tourist – Anime QandA

Japan Trip 2017 – Day 18, 19 & 20

The final three days of my Japan Trip 2017, it’s been… well, a trip!

If you haven’t read Day 1 & 2 of my Japan Trip 2017 blog series, please do so before reading this post for context and continuity’s sake. Day 3, Day 4, Day 5 & 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11/12, Day 13, Day 14, Day 15 & 16 and Day 17 are also available to read.

So this is the end, huh? Yes, I’ve decided to wrap up the last 3 days into one post, not just because my 2019 trip to Japan is imminent (I’m writing this less than a week from the day we fly out), but also because not much happened in day 19 and 20 so it made sense to not draw it all out unnecessarily.

Fair enough. So what did you get up to on Day 18? Another shrine, though this one was both closer by to Akihabara–it’s called the Kanda Shrine and it’s literally 5 minutes walk from Akiba–and it’s full of anime stuff, so you know, win-win!

A religious shrine with anime stuff in it? Doesn’t seem exactly respectful, does it? What do I look like, a Shintoist? I don’t know how strict their religion is with regards to this stuff, all I know is I was glad the amount of ‘Is The Order A Rabbit??’ stuff at the shrine (a good show) outpaced the number of ‘Love Live! Sunshine!!’ stuff (a not-good show).

Yay, more anime! My ‘Is The Order A Rabbit’ girls! 🙂

Well that’s an ~opinion~ if ever I’ve heard one… (Opinions are my own, they do not represent, well anyone elses’ because that’d be weird…)

Right. And so after that? You’ll never guess what we did next! Pretty much the opposite of a calm and serene shrine.

Something lewd, I presume? Nope! We went to a “shooting cafe” in Akiba, which was as close as I’ll ever want to get to a real gun as we fired Airsoft guns into a target on a range. It was fun, and also kind of scary how easy it was to use a gun and get bulls-eyes!

And then? Dinner! *picture incoming*

Well that seemed like a full day of fun, what about Day 19? According to my memory we just did a heck of a lot of anime merch shopping with the only picture being of the irlwaifu Sharon eating Taiyaki.

I don’t know why I’ve always got these photos of Sharon putting things in her mouth…

It’s a ‘Magikarp’ branded Taiyaki from ‘Pokemon’ hence why it has ‘GAME FREAK’ and ‘TV Tokyo’ on the wrapping.

That’s it?! Oh and some wistful midnight photography of the night time streets below from the window of our tiny hotel room.

Right and so Day 20 then? So here’s a fun fact for all you potential tourists. If you only intend to spend 1 day visiting Akihabara make it a Sunday! Why? Because around noon the police close off all the connecting side streets and open up the main thoroughfare of Akiba to pedestrian traffic. That’s right, you can walk up and down the actual road of the titular Akiba strip without a care in the world. It might seem inconsequential, but if you’ve ever been constricted to the pedestrian heavy sidewalks being able to walk down the length of Akihabara on the roads is sublime. Also makes lugging heavy suitcases a kilometer (that’s a bit over half a mile for you Yanks) to the train station an absolute breeze.

It’s a free-for-all on the Akiba strip and it’s a really cool experience!

Had to get a pic standing in front of the billboard for the ‘Is The Order A Rabbit? – Dear My Sister’ movie!

And so that’s the end of the Japan 2017 blogs now, is it? Yep. That’s it, the end!

Wow, okay so how you want to wrap these things up? First of all, thanks so much for reading these vaguely incompetent posts. I started out okay but quickly degenerated into something (what I considered to be) disappointing–mostly due to a lack of photos. But it’s all a learning curve and my upcoming 2019 Japan Trip (I’ll be there from February 7th to 28th FYI) will hopefully be lightyears ahead of this as I am now well aware of what I need to capture and record in order to make a satisfying travel blog series! I won’t be blogging while I’m there but within a month or two of my return I will start the weekly travel posts again.

If you liked my post and want to support my content, please consider supporting my Patreon page, or donating by buying me a coffee on Ko-fi!

Japan Trip 2017 – Day 17

The seventeenth day of my Japan Trip 2017, hope you like pictures of trees and stuff!

Day 17, what’s in store? We went to visit Ueno, specifically Ueno Park and Ueno Zoo. And it’s an absolutely gorgeous place–specifically Ueno Park.

Looks like a pretty place. Indeed and it was a nice day. Though we had a rather unique experience when we were in the main thoroughfare of Ueno Park. Five middle schoolers and their teacher approached us with questionnaires and questions to ask us in English to help practice their English skills. They asked us some generic questions about where we were from and what we liked about Japan, then they asked what my favourite sport was. I replied “I don’t like sport but I like anime!” and they asked me which ones, I had to wrack my brain to think of one that was suitable for middle school boys and Sharon suggested ‘Assassination Classroom’ I said to her “it’s not called that in Japanese, but I couldn’t remember it’s name in Japanese and so I just said Koro-sensei” and they all excitedly exclaimed “ah, Koro-sensei! Koro-sensei!” It was a really fun and endearing experience.

