You'll Never Believe What Happened!

So yesterday, since we weren't meeting up with our friends until 7, we decided to go down to Shinagawa because Cinnamon was in a running mood. She thought it would be a good day to try to race the shinkansen! We got down there pretty early so there wouldn't be too big a crowd, and she jumped down onto the train tracks when the next train pulled up. Naturally, I jumped down there too, to try to talk her out of it, because seriously, those trains go 180mph! There's no way she could outrun one of those!

Unfortunately, the train conductor saw us and pushed the "Emergency Ninja" button that all shinkansen trains in Japan are equipped with. And suddenly, a ninja appeared out of nowhere (because ninjas can do that - they're ninjas) and we engaged in combat. Too bad for us we had left our shurikens and our nunchaku at home that day. It was a pretty unfair fight, and the ninja captured us and handed us over to the station police.

Apparently, the police don't look too kindly on foreigners who jump onto the train tracks, so they booked us into the jail. While we were there, we had tea with a very nice man in the cell next to us who looked like Buddha. He gave us his business card so we can keep in touch with him. After a few hours, a guard came by and told us we had two options. Either we could pay a hefty bail or we could take our chances in a one on one sumo match with the emperor.

Naturally, since we aren't the millionaire foreigners the old guy at the palace assumed we were, we decided it would be best to fight. We played "rock paper scissors" to see who would get to be the lucky sumo wrestler, and Cinnamon won, so I was the unlucky loser and they took me to an arena to prepare for my impending fight. It was quite an ordeal there. First they made me bathe, so I wouldn't bring any dirt into the arena, then I had to change into a loincloth (because it's tradition, after all), and some guy who I guess was supposed to be my coach came and yelled at me for about half an hour. I didn't catch much of what he said, but I'm pretty sure he called me foreign scum and told me not to disgrace the emperor.

Then I was brought out to the arena and lo and behold, Cinnamon and Mr. Buddha were in the audience! Everybody was booing me, but I had a lot of fighting spirit after that yelling session earlier. The emperor was a surprisingly tiny guy, so I figured I could beat him pretty easily, especially since after eating all that fast food since I've been here, I've really bulked up (I'm a good 250lbs now).

The match was over surprisingly quickly, with me easily overtaking Emperor Scrawny McWimpPants. Afterward, he came over and congratulated me on a job well done. He said he was so impressed with my fighting style that he would allow both me and Cinnamon to go free. I thanked him for his generosity and once I had changed back into my street clothes, we were set free.

Later, we met up with the girls and had delicious meat for dinner.

Today, we called up Mr. Buddha and he said that he would be working in Shibuya in the evening, giving out free hugs near the Hachiko Exit of the station, so we should drop by. So we did. It turns out that he's actually a pretty important guy in the San-X corporation and he offered the both of us jobs at the Hello Kitty factory in Yokohama. Naturally, we both jumped on the chance to work for such a wonderful company. Needless to say, we won't be coming back to America or Barnes & Noble. Sorry, guys. You're just no match for a cute, white cat with no mouth.

Catch you all on the flipside.

PaniSuta and Cheese Fries

Okay, on to PaniSuta! Still wondering what it is? Allow me to explain. For the past 3 1/2 years, the four guys of *pnish* have been hosting a radio show in Kiba every Saturday from 5pm to 6pm. The studio is really tiny, but one of the walls is a huge window, so people can come by and watch what's going on and listen to it outside. They recently announced that Saturday's show would be their last, so we knew we had to go watch.
And watch we did!

That's the studio right there. Just that tiny little area in front of the window. We knew there would likely be a lot of other people coming to see the very last show too, so we got there extra early - around 3:30. Luckily, Cinnamon and I had planned for all this waiting and brought a mini picnic in our new bento boxes! It was full of fruit and veggies and cheese and crackers, all arranged in a visually appealing display.

There were more tomatoes, but we ate them before I remembered to take the picture.

We also had a container of plum slices and cherries, one with 3 different kinds of sliced cheese, and one with various snacks (more Pucca, some mini Oreos and two mini fruit jellies), but they weren't super attractive, so we didn't take any pictures of them. But it was delicious~!

