Tokyo Trip 2007, Day 6: 212

January 4th, 2007

Had my bagel, with cream cheese and lox. The bagel shop is called 212, adroably enough, and bagel, lox and coffee were all 212-worthy. Thumbs up for whoever managed to get such good egg bagels out here to Tennozu Isle.

Today the plan is to first, ship the gigantic heavy boxes of crap we have, second to visit the Sengaku-ji, and third throw money at stores in Ikebukuro.

The wife asks if I’ve mentioned the remote control drapes in the room. I hadn’t. So I’m mentioning them now. Because you want the convenience of opening and closing the drapes from the comfort of your own bed.

I came packed with mostly disposable clothing. Sweaters and shoes I planned on leaving here, to free space in my luggage for books and the like. Housekeeping is finding this confusing and probably distressing, as every day there are clothes in the garbage. Wait ’til they get the shoes I’m wearing. :-)

So, the Sengagku-ji.

If you look back at our first ever trip to Tokyo in 2003, practically the very first thing we ever saw on TV was the story of Lord Asano’s 47 ronin. (I’m assuming you know it. If you don’t go look it up.) This time, we assumed we’d be nearish their shrine, because I had the wrong hotel in my head. The wife looked them up, did a bit of reading, we watched a famous movie about them, because why not. :-) We were sitting here in the room two nights ago, trying to decide whether to go to their shrine, when we turned on TV and lo and behold! There was /famous actor who always plays samurai roles/ playing Oishi, and the whole 47. When we stopped laughing, we promised to go to their shrine. Bruce says that we keep tuning into the “47 Ronin” station on TV. The wife says “47 24/7” “All 47, all the time.” I can see this being the beginning of a joke that never dies. lol

So, we’re waiting for Bruce to play the “ship great wopping boxes full of crap” game, and then we’re off to pay tribute to the men who symbolize loyalty and devotion beyond all bounds.

See ya later.

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Maguro!

January 3rd, 2007

Maguro is:

1) Japanese for tuna

2) The name of an upcoming J-Drama about life on a fishing boat

3) All of the above.

The correct answer is – 3.

Some other TV comments. Couple of nights ago was one of those brilliant variety shows where they make stars do stupid crap. It was a “hidden talent show.” Eight boy band guys were made to do a very energetic and athletic Chinese Lion dance. They were simply spectacular, especially considering they had weeks to practice. The show host ended the show by playing the William Tell Overture on a xylophone. One female star did a kama routine and Beat Takeshi tap danced brilliantly. Is there NOTHING Beat Takeshi cannot do??

Today began very relaxedly, with a few episodes of Major, a baseball anime, then we wandered over to Shibuya to meet Bruce and head out to geek.

So, here was the deal. I was completely convinced that I wouldn’t be buying anything. I mean – I already spent a fortune on doujinshi, what was left?

Then I hit Animate and remembered – light novels. Bruce had suggested we use his room as a HQ in case I bought more heavy anvils than I could carry around. When I staggered out of Animate with a pile of novels, I suggested we drop the anvils back at his room. :-)

We had a short break (shopping takes work, you know it does!) and headed over to where the Shibuya Mandarake is located. On the way we decided to stop at a ramen place, because I haven’t had ramen yet in Tokyo. I’m not sure why I haven’t yet since I like ramen, and I was suddenly in the mood. So we stopped at a place that had three seats (lunctime in Shibuya…you find three seats) and the guy behind the counter, in very good English, explained what I could read on the sign – what ramen was what and which was most popular. We ordered three bowls of the most popular, which was exceptionally yummy.

Then we hit Mandarake. And I remembered that I have several other problems besides doujinshi and light novels. There’s my thing about gashopon…and Drama CDs…I couldn’t stop myself. LOL

For a person who wasn’t going to get anything, I bought an awful lot. Got some light novels, a few manga, some doujinshi that filled in a few holes, the KnM and Onegai Friends Drama CDs, and some of the Marimite soundtracks, all of the last used, so for cheap. Which didn’t make the final bill less gag-a-riffic. LOL

We then headed out to the Meiji shrine, since Bruce hadn’t ever been. To say it was mobbed would be horribly understated, but there you go – it was mobbed. Pattie and Bruce threw money at the god, then we rode the people ride for a while, Bruce tried a stick of dango at the inevitable foods tents, and we crossed the Jingubashi to Harajuku to go to Book-Off. On the way, we passed a zillion food booths, and wifey and I shared a chocolate and sprinkles covered rainbow banana, and I made Bruce drink sweet sake, which tasted like a sake shake. It was kind of weird, and kind of good. (I’ve figured out how to make Bruce do stuff. All I have to say is, “it’s traditional to xxx at yyyy” and he says, “Oh, then I should do it” and does.)

