Listen to the Rain

Here's a backdated index for all the posts I wrote about schoolpsychnerd and my trip to Japan with friends!

• Friday, July 15 to Saturday, July 16 - Chicago to Tokyo - Mostly on airplanes.
  
• Sunday, July 17 - Tokyo - Meiji Jingu, shopping, and Shinjuku park.
  
• Monday, July 18 - Tokyo - National Museum, Clothes shopping, meeting a friend of schoolpsychnerd for dinner in Shinjuku, and the Final Fantasy cafe.
  
• Tuesday, July 19 - Himeji and Hiroshima - Himeji Castle and a drinks truck in Hiroshima.
  
• Wednesday, July 20 - Hiroshima - The Peace Memorial Museum, shopping, and a kagura performance.
  
• Thursday, July 21 - Miyajima - Itukushima Shrine, climbing Mount Misen, and staying in a ryokan.
  
• Friday, July 22 - Chiyoda! - Visiting and having dinner with our old students in the town we lived in!
  
• Saturday, July 23 - Kyoto - Racist hotel, Pokemon center, and surprise festival performance.
  
• Sunday, July 24 - Kyoto - Gion Matsuri parade, Fushimi-Inari, and parade at Yasaka-Jinja.
  
• Monday, July 25 - Kyoto and Ōsaka - Sanjūsangendō, Shitennōji in Ōsaka, and the Tenjin Matsuri in Ōsaka.
  
• Tuesday, July 26 - Kyoto - Hōnen-in in the rain, lunch in Gion, the Kanji Museum, and Torin yakitori restaurant.
  
• Wednesday, July 27 - Tokyo - Otome Road, Akihabara, and gaming in an arcade.
  
• Thursday, July 28 - Tokyo - Sailor Moon Cafe, the Ghibli exhibition in Roppongi, Super Potato, and dinner in Ginza.
  
• Friday, July 29 - Tokyo and Toronto - Sakura manjū, one last ramen, and a flight home that worked out in the end.

What a wonderful trip!

After a delicious and cheap breakfast of toast and butter and tea and no soup because it had pork and shellfish despite being beet soup, we left the hotel at 10:15 in order to have enough time to make our 11:30 Sailor Moon Cafe reservations in Shibuya. But we had more time than I thought, so when we passed by Ozz On and schoolpsychnerd saw a blue and black dress in the same style as the previous skirt/shirt combo she had bought, we stopped in. That turned out to be a dud--it was a skirt and shirt just like the other set, but they didn't have the skirt in--but she did find a black vest and skirt combo that made her look like a vampire hunter. Just needed black boots and a ruffled top. And stakes.

Also, Ozz On takes Discover. Japan really is prepping for Olympics-related foreign tourism.

The train to Shibuya was only about fifteen minutes, leaving us plenty of time to walk to the cafe without having to rush. Except we did have to rush because we went out the wrong exit, and then we arrived at Q Cafe and got into line, so it was a case of hurry up and wait. The line ended one person behind us, too. But it moved quickly, and after a few minutes...



Sugary desserts are a feminine thing in Japan--there's all kinds of sweet parfaits filled with ice cream and whipped cream and berries and so on for women. And this was the Sailor Moon Cafe, so they turned the sugar up to 11. When I ordered the Moon Faeries' Tea (upper left), I was expecting actual tea, not a blueberry smoothie with fresh cream and white chocolate on top. At least with Sailor Neptune's Praline (schoolpsychnerd would like to clarify that it is called the Elegant and Sweet Neptune Set ) , I knew what I was getting. And it was pretty good, mostly dark chocolate and a matcha base.

schoolpsychnerd also got the tea and the Cosmic Heart Macaroon, which wasn't actually a macaroon. It was more like a layer cake, and it was also loaded down with an enormous amount of sugar. I guess Sailor Moon is powered by love and also sugar rush.

My stomach hurt when we were done eating. I am not cut out for fighting evil by moonlight.