Finally, the show started, and luckily Courtney was there with us to help translate some of what they were talking about. At the end, one of the guys came out to sing a bit of one of his songs (he's put out 3 mini-CDs), all the guys were given flowers by the radio station staff, and they all came out to thank everyone for coming.

But we decided to wait around for a bit in the hopes that the guys would come out and maybe shake hands with us or something. (You can't pass up an opportunity like that. It's like shaking hands with a celebrity!)

There's me and Cinnamon waiting around, clearly very happy to have had the chance to see the guys in person again.

And the other girls we came with! From left to right, there's Sara (from Spain), Katie (from Kenucky), Gigantor, and down in front, Courtney (originally from Louisiana, but is currently teaching English in Hikone, Japan).

Luckily, our waiting paid off! One of the guys came out a few minutes later, but was in a hurry because he had to get to rehearsals for a play he's doing. Probably ten minutes after that, the rest of the guys came out and shook every single person's hand who was in the line that formed (and there were probably close to 100 people). Needless to say, we were incredibly happy to have been able to shake hands with 3/4 of *pnish*
Then we headed back to Shibuya for dinner. And you'll all be thinking "Why would they go to Japan to eat there?" but that's what Courtney wanted, and neither Cinnamon nor I were particularly hungry after our picnic.

So yep, we went to the Outback Steakhouse! It was really good, and almost like back home, except the bill for the five of us was about $100 (and none of us even had steak). After that, it was 9:30, so we called it a night and went our separate ways.

Today, we'll be meeting up with the girls again in Hachioji (about 30min outside Shinjuku) to eat some genuine Japanese yakiniku! It's all you can eat night, so we're taking advantage of it. Yakiniku is essentially different kinds of meat you grill at your table, accompanied by various dipping sauces. According to Courtney, it's a really fun experience (I'm assuming something similar to fondue, perhaps?) We'll let you know how it turns out!

Ever-busy Shibuya

So, as continued from my last post, we got back on the Yamanote Line and headed to - you guessed it - Shibuya! Somehow, there's always something to do here, even if it's just walking around and people-watching. And after about four weeks of being in Japan, I finally have some pictures of the neon lights to show you!

I will admit, they could've been better, but we were tired from walking around all day. You take what you can get. But we're in Shibuya often, so there'll be other opportunities to photograph it at night.

While we were walking around, we spotted this little shop selling some interesting and exotic merchandise - including these weird shoes.

It's sort of hard to tell from the picture, but a couple pairs of these shoes (the ones on the ends) have curled toes like elf shoes. No clue why. I think they're pretty ugly myself, and look uncomfortable.

This place, however, always catches our interest. Unfortunately, every time we pass by, neither of us are hungry. But one of these days, we are going to go get ourselves one awesome dessert. How could you pass up food that looks that good?

The next day, we went to Kinshicho (which is on the way to Funabashi, but much closer) and hit up the Tokyo Arcakit Kinshicho Daiso store. As you may have guessed, it's another 100 yen store, only this one was half the size of the other one. However, we still didn't leave without buying anything. Such is the beauty of 100 yen store shopping.

Since the store was on the 7th floor of a big department store building, we checked out some other stuff on the way down and I was again unsuccessful at finding shoes. After that, we chilled (quite literally!) outside for a bit while Cinnamon ate her Pucca snacks. They're essentially like chocolate biscuit cookies (shaped like fish and octopuses) filled with vanilla cream. ...I know you were wondering.

We checked out a few fruit stands in the area, then headed back home.

Thursday was surprisingly COLD and overcast. Seriously, I think the high must've been something like 72. Compared to the warm weather we had gotten used to, it felt pretty chilly! So dressed in pants and armed with jackets and umbrellas, we set out for Harajuku, in search of the last Daiso store on our list. It was disappointingly small, but luckily the street it was on was chock full of interesting shopping places and Cinnamon came away with a new hat.