The crowd was incredible, but we finally made it to Book-Off. Where my poor wife crashed. She sat around while Bruce and I shopped, but they really didn’t have anything I wanted. We cut our shopping time, because she was really having issues walking, so we rode the people ride back into the station.

Wifey continued on to our hotel, but Bruce and I went back to his place to get all my anvils, where he (nice guy that he is) pretty much asked if he could accompany me back to help me carry stuff. I carried my own stuff, but he brought a big bag of his own to ship out from here tomorrow. We decided on a combi dinner – those two had curry nikkuman and curry rice and I had the most awesome pasta salad w/peanut sauce and pork.

There is a NY-style bagel place downstairs, so tomorrow for brekkie we’re going to try bagels and coffee NY-style. Bagels are my breakfast every single morning at home, so it feels kind of comfy to contemplate a bagel here in Tokyo.

We started to fade and Bruce left, leaving us watching yet another crack-TV show. Today the stars are cooking (Maguro!, no kidding – it’s a promo for the drama) and one of the women was also on the hidden talent show where she had done that blindfolded kama routine. Now she’s cooking something elaborate and doing a bang-up job. Kama and cooking – I want to marry her. :-) Aoki Sayaka. Expect a proposal shortly. There’s also a woman on this show in kimono and a mohawk. I like the look.

I’m sure I’ve forgotten about a million things I saw today, but this TV show is taking over my brain.

Tomorrow, more geeking and one last shrine. I’ll tell you why tomorrow. LOL

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Shichifukujin-meguri

January 2nd, 2007

We did it! It took a LOT of walking, because I have no doubt that we went about it in the least logical way possible, but we completed the Shichifukujin-meguri today.

And as we hit the fifth shrine, we realized that we’d missed a really cool component of the whole thing…the stamp rally. Apparently, we should have bought this piece of paper with the seven shrines names on it and gotten a stamp at each. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize this until late in the game, but we bought the thing anyway and I had the woman at the Benten shrine near Tokyo Tower stamp it (well, the wife did, anyway) because that was the shrine I had looked forward to visiting. It’s a sweet little shrine at the base of the hill below Tokyo Tower.

We walked up to the Tower, and bought crap, because…crap, duh. Had soba at Zojoji, burned my travel charm which had literally jumped into my backpack at home to come and be burned, then bought another.

On the way to the train station to get to the next shrine, we passed another cute shrine (the area is simply crawling with them, because of the Zojoji) and went up to pray. There was a man walking around in Heian period wear, so Bruce and Pattie took pictures.

By the way. You’ll notice the lack of pictures from Comiket and such. That’s because, true to form, I forgot to take a single one. Today I got two…one of a cement post that was supposed to look like a tree stump and wifey and Bruce at Sakurada shrine. That’s it. I’m just not a photo person.

At the fourth shrine or so, I had realized that all the ones on the Minato-ku meguri had banners marking them. That helped for the sixth, which the wife found, and after we visited the very last, we saw that the banners marked the shrine form the main street where it wasn’t visible. We were all really happy. Because the 7 gods had held up their end of the bargain, and I had held up mine, I finally gave in and bought a fortune, which said, “pretty good luck.” So I felt really happy ’bout that.

While in Roppongi (which Bruce immediately loathed too…oh, and yesterday, we had eaten at a fast food place there called “First Kitchen” which, for fast food was pretty good, even if Tokyo wants me to eat cabbage, for reasons I can’t identify) for the last two shrines, we stopped for coffee and cake at Almond. Almond is always in the guidebooks about Roppongi, and as is typical with most places in guidebooks, it was okay. But we had a sit, a coffee and cake and were ready to face that last walk to the shrine.

After we completed our walkabout, we headed back from Bruce’s room. Sat for a short spell, then headed out to a local theater to see “Love My Life” based on the manga by Yamaji Ebine. It was not the best movie I’ve ever seen, but it was sweet and fluffy. Eri and Ichiko’s relationship is very real and cute. I will do a full review later when I do a Live-Action review week. I liked the music alot, I may look for the soundtrack. The band who performed the music, Noodles, is doing a live on Thursday that I will not be going to.

Dinner was very decent katsudon at a random Katsu restaurant where the man next to me was distressed by our foreigness. Can’t help, sorry.

