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Day 1 and Day 2

I got into Tokyo about an hour later than I was supposed to. The flight from Houston to Narita was delayed about an hour because of some maintenance issue. The flight sucked. I sat next to some middle aged Japanese businessman who kept wanting to get up every so often, I didn't mind that though because it gave me a chance to get up. He snored pretty loudly though. On the other side of him was some military kid. Surprisingly a lot of the people I boarded the plane with in Gulfport flew all the way to Tokyo. Military people flying from the big military base in Gulfport, MS to the big military base in Okinawa.

I didn't have any problems getting through customs and met up with Hoshi just fine. Everything is so big and overwhelming though, I know I couldn't do anything if I wasn't with someone who spoke the language. The train system is very efficient but seems impossible to figure out and decipher where to go and whatnot. I'm also surprised to see graphitti all along the train routes.

The city itself (Tokyo) is so industrial looking, sort of ugly, but the Westin hotel we stayed at was SUPER fancy and was in a cute little area of Tokyo called Ebisu that was more upscale looking. Lots of brick sidewalks and stuff. Hoshi took some pictures of the hotel room and I'll post them up on the board later.

I was so tired the first night I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. I woke up early the second morning, around 6AM. I actually saw Koichi Yamadera (Ryoga)'s talk show! He has a show on at 7 AM on TV Tokyo. A little girl is his cohost and she's pretty cute. She keeps pumping her fist at the screen like she means business or something. haha

We went to Uniqlo in Harajuku on the second day and I got all the new Takahashi shirts that have come out. Got some pictures with the big Lum and said hello to her for us! haha The floor there is really cool, just covered in UY pages. Unfortunately I had to haul my huge luggage all around Tokyo because I couldn't find an empty locker to store in it. To top it off one of the extender bars broke and went inside the suitcase, so its hard to manuever too. That was a major pain in the ass all day, especially with the numerous stairs to climb.

We went to Mandarake in Shibuya that day too. Hoshi says we went all over the place today. I got some stuff there. Its pretty deep underground actually, so you have to walk down a ton of stairs to get to it. Looks sort of like a dark cave inside. They had a lot of cool stuff, not much rare Takahashi stuff though unfortunately. No old Shonen Sundays there just old Jumps (we asked) but they had lots of her manga. The new UY shinsobons too. Took some pictures there too.

Oh, I saw an old golf anime when I first got to the hotel last night and then also saw Kyojin no Hoshi. Thats it so far.

Everyone is so fashionable looking. It seems like the people our age spend a fortune on clothes, but they all look really nice.

Day 3

Yesterday I went to Hoshi's high school and met all her co-workers and was a part of her classes. She played a "20 questions" game where the students had to guess who the guest was today, while I hid behind a projector screen sitting on a little ledge in the back of the classroom. I was hiding there before the students came into the room so they had no idea someone was in there the whole time they were guessing. When they finally guess "boyfriend" and I come out they all scream and get excited. That wears off pretty fast and then they don't wanna ask any questions so Hoshi and her Japanese co-teacher have to try to goad them into it. It took the second class a half hour to guess me, so my back was really hurting from being balled up on the little ledge so they wouldn't seem my legs.

After school we went to a town not far away to meet up with her other JET friends. They have a weekly dinner together and that was pretty fun. Got to meet people from Scotland and England and New Zealand and Canada who are all here teaching just like Hoshi. We ate at a big Japanese restaurant that also served some American food. I actually haven't eaten much in the way of Japanese food yet.....hahaha, lots of pizza mostly. After that we went to a trendy little cafe and had some cake and then caught the train home and watched Superbad before bedtime.

Its 8:31 am here now. Needless to say I'm waking up much earlier than I do back home.

I'll post some pictures later today! Hope everyone is well.

A wedding hall across the street. Saw a bride wearing a traditional western style dress leaving the next morning.



Evening approaches the city.



The Westin Tokyo, where we stayed my first night. Super fancy!



Haha, me in a yukata provided by the hotel.



The Uniqlo store in Harajuku, Tokyo's fashion district.



Me with Lum. And my broken suitcase that I had to lug around Tokyo all day.



The view of Lum from inside the store. Covered in panels from UY. The entire floor of the place is too, its great!



Me in front of Mount Fuji on my way to Hoshi's school.



Me with Hachiro. Mitaka was nowhere to be seen this time. haha



The entrance to Mandarake in the Shibuya area of Tokyo.



