I’ve been back from Japan for a little less than a week, and it’s about time to start writing down all the stuff we saw and did on our trip.

Day 1

The first day of any trip is always traveling.

I got to the airport in the wee hours of the morning to catch my 7am flight to Atlanta, where I would be meeting up with my traveling companion, Brett. We got out on the runway, and then sat for about an hour and a half (I only had an hour and 45 in Atlanta to make it to my next flight) while we waited for the rain to stop in Atlanta. We finally took off, and landed in Atlanta with about 15 minutes for me to get to the other side of the airport. As I ran full speed across the airport and boarded the inter-concourse train, I called Brett to give a status update. They were forcing him to either board without me or give up his seat, so he had to board. I rolled up the gate and breathlessly hand them my passport and board the plane just in time. I wandered down and greeted a fairly freaked out Brett.

However, aside from that, the 13 hour flight was actually not too bad. Delta’s been shocking me with continually excellent flight experiences. Decent free food, free movies on private LCDs, free sleep masks, etc.

We landed at Narita and proceeded through customs with no issues. Then we exchanged money and got our JR Passes. We got on the Narita Express and headed to Ikebukuro, where our ryokan was.

It took us a while to find the place once we got off the train, due to the fact that it was tucked in a back alley, and the front kind of looked like a back entrance. But, after wandering around the building about five times we decided that the “back door” was actually the front door.

We relaxed at Kimi Ryokan for a while before we headed out to investigate the neighborhood for some dinner.

We wandered around for a while before settling on a kaiten-zushi place on the nearby strip. I was initially leery of the conveyor places, but this one was sufficiently small, busy and friendly enough that we gave it a try. I’m very glad we did as the sushi was amazing, the people were wonderfully friendly, and we had a great time.

One thing that some people might not realize is that nigirizushi normally comes with wasabi placed between the fish and rice, but a lot (i.e. all) of the places I’ve been here in Bloomington/America forgo the wasabi. It was initially a shock to find wasabi in everything, but that soon turned into a lust for it in everything when I got home. I’ve not had a chance to corner Bruce (the main itamae at Sushi Bar) yet and harass him to do so… yet.

After we had our fill we headed out and wandered around the neighborhood a while before heading back to Kimi.

Day 2

We got up bright and early on the second day of our trip, because we had tickets to The Ghibli Museum. We headed over to Mitaka and hiked down the road to the museum.

The museum doesn’t allow photography, so I’ll just have to describe a few of the cooler exhibits.

• There was a series of interconnected rooms plastered with sketches and concept art. As we progressed through the rooms we were walked through all the various steps of producing an animated film.
• There was a room where kids could climb and play with a giant stuffed cat bus.
• There was a room with explanations about how animation works, including a massive Tototro exhibit with tons of small figurines in various stages of an animated scene. It would periodically spin up and animate. It was really a lot cooler than I can explain.

Exploring the museum was a lot of fun in and of itself. Oh, here’s a bunch of picture’s and explanations on this Museum Article.

After the museum we headed back to Kimi for a while, before heading to Harajuku to get dinner at a neat little microbiotic place that Brett knew about. It was quite good, but after we ate and wandered around the district a bit, we headed home where we quickly got slammed by jet lag and fell asleep sometime around 7pm.

Day 3

This day started early with a trip for breakfast, and then we heading on to Akihabara.

Akihabara, or electric town, is essentially geek paradise. The streets are lined with stores selling everything from light bulbs to wiring. The side streets are clogged with electronics stores, figurine stores, video game stores, manga, anime, soundtracks… it was amazing. Also, almost everywhere we looked we were beset by Gashapon Machines containing everything from pokemon stickers to half naked figurines of women in bondage (don’t ask).

We made a stop by Super Potato first to satisfy our retro gaming desires. SP is a great little retro store in Akiba, with wall to wall games, music, and random retro swag. We wandered around the place for what felt like hours. There is so much there that it kind of overloaded my brain and I just sort of sat there trying to figure out a way I could afford it all.

After Super Potato we headed down the strip to “HEY Arcade”, a five story arcade bustling with excellent games and skilled gamers. We took some time to play some games, but we didn’t stay too long because we had lots to see. We came back later a few times and saw some expert playing.

We ended our trip with a stop by Yodabashi Camera one of the most gigantic electronic stores I’ve ever seen. They have two entire aisles of capsule machines! We spent an hour or two wandering around, before having lunch in their food court. Yes, this electronics store has a food court. Yes, that’s insane.

Before we left, Brett and I both opted to get Moero! Nekketsu Rhythm Damashii Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan 2.

After we got done at Yodabashi, we noticed it was raining, so we took the chance to quickly head back to Super Potato, where Brett bought Radiant Silvergun. After that we headed back to the Ryokan for a bit while we waited for a friend of Brett’s coworkers to meet us for dinner.

When we met up with the friend, we figured out a nearby vegetarian restaurant and headed out for some dinner. The place was a Tofu place in the Tobu department store, which is one of the largest department stores in the world. Once we found the place, we sat down and our host ordered up a meal. Everything on the menu was tofu, and it was a bit of overkill for a simple omnivore like myself. However I enjoyed the food and the company. We headed back to the hotel by way of the Tobu market, stopping to grab a couple riceballs.

Once we made it back to the hotel, we spent some time on the internet before another jet lag induced crash.

Next Episode: “Japan [Day 4-5] - Koyasan”

Another year has passed, and I’m now 27 years old. Because of the date of my wedding being my birthday, I’ve also been married for two years now. Neither event was that big of a deal this year with the busy life I/we lead. Jenn and I were not blessed with a week in Cali this time around (Last year we went to Disneyland for our anniversary), but rather a stressful week of study and homework.