Then we were off to Shinjuku to search for the Sanrio Shinjuku Gift Gate, as it was the only Sanrio store in the Tokyo area that we hadn't been to. We found it with a minimum of trouble and I came away with a couple of things you'll see in a later picture. From there we walked back to Harajuku and hit up Lotteria for dinner. Finally, a genuine Japanese burger chain, hahaha! Someday, we'll make the rounds to Mos Burger and Freshness Burger too. Cinnamon was disappointed that the burgers pictured on the menu didn't look at all like the ones we got, but they were still really good. And they had melon soda there! I wish we had that in the US, because that stuff is really good.

Yesterday (Friday), was the last day our rail pass was valid, so we used it to go back to Funabashi and hit up the 100 yen store one more time. (What? You can't argue with good quality, cheap goods!) Cinnamon and I both ended up buying several really cute bento boxes (essentially Japanese lunch boxes) and accessories. Here's that picture I promised you, of the things I bought at Sanrio and my bento boxes.

That would be a set of 4 nesting Cinnamoroll containers and a little set of Cinnamoroll picks (to use with the containers... for picking food).

From Funabashi, we went to Kinshicho (again) and actually bought some fruits and veggies from one of the grocery stores we had passed before. It was surprisingly cheap (for Japan)! So it's too bad Kinshicho is so far away from us or we'd go there more often to buy our fruits. It was an absolute pain (quite literally) to carry them all the way home, but that's what we get for buying all the heavy fruits.

Why all the fruit? To bring with us on a mini picnic at PaniSuta today! I know you're all dying to know what PaniSuta is (I'll give you a clue - it has to do with *pnish*), and I'd be more than happy to tell you, but I am dead tired after our busy day today, so I'll let you know how the picnic went in my next post. Two is enough for one day, I think. So look forward to it soon!

Real Tokyo

Well, I guess somehow it's been 5 days since my last update. The days really do go by so fast. This past week, we took advantage of our rail pass (which lets us ride any JR line train for free for 7 days) and visited a whole bunch of 100 yen shops (which are essentially the Japanese equivalent of dollar stores, only things are much better quality). Tuesday, we went to a 7 floor one in Funabashi, which is outside of Tokyo kinda in the middle of nowhere. I think we ended up spending close to 4 hours there.

And there it is! After spending the afternoon there, we took the train back to Tokyo (as that's where the Sobu Rapid Line stopped) and figured we might as well see what the actual capital of Japan had to offer. I assumed it would be nothing but a bunch of big skyscrapers and office buildings, but I was wrong!

But not entirely! There were plenty of skycrapers to be seen (along with that guy down there who was stretching. Cinnamon wanted me to include him in the picture).

We started walking in some arbitrary direction when we passed a map and noticed the Imperial Palace wasn't too far away. So we started walking that way and came across this neat little park with all these fountains.

Here I am standing in front of them, looking like an idiot. (In case you were wondering, I was trying to hide my tacky plastic bag full of dollar-priced merchandise behind me).

Just look at those big cheesy smiles! The next few pictures were taken from the grounds around the Imperial Palace (since it was late when we got there and I'm pretty sure they don't allow just anyone to walk on up there). It seemed like a really big place, and we only saw two sides of it. So here's what we saw:

At this point, as I was taking this picture, this old Japanese guy (who I'd say was probably in his 60s or 70s) came up and started talking to Cinnamon, asking her where she was from and stuff. So we ended up talking to him for close to half an hour, I'd say. Clearly, he was just using us to practice his English, but he was doing a pretty good job. We were impressed. When we told him we had been in the country since June 5th, he assumed that we must be wealthy millionaires, seeing as how Japan is such an expensive country. Hahaha, I wish!

We were trying to get a picture of the two of us with the palace grounds in the background. Can you tell it was a little windy that evening?

Lastly, Tokyo Tower! This was actually the closest we have been to it, even though the place where we're staying is within a few miles of it. Maybe one day we'll actually get to see it up close. But for now, this will have to do.

After that, we headed back to the station to go find somewhere to eat. And since I still have quite a few pictures from that night, I'll stick them in my next post so this one doesn't get too long.