We ducked into the main store across the street after we ate to look around. The company running the cafe is famous for making jewelry inspired by desserts, so they had a lot of really cute necklaces that looked like macaroons but also like the warriors' regalia. I didn't get any pictures of those, but I did take one of the wall mural:



schoolpsychnerd was extremely tempted by some of the jewelry but realized that she wouldn't really have any opportunity to wear it, so we left and decided to walk to our next destination--Roppongi Hills Mori Tower for the Ghibli Exhibit. Plus, then we could stop at CoCo's for curry, which we did.

The walk was peasant mostly because we were in the shade of tall buildings and managed to go out in the open when the scattered clouds covered the sun. Mori Tower was a bit of a maze, the kind of place where a corporate espionage film would be set, but after going up, then down, then around, we bought tickets for the exhibit and took the elevator up to the 52nd floor.



The exhibit mostly didn't allow photographs or I would have taken a ton. Walking in was a hallway with posters from all the movies they've done, then a small section with storyboards and production stills from the next movie coming out this year (Red Turtle, I think?). Then a giant Totoro, a reproduction of Miyazaki's office, some soot spirits creeping through a corner, a full-size reproduction of the catbus, and a floating airship from Castle in the Sky, which I've never seen but know about because Sky Castle and Ancient Robots and Girl With Mysterious Pendant are all in it, and from there entered the top tier of JRPG tropes.

They didn't have that much from my favorite Ghibli movie (千と千尋の神隠し/Spirited Away), sadly, other than the Oscar that they won for it. And while I loved the Nausicaa manga, I've never seen the film.

I did find this article that has a lot of press pictures in it if you'd like to know what it looked like. And they allowed pictures later, so I got this picture of schoolpsychnerd where she has always truly wanted to be.



There were a couple people over in Akihabara, so we decided to go there next. Originally we were going to walk, but the map said it was four miles away, so we hopped on the Hibiya Line and rode straight to Akihabara. Then we alighted, went up the stairs, and walked over to Super Potato.

As soon as I walked in, I went like , because this is what it looked like:



There were three floors: one floor of 16-bit and earlier games, one of Playstation and later games, and a retro arcade. I didn't end up buying any games, because I've realized that just about every game I play from now on is going to be on the computer one way or another. I did buy more plushies, though--a bob-omb and a winged goomba that we're going to hang from one of the pre-existing hooks into our kitchen ceiling.

After twenty minutes wandering through the promised land of retro gaming and meeting up with everyone after most of a day spent apart, we went across the street to the Akihabara branch of Animate so schoolpsychnerd could look for Sailor Moon items. She found a small figure of Usagi sitting on a cake, bought it, and we went on to the Yellow Submarine hobby shop in search of tabletop RPGs. They had them--there was even a copy of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay translated into Japanese--but not Call of Cthulhu or Alshard. Sword World made a strong appearance, but I don't like the rules.

We left and I checked into our flight, getting schoolpsychnerd and I seats across from each other, and then we headed back to the station to meet up with tropicanaomega and her friend, who came down from Aomori to see her, coming back from Mandarake.

We took the Yamanote Line to Yūrakuchō to walk to Ginza, but arrived a bit early to meet aaron.hosek's friend, since his workday ends at 7 p.m. After trying a cafe and being told there were no seats (tastee_wheat checked it out later and found plenty of seats. Probably another case of being too foreign), we walked to Hibiya Park and sat on benches overlooking the water.



After about half an hour of resting, it was close to the time when we were supposed to meet aaron.hosek's friend, so we went back toward Yūrakuchō Station and waited until he appeared. After introductions, we all walked to Ginza to find a restaurant, since aaron.hosek wanted to see Ginza at night and his friend knew where to go eat.

If you're not familiar, Ginza is a glitzy part of Tokyo, all neon at night and no vending machines. I figured that meant we'd have a hard time finding a place to eat, but the second sushi place we went had plenty of space and good food. We stayed there for two hours until the chef came out and started clearing glasses in a universal "get the hell out of my restaurant" gesture. tropicanaomega did manage to pull off an awesome party trick, though!



And then we walked back to the train station and went back to our hotels to prep for the journey home. But it was lovely to have a last dinner together as a group!




