Auld Lang Syne

November 19-23

From the 20th to the 23rd I was in Tokyo with three of my best friends from Wake Forest, Jenni, Jeannie, and Diane. Late Friday night I took the night bus to arrive early the next morning outside of Ikebukuro station, which was very conveniently about a 5 minute walk from the hostel we stayed at. I was the last to arrive so despite it being too early (around 5:30AM) for me to check in there was no problem with me just walking right into the room with Jenni who had come to pick me up…for some reason she thought my sense of direction might need a little help :P

After a few more hours of sleep for everyone I officially checked in and we headed off for our first day of adventures. Our first stop was McDonald’s for breakfast and I enjoyed a delicious McGriddle. Next up was Nakano Broadway, which is basically a big store but with several of the floors devoted to fan goods for all sorts of different things such as anime, music, and movies. It felt kind of like a classy flea market (if that isn’t too much of an oxymoron). We spent most of the day shopping and playing around in the different stores. That night we bought some food and drinks and then spent a very long time singing karaoke. It’s hard to describe just how much fun it is to karaoke if you haven’t had the real experience, but believe me when I say it’s a very fun way to spend an evening.

Diane in front of the sign for Nakano Broadway

Just one of the many stops we made to play some ufo catcher games. Jenni is really good at them and Jeannie really wanted some Christmas Disney characters.

When we say this huge ice cream cone we just knew we had to get it. Jenni looks very devious in this picture.

It took very little time for the ice cream to go from the previous picture to this one. I love Jenni's face...I promise I was just pretending to steal her bite of ice cream :P

Jeannie and I posing with our ramen we had for lunch.

It was really awesome to see UNC paraphernalia in a store in Japan!

Weeellllll, I spent a bit of money but I now have the entire set of the One Piece poster...and lightsaber chopsticks, so it's okay.

Yes, we bought matching Mario one-up mushroom "Get A Life" socks.

Sunday Diane went to go visit her host family so Jenni, Jeannie, and I went to go see the new Harry Potter movie. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should go! Before the movie started we did a Harry Potter themed purikura (picture booth), one picture had Hogwarts in the background and the other with the Weasley’s. After we all met back up we went to Akihabara and did some more shopping and exploring. For dinner we went to a sukiyaki restaurant and had delicious, delicious food.

This frog and Santa Spiderman were hanging around outside the movie theater advertising some nearby shop.

There was Harry Potter purikura inside the theater! I tried to take pictures of my pictures so these aren't the best quality. Here we were trying to make the same face as Ron.

Yay Hogwarts!

Jenni and I playing the taiko drumming game after the movie.

Jeannie and I posing with the movie poster after watching the film.

Many of you won't appreciate how extremely cool it was to see this cafe. Basically Gundams are giant fighting robots.

Jenni and Diane posing with the Gundam taiyaki.

Sukiyaki!

After cooking the meat and veggies you would dip it in raw egg to make it even more delicious. I know this is a little off-putting for many westerners but the Japanese use raw egg quite often and I haven't gotten sick yet *knock on wood*

Since Tuesday was a national holiday and we had no work, I was able to ask for Monday off. Monday morning Jenni and I were on a desperate search to complete the poster collection we had started and Jeannie and Diane were willing to humor us so we headed back towards Nakano Broadway. With some good luck we were able to get the full set of One Piece posters! Lunch was at a kaiten sushi restaurant named sushi-go-round, which is my new favorite description of conveyor belt sushi. After lunch we split up for a few hours so Jenni and Diane could go to Korea town and look for fan goods for some musicians they liked. Jeannie and I went off to Tokyo Tower since I had never been. It was cloudy so we didn't pay to go all the way up to the top but we had a lot of fun exploring around inside.

First glimpse of Tokyo Tower.

We did our omiyage shopping at the tower. This was one of the particularly good bits of engrish there.

The very disturbing Tokyo Tower mascot...sorry, but I don't think I would ever buy my child a stuffed animal that looked like that.

The so-bad-it-was-hilarious 3D haunted house movie Jeannie and I watched. It had worse graphics than most video games made in the past decade.

We were being Godzilla.

Naturally we took a picture with the mascots, wouldn't want to forget how disturbing they are.

Outside the tower was very festive!

Our last stop was Yokohama to go to Chinatown for dinner. We went to a dim sum restaurant. It’s like a buffet but better because you pay a set amount and have a menu with tons of items on it that you can order from. They bring out a small dish that everyone at the table can share. We at sooooooooooo much food and it was all freshly cooked and delicious, as opposed to cold, stale, and touched-by-who-knows-how –many-people food you get at a buffet.

After dinner we did a group purikura before my night bus left. We cut it rather close and Jenni and Diane waited at the bus stop while Jeannie and ran back to the hostel from the train station and then ran to the bus. This is probably why I got sick a few days later because it had started rainy and was rather chilly and I was dashing about working up a sweat and getting rained on. Luckily I made and after a final round of hugs and a group phone call while we were waiting for actual final departure and could still see each other, I was headed back to Himi. The bus got into Takaoka just in time for me to catch the first train into Himi and I spent a large part of the Tuesday just sleeping and realizing that I had caught a cold.

A couple of the purikura we did. We were on a pirate ship in this one. Clearly I'm the captain because I have the top hat and mustache.

I love how this one came out!!

So to summarize the trip: I had an awesome time, got some cool swag, and got to see some people I love. All in all, an excellent way to spend the weekend before Thanksgiving!