And to end the day, I need to revile Oosaki. Twice I have been on a train back to the hotel and, in Oosaki, the train has simply stopped going where it was supposed to go. Once it all of a sudden was headed to Yokohama, and tonight it was, to the surprise of everyone aboard, out of service, stranding us in ing Oosaki, waiting for another train.

There are ads everywhere for a TV show this weekend call Byakkotai and already the wife is slashing the male characters on the posters. It looks like great, overemotional Meiji period drama.

Oh, and those silk worm cocoons I got yesterday? One strews them about to bring good fortune.

Tomorrow, we start geeking once again. I actually don’t expect to buy much, because you have to see the box of doujinshi I’m shipping home…but I have no doubt I’ll get some stuff. LOL

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Things we didn’t do today

January 1st, 2007

Today, we did not do the following:

Visit the Tobacco and Salt Museum (and not just ’cause it was not open)

Buy any otaku related stuff

Purchase any number of expensive “lucky bags” of trendy clothing in sizes that would have been humorously nowhere near their American equivalents.

We did walk a considerable amount and hit six or seven shrines, three of which were the seven gods of fortunes’, but we had a moment with them at the Toyokawa shrine) and we bought 7 Gods goods including silk worm cocoons that are, in some way, fortunes. I will figure that out later.

We also met Bruce at the Hachiko statue in Shibuya, and had many moments of quiet geekiness in ways that are quite embarrassing to relate, like smiling at the crows at Hikawa Jinja and thinking of Hino Rei. :-)

Sometime around 3PM, the wife and I fell flat. (Hey, we’ve only been here for two days and we’re up at like 4AM, so it’s not just us being weiners.) We walked a bit around Shibuya, crossed *the* intersection, which I hadn’t been able to do before) and eventually crawled home for cup ramen and inexplicable Japanese variety TV shows.

Tomorrow we do more shrines, and plan on going back to geeking on Wednesday. :-)

Hope you all had a great New Year!

P.S. to Sean – We did not know of it beforehand, or we *would* have gotten you the yaoi A-Team doujinshi. :-)

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Okay, here’s what really happened

December 31st, 2006

It’s 6:30 AM on Jan. 1 2007

Happy New Year

Yesterday, we were basically awake at 4AM, and puttered around for a while, ran out to the AM-PM for breakfast, relaxed and repacked so we had everyhing we need ready to go.

Rica arrived at about 8AM as promised, so the three of us lugged our stuff to the already jam-packed Rinkai line, which dumped us all off near Big Sight. As the train completely emptied in a roiling sea of otaku, Rica panicked. LOL I told her that, at *every single* event I do, I have that moment too, when I look around me and think, “Why am I doing this?”

And, as far as I’m concerned, we were now with the slightly more functional half of otakudom.

As we walked (and walked an walked and walked) with the rushing circle folks, we talked about the differences between comic events in Japan and American cons. Rica said that she liked the idea that at cons (for convenience American events will from here on out be referred to as “cons” while Japanese events will be “events”, ‘kay?) people come all dressed up. She gestured around and said that this was boring. I looked around and nodded, because parkas are *in* this year and greay and black are the dominant colors. But it is winter, after all.

When we arrived at the West Halls, we saw, in succession, a girl with the most FABULOUS black back-laced boots, which she had laced with a hot pink wide ribbon. It looked great. Followed by Yumi, from Marimite, and a boy dressed as the White Rabbit in a really, really cute costume. :)

Lots and lots and lots of maids. Too bad I find it so uninspiring. Many of the maid costumes were ruined with inappropriate footwear. Blue and white striped maid costumes with white ruffles look bad with knee-high brown pleather boots. FYI, girl in the bathroom that took more than 15 minutes to button her ruffle right.

Most of the cosplayers would have been identifiable to any American congoer. There were people who thought, despite all evidence to the contrary, that they were really put together. LOL And many costumes I did not recognize. The wife informs me that the most over cosplayed character was Jigoku Shoujo. I did manage to see a couple Hayate x Blade folks, including one happy Shizuku. I’m not sure why, but the thing this year seemed to be to wear gigantic shoes, so characters like Yumi and Shizuku had a tendency to be strangely tall. :-)

We set up pretty quickly, Rica was rewriting signage and prices, so as Comiket opened, she and I were folding and taping paper. When I arrived, there were gifts from Tadeno Eriko-san to Rica and myself, then she stopped by and we chatted. Also Horai-san, one of the folks who had staffed Yuricon 2005, came by with bags and bags of doujinshi. So we were really crunched for space behind the table. But many thanks to him. :-)

Shortly after Comiket opened, Rica and the wife shooed me away to go shop…which I didn’t want to since I was kind of waiting for someone to come to the table and, in the end, I did miss him, which was sad, but I took myself off to the other side, the East Halls. Compared to the hordes in the East Hall, where were were on the West side was a bastion of civilization.