Proof that I have my priorities right! The newest Inuyasha book and the newest issue of Shonen Sunday, from Wednesday night.


Thats it for now. We're off to Osaka and Kyoto in a few hours to find more Mandarake, see the sights and visit the Osamu Tezuka museum in Takarazuka. Have a good weekend everyone!

Back from backpacking across Japan! What a weekend!

Hoshi said she really liked Kyoto more than Osaka but I liked Osaka more than Kyoto. We stayed in the Umeda area of Osaka, which was sort of scary and looked straight out of Blade Runner!!! All the neon lights and the people yelling for you to come into their restaurants, tons of host clubs and bars and stuff, it was really intimidating but I liked it after I got used to it. TONS of walking around though. We ended up staying in "Hotel Africa" which was a love hotel. It was okay. Took us a bit to figure out how to get into it and all and pay and whatnot. Porn on some of the channels including anime porn, but they just showed like the same two pornos on the channels so they just kept reshowing the same crap!! We ended up eating at this really good place called "Yakiniku All Night" that was great! Lots of different meats to grill. It was so fun!

The next day we went to Takarazuka and it rained all day. The Tezuka museum was great! I really enjoyed going there and seeing all the cool stuff. The exhibition right now was on his final series (I think) so it was focused on Gringo, Ludwig B, and Neo-Faust. I got some stuff in the giftshop.

After that we went to Kyoto, which was pretty old fashioned. The train station there is unreal though! Like 12 stories tall! stories tall! I was hungry and saw a ramen shop so we ate there and it was sooooooo good. We actually ran into a class of little kids. The two that sat beside me looked Japanese but then they started speaking perfect English!! So I asked them where they were from and they were on a school trip from California. Haha, the little girl next to me asked me if I was in school then so "oh wait you're probably not!" Ha ha. Then some boys from their class came in and made a lot of noise and tried to sit down without ordering so a waitress came over and was trying to tell them they had to order from the machine out front but they didn't get it so I explained it to 'em!!

After we left there we went to the Gion area and stayed at the ryokan........sort of freaky. We ate dinner right when we got there and I was SO glad that I'd eaten all that ramen because dinner there was shabu shabu.......and all the stuff they gave us to cook in the water wasn't so great. I had to eat some awful liver that almost made me puke in front of the lady who was bringing the meal trays. She also put some mushrooms and tofu into the boiler thing......bleh. The coca cola was the best part of that meal by far!!! The meats were pork and beef and duck, I tried the duck but wasn't too crazy about it. I felt bad eating it. The pork was the best but you're barely getting it cooked in that water..... the ryokan was gorgeous though. We took lots of pictures from our room. You could look out on a little rock garden and we got to wear yukata all evening and slept on the floor and stuff. The bathroom was really cool looking too. A wooden bathtub!! Dinner took almost two hours and they gave us some sherbert at the end. After that they layed out our futon and left us alone for the night so we watched some TV. We watched the new Gokusen TV drama which is really good, and then some comedy shows that were pretty interesting. A lot of the comedy duos where seem to do a lot of comedy that would be considered "hacky" in the US. Lots of catch phrases repeated over and over and over.

Woke up yesterday morning and ate breakfast..........more of the same from the ryokan, grapefruit, toast (the best), yogurt, non-crispy bacon, and a salad. I poured a ton of sugar into my yogurt and it tasted like pudding so I was able to eat that and the toast. Finally found some good anime on this morning, GeGeGe no Kitaro and One Piece, so we watched those while we ate. After we checked out we walked around Gion and there was a big temple and walking area near by. Lots of foreigners were there so we took a lot of photos and I rang the bell at the temple and did all the traditional stuff there. We stumbled across some teenage girls getting professional photos taken of themselves in kimonos and we got our picture taken with one. After that it was back to the train station and they had a big Tezuka store there (bigger than the gift shop at his museum) and I found a cool Blackjack mug that I got. After that it was just a long series of trains back here. Hoshi found a bunch of Hello Kitties from Kyoto and Osaka to add to her collection and I got a UY shinsobon at a giftstore in Kyoto as a memento.

I found quite a few magazines at the Mandarake. I doubt any of them have color pages but found some early UY ones. Its amazing how cheap this stuff is here, especially compared to train tickets and food and stuff. They had a TON of old Shonen Jumps but barely any Shonen Sundays, but I got what they had.