Flight was at 1130pm, so I'd reach there by 8.20am. Ok. Sleep then.
Sleep: Truly terrible, horrible, and uncomfortable. AAAGH!! I'm not of the avian species; it's not normal for me to sleep upright! Was shifting about trying to get some sleep so that I wouldn't wake up to a neckache or cramp, but that was to no avail. Still ended up with a neckache anyway. And in the middle of it all the plane suddenly dipped, could feel the sudden drop in altitude. Abit scary at first...but was too tired to freak. Slept on. XP
Woke up and greeted ti. Happy birthdayy ti!! XD
On reaching narita airport, I was thinking, whoa, so this is Japan. I’m in Japan. Neatness. And on the country entry form, there was this space titled: Alien Registration Number.
@_@ What?!
At the immigration counter..whoa. The queue melts away fast. Especially for the locals queue. An extremely huge crowd of Japanese re-entering only took at most 10 mins to settle ALL of them. While all the foreigners took almost half an hour to settle about one-third the amount. Cause of the intense security checks and stuff. But still….とっても早いです.. すごい….In Malaysia you could take ages to enter if you’re using a foreign passport.
One thing about Japanese guys (at this point the most significant were the immigration officers) is that they are quite…in touch with their feminine traits. They sound like guys trying to be girls. No offense, but they really do. I’m sure they think it’s natural to do so…well..I was gonna see more of it later. Had an inkling of it, but didn’t pay it too much attention. Until. Until. XP
Had a simple breakfast at the airport. Wow. It was just unusual to hear everything in Japanese, the intercom voices, the people around me, the cashier, the mothers, fathers, children…Absorbing everything in one go was very interesting. Imagine, something I only used to hear on my pc (yeah, while watching anime) was now in real-time situation.
As expected, I acted as my family’s translator. In truth, Japanese people do know English, it doesn’t matter whether it’s limited or broken or whatever, but they know more English than I do Japanese. It was abit awkward for me to speak it at first, cause I could imagine their faces once I uttered something in the wrong grammar or whatever it is.
From the airport to the hotel (which was in shinagawa) took about an hour..Fell asleep in the bus. For some reason, it was that comfortable. It was about noon by the time we reached there, checked in. Checked out the room for abit. And the bathrooms. The bathrooms kinda reminded me of the ones ming and tsing have in their rooms. The kind with the assorted buttons that do different things for different purposes.
After that, we headed out to akihabara.
By train.
At the train station had abit of lunch…and they blasted tunes I got 2 weeks back, pretty new…like Asia Engineer – Eternal Pose, home made kazoku – shounen Heart, Chemistry – Wings for words, Orange range – kizuna… XP it was good since I didn’t bring my iPod along. Should have, should have!!! X(
If there’s something else I was always amazed with in urban areas crammed with people like hongkong and japan, it’s the railway system. An integral component of the local’s mode of transport, it stretches everywhere, and is probably more useful than a car. Within a few minutes’ walk, you see an arrow pointing downwards, stating, “JR Yamanote Line” or Ginza Line…or the rest of it which I do not remember. There are at least 10 sub-lines and 4 different railway services. The most common is the JR (stands for Japan Railways) line. The core line, the Yamanote Line, goes to the main parts of Tokyo, so that one my mom’s most familiar with.
Ticket buying is something else too. The first time we tried, we nearly bought the wrong ticket. Cause you don’t buy by place, you buy by price. And for each price there are at least 3 different stops in vastly different trains going in different directions. So first check the place, then the price. And make sure you enter the correct gate. If not the train you wanna get on won’t be there, and you can’t get a refund for entering from the wrong gate.
Moving on…
Reached akiba. Omg. It’s like a heaven for tech junkies and anime junkies. My first stop (which was random) was into this 3-storey building where they have figurine stores on nearly every floor. I headed for the 2nd floor first. There was a huge anime/manga shop there. Went in and drooled. They have an extensive collection of manga. One half of the shop was filled with manga to the ceiling. From shoujo to shounen to seinen to yaoi to shoujo-ai to doujinshi to hentai..It’s all there. I kid you not. And I do not make typos like hentai. Yea, it’s pretty common in Japan to have hentai or at least something ecchi-ish. No big deal. Just ignore those and move on to the more interesting stuff.
Another building I entered was even keng-er. XD 8 floors! I think the name of the complex was Gamerz. Anyway.
1st floor is the new magazines, manga and games.
2nd floor has the manga. New manga. Old manga. All kinds of manga. Every genre. One whole floor. Shelves are jam-packed with ‘em. Just drooled la really. Wanted to buy some manga, but decided against it. I don’t know why.
3rd floor is where they have all the merchandise like the shirts, shitajiki, cups, pencils, keychains….@_@ I wanted to buy the ichigo mashimaro ones… T_T
4th floor is the ultimate drool (for me anyway) the CDs!!! Original CDs, soundtracks, albums, singles, dramas…*DROOL, DROOL, DROOL, DROOL* and I couldn’t help myself from gaping at the amount of stuff they have..I wanted all the CDs….T_T the gankutsuou soundtracks…the..the….*drools just thinking about it*
5th floor is where they place all the anime DVDs. A nice nice selection, and the champloo DVD covers I so wanted…the pictures are very funny, and represent champloo just nicely. XDXDXD Someone please scan it!!!
6th floor is the figurine floor. Figurines from so many famous series and series I liked. Like the ichigo mashimaro, the One Piece…oh, especially the Basilisk one. Even if it’s just Gennosuke. And it’d cost me ¥3000+ which would drive me crazy as is. I’ve only got ¥3000 to spend. Must be extremely picky. *takes a final glance, takes a deep breath..and moves on*
7th floor is the Gundam model floor. I still half-wished they had the Eva models though. My favourite Eva model is still Eva 00. シンジの紫色のEVA.
8th floor was the only floor I didn’t visit; the trading cards floor. Not my cup of tea. Oh well. But I suppose they should have all the yu-gi-oh, naruto, pokemon…I mean, they must have others enough to fill an entire floor.
Then ti and korg went over to the namco plaza. It’s an arcade where they house most of the recent games such as Tekken 5..I think it’s the most popular one there, where people challenge each other and the winner gets to stay on and keep on playing till he loses.
Enough of akiba, we decided to move on and proceeded to ginza. Had shabu-shabu for dinner (it’s kinda like steamboat with slices of beef or pork that you dip into soup to cook it to your own preference; literally speaking I cooked my own dinner XP which was fun) and people were staring funny cause we sure didn’t know what the regular way to eat it was. But who cares. XD It was prolly the healthiest dinner I had. Lots and lots of vegetables and lean pork which was the main course, then at the end of it you have a bowl of noodles.
And strolling about ginza (by the time we exited it was about 9-something-ish and most shops were already closed) was interesting. All the branded goods, and yeah, the Apple store in tokyo is in ginza. The night lights (most of which are bright neon shop signs and the huuuge plasma tv on buildings at the main junction) were interesting, nonetheless.
Only got back at about 1030pm, and I’ve never enjoyed the comfort of a bed more than this. Fuuuuuuuuuuh~ but both brothers just had to experience Japanese tv shows (most are reality shows, by the way) which is very amusing. They rattle on and on and laugh and giggle and we have no freaking idea what is going on but we watch it anyway. Switched to mtv after the shows got decidedly boring. Loved this song even though the artist looked abit sissy in the video
Song currently ringing in my mind: toshinobu kubota – Club Happiness