Sounds like it. So what about the zoo? Can we expect lots of pictures of animals now? Nope. Zero pictures of animals, I’ve never really been a fan of zoo’s at the best of times and the zoo’s in Japan don’t really have the best reputation. Ueno Zoo is apparently among the better Japanese Zoo’s in terms of animal enclosure sizes and cleanliness but it was still kinda depressing. So here’s some pictures of the scenery inside the zoo.

Zoo pics without animals, fair play. Anything else happen? We had Indian food for lunch at Ueno Station, unexpectedly delicious. (Well I say “unexpected” but it’s hard to get legitimately ~bad~ food in Japan unless you’re really trying).

Right, and is that it for the day? Because that only seems like half a day. That’s all the photos on my phone which must mean after lunch we must have headed back to Akihabara and just went anime shopping for the rest of the day. I don’t even know what we had for dinner! Once again I apologise for being so bad at travel blogging–i’ll do better next trip I promise!

If you liked my post and want to support my content, please consider supporting my Patreon page, or donating by buying me a coffee on Ko-fi!

Japan Trip 2017 – Day 15 & 16

The fifteenth and sixteenth day of my Japan Trip 2017, don’t get your hopes up

So you promised a “not very exciting Day 15 and 16”, care to elaborate? The irlwaifu Sharon has a chronic illness and the fact we’d been more or less put in 2 full weeks of travel activities meant exhaustion had struck her in a big way so we didn’t really do anything active or exciting these two days so she could rest up.

Sorry to hear it. No worries, a day of Sharon resting means a day (or two) of me going out and shopping at anime stores which is good for me, but bad for you readers as there’s not a lot to showcase. But here it goes anyway!

We went for a walk through Yokohama’s pristine business district nearby our hotel, there was some gorgeous autumnal foliage on the trees, so if that’s your thing enjoy the photos!

Afterwards Sharon went back to the hotel to sleep while I undoubtedly sought out some lewd anime store filled with scantily clad waifus. It’s what I do. (No pictures, sorry perverts). Afterwards we went for dinner at one of the many restaraunts located in Landmark Tower, this time something less fancy than yesterday. A tasty pizza and exceptionally crispy potato chips.

You Americans out there might think it odd to put an egg on a pizza but Australians have been doing it for decades! Seems like the Japanese have caught on too!

And is that it for Day 15? Yep, and that was our last day in Yokohama. If you ever get the chance I recommend it for sure, especially visiting the area in and around Yokohama Landmark Tower, its clean, beautiful and surprisingly laid back for such a big city! Although here’s some last minute night time shots from our hotel window.

The city below, I did love watching the traffic zoom around like I was playing SimCity or something!

Me trying to photograph the hotel room next door like some pervy voyeur.

Right, thanks for that… so moving on from Yokohama where did you go for Day 16 and onwards? AKIHABARA, BABY!

Of course… Yes the last 4 days we were based in Akihabara (again) I did say I loved this place right?!

Oh you mentioned it once or twice… Good. So yeah, not a lot doing on this day, lots of shopping and some eating, here it is in that order.

Me admiring some “fine art” outside the Sofmap building.

And what’s that you are carrying? I’m glad you asked. That’s an anime figure I’d bought from Mandarake and here’s something important to know for all you would be purchasers of all things anime who are travelling to Japan. If you see something you like but don’t know if the price is worth it, GO TO MANDARAKE’s website! I wouldn’t call it the perfect solution but more often than not the price you’ll see (whether in stock or not) is the price you should be paying for secondhand anime goods. The figure in that bag I saw on five seperate occasions throughout Akihabara in big department stores and tiny toy stores. And the prices? Well as high as $550 US to averaging around $200 US to the price I eventually got at Mandarake’s brick and mortar store at $110 US. Be smart about your shopping.

This is the item in the ‘Mandarake’ bag, a Ryoko ‘Kill La Kill’ figurine. Even if you can’t speak Japanese, just show them the page from their website and they’ll more than likely be able to find the item for you.

And the food? Right, sorry, got sidetracked there for a minute. True to form I can’t remember what exactly lunch was, some chicken rice bowl from a restaurant inside the Akihabara UDX building.

And dinner was takeaway burgers from Japanese fast food chain ‘Mos Burger’, they are ~good~ but kind of overrated, if you want my quick and probably inaccurate rating of Japanese fast food burgers it goes:

McDonalds
Carl’s Jr.
Mos Burger
Wendys

That’s a meal deal for 2 people FYI, I’m not a buta yarou!

