Ryan & Kari in Japan

Dinner with Friends

2010-10-29T17:43:00.000-07:00

The past couple of days have been a lot of fun; we spent Thursday in Nakano, where there's a big pedestrian mall-thing called Sun Plaza. We've been there before, and will likely go there again, because there are several stores full of manga, figures, and even anime cels! It rained for most of the day, but we still managed to enjoy ourselves.

We ran around Akihabara in the evening, which accomplished nothing, though I did get to visit my favorite store, Super Potato. The rain was making us miserable at that point, so we didn't bother buying anything.

Friday was spent hanging out with Kari's caricature artist friends, all of whom were awesome. We had lunch with Kage Nakanishi, who runs Caricature Japan, and then walked around the shrines and temples of Asakusa.

In the evening, we met up with Tomo Tabata and some other friends at Tokyo Tower, and then headed over to an izakaya for dinner. Everyone was great, and we had a fantastic time. I kind of felt like crap when we got back to the hotel, but it eventually passed.

We've got plenty of pictures to share, but no way of doing so. I was hoping to find an SD card adapter for the iPad somewhere, but haven't had any luck yet. We'll keep looking, though.

Once again, there's nothing good on TV.

Arrival and What-not

2010-10-27T09:07:00.000-07:00

So here we are, safe and sound in Tokyo. The hotel is very nice, though not in the most beautiful area of Ueno. Our first night (we got in around 8pm) was spent procuring food and searching for a new GPS receiver for my PSP, which we've yet to find at a decent price.

We spent the day today at Tokyo Disneyland, which is pretty much what you'd expect: rides, characters, and lots of people who don't watch where they're walking. Still, we had a great time, and got some really nice footage of the Halloween parade.

Our posting ability is somewhat limited, since all we brought are our phones and an iPad. Blogger's editor uses an editable IFrame, which doesn't work on the iPad. So I'm typing this on my phone, which isn't super fun.

The TV gets about 10 channels, and the only thing good on right now is the hotel menu's music. Time for bed, I think.

We fail at blog.

2008-11-19T05:04:00.000-08:00

Sorry we're not updating the blog, but we're not used to all the walking around, standing on trains and generally not being lazy. So by the time we get back to the hotel each day, we're exhausted and want nothing but to lie down and fall asleep. It's not that we've got nothing to post about, believe me. I just checked