Well, somehow I made it back in one piece. Recommendation: do not get sick two days before your flight. I did, and basically spent the whole time trying to recover as quickly as possible ;_; (thanks for all the well wishes! m(_ _)m) On the bright side, I booked a hotel that was basically across the street from ueno station. i.e. I could get to akiba in about 10 minutes ^_^
Think I’ll go in chronological order, lewt post will follow in the next couple days… (not too much this time, especially by rin’s standards :P)
First stop, pictured above, was ginzan. Way up north in japan’s yamagata prefacture it was pretty dang cold and snowing lots. Soooo much different than the bay area here in california ^^;;
Was hard to take pictures because of all the snow… since my main focus were the onsen, i was constantly putting my camera back in a plastic bag to prevent condensation should we (was with a friend) head indoors. That and trying to keep too much snow from melting on my camera ^^;;
Was pretty awesome going from the snow outdoors into scalding hot baths. Prolly not too awesome for my cold, but as an experience, lovely ^^ Especially the rotenburo (outdoor onsen) ^^
Walked a bit around yamagata before heading out to zao.
One of the few days with clear weather!
Of course with all the snow, all I could think was, ‘kanon!’ ^^;;;
Zao is a pretty dang big place to ski, and also home to nice rotenburo. Except I must say stripping down nekkid in the snow is quite an adventure ^^;
Towards and at the top of the montain the trees get covered in snow – they call ‘em 樹氷 (lit. ice trees). Something about the air, humidity and whatnot causes the snow to get caked on the trees. It’s quite impressive.
Alas, it was snowing and cloudy so the pics are nothing like the gorgeous blue sky promotional pics you’ll see ^^;
After another overnight bus ride I was back in Tokyo. At 6 am. And couldn’t check in until 3pm ^^;;;
Took that opportunity to see the haruhi movie ^^ I enjoyed it thoroughly and I think nagato fans will likely get orgasmic :P Wish I could comment on how the movie compared to the novel but haven’t read it yet orz.
Rest of the week was spent watching other movies and shopping in akiba… while recovering ^^;;
At the base of the building above, it’s no longer gamers (i.e. that corner of the building is no longer a games store front… the regular gamers store front is still there though). Some new restaurant or something. Bunch of other changes… seemed a lot bigger than the previous differences I’ve noticed in akiba. Below, some store (pachinko mebbe? can’t remember, never went in ^^;) looks like it’s completely shut down.
Also that store where the rapping guy (near the JR station entrance) was seemed to be gone ;_;
And what’s with this aoki clothing shop? Seemed out of place in the middle of akiba…
Below the railgun ad are a buncha kebab(?) vendors… been meaning to try them since I love that stuff but when I came back it was raining or I was still under the weather so it didn’t seem like the best place for a meal ^^;;
‘nother look at the gamers building ^^
Met up with another friend and took him to experience a maid cafe ^^; First stopped by @home but it was deserted… sign said they were open but chairs were still stacked on top of some tables o.O Ended up at MaiDreamin.
pics from main site
We didn’t order any but they have special monster sized dishes ^^;; If you do get one you get a bonus 30 minutes (it’s like 500 yen/hour just to be there) plus a pic with the maids ^^; In addition, instead of the usual moemoe power to charge up and make your food delicious, they do a super moe moe power up with the whole cafe ending with a moe moe beam ^^;;;;
They had english menus so I’m assuming they’re accepting of foreign guests (I mention that ‘cuz I thought I had heard of some folks having trouble getting in other places unless they could speak Japanese?).
At any rate, if you’ve been meaning to try one, from my experience MaiDreamin will probably sit well with you. They also have like 4 locations in akiba and 1 in ikebukuro ^^;;;
Saw nanoha after haruhi… totally recommend it to all nanoha fans. And for those of you that still haven’t become a fan or haven’t gotten around to it… totally recommend it to you too! (even you, blowfish :P) Reason being is that it’s the entire 1st season compressed to about 2 hours. Pacing was great, no more of that monster of the week feel… and it delivers almost everything there is to love about the first season. So – if you haven’t watched the entire first season, here’s a way to get it done really quick. If you still don’t like it, fair enough, and now you can say you even seen the whole thing (basically).
click for gelbooru
punynari wrote up a nice post on the movie if you’d like to know more (though remember to skip through the mid section if you’re afraid of spoilers). I’m hoping an A’s and StrikerS film will follow ^^
Frog fountain thing in ueno park. Walked around there for some pics before leaving tokyo.
Some yo-yo performing dude ^^;
If you’re planning on upgrading to a nicer camera, one thing I can attest to is the value of a high resolution and a sharp lens. Took this pic:
…pretty uninteresting. But from that pic I was able to make the following 100% crop:
Prolly not enough resolution for a print (1179×768) but more than enough for a blog post ^^ Quite frankly I was amazed how sharp it was at 100%, only using 1/125s shutter speed. At any rate, still not a superb pic (bird kinda blending in too well with the tree ^^;) but an improvement ^^;
I’m sure it must look better at some point during the year… but in February the lake in Ueno park looks absolutely dreadful ^^;;;;
Not really sure what this cat was going after ^^;
…which reminds me, some cats in yamagata, above ^^
Also ended up seeing the fate/stay night movie… Though honestly I’m not really sure what I thought about it. I felt like it was epic… but I was still a bit sick and had to leave for a short while midway… when I came back I knew I had missed a(some) pretty big scene(s) ;_; Also, I didn’t really know what the heck was going on… had previously been planning to complete the game before watching the anime or anything. Since I’ve only played like a half hour of the game, I know close to nothing. I felt like there was a lot of imagery that was supposed to invoke responses in those familiar with the series, but I just left with more questions ^^;; I’ll definitely have to finish the game and rewatch it… though it won’t be the same without thunderous cinema audio ^^;
click for gelbooru
One thing I did fully appreciate was rin’s tsundere ^^
Again, I’ll point you to punynari, who also has a post on his thoughts on this movie too if you’re interested.
Well then that ended up being longer than I thought ^^;; A nice trip, but definitely crippled by being sick. Guess there’s always next year ^^
以上！
Filed under: japan Tagged: akiba, japan, ueno, yamagata