And that’s all for this portion of the trip? Yep. Sorry it’s a bit low on content but that’s how it goes sometimes! Join me next time when we visit shrines and stuff! At the very least it’s sure to be more photogenic than this post!

If you liked my post and want to support my content, please consider supporting my Patreon page, or donating by buying me a coffee on Ko-fi!

Japan Trip 2017 – Day 14

The fourteenth day of my Japan Trip 2017, noodles and roller coasters oh my!

Okay, Day 14, let’s go! Breakfast at the reliable ‘Vie De France’ is only reliable if you pick smart choices. While the top item in the picture, the pork cutlet in bread (it probably has a name in Japanese) was good, the chocolate scone was absurdly dry and almost inedible as a result. Oh well, teach me for getting something unhealthy for breakfast.

Right. And so after that? What were the plans for the day? The Cup Noodle Museum! I mean I’d probably be interested regardless but the fact of the matter is I love Nissin brand Cup Noodles and the Japanese ones are the absolute best in the world!

Three exclamation marks!!! Get hyped for noodles, son!

Okay, what do you do at a cup noodle museum? Well there’s the usual stuff, learning the history of how the first cup noodle was made, the legacy of the company, etc. Plus some cup noodle related art installations to pad out what is essentially something that takes 15 minutes to learn the entire history of.

A picture of two nerds in front of noods.

A replica of the kitchen the first cup noodles were made in. Complete with terrible lighting for photography!

Seems kind of underwhelming… Maybe, but the real highlight comes from a separate part of the museum where you get to design your own cup noodle cup and then have it filled with custom ingredients and then have it vacuum sealed as if it were one you bought in a store!

Sharon drew an Umaru cup noodle cup! Mine was some terrible surrealism inspired trash because I can’t draw.

They let you crank the machine that flips the noodles to the bottom of the cup.

Sharon’s on the left (onion, chicken, beef and egg) mine on the right, (onion, beef, shrimp and crab stick). I do love seafood, even in dehydrated form!

Then the plastic is ‘baked’ onto the outside of the cup to preserve the ingredients and you receive it! Itadakimasu!

Well it looks like you had fun at least! It was, I recommend it though the whole ‘making your own’ cup noodles would be strictly for people who are interested in eating them as it costs about 3 times the amount of buying a cup noodle off the shelf.

Here’s the view from a balcony in the cup noodle museum.

And then after that? Exploring a nearby (like directly across the street) shopping complex, it was very odd and Hawaiian inspired. Though I didn’t take any pictures so you’ll have to take my word for it! After that and some lunch (also not pictured, don’t worry you’re not missing anything) we headed over to Cosmo World–the theme park I teased in the previous blog!

The sun was just setting when we arrived.

And how do you rate Cosmo World as an amusement park? It’s got a great seaside location and it photographs a treat at night. But the rides are pretty generic, the log flume was probably the most fun of all the rides though the roller coasters had individual charms. The real problem with the place is the price, unlike some theme parks you can’t just pay a one-off fee and ride everything as much as you want all day, that’s because the park doesn’t have an entrance gate, you can just walk on off the street. Meaning that you have to pay per ride which would be fine if it was cheap. But paying between $5 and $10US per ride per person seems pretty steep. But then again maybe it makes sense for people who don’t want to ride everything multiple times.

Some other rides located mid-way between Cosmo World and our hotel.

This part of Yokohama is absolutely stunning at night.

And what about dinner? I presume there’s dinner pics? There’s always dinner pics. We were spoilt for choice at the Landmark Tower, there’s literally 30+ restaurants in the building and it took us about an hour to decide on a place. We settled on something a bit more up-market, bit romantic, with a nice view and a lounge singer crooning out Western songs in broken English. I had the Spencer Roll Roast Beef, which I can’t say I’ve ever had in Australia but was so delicious that I’m honestly looking forward to go back to Japan so I can have it again.

The restaurant was called ‘Mangia Mangia’ more restaurants should put their names on the plate, makes my job easier!

But what about desert? I didn’t have any myself, but downstairs in the shopping mall part of ‘Landmark Tower’ Sharon found an ice cream chain that was doing a collaboration with the anime ‘Yuri! On Ice’ so she ordered the ‘Pork Cutlet Bowl Ice Cream’ which came with a ceramic character bowl, gotta love the fact that you can get anime merch even at an ice cream chain!

It’s meant to look like a pork cutlet bowl, with the ‘rice’ being a lemony sorbet, the ‘meat’ being represented by a preserved fruit of some sort, the ‘egg’ a citrus jelly and the ‘green onion’ being apple juice spheres. She said it was delicious.

