Japan 2016 Day 2: Ueno Park, Asakusa & Super Robot Spirits 2016
Japan 2016 ~Spring~
Day 0 & 1: THURSDAY
Day 2: Ueno Park, Skytree and Super Robot Spirits 2016
Day 3: Yokohama: Chinatown, Waterfront & Cosmo World
Day 4: Tokyo Disneysea
Day 5: Nebukawa and the Hakone Disaster
Day 6: Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum & Pacifico Yokohama
Day 7: Odaiba & Tokyo Tower
Day 8: Osaka
Day 9 & 10: Universal Studios Japan & Hometime
We started the day off with a quick look around our neighbourhood in Kannai, Isezakichō.
Apparently this road is really famous, and used to be the no.1 shopping place for all of Yokohama?
View from the room.
....if you thought I was joking xD
Our hotel is right on the shopping street.
The gates are huge at the entrances.
When I was at Ueno last, I totally missed the whole park area because I got off on the wrong side. Not even sure if I finished that entry yet, but here we are anyway XD
Tutu wanted to come and see a whale she missed on a previous visit, so we wandered around for a while looking for it. We bumped into a huge vegan food festival on the way, where the most popular thing was Vegan Kebab and it really, really smelled good xD.
Kebab!!
Some fountains we passed.
Tutu got an azuki? Ice cream here and we eventually found the huge whale! After many attempts to pose with it, we gave up because there were just too many people ...plus it was so damn big lol.
It's huge!
We then headed for Asakusa, Tutu had never been to Skytree before, so off we went! We walked the same way I did last time over the bridge, a couple asked Tutu to take their picture on their camera which was the same as theirs.
We walked along for a while and saw this...
And a bunch of other animals..it was some kind of sale at some showhomes or something?
The main reason I suggested this way was because of this cute dock I found on my last trip:
Which now looks like this :|
Fffff...Anyway, skytree was just around the corner, so we walked up there
We ran into the Duck bus...
..and the Panda Bus!
Update: still huge.
We decided to go up the tower first, but this time there was a gaijin line for "international visitors" which was only like a 20 minute wait! nice. It was a little bit more expensive but the lady didn't even check our passports, so both me and tutu were from the UK apparently XD. I think she was more busy trying to explain to people that this line was only for the first deck. It's really weird how fast that elevator gets you to the top o__o 350m in seconds, your ears pop!
Click to viewThe view is quite something, as always :D
The view was pretty hazy/smoggy that day, so no Fuji, and you couldn't see very far.
As the view was so bad we decided not to head up to the Galleria deck, as we couldn't see much extra anyway that day. We got some stuff from the Skytree shop, I got some postcards that I sent to my mom & friend Saskia. I also got a Skytree magnet to match the Tokyo Tower one I got her last visit, it's now on the fridge, lol
The mall next to Skytree has a Rilakkuma store and Tutu is a big fan, so we headed there and Tutu had fun buying lots of stuff including a Denim bear, which was really cute! .. unfortunately at some point after we left the mall we sat down for a minute (because my feet already were really sore..) and when we got up Tutu left her Rilakkuma store bag behind and lost everything >.< We tried looking for it, and Tutu went back to the store to explain but we ended up going to the information desk and filing a lost item report. We didn't hear anything after that, it's pretty much all my fault for being old, ughhh :((((
Originally we had thought of taking the cruise line from Asakusa to Odaiba, preferably on the Himiko, but we were already pretty late from Golden Week slowing everything down, plus looking for Tutu's bag so we ended up just taking the train to Odaiba, and we only ended up being 5 minutes or so late!
Under the Daikanransha.
Super Robot Spirits 2016
Super big thanks to twissie for getting me tickets to this!!! originally we had planned to hang out in Odaiba for a while before the concert started, but since we arrived late I just had to run off to Zepp Tokyo..... which was easier said than done because I got lost and ended up back where I left Tutu originally XD. I went in the wrong door, then had to pay 500Y for a drinks token for some reason, then suddenly I miraculously remembered enough Japanese to ask what door to go in, and the guy said I could go into any, so I went to the back.
