Here’s the very few pictures I took yesterday.

This is the entrance to the Hanazono shrine. I’m exeptionally fond of this shrine, as it’s tucked into an amazingly busy corner of Shinjuku, and because it features prominently in my fave girl-gang manga Hana no Asuka-gumi.

Here’s the shrine itself. Frankly, if it comes down to shrines and temples versus anime stuff, I’d take the shrines. One of my favorite things about Japan are the shrine and temple complexes. I like being in a country where Christianity isn’t the dominant meme.

Last night a bunch of us went to Nakano to try and get to Mandarake (a sprawling series of anime stuff stores) but dinner took so long that the stores were closed by the time we got done. P asked me to take this picture of these “charming” candy creatures with the comment, “It’s amazing what you can do with gumdrops these days.”

It’s another beautiful day out, and I’m really in the mood to get geeky, so I think that we will try to get to Mandarake today and make it an all-day-er.

Tonight is the staff dinner at Cocolo Cafe, so I will get to meet all of our Japanese staff for tomorrow! Oh my god…is the event really tomorrow?