Had to find a way to squeeze anime into this somehow, huh? Well it is an anime blog after all… And that’s it for Day 14, stay tuned for a not very exciting Day 15 and 16!

If you liked my post and want to support my content, please consider supporting my Patreon page, or donating by buying me a coffee on Ko-fi!

Japan Trip 2017 – Day 13

The thirteenth day of my Japan Trip 2017, and what a view!

If you haven’t read Day 1 & 2 of my Japan Trip 2017 blog series, please do so before reading this post for context and continuity’s sake. Day 3, Day 4, Day 5 & 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10 and Day 11/12 are also available to read.

New day, new city? That’s right, we’re in Yokohama! Which is actually not all that far from Tokyo (like a half hour express train from the heart of Tokyo). Despite that the place definitely has a different ~vibe~, at least where we stayed did. It almost felt like a more casual Tokyo but I couldn’t even put my finger on the reason why… anyway as I teased at the end of the last blog our hotel in Yokohama is the Yokohama Royal Park Hotel located inside Yokohama Landmark Tower which is the second tallest building in Japan! Floors 49-70 of the building have a five-star hotel and our room was on the 54th floor and, it was certainly an amazing experience to have a hotel room up that high!

We stepped out from under the underground subway station expecting to be greeted by sunlight only to be steeped in shadow. We turned around to find the behemoth building blocking out the sun! At least there was no getting lost trying to find it!

Directly beneath Yokohama Landmark Tower.

5 star hotel, huh? Swanky… Surprisingly enough this 5 star hotel was cheaper than all of our other 3 star Tokyo hotels. I say surprisingly but given the size of the building (the amount of rooms it probably has) and the fact its not in Tokyo means they probably have a hard time filling it up and so have to be comparatively affordable. And can we take a moment to talk about that view…

The view from our 54th floor of Yokohama Royal Park Hotel in Landmark Tower.

Lunch at a fish and chip shop underneath the tower. The fish batter had weird green herbs in it but was still nice.

So what did you get up to on this day anyway? Not a lot, as is usually the case on the day we check in to a new hotel. We walked around the waterfront district, which was very pretty and scoped out some things to do on the next day as we’d be staying in Yokohama for 3 days.

Some weird thing near Landmark Tower. This is a very useful caption, I am good at this.

There was a smaller fun-fair style place on the tower side of the bay, with the larger amusement park ‘Cosmo World’ being on the other side.

The aforementioned ‘Cosmo World’ amusement park. This is but a tease as we didn’t visit it until the next day.

Right so, “sightseeing” things around the hotel. Surely that wouldn’t take all day? Well I had to find the nearest Animate and scope that out too! Which we did, and we found lots of goodies, none of which I have photos for from the actual day. Oops~!

Of course, so what other pics do you have? Food of course! Now this might seem like a weird pick for dinner, but we went to Sizzler. Yes, the American buffet chain, why? Because Sizzler’s in Australia pretty much all closed up like 15 years ago (there still might be one or two floating around) so seeing as how there was one in Landmark Tower, we had to go!

Did it live up to your nostalgic expectations? Simply put, no. It was okay, but not worth the cost, but still experiencing a Japanese Sizzler was still interesting. Amongst the buffet they had “uniquely” Japanese things like steamed rice, silken tofu and edamame.

Uh-huh… And then? Here’s some night photography of the areas around Landmark Tower.

There was a tall ship permanently docked in the bay outside the hotel. No, We didn’t go on it.

And is that it? More or less! It was a relaxing transitional day, we spent a lot of the evening lounging around the hotel, enjoying the view. Speaking of which, here’s what the view from our hotel room looked like at night.

Thanks for reading, look forward to day 14 when we visit a museum for noodles and ride overpriced rides!

If you liked my post and want to support my content, please consider supporting my Patreon page, or donating by buying me a coffee on Ko-fi!

Japan Trip 2017 – Day 11 & 12

The eleventh and twelfth day of my Japan Trip 2017, its mostly about food tbh…

If you haven’t read Day 1 & 2 of my Japan Trip 2017 blog series, please do so before reading this post for context and continuity’s sake. Day 3, Day 4, Day 5 & 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9 and Day 10 are also available to read.

Two days in one post, huh? That doesn’t bode well… Wow, way to get readers wanting to continue reading! Some days when you’re on holiday you don’t feel so inclined to take photos of everything or you second guess how interesting something is or you’re not allowed to take photos because you’re spending all your time in stores. Or in the case of Day 11, all of the above!

