised Rachel to bring a jacket, since the city is nearly always cold. But we emerged from the BART station to sunshine and warmth. And of course, the Ferry Building was insanely crowded, despite it being 2 in the afternoon. We went to the little Japanese deli at the Ferry Building and got wasabi mashed potatoes (mixed with sugar snap peas, vegetables, and etc.), which was green and had just enough wasabi for a bit of a bite; roast beef sushi, made nigiri-style so that each piece had a lovely red piece of roast beef on top; kakiage tempure, a giant fried mixture of teeny whole shrimp, onion, and other assorted veggies; tonkatsu; and salmon onigiri made so recently that it was still warm, with little salmon bits scattered all through the rice. It was delicious. There were no seats available at the time, so we just parked ourselves next to a bookstore sale cart and watched the bay.
Well, until we started looking at the sale cart (this didn't take too long). I will let Rachel write up the unbelievably insane book God Is Gay, which purports that, among many things, we are androids who need to pay more attention to our basic programs (I think... it's hard to tell because the prose is so bad), and randomly flipping through a Terry Goodkind to find mention of a killer chicken. Alas, no sense of irony there, but since it went on for five pages, I think it may be the top Manga Fowl of DOOM, despite not being manga.
We also visited two anime/manga merchandise stores (one of which was extremely awesome and organized and had manga for 60% off), in which we both walked out with much less money, but a lot more little ninja figurines!
On the way back, to continue with various transportation woes, the BART ended up stopped at a station for fifteen minutes or so. Normally, this wouldn't cause that much woe on my part, but the conductor announced, "We're stopped here for I'm not sure how long. I really don't know what's going on, but apparently police are stopping all trains in [station name I forgot] to look for someone. They aren't letting any trains in or out. I'll let you know more when I do."
Rachel and I looked at each other.
"Did she really say something about the police?"
At which point, Rachel relayed a story about her friend, who ended up with an escaped convict under her house one bizarre night, which really didn't make me feel better.
Thankfully, we made it back home alive, without any such run-ins with convicts, escaped or otherwise, and celebrated by watching a lot of Fullmetal Alchemist.