I wanted to stop at Fujieda Miyabi’s table, and it turned out that so did about 350 other people. I found the end of the line, asked myself if I really wanted to do this and decided that I did. So I took the plunge. It was probably stupid, because we were lined up outside and I didn’t have a coat, but we were right in the morning sun and I felt comfortable enough. The line moved slowly, but fairly steadily, and for an hour, I inched my way forward. Here’s how you know you’re a geek: as I got to the final stretch, I was actually getting kind of excited. lol

Got myself and Bruce some stuff, because he had shopped for me the last two days and headed back quickly where, yes, I had missed the person I wanted to talk to. They said they’d come back, but oh well. More importantly, when I came back the only person there was the wife, and she was doing a brilliant job of selling with no Japanese at all. LOL She wins, hands down, as the best salesperson of the day. When Rica and wifey were at the table, we actually had a line at one point. Which chuffed me no end. We met a lovely translator who knows Drama Queen, and she and Rica talked about how to apply for Comiket. (This year we were the only foreign company at all at Comiket, which made us notable.)

So, behaviors. There’s the person who walks up, looks confused, stares for a while, then nods, as if they “get” it. Then walks away.

There’s the person who stares, rubs their chins, looks at a book, then walks away.

There’s the person who picks up a book clearly marked in their native tongue that it is NOT in their native tongue, pages through the books, looks at another, then remarks, “I can’t read this, it’s in…” Then we point out that, yes, they are, and here are books in their native tongue, at which they bolt, terrified that they were spoken to.

There’s the person who comes up, looks at the books and, when we speak, bolts like they were slapped. LOL

So, yeah, some of the same behaviors as at cons.

What you don’t get is teenyboppers running through the halls, smacking each other with fake weapons, or screaming and no one would *ever* consider running up to the table, screeching, “Eww, yuri!” or somesuch and run away. As the whole row was yuri, that would be plain weird.

So, Erica, how did it feel to be NOT the only yuri publisher in the place? No different, really because we were *still* aliens, being the only foreign circle. So, we still got a weird crowd – even for Comiket.

The circle to our right, when I went to pick up a Shinobuden doujinshi from them, turned out to be a lovely gentleman who reads Okazu, and had very good English. He was very kind and gracious and I will review his book when I get home – the art is simply adorable. I thank you, sir.

To our left was a young woman who was very quiet, but I did buy some of her books, as they are quite lovely. I also took and opportunity to introduce myself to Sakuraike and UKOZ, both of which circles, ALC Publishing has licensed work from for Yuri Monogatari 5, so please look forward to that!

I did manage to buy pretty much every circle I wanted to buy from – including a fair number of fanfic or shousetsu. I also managed, without even realizing it, to pick up a Mori Natsuko fanbook, which I bought entirely for the cover and I cannot wait to try to read. LOL

In the end, we had a terrifc day, and it made a spectacular end to Yuricon’s presence at Comiket. I’m truly glad I had a chance to be there.

Oh, and tere is no doubt in my mind that working an American con is significantly more exhausting than Comiket. Otakon is, for instance, about 20 hours of selling time, Comiket is 6. So, yeah. And the fans…as I say, so much more well-behaved

(I have GOT to interject here. The wife is looking at the Comiket catalog as I type. She says, “Oh, the Marimite section.” then she pauses. “They look so good as ants.” I wouldn’t even LOOK. And she says that, so far as she’s gotten in the catalog, about halway, Marimite is the largest section of circles. Oh, wait, Naruto beats Marimite. But there’s still a chance that One Piece will beat it Go One Piece!)

To celebrate our success, Rica took myself, wifey and Bruce to a yakitori restaurant where the food went from excellent to omg, this is orgasmic. (We really wanted okonomiyaki, but they were ALL closing early for the New Year. I mean, like all of them. But the food at Momotarou in Ebisu gets my hearty recommendation.)

Wifey wanted to go out, but I was starting to crash, so she and Bruce went out to a temple, and I went back to the room to sort through what I want to take back in the luggage and and what can get shipped.

By the time I was nearly unconcious, wifey was back and we crashed.

Now it’s the dawn (literally) of a new year and we’re off to find the seven gods of fortune and thank them for yesterday.

See you when I get back!

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