Fair enough, well do your best then. What did you do on Day 11? We went to Nakano Broadway! Which for those who don’t know it’s like an older-style shopping mall connected to a slightly newer shopping mall and the newer one’s upper floors are pretty much entirely anime and otaku related stores. It’s also more of a mix of old and new, vintage and modern then anywhere in Akiba is so if that’s your style then you definitely need to pay a visit. I’m not so into retro toys and figures so that stuff was kind of boring to me as I didn’t have a connection with any of the old shows they were attached to but it was still cool to look at. Plus there was more than enough modern anime-related goodies to keep me entertained.

This is the older part of the mall. Sadly I have no photos of the inside of the new part 😦 I promise to get some next trip though!

This round the back of the mall. These are *literally* the only two photos I have from Nakano except for a food one.

So is that all you did in Nakano, look at anime and otaku stores? Pretty much, as far as I could tell there’s not much else to do there, its a pretty suburban area. Anyway, we had lunch there at a place that specialised in curry puff things so have a photo of that!

This was very fancy plating for what was essentially a giant curry puff (and side salad and egg in dressing). The puff was ~ridiculously~ fluffy. Miss Beezlebub would have been in heaven.

And what about the rest of Day 11? Honestly I’m not quite sure, I know that sounds pretty bad for a travel blog but the only thing of note that we did was dinner. And that I do have a lot of photos of because it was at a famous chain that specialises in “bullet train” delivery sushi! What does that mean? Well take a look at this video I took to find out!

I’m not even sure what I’m looking at… So basically you order the sushi you want from a video screen and in a few minutes it gets delivered to you by a high speed sushi train! It’s very cool and never got old! Incoming flood of related photos!

I think that’s the whole menu in that picture. Truly impressive!

Some sort of massive fish sushi, it was delicious though!

It’s a bit hastily put together but with the speed at which the food comes out you can hardly blame them.

And you said there wouldn’t be enough material for a full post! I stand by that! I mean who’s going to want to be satisfied with a post that’s 90% food! Oh wait, this is the internet that’s practically what social media is used for… Oh well, on to Day 12!

Okay. So Day 12, I presume it was a more interesting day photo-wise? Yes and no. See, Sharon wanted to go back to Harajuku since we kind of rushed through their on Day 10 whereas I wanted to go back to Nakano because likewise we rushed through. So we did both… only separately! And I took precisely ~zero~ photos as I was just buying heaps of anime merch and being a general weeb. But before we went our separate ways we visited the Meiji Shrine which is located just outside of Harajuku station. It’s a beautiful shrine in a massive park and a must-see location if you’re nearby!

Sake bottles. All empty sadly. What? Don’t look at me, I didn’t drink them, I swear!

My simple prayer/wish was “pls no war” because I had a bit of anxiety as the President who must not be named was visiting the region while we were in Japan.

*squints* It was a very sunny day for these two pale nerds.

Well isn’t that touristy and wholesome and normal you should do that more often… Yeah yeah yeah, you’ll get that with the next trip (probably).

So no other photos from the day? Well… I mean, is it a day in Japan without pictures of food?! For dinner we didn’t stray too far from the hotel surrounds and ate at a smoky little bar, we just ordered random bar food that looked different or tasty and drank copious amounts of alcohol. It was good!

And that’s Day 11 and 12 complete? That it is. I hope you enjoyed that, look forward to Day 13 where we find ourselves in a new city and staying in one of the tallest hotels in the world!

If you liked my post and want to support my content, please consider supporting my Patreon page, or donating by buying me a coffee on Ko-fi!

Japan Trip 2017 – Day 10

The tenth day of my Japan Trip 2017, have you heard of the Kawaii Monster Cafe? Because you’re about to!

If you haven’t read Day 1 & 2 of my Japan Trip 2017 blog series, please do so before reading this post for context and continuity’s sake. Day 3, Day 4, Day 5 & 6, Day 7, Day 8 and Day 9 are also available to read.

So what’s in store for Day 10 of the trip? Well first of all a quick detour from our hotel in Shibuya off to Shinjuku, for what reason? Shopping and food of course! What else are you supposed to do on a holiday? But if you’re getting bored of all that keep reading ’til the end where you’ll get to see us visit a burlesque show in Harajuku!

So what’s in Shinjuku? Lots! Though we mostly just walked around for a couple of hours, went to the Animate (which was mostly geared towards female anime fans) and then had some lunch.

I don’t think Sharon even knew who these boys were but she was happy to see them nonetheless!

That’s one table you don’t want to rest your arms on!

So what was for lunch? We found a third floor Okonomiyaki restaurant (that’s Japanese pancakes for all you filthy normies) where there’s a hot plate built into the table in front of you where you’re supposed to make your own! It was honestly a little intimidating, mostly because there was the language gap and the fact I’d never made Okonomiyaki before. Luckily we managed to convey our overall ineptitude and the waitress helped us out a bit, though we still added the toppings ourselves.

