Ikebukuro and stuff
After class today I went back to my room to drop off my umbrella and books/notebooks, then I went to Shibuya and just wandered around there for a while. I played a round of DDR in an arcade (and didn't fail on standard, suprisingly) and went to the top floor of Tower Records, where they have imported books. Why, it was almost like being in a normal American bookstore... I read some articles in PC Gamer (Civilazation IV!!) and looked at some other stuff. They even had English manga.
Then I went to Ikebukuro and wandered randomly down this street... Ikebukuro seems to be a bit elevated from the area around it and the sun was getting low and it was quite nice. Walking back toward the station I walked past some kind of really elite looking set of schools... I noticed on the elementary school that the "gaku" in "shougakkou" was written in some old/fancy/Chinese way. The buildings were really nice looking though, and one even had lots of vines on it. "Rikkyou" I think it was called. After more wandering I went in a store that for all except the first floor was fairly normal and sold typical department store type stuff I guess (except the clothes, it wasn't really a clothes place... there are PLENTY enough of them). The first floor had random cool stuff, from figurines of various sorts to some neat things with metal balls rolling around on tracks. But coolest of all was the section with the Star Wars (and some other stuff, primarily Aliens) stuff... there were things like an awesome Slave I model with a framed picture of Boba Fett signed by Jeremy Bulloch behind it, an X-wing model with a framed picture of Luke signed by Mark Hammil, and such stuff for other characters too. Then there were full sized replica lightsabers and blasters, and more signed pictures... and an AWESOME full sized Yoda with his lightsaber out. This stuff was expensive of course... the full-sized Darth Maul lightsaber was about 98,000 yen I believe (about $1000). Then went to a Gamers in the same building, got a manga. Then ate in Shibuya and came back.
Doesn't sound like a whole lot, but I was out for about 7 hours doing that. My legs are tired and I'm ready to just be restful. I'm thinking of heading down to Kamakura tomorrow though... need to get on the whole sightseeing thing.
Then I went to Ikebukuro and wandered randomly down this street... Ikebukuro seems to be a bit elevated from the area around it and the sun was getting low and it was quite nice. Walking back toward the station I walked past some kind of really elite looking set of schools... I noticed on the elementary school that the "gaku" in "shougakkou" was written in some old/fancy/Chinese way. The buildings were really nice looking though, and one even had lots of vines on it. "Rikkyou" I think it was called. After more wandering I went in a store that for all except the first floor was fairly normal and sold typical department store type stuff I guess (except the clothes, it wasn't really a clothes place... there are PLENTY enough of them). The first floor had random cool stuff, from figurines of various sorts to some neat things with metal balls rolling around on tracks. But coolest of all was the section with the Star Wars (and some other stuff, primarily Aliens) stuff... there were things like an awesome Slave I model with a framed picture of Boba Fett signed by Jeremy Bulloch behind it, an X-wing model with a framed picture of Luke signed by Mark Hammil, and such stuff for other characters too. Then there were full sized replica lightsabers and blasters, and more signed pictures... and an AWESOME full sized Yoda with his lightsaber out. This stuff was expensive of course... the full-sized Darth Maul lightsaber was about 98,000 yen I believe (about $1000). Then went to a Gamers in the same building, got a manga. Then ate in Shibuya and came back.
Doesn't sound like a whole lot, but I was out for about 7 hours doing that. My legs are tired and I'm ready to just be restful. I'm thinking of heading down to Kamakura tomorrow though... need to get on the whole sightseeing thing.