Too Many Slugs

I guess it's been a while since my last update, huh? We spent a couple days not doing a whole lot, but we had a very fun weekend! Saturday morning we got up super early (well, super early for me - 5:30am) to get ready and head down to Shinagawa Station for 7:30 because we had an important train to catch at 8:10. But we ended up getting to the station at 7:20, with plenty of time to catch an earlier train, so by 7:40, we were on the Hikari shinkansen bound for Osaka~

For those of you who don't know, the shinkansen is the famous "bullet train" that can get you to quite a few destinations in Japan in the shortest amount of time. The one we were on can travel at speeds of close to 180mph. So the 315 mile trip takes only about 3 hours (because there are about 5 stops in between). That's not even the fastest train, which can do the trip (with fewer stops) in 2 hours and 25 minutes. It was a pretty smooth ride through the countryside, and for the first time on our trip, we saw mountains! We even ended up going through quite a few tunnels in them. And we finally made it to Osaka at 10:30.

What were we in Osaka for, you may ask? To meet up with my friend Courtney and see *pnish* again! We went to see the last two performances of Samurai Mode (with 2nd and 5th row seats, respectively) and it was even better this time around since we were so close to the stage. I could see it another 3 times and still not get tired of it. I'm a little sad it's finally over. After the show, we waited around with about 30 other girls for the guys to come out (which I swear is not at all as creepy as you may think) so we could congratulate them on a job well done, and since we were the only three foreigners standing there in a group, two of the guys who saw us seemed pretty surprised and excited to see us, which was very cool.

After that, we headed back to Courtney's place (about an hour outside of Osaka) to spend the night and we were up and off again by noon Sunday. We had to wait a while for the train that would take us into Maibara, where we were catching the shinkansen, since it was running about 20 minutes late. So I snapped some pictures while we waited!

Lovely, super scenic Minami Hikone station. There were some mountains (which you can sorta see just to the right of the tomatoes on that sign) but unfortunately, it was hard to get a good shot of them from where we were standing.

Here's Cinnamon summing up her feelings about Minami Hikone. Despite it raining on the walk to the station, it was hot and muggy and she was hungry and the train was late, so she was not impressed by this little town.
Luckily, the train finally came shortly after and took us to Maibara, where she had a drink and a snack while we waited another 50 minutes for the shinkansen.

See? Much happier... if a little tired. There wasn't much worth seeing in Maibara near the station either. However, we did see about 5 Nozomi shinkansen (they're the fastest ones) that whizzed right by the station going super fast. Cinnamon tried to get a picture of one, but by the time she turned her camera on and put it in the right mode, it was long gone.

More waiting. (That's my "I'm looking at the camera, but don't know a picture is being taken" face. Sadly, this was better than the other picture she took of me). Since I'm sure you're getting tired of random shots of us and station signs, I'll show you a little bit of what we got to see from the shinkansen.

Mountains! And also some rice paddies and houses. The weather was pretty cloudy and rainy (in case that's not obvious), so it was impossible to get a good shot of the mountains, as they wanted to hide behind the clouds. I think this was taken somewhere between Maibara and Gifu-Hashima.

More mountains, possibly somewhere between Gifu-Hashima and Nagoya. I apologize for the blurriness, but when you're taking pictures out a window on a train going 180mph, things are gonna be blurry.

And lastly, the two of us on the shinkansen. We were quite happy to discover there was easily 3 times the legroom as what we had on our flight to Japan, so it was a pretty enjoyable ride.

When we got back in to Tokyo, it was raining, so we stayed in for the night. Today we caught up on sleep and went to the grocery store. Exciting, I know. No idea what's in store for us tomorrow, possibly checking out a big 100 yen shop? We'll see.

In case you were wondering about the subject of this post, within the past two days, we have found 6 slugs in our room. They only seem to come in when it's raining (as you may remember from before), and we don't know exactly how they get in, but we assume they're crawling in from under the sliding glass door. Thankfully slugs are harmless and very much not scary, but they're better left outside, that's for sure.

Now it's bedtime for me, so I'll keep in touch with you all later. Please let us know if you're reading the posts so we know you haven't all forgotten about us already! And if there's anything in particular you want to see a picture of, we'll do our best to get a shot of it for you.