It may look like a mess but it was delicious!

After lunch we took a train to Harajuku, a “trendy” spot filled with people far more fashionable than us (also, expectantly lots of tourists). I’m still undecided about how I feel about Harajuku, it was an ~experience~ but there was very little that interested me. In fact, I think it was the longest period of time while in Japan that I didn’t see anything anime related!

While there we decided to do some ~cliche~ (but fun!) Harajuku things like get a giant cotton candy and take “kawaii” photos in the ‘Purikura’ photo booths!

Purikura photo booths + man with a beard = nightmare fuel.

And after that? Some more shopping then dinner at a chain Tempura restaurant, honestly not that good, the batter was too thick, but for the price it was okay.

And then?! You’re just waiting for the reveal of that burlesque tease I made at the start of this post aren’t you?

N-no, not really! I wouldn’t be interested in anything so lewd! Sure sure, so after that we headed to the ‘Kawaii Monster Cafe’ which most days of the week is just a bright and colourful cafe filled with noise and people in costumes! But on Thursday nights, they hold a sexy burlesque show, and well, guess what day it was when we decided to visit Harajuku?

Thank god it’s Thursday! Ahem, I mean… The interior of the place was really cool, like someone had put Alice in Wonderland in a blender and upped the contrast of the mess that resulted.

Something vaguely fetishistic about a bunch of baby bottles hanging from the ceiling.

Uh-huh, very interesting… But you’re not here to see pictures of the decor, right? You’re here to see what anyone going to a burlesque show wants to see, RIGHT?!

Show me it! Right, here it is! Some food and drinks!

That’s not what I’ve been waiting to see! Haha, yeah I know, just thought I’d mess with you. Fine, here’s a bunch of videos I took! Unlike a lot of places in Japan they are totally cool with you taking photos and videos in here! Sadly the lighting was, well ~club lighting~ so I only really had one video worthy of sharing!

Oh, well I guess that was okay… Trust me when I say, the full experience was a lot more hectic and fun than that video can convey! There was loud techno music and bunny girls and members of the ‘audience’ being allowed to dance on stage with the girls. It was just a lot of fun! In fact here’s another video, just try and ignore all the drunk patrons dancing around the entertainers on the stage.

Seems like you had fun! I did, I really did. And here’s a bunch of random photos from the day that I didn’t quite know where to place in the chronology of this post. Blame it on the booze.

Not sure if this was in Shibuya, Shinjuku or Harajuku!

The bathroom sinks in the Kawaii Monster Cafe had a lot of balls!

Probably the clearest photo I could get of one of the main dancers, look at those abs!

Well that was certainly an eventful day. What can we expect from Day 11? Not much, don’t get your hopes up, it’s all down hill from here!

If you liked my post and want to support my content, please consider supporting my Patreon page, or donating by buying me a coffee on Ko-fi!

Japan Trip 2017 – Day 9

The ninth day of my Japan Trip 2017, Shibuya beckons…

If you haven’t read Day 1 & 2 of my Japan Trip 2017 blog series, please do so before reading this post for context and continuity’s sake. Day 3, Day 4, Day 5 & 6, Day 7 and Day 8 are also available to read.

So last time you were at Disneyland, what comes next? Back to reality–which if it were any other country it’d be disappointing but this is Japan we’re talking about here! Nothing boring about Japan! But before we get to the next leg of our journey, there’s checking out of the hotel and breakfast to be had (not necessarily in that order).

Ridiculously delicious microwave breakfast from Lawson’s. Yes this was my breakfast.

Just a couple of dorks in an elevator, don’t mind my terrible face. I’m bad at candid photos… also there’s a story behind that Daisy duck plush which I’ll save for the end of the trip blog…

Leaving, Maihama, huh? Where to next then? So from Maihama we move on to quite possibly the busiest place in Tokyo–that’s right, we’re in Shibuya! I’ll admit I was a little intimidated by the prospect and while it was exactly as busy as I expected, it wasn’t nearly as intimidating. Well, the hike to our hotel was, lugging those 20+ kg suitcases up multiple sets of footbridges and up and around side streets was ~not~ anyone’s idea of a good time. But we got there in the end, a boutique hotel called The Shibuya Granbell… I wish I’d taken more pictures because boutique hotels are no slouch! The only photo I could find was one of the bathroom, so here you go!