This year my father came in to send the day with us on my birthday. We spent the day talking, and playing Wii. Dad seemed to take a shine to the Wii, and had a good time. I also spoke with my brother for an hour or so, and got a chance to catch up with my sister and my mother. Later in the evening we went out for dinner before my father left to head back.

School

School is going the same as it ever was. I’m taking summer session classes, which means that I’m cramming sixteen weeks of class into six short weeks. It’s not exactly something I’m loving. Currently I’m taking Intro to East Asian Culture, which is interesting, but not enjoyable at this speed.

With regard to my general academic progress, I’m still fairly tired of school. I’m still not convinced that it’s worth the time and potential professional sacrifices. I’m going to keep at it until there’s an avenue to the bay area open to me, but this bullshit is getting so taxing. I can’t take two more years of insipid undergrads. The other day I actually overheard some girl on her phone say: “.. and like, then I noticed that, like, I didn’t have underwear on! … I know!” /sigh

I still haven’t decided for sure what I’m planning to do, but… yea… I’m pretty done with this part of the country.

Photography

The photography is going well, I think. I’ve gotten a lot of great feedback, and Jenn stopped complaining about me wasting my money on the camera a while ago. It’s annoying that I’ve not had a lot of spare time to go hunting interesting pictures, but a lot of my initiative is eaten up by school and work. I’m looking forward to going on my trip to Japan and getting a lot of good photos. I’m planning on getting a Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR DX Zoom lens before the trip, which is a compact and versatile, albeit slow, zoom lens. Should prove useful, and with that purchase I will have officially spent more on lenses than I did on my camera.

I’m planning on trying to take a photography trip this weekend if the weather isn’t crappy, maybe I’ll get some pics at the cascades or something. Last weekend we went to the Exotic Feline Rescue Center, and I got some nice shots. The cats are amazing, and the trip is well worth it.

Here’s one of the cats, a really sweet white tiger that they have there:

Video Games

I’ve quit wow fairly cold turkey. It just wasn’t worth the time investment to play with a bunch of folks I didn’t know, and working on content I’ve already beaten. I felt bad about flaking out of my guild, who were about to make me a class leader and an officer, but I think it’s for the best.

I’ve taken up playing GH3 and Smash Brothers with a couple friends every week, and I’ve been playing a lot of Team Fortress 2 with Tim. I wish I could play more varied games, but with my Warcraft singularity it was easy to slack off on hardware upgrades. RIght now I’m looking at about $1200 or so to get my computers to the place I want them, and I won’t have that scratch till after Japan. Once I upgrade I have a list of games I hope to play; Bioshock, C&C3, Age of Conan, Supream Commander, crysis, the list goes on and on…

I’ve also been playing a lot with Rupture, which is a kind of cross platform gaming aggregation platform thing I’ve talked about before. THey’ve made some big strides, and it’s starting to shape up really nice. They also got picked up by EA this week, so congrats to the team on that one, you guys deserve it!

Japan

As I mentioned a couple times in this post, I’m heading to Japan this summer finally! Brett (old roommate, good friend) and I are heading to Japan for two weeks in August. We’ve not set things hard in stone yet, so if you have any strong suggestions on places we should plan on making a priority (that aren’t on my Japan List ) let me know!

I’m really excited for the trip to Japan, it’s going to be the first trip I’ve made outside the country that wasn’t contained within the sterile walls of some sort of resort. We’re planning on getting train passes, and seeing a lot of varied places.

So the rest of the summer should be very taxing, but will end in a large amount of awesome. I can deal with that.

It's nice to know that the United States isn't the only country that likes to pretend it's never wrong. The GaijinSmash guy talks a little about the Japanese war self denial. It's a weird feeling... it's not so much that I'm 'glad' that the US isn't the only country that pretends that the wars that we didn't win, didn't really happen. But, it makes me feel a little less horrible about the things our history book glosses over.

Should we gloss over the future, and work to instill some sort of pride in our country? It's hard to say. On the one hand I think that people need to be able to have that pride in our country to stand up against genuinely horrible people doing genuinely horrible things. Granted, that hasn't happened very often recently. The obvious counter point is that when you cram patriotism down people's throats all their lives, it tends to rot their brains to the point where the US can do no wrong. Where we should draw the line is really hard to decide. Do you show that famous picture of the Vietnamese kid getting shot to 4th graders? How about high schoolers? I never saw anything nearly that graphic in any of my history classes (and in fact didn't see that image till I hit college at some point. Yay internet), even the one where the teacher lamented about the horrible atrocities that the US has engaged in that were just omitted from our books.

I recently saw two movies that I've been meaning to mention. They are two sides of the battle for Iwo Jima, Flags of our Fathers (Quicktime Trailer) and Letters from Iwo Jima (Quicktime Trailer). Both of these movies I've watched twice now, and both were very intense. Neither one feels like a glamorous retelling of the war on either side. The battle was long, it was a horrendous loss of life (of 22,000 Japanese troops, 20,000 died) for both sides, and the outcome was known before the first troops landed on the beach. Flags tells the story of the fight from the American side, and details the post battle exploits of the three soldiers who were in the flag raising photo. Letters tells the story from the Japanese point of view, interspersed with flashbacks of the soldiers as they write letters to their loved ones. I found that I liked letters a bit more, but I highly recommend both movies. Not since Grave of the Fireflies have I been this moved by a war movie (Incidentally, if you have never seen Grave of the Fireflies, you should go rent it now, or borrow it from me).