Steps taken: 19942

Woke up early but at least this time I managed to sleep through the whole night. After leisurely getting ready and heading down to the attached cafe to eat--schoolpsychnerd and I had the sakura pancakes, which had a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top and a bit of cherry blossom flavor in it--some of us went back to the hotel to finish getting ready while schoolpsychnerd, xoDrVenture, and I went to Ikebukuro Station to do a bit of shopping. Except we forgot that this is Tokyo and there's a reason that when Gibson wrote about Tokyo in Neuromancer, he called the part of it where the story took place "Night City"--almost nothing is open before 10 a.m., and even the bakeries don't open until 7:30 or so. We went to Andersen and got a bit of bread and sat around until the rest of the stores opened, and then went to look. schoolpsychnerd found a shirt at a store called Ozz On, bought it, and around then everyone else showed up and we got on the train for Ueno.

Multiple people had suggested a lower-activity day after all the walking there was yesterday, so we went to the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno Kōen. It's a Japan-focused art museum, though there was a Greek art exhibit that was hilariously advertised as "Land of the Immortals." There was a statue gallery that banned photography, but most of the rest of the museum was fine with pictures:



The museum was roughly ten times as big as the part we saw, but after statues, clay works, Jōmon and Yayoi crafts, and Ainu and Ryūkyū art, it was after noon and everyone was getting really hungry and the sun had come out so we didn't want to do that much walking or eating at the food carts in the museum courtyard. We waited around for a bit while tastee_wheat looked at the general Asian art building, and then we headed over to a building in the south of the park and split up between a Japanese restaurant on the middle floor and a Chinese restaurant on the bottom. I went for Japanese food, and after a steak bentō I had to get dessert because it looked like this:



After the museum we split up. tastee_wheat and a couple of the others headed off to Tokyo Tower to try and see the city from the top while tropicanaomega, schoolpsychnerd, and I headed back to the hotel, though we stopped on the way back to Ozz On to get a skirt that matched schoolpsychnerd's new top. They ended up going out again before dinner, to a bunny cafe called Usabibi and met Bibi, Mikan, and Purin the rabbits. I tried to read for a bit, but pretty soon I got extremely tired and ended up napping for a bit, and again after schoolpsychnerd came back. At 6 p.m., I asked for three more minutes of sleep, and after that the two of us and aaron.hosek headed out to meet one of schoolpsychnerd's old friends, who neither of us had seen since we got married.

We met up in Shinjuku outside a sukiyaki restaurant, and after schoolpsychnerd glomped her friend, we took the elevator up. Unfortunately, without a reservation the earliest they could fit us in was 8:30, so we left and went up to the top floor and another restaurant called Nanairo Temariuta, which had giant wicker balls built around tables in the center of the main dining space, all of which were occupied (手毬 is a traditional handball game). Instead they stuck us in the back room with the other group of gaijin, but that's the only (minor) complaint I had. It was great food otherwise, through the pictures were a little deceiving and we ordered way more food than we had the stomachs to eat. Two pots of nabe was probably one two many, though in our defense, the waitress did say each one feeds two people. Two sumo wrestlers, maybe.

schoolpsychnerd's friend had to run to catch a show at the robot restaurant, but we didn't leave Shinjuku quite yet. We wanted check out the Square Enix cafe first, so after briefly checking out the lights of Shinjuku:



...we followed google maps and two streets over, the crowds and lights pretty much vanished. We walked through darkened streets, deserted by almost everyone but a few people going about their business, and in maybe ten minutes of walking we arrived at the weird dome of Artnia, the Square-Enix cafe.

Well, sort of cafe, sort of bar, sort of gift shop. When we got there it was almost closing time and they didn't seem to have a menu out at all, so we looked at the gifts. Most of it was Dragon Quest oriented in honor of DQ's thirtieth anniversary, but there was a room in the back done up for Final Fantasy:



Not visible here is the way that the water appeared to be moving up into the ceiling.

schoolpsychnerd bought a keychain because she felt bad looking without buying anything, and then we made our way back to the train station and headed back to Ikebukuro. A quick poll of our friends determined that nearly everyone was ready for bed, except for one unfortunate who had taken a five-hour nap, so we went back to the room and went to sleep. I didn't even get halfway through writing this before I fell asleep, and so I post it now.