When I finally got in, Tomohisa Kawasoe was in the middle of singing Stand up to the Victory from Gundam V. Everyone was doing tons of hand movements and chants I'd never heard of, haha. These concerts have been going on for a long time and I'm not sure, but this might be the 10th or 15th anniversary? something like that, the concert was called Birthday this year anyway :D
Super Robot Spirits is a concert series of anison (anime song) singers singing the themes to mecha animes, usually in sets of a few songs or just doing one and leaving, then the next person comes on to sing. This year was split into two concerts, the first had the big super robot acts and the second had real robot acts. Now if you don't know the difference between real and super, just read this! but real robot series like Macross or Gundam, tend to have female singers and this is the concert I went to, because by a lucky coincidence Mari Iijima was one of the performers!!!! and since she was one of the main reasons for going to Japan the last time, this was really great news :D
Mari dancing backstage to Stand up to the Victory
Downstairs was standing only, there were some railings to hold onto, but it was too full to get one of these so I had to just stand there, which at this point I was REALLY sore and my feet were dead, so this was really difficult and painful to keep standing, and I was really suffering D: On the upside, I used to be really into mecha anime music, so I knew a lot of the singers and the songs!! it was really exciting to see a lot of these songs performed live especially when singers like MIQ!!! (who even did the Yodabashi Camera song XD), Yumi Matsuzawa, Maya Ayukawa and most importantly Yoshiki Fukuyama, who not only is in my favorite anison group, JAM Project. He is the signing voice for Nekki Basara in Macross 7, which had an entire fictional band called Fire Bomber, which was so popular they ended up having about 20 albums or something crazy. I went through a long phase where I listened to nothing but their songs, so good!! XD
I knew I'd like this concert, and I really was! but I was getting so sore from standing and kept thinking I'd leave early, especially as Mari was just doing a short set and was leaving immediately after to do a radio interview, so I knew she wasn't coming back out to do more, plus I kind of expected it to be 2 hours at the most and Tutu was going to wait outside for me around 7pm. Anyway, after singing every Gundam song that has ever existed, with a few interludes from MIQ and Fukuyama, a lot of the acts returned to do an A capella with lots of various songs.
I didn't even know Hiroko Moriguchi was coming, Zeta is my favourite Gundam series and she sung a few with the audience, even if the vocals kept playing when she did that.. XD "I recorded those backing vocals earlier, I swear I'm singing live, don't worry!"
This was about an hour and a half into the concert and my legs were critically bad at this point XDD walking around all day is NOT a good idea before a concert. but in the end, they sang this and the crowd started getting really hyped up because it was obvious who was about to come out :DDD
Mari doesn't tend to do a lot of anisong gigs because she has a lot of original music she prefers to perform instead, so this was her first ever appearance at this concert series and everyone went nuts, especially me.. but I was drowned out XD It was my first time seeing her perform her Macross songs, and she did 3 songs I think, ending with Ai Oboete Imasu Ka:
She really, really had to go, so she had us all wave then said goodbye to us during the end of the song (it has a really really long outro) and just left XD the band played for about a minute or so on their own. I really considered leaving myself because of my legs and having seen Mari, but I decided to hold on because they started playing more Macross songs! :D
I'm glad I stayed because I would have missed seeing this!
In the end I stayed to the end of the concert, but it was THREE HOURS LONG lol possibly the longest concert I've ever been to... but as soon as the encore call started I ran out, I couldn't last any longer and Tutu had been waiting for an hour or more so I limped walked as fast as I could to make my apologies to her and we headed back to Yokohama.
Mari had mentioned to me in an email that the fan club was meeting her at the airport before she flew home at 1am from Haneda, but due to my legs, keeping Tutu waiting and possibly not even having enough time to even get back to the hotel that late made me decide not to go :( I was sad to miss it but Tutu didn't want to go home alone either, and I'm sure I'll see her again soon, maybe even later this year!
I missed them (I know some of these fans from last time XD) it seems fun!
When we got back to Kannai, we stopped by the large Donki near our hotel, and I got all of this!! (including some reduced items, huhuhuhu) I'm not sure if we ate much of anything today either..
Foooooood
I even got a tea with Reni Takagi on it, my fav momoclo Z member XD
(not that I'm actually a big fan but... I have their KISS CD xD)
Then it was fooding and sleeping time, exploring Yokohama tomorrow!