Old Town

Time for another update from Japanland. (Are you getting sick of them yet?) Admittedly, we haven't been doing much, just visiting random areas of the city and doing a ton of walking. My poor feet still aren't happy about that, so I keep looking to see if there are any good, comfy shoes in my size that I can buy to replace the ones I brought which are strangely all much less comfortable to wear in Japan than they were back home. No luck yet, unfortunately.

But onto more important things (like pictures), yesterday we visited Ueno, which is in the northeastern part of Tokyo, and one of the older districts. Since we never really have a plan when we get to these places, we consulted a map across from the train station and decided to head into the park which was just down the street.

It's a very big park with all kinds of things inside it, making it feel less like a park-park and more like some sort of amusement park,

This museum is in the park, as well as a music hall, a Western Art museum, a zoo, an art college, an amusement park, a pagoda, and a few temples. There are probably some other things I'm forgetting. But I guess Monday isn't a very big day for museums because they were all closed. It's just as well, since we didn't actually want to go into any of them anyway.

I'm really not sure what this little shrine was, since there was no one around it at all. If you make a 90 degree turn to the left from where this one was, there's a bigger shrine that people were constantly going in and out of, so I guess this one wasn't such a big deal.

 

I mean, I don't know why, since this one had a pot with a Triforce on it! Cinnamon noticed that right off the bat... so she took a picture of it.
 

Both of the shrines were in the middle of this big pond which is actually 3 ponds. It was a very pretty area, and as you can see, you could even rent a boat to go out on the water. But of course, that costs money, so we didn't do it.

Just a random shot of some fish in one of the ponds. Don't know what kind they were, but some of them were pretty big! Also, there were a few little turtles in the water too.

In case you guys were skeptical, we took a picture together just to assure you we are indeed both still alive and haven't killed each other yet. Also, we're super stylish in our sunglasses!

After all that walking, I was getting thirsty, so I coughed up 130 yen for what promised to be delicious tea (it said it was delicious in, like 3 places on the bottle). But oh man was it the worst tea I had ever drunk! For reasons I can't even comprehend, it tasted like it was made in a dirty coffee pot. I seriously expected it to have coffee grounds or something in it. Needless to say, I just couldn't bring myself to drink the whole thing and I won't be buying it again. Yuck.
 

As we walked the perimeter of the ponds, the entire path was lined with beautiful, flowering hydrangeas on one side. It's still kind of hard to see in this picture, but there were tons and tons of flowers.
 

Here's a closeup shot of one of the clusters (my specialty!). I'm surprised it came out so clearly, to be honest. The wind was certainly not making it easy for me to photograph them.

After leaving the pond area, we found some swings, so Cinnamon had to test them out. They were a little low for her, hahaha.
 

After leaving the park, we headed over to Ameyoko, which is kind of the "bargain basement" alley of Ueno, formerly Tokyo's black market after WWII. There, we found everything from clothing and shoes to golf equipment, pachinko parlors and bars, and a ton of places hawking fresh fruit and fish of questionable freshness. (Sorry, I don't trust fish that's been sitting in an open air market all day, no matter how loudly you proclaim it's on sale.)
 

Since we couldn't think of anything else to do in Ueno, we hopped back on the train and went to Ikebukuro for food, where we ate ate a nice little place called Miami Garden. Cinnamon had a tomato, basil and mozzarella pizza (which was tasty), and I had spinach and bacon spaghetti in cream sauce. That was... interesting, on account of the bacon seemed like it was barely cooked (it was still pink). You can argue that it's not Japanese food, but it's definitely the Japanese take on Italian - not something you can get in the US, that's for sure.

Just for Greg, I found this sign while we were walking back to the station after dinner. We didn't actually go to the cat cafe, but that's the first sign I've seen for one. (In case you were wondering, the Sunkus is a convenience store).

Today consisted of walking around Shinjuku and then going the wrong way to Yoyogi and ending up in Nishi-Waseda. But we got to take the new Fukutoushin train line that had just started operating on the 14th. The stations were very clean and definitely felt brand new. After walking around in Shibuya for about the 5th time, we came back home and watched an episode of Full House in Japanese. Good times.

I was able to upload one of the Kitty Guys videos to Youtube, so if you want to see some goofy dancing to a very catchy song, go ahead and check it out!

Two fantastic days

Once again, hello everyone~! Have you all had a good weekend? Doing something special for Father's Day? Over here in Japan, our weekend is winding to a close (as of right now, it's 8:40pm Sunday), but don't worry, because we have plenty of exciting news to share!

Yesterday, Cinnamon and I met up with my friend Courtney and her friend Megan to go see the *pnish* play, Samurai Mode. I had been wanting to see this group live and in person since 2005, so this was an awesome experience for me. And Cinnamon certainly enjoyed it too. The acting was great, there was a little dancing and plenty of sword fighting. We're both very glad we get to see it two more times next weekend.

This was a poster advertising the play just outside the main theatre, so we took a picture of us with it. (Don't ask what I'm looking at, because I have no clue.) After the play, the four of us hit up TGI Fridays in Shibuya to satiate Courtney's craving for American food, and it was almost 11pm by the time we got home.

This morning started of as an extremely early one (for me). We got up at 6am and were out the door by 6:40, headed to Harajuku to meet up with Courtney and Megan again so we could all go together to a street live being held in the park across from the NHK building. The street live was being put on by a 7-man group (similar to *pnish* in that they do a combo of acting and dancing) called Kitty Guys. Today marked the 1st anniversary of the group, so it was kind of a special thing.

The guy second from the right (with the white headband), Sueyoshi Kazuya, was actually in Samurai Mode as a guest star, and all of them have previously performed with other members of *pnish* in different performances, so the groups do share common interests.

You'd be happy to know I have video of them dancing (as taken by my digital camera, so not the best of quality), but unfortunately Vox has a max video size limit of 50mb and the video is 57mb... and I don't know how to make the video smaller. If anyone has a suggestion that's simple and doesn't require extra software, feel free to let me know and I'll upload it for you!

Unfortunately, we were only able to stay at the street live for about 45 minutes, since we had to immediately head to the middle of nowhere for Cinnamon's race, which was at 10am.

Or so we thought.

After hurrying as fast as we possibly could, we managed to get to the registration location (a middle school) at 9:50. But as it turned out, the women's race didn't start until 11! So Cinnamon had plenty of time to get registered and warm up before running.

I drew a helpful arrow in there in case you had trouble spotting the tall foreigner in the crowd. This was the group standing at the starting line (with the added bonus of a baseball game mere feet away). The race turned out to be on a dusty, rocky path that was far from scenic (a downer for Cinnamon), but it's not all bad news!

Since Cinnamon didn't like any of the pictures I took of her running, here you can see Gigantor herself (I say it out of love, of course - I mean look at how she towers over everyone!) right after she passed the finish line. The lady there is taking the timing chip off the back of her race number, in case you were wondering.

And out of all of the women in the race, Cinnamon managed to come in 5th! A big congratulations to her! She finished all 8k (about 5 miles) in under 40 minutes!

Oh, but that's not all!

She even got a trophy for it, a certificate (though we don't know exactly what it says) and a little gift! Plus, they gave her another gift for... some reason we're not sure of, so she made out quite well!

Here's all the stuff she got - 3 small towels (like washcloths), a larger towel (Lacoste brand!), her t-shirt, her trophy, a tote-like bag, the certificate, her time card and her race number. Not bad at all!

So, trophy and gifts in hand, we headed back for the station so Cinnamon could hit the shower and we could finally rest a little. On the walk back, we came across these guys, and I thought I should take a picture because they reminded me of gnomes (even though they're probably dwarves?) and we both thought Greg would appreciate it anyway. So if you're reading this, Greg, this picture is for you.

So far, we don't have any plans for tomorrow, but I think we'll sleep in for sure. We both got sunburned today (Cinnamon more than me), since we didn't figure we'd be in the sun so long. Also, stupid weather.com knows absolutely zilch about the weather in Tokyo. They forecast cloudy skies when it was very much sunny out.

(On a totally random note, we just felt another little earthquake a few minutes ago. It is such a weird sensation when you're not expecting it. It's so easy to try to justify things shaking as the result of thunder or a big truck going by, because living in Florida, the last thing you think of is an earthquake. I guess you get used to it after a while.)

Okay everyone, 'til next time~!