Steps taken: 15565

今池袋で投稿してる！

Two weeks off five years after we said our goodbyes and left, schoolpsychnerd and I are back in Japan! And this time with friends! tropicanaomega, tastee_wheat, xoDrVenture, aaron.hosek, and one more person all signed on when we said that we were going to go back to Japan and would anyone like to come, and, well:



We woke up at five a.m. to make sure that we could shower, eat a leisurely breakfast, finish our remaining travel checklist items, and still make it to the airport on time. And we did. Even though Midway had a three-hour-long line at 6:45 a.m. Wednesday for no reason, we sailed through O'Hare's security in five minutes, got to our gate, and then I wandered around for a while, because I was going to be sitting for almost twelve hours on an international flight and there's no reason to do too much sitting before then if I didn't have to. We boarded our Air Canada flight to Toronto, went through the perfunctory customs screening given to those making international connections, and then settled down to wait.

While we were waiting, we sat across from an elderly East Asian couple talking to each other, and I got a bit discouraged when I couldn't understand a word they were saying. All was explained when a tour guide came by and handed them a map that schoolpsychnerd could see was clearly in Korean, though. Oops.

schoolpsychnerd's nationalist former co-worker is probably fuming to himself right now and doesn't know why.

The flight boarded late, but once on board we were pleased to see that the projected flight time was an hour shorter than we had thought. Which isn't that much when it's already over twelve hours long, but I'll take it. There's not much else to say about the flight. It was long, it was cramped, the food was tolerable (beef yakiniku, then omelets we picked the sausage off of), someone's toddler kept making a break for business class, schoolpsychnerd watched Batman vs. Superman and made a lot of faces, and I played a lot of Dragon Quest IV on my iPad. There was a USB charge port on the back of the seat just under the touchscreen menu, which was a nice surprise.

I especially liked the part where we arrived forty minutes early and then sat on the runway because our gate was still occupied. No good deed goes unpunished.

Japan's customs form was a bit more elaborate:



But customs didn't take any real time at all. After maybe an hour we were through, had picked up our wifi (where speaking Japanese prevented a misunderstanding, so hurray me), and were waiting for xoDrVenture to eat something before picking up our JR Passes and getting on the train to Ikebukuro.

We made it to the hotel, checked in without any trouble, and eventually went out looking for food with 5/7ths of our group, two of them having crashed out in the meantime. We ate ramen from a ticket machine ramen joint, came back to the hotel, and then everyone went to bed.

I'm not going to keep a super exhaustive account of everything I do this trip (Edit: That's a lie, I wrote down everything), because I'll be here for two weeks and writing takes time. But I had a lot of down time on the flight to write in between killing slimes in DQIV. And now, it's time for bed, because for my body it's 8 a.m. and I've been up for 27 hours.

Tomorrow, Japan!

As the subject says. My parents and sister came over to visit, and we ended up traveling all over the place. Tokyo, Kamakura, Nara, Kyoto, Himeji, Matsue, Izumo, Hiroshima, Miyajima...it was a ton of traveling. I probably walked over 100 kilometers, even with the times that we took public transit, and that doesn't count the extra effort expended from carrying my bags all over the place. On the other hand, we got to go to a ton of places I've wanted to visit since we came to Japan but didn't really have the time. Most of them were the same places I've already written about multiple times--Kinkakuji, Meiji Jingu, Himeji Castle, etc., so I won't repeat them here. But, I'll talk about the one that I think my favorite--出雲大社 (Izumo Taisha) in the eponymous Izumo. It's a shrine to the god of marriage, and fittingly, we saw no fewer than five couples in various stages of their wedding while we were there.

Funny story--apparently it's bad luck for a couple to go through the main gate to Izumo. Of course, schoolpsychnerd and I didn't know about this until after we had already gone through it. :p Then again, there was a rope that people were trying to toss coins into (as in, getting them to stick between the fibers of the rope. It was about a meter wide) and I managed to make my coin stick on the first toss, so hopefully that will counterbalance it.

