Saturday was one of the most physically demanding days of my entire life. And I didn’t *do* anything! 

We started the day at the Hanazono Shrine in Shinjuku, where I waxed poetic about Hana no Askua-gumi and the girl-gang aesthetic of the 1980s-1990s. 

We then headed out to Nakano, where we got together with Kat Callahan, who is always ready to talk anime. ^_^

I don’t know what it is about Nakano, but a few hours there and I am flattened. So a couple of us headed over to the cafe which was decorated with Go Nagai images and selling goods. ^_ There is a Go Nagai exihibit in town, as well. (Thanks, Richmond, for letting me know!) that I’ll try to catch this week. 

From Nakano we dumped our purchases and headed back out to Hikawa shrine for the festival that hadn’t been there the night before. Folks who arrived early said they saw a Hino Rei cosplayer in her school uniform. I can not confirm, but that would be cool. ^_^

This was accompanied by, of course, eating food, and watching dancing. By the time we crawled home late that night, we were flattened. It was a terrific day.

Sunday was our “free” day. We started it by heading in different directions. Half of us went off to explore Ikebukuro quickly, with visits to Book-Off, Tokyu Hands, and a quick walk-through of Animate. I stopped and had a “Pink” – baked apple flavored Starbuck shake. I found this at Animate and scooped it up.

We continued the theme of junk food for the mind and body with lunch- pizza-  at Mister Donut, complete with plastic-flavored Halloween donut.

Alice had headed out to a national park from some hiking, my wife went shopping and the rest of us went to Takarazuka Theater for God of Stars, which was amazing. Think Son Goku as an Iron Chef in Singapore, who falls for a tomboy who can’t cook. It was brilliant. The revue portion, Eclair Brilliant was equally as wonderful in its revue-y way. 

We hung out, waiting for the stars to do the walk-by. Both of the lead otokoyaku Kurenai Yuzu and Makoto Rei, the two leads, were so kind to their fans, that we liked them even more. 

Dinner was a sumptuous feast at a local duck and soba place that is now on my always-go list. (Thanks Chris for introducing us to Takadaya.)

One last crazy day for us on the tour to go!

It’s been a busy couple of days here for the tour and part of it was on the road. Having got all comfy in our hotel, we packed up and headed for Kamakura, where we visited locations that featured in Aoi Hana / Sweet Blue Flowers. We had lunch in the cafe that was the basis for the one that Fumi and A-chan ate in, and where Fumi came out. 

We were supposed to have headed to Yoshiya Nobuko’s house, but due to unexpected (and at this point, inexplicable) circumstances, we were unable to do so. Not going to lie, we were all disappointed, but lunch helped. We then headed out to Enoshima, the site of many a day trip and date in dozens of anime.

Enoshima is a volcanic island which, according to local lore, rose out of the ocean, to allow the goddess Benzaiten to alight in order to face a dragon that was terrorizing the locals. There is a shrine on the island. Several, in fact, because that’s how things work.

The onsen resort we stayed in also had a shrine to Benzaiten in the cave hot springs, which was hot as blazes. The “roman” (i.e., Victorian) bath was easier to manage and very beautiful. 

Dinner was sumptuous, and almost killed us. This was the first course of five.

The view from my room. We’ve had pretty  cloudy weather, but aside from a few hot days when we arrived, its been nice.

Breakfast the next morning was lovely. I forgot to get a picture. Woops! But we did get try Enoshima’s specialty, whitebait. It was pretty great over rice, with some pickles. Honestly, that was one of my favorite things we ate.

When I say that it’s Enoshima’s specialty….I mean you can get it in a zillion ways. On burgers, raw, cooked, dried, fresh, on mochi, as crackers. etc…. Including as ice cream.

On the way back to Tokyo, we stopped at the Library of Literature in Kamakura, which was the inspiration for the design of Fujigaya girls’ school in Aoi Hana.

It was fantastic. The exhibit while we were there was honoring Kandono Eiko, creator of Majou no Takyuubin (魔女の宅急便), which we know as Kiki’s Flying Delivery Service. She is a prolific children’s author and was recently awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Award.

It was a delightful exhibit, in a beautiful location- well worth the visit!

With that, we headed back for something we were all looking forward to…a Halloween Tea at our hotel. ^_^ It looked so cute on the poster we just had to.

The expression on the ghosts was brilliantly apt, as they were delicious. ^_^

After the third too-large meal in a row, we needed a long walk, so we headed out to the Akasaka Hikawa Shrine, the shrine that is the inspiration for Rei’s shrine in Sailor Moon. The festival we expected hadn’t opened yet, and so we all blamed Rei’s grandfather, but we did catch up with the parade of the mikoshi.

Today we’ve got a full schedule, with a visit to Shinjuku, Nakano and we’re hoping to get back to Akasaka to see the festival.

More to come!

Today was a shopping intensive day for the tour – we had places to get to! Our first stop was Harajuku, for some shopping. Katherine and Amy started us off with a visit to Alice on Wednesday, a lovely little Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass themed store, where everyone picked up important items like parasols and jewelry. ^_^ To get in, you have to walk through a teeny-weeny little door. ^_^

Then off to the Sailor Moon store, of course. Then Kiddyland for character goods, equally of course, then lunch with a vaguely Hawaii theme. 

We then sweated our way over to Shibuya (the weather here is quite hot, unusually so after a typhoon) for the Bloom Into You popup store, which was small, but the goods were really lovely – clearly new original art. I couldn’t help myself, I bought a Sayaka t-shirt and some small items, at least a few of which will be for Lucky Boxes. ^_^

We followed this with a visit to Mandarake and Animate, where we all picked up more stuff we *totally* need. ^_^ Animate Shibuya has a small Yuribu, with a reasonable variety of multi-format items, including an original Drama CD, manga, novels and magazines.

I took some pictures, but the connection here is kinda shitty, so take a look at this link for what I’ve shared so far.

Today we’re headed down to Kamakura to do a little Aoi Hana wandering. 

Hello and welcome to a story you did not expect to read. ^_^  The day we left for Toyko a major typhoon hit, so the first day of the tour was spent stranded in Narita. The trains were not running because there had been damage to the tracks. We still have no idea why the buses were not running.  Narita closes down at 10PM, did you know that? We were about 20 people from the front of the line, when they closed the bus counter. The airport handed out sleeping bags and crackers. Dinner was some senbei and a packet of dried vegetable chips which were legitimately tasty, so there was that.  ^_^

When they distributed the sleeping bags, we kind of all knew it was time to accept we were stuck. I was actually asleep on the floor when I was woken up by my wife – a new bus had been chartered that would take us to Tokyo Station. We took it and grabbed cabs to the hotel, so we finally got to sleep at about 4 AM. 

Nonetheless, there we all were, the next morning, ready to go!

First stop, we hit up the Yayoi-Yumeji Museum for a historical first step, to discuss women’s lives in Japan a century ago. The current exhibit was about kimono and fashion in the early 20th century. It was magnificent. (I have a few pics, I’ll add in when I have a chance!) There was a corner on author Yoshiya Nobuko and they even had a kimono of hers! The whole thing was a great start to the trip.

Two of our party went to the Swallowtail butler cafe on Otome Road. The verdict was that the food is excellent and the experience is really unique. They won’t let you do anything for yourself, in a kind of over-fastidious approach to service. ^_^

While they did that, the rest of us went to Yamashiroya for shopping. We crashed for a few and then went to dinner with James Welker, who was entertaining and charming as always. 

Day two is going to be a lot of shopping, with Harajuku and Shibuya on the plate. Report later!