Basically there’s a clear window between the bed and the bathroom, so I guess for people who like to watch their partners while in the bathroom? #nokinkshaming

Right… so what’d you do in your first day in Shibuya? Well we were on the West side of the station, which meant we’d have to cross those multiple sets of troublesome footbridges just to get back to the station and then East of the station was Shibuya proper. So obligatory photos of the ‘Shibuya Scramble’ a.k.a. the busiest crosswalk in the world, and I gotta say, not nearly as busy as I expected. The worst thing about it was dumb tourists stopping right in front of you as you’re trying to cross and taking photos. Not me though, I just lifted my camera above my head and rapidly pressed the button in the vain hope of getting a cool picture of the melee.

View of the ‘scramble’ from Shibuya Station.

A photo taken midst stride while walking across the ‘scramble’. See, no need to stop and be a nuisance to everyone!

And then? Lunch of course! Which meant paying a visit to Wendy’s, yes that Wendy’s. And I know what all you Americans are thinking “why did you travel all the way to Japan just to eat at a Wendy’s?!” and what I have to say is, we don’t have Wendy’s in Australia and as a fast food fan (and also someone who never intends to visit America) this was as close as I was going to get to experience Wendy’s. So that’s why!

And then after lunch? Just exploring Shibuya more or less, nothing was planned for this day so we just kind of walked around and looked at things that looked interesting… which for a place like Shibuya doesn’t really offer many photographic opportunities as its mostly a lot of retails shops. Though we did find a very cool Mandarake store (those familiar with my Mandarake Madness posts will know they are second-hand anime retailer located all over Japan). This one was located on like the fifth basement level of a building. I didn’t get pictures of the inside (as I’m always wary about taking photos in anime shops as there’s often signs discouraging the practice) but I did get a picture of the street-side entrance.

Buy anything? A few things, but I’ll post that (maybe) in a seperate post about all the merch I got in Japan this trip (assuming anyone’s interested enough). So more wandering around found a cute anime window display surprisingly not near an anime store, but rather in the more ~fancy~ area of Shibuya near the H&M advertising one of my absolute favourite CGDCT shows ‘Is The Order A Rabbit??’ Actually to be precise they were advertising the movie which was being released the same month we were there and obviously I had to get a photo in front of it.

I’m not looking at the camera because I was too busy being mindful of other pedestrians as this was a *busy* street!

Random photo of Shibuya Tower Records I took.

Great. And after that? We headed back to the hotel side of Shibuya, and looked for something more ~authentic~ to eat for dinner. Eventually we found ourselves at this quaint little ramen shop run by an old woman–we were the only ones in the place and though she (seemingly) didn’t speak a word of English and neither us of Japanese she welcomed us warmly and handed us menus. We ordered our food, we watched her prepare it, we waited patiently and we ate of it heartily. It was a surprisingly authentic and intimate experience for a place as flashy and hectic as Shibuya.

And after that back to the hotel, right? Well~ not quite. It wouldn’t be a day in Japan without finding where the nearest Lawson’s convenience store is and acquiring snacks!

Yes, even the cookies have ‘Is The Order A Rabbit??’ anime branding on them it was *that* big of a deal while we were there! Also that “Uchi Cafe Sweets x Godiva’ *thing* was phenomenally good.

I took this screenshot of the wifi networks in our hotel, yes that’s an individual wifi spot for *every* room in the hotel! Japan’s hotel wifi game is *lit* AF!

And now, time to sleep? Time to end this blog post? Ah, but not before some views of Shibuya from our hotel room at night. Despite being an awkward location geographically to the rest of Shibuya I still kinda fell in love with the view here… it looked better at night hence why all my photos of the view are at night…

This was taken from the edge of the bed of our room. The window was impressively large and offered a view of a thousand other hotel rooms.

If you liked my post and want to support my content, please consider supporting my Patreon page, or donating by buying me a coffee on Ko-fi!

Japan Trip 2017 – Day 8

The eighth day of my Japan Trip 2017, fun at Tokyo Disneyland!

If you haven’t read Day 1 & 2 of my Japan Trip 2017 blog series, please do so before reading this post for context and continuity’s sake. Day 3, Day 4, Day 5 & 6 and Day 7 are also available to read.

So last time you were at DisneySea, this time Disneyland? Correct! And you know what, before going to Disneyland I was always a bit ~cynical~ about the whole idea of it, it seemed so over-commercialised and phoney–that’s until I actually visited the place and well… yeah I was kind of swept up in the magic. That was 2015 the first time we visited Tokyo Disneyland, so would our second time visiting the park (in 2017) have a different outcome? Yes and no.

Oh? How do you mean? Has the lustre of the place worn off? It’s nothing as drastic as that–arguably I had a better time this trip because not only were we more familiar with the park and didn’t get lost but also the queues were super short for nearly every ride! I don’t know if we just got lucky or what but I don’t think we waited for more than 45 minutes on any of the rides–even the most popular ones! Which was especially surprising since we attended on Halloween (October 31st) which is also the only day of the year adults are allowed to dress in costume!

Sharon made a hybrid Snow White/Sailor uniform costume. Pretty good since (at the time) we didn’t even own a sewing machine!

Wait, so if you had a better time, why’d you say “yes and no” in relation to it being a different (presumably less positive) experience? It was more about my approach to the whole experience, because I was less caught up in the whole “magic™” of it all I was viewing it more like a trip to a theme park than an adventure. Obviously I still had heaps of fun, but it wasn’t quite as special. Although the decorative Halloween touches around the park added a lot to make it feel at least a bit unique!

Halloween Christmas Tree in the queue for the Haunted Mansion.

Fair enough. So what did you do all day? We rode rides and ate food–kinda all you can do at Disneyland. This post will probably have less to talk about than others, but on the plus side more pictures and pictures speak a thousand words after all!

Froppy shirt on the teacups. Once again the shirt was getting lots of attention from passersby throughout the day!

“Futuristic pizza” with Stormtrooper themed mochi.

Cinderella’s Castle looking majestic AF even with the ominous clouds behind.

In the previous post you did a rundown on your thoughts on all the rides? Care to do so again? Sure but there’s a lot more than DisneySea so bear that in mind:

Jungle Cruise, fun but nothing special, don’t wait for longer than 30 minutes for.
Pirates of the Caribbean, ignoring the problematic elements it’s a wonderful visual experience and is actually a decent amount of fun. There’s never much of a queue but I’d wait 20 minutes at most.
Big Thunder Mountain was unfortunately closed but I rode it in 2015 and it’s an amazing roller coaster–worth waiting up to 90 minutes for!
Splash Mountain probably my favourite ride in the park, I’d happily wait 90 minutes for (and unless you snag a fast pass like we did you will have to as it’s consistently the busiest ride in the park!)
Haunted Mansion it’s genuinely spooky and atmospheric and was the first ride we rode which set the mood perfectly for Halloween. Highly recommended at any time of year, would wait an hour for if need be.
It’s A Small World terrifying for all the wrong reasons. Do not ride unless you’re prepared to go insane.
Snow White’s Grotto, this ride is so out of place at Disneyland it feels like a cheap carnival ride at a state-fair, was not worth waiting 20 minutes for, wouldn’t ride it again even if it was empty.
Alice’s Tea Party, also known as the tea cups–I spun the cup too fast and felt sick for like half an hour afterwards. Still fun though, would wait 20 minutes to ride it.
Monsters, inc. Ride & Go Seek, while more geared towards kids it was still a lot of fun though I don’t know if it was quite worth waiting 45 minutes for. If you’re with kids sure, (or are big Monsters, Inc. fan) but otherwise probably not.
Star Tours: The Adventures Continue, a fun but underwhelming Star Wars themed simulator ride. Wouldn’t wait for more than 45 minutes for it.
Space Mountain, a legitimately intense roller coaster experience, would happily wait an hour to ride.
Pooh’s Honey Hunt, probably the most surprising experience at the park. We didn’t go on it in 2015 because the queue was always 3 hours+ (sometimes as long as 4 hours) and couldn’t understand how it could possibly be worth the wait. But it is (arguably) even as someone who doesn’t care one iota about Whinnie The Pooh this was so much fun and a technical and visual marvel. We got extremely lucky and walked past just as it was reopening after having a ride closure so only had to wait 5 minutes! But I’d easily wait 2 hours to experience this again!

Yikes! That was a lot of rides! And that’s not even half of them, but it is the main ones. But now back to photos of food!

My favourite food item from the Disneyland trip. A savoury “ice cream” cone, the cone is filled with slow cooked beef and gravy and the top is mashed pumpkin topped with cheese!

Obligatory sexually suggestive photo. Can’t even remember what it was she was eating.

How about some more pictures of scenery and stuff? Not everybody is interested in endless photos of theme park food you know… True enough! Nightfall came and so here’s some pictures of that!

Lots of people waiting for the fireworks (which sadly were cancelled due to “bad weather”).

Obligatory ‘try & get the moon in a picture but it never looks as good as it does in person’ photo.

So you waited around until nightfall and no fireworks? Sadly, correct. The fireworks were cancelled the day before at DisneySea as they were again this night. Unfortunate as Sharon really wanted to experience it but maybe next time!

So there will be a next time for your next trip? Possibly. It’s undecided where it’ll fit in our current itinerary but I’m always up for going again, it’s an expensive, tiring day but ultimately its worth it. And with seemingly something new popping up every time we visit there’s always a good excuse too!

If you liked my post and want to support my content, please consider supporting my Patreon page, or donating by buying me a coffee on Ko-fi!