The shrine also had a museum on the grounds that had swords forged by Muramasa and Masamune, which were in amazing condition for being 500+ years old, and a lacquer box made in 1150 that looked like it had been made yesterday. Not bad for a small museum curated by one guy.

Wow, I expected that I would have posted earlier than this. Maybe I need to adopt some sort of project like tropicanaomega did in order to make me post more often? You think nothing worthwhile happens in your life, but something like that shows you that it's easy to find a lot to talk about even in seemingly mundane things.

schoolpsychnerd and I did go to Tōkyō, as I mentioned. There isn't actually all that much to talk about there, since it was New Year's and almost everything was closed. This was actually the same problem we ran into last year when we went to Kyōto, and I'm not sure why we didn't think of it earlier. I showed schoolpsychnerd some of the places I went to when we first went to Tōkyō a year and a half ago, and we went shopping in Shibuya at 109, where schoolpsychnerd bought a hat. The most fun part was for New Year's Eve, where we went into Ueno Park at midnight to a small shrine with a bell and rang the bell to welcome in the new year. It turns out the shrine was over 500 years old and had been mentioned in a poem by Bashō. That was a lot of fun.

I need to take more time and write these sooner after they happen. I'll try to do that in the future.

So, Americans don't know from fast food.

Last night, schoolpsychnerd and I went wandering around Shinjuku again looking for food. After skipping out on an Italian restaurant because it had a long wait and we didn't have much time, we found some hole-in-the-wall noodle place (the third one we looked at). There was a large display of plastic replications of the dishes on the walls. I picked something that I could read ("クーリライスセット", Curry rice with noodles on the side), but it turned out I didn't need it. When we got inside, there was a big machine just inside the entrance with buttons on it. Each button corresponded to the number of one of the displays outside. You pushed your order, got the ticket, and gave it to the womean behind the counter, who then made your order.

It took her about 30 seconds to make both schoolpsychnerd's and my food, which is the least time I've ever waited. After she was done, she asked both of us "Soba de mo udon?" (at least, I think that's what she said?) and then "Atatakai de mo tsumetai?" which means "Hot or cold?" Until yesterday, though, I only knew atsui and samui, which also mean hot or cold but only refer to weather or places, whereas tsumetai refers to objects, so I heard it as "takai," which means "tall." I asked "takai?" and she looked at me a bit oddly, but we got it straightened out. She later stopped by our table and said something--I'm not sure what, but with the hand gestures I'm pretty sure it had to do with the fact that I was a foot taller than her. :-p

Good food, too, and only 800円 for the both of us. Who says you can't eat cheaply in Tokyo?

A lot of women were walking around with open umbrellas yesterday even though it wasn't cloudy. I'm not sure if they were for protection from the sun, insurance against the T-storms that were supposed to show up later, or what.

Well...schoolpsychnerd and I woke up at 5:30 a.m., which isn't so bad. We went to bed at 10 p.m., which is better than I did my first day in Ireland. (that was like...bed at 6 p.m., up at 3 a.m., and I did that for a week. I have schoolpsychnerd to help me stay up this time, though, or vice-versa as it turned out.

We met a Japanese couple yesterday who asked us directions to Tokyo Tai(something). Unfortunately, we couldn't help them--even if I had gotten his second word, we can barely find our way around Shinjuku, much less anywhere else in Tokyo. We apologized profusely and went back to the hotel.

Speaking of directions...most streets here don't have names. The ones that do usually don't have signs. The ones that do usually aren't in English. It makes finding your way around almost impossible, even with a guidebook that has a detailed map or the occasional detailed street map. I did manage to nagivate us back to our hotel from a map entirely in Japanese, though, because I could read all but one character in the hotel name. That made me feel accomplished.

Of course, right after I did that we turned around and saw "Keio Plaza Hotel" in huge letters on a building 200 feet away, so really, it wasn't that much of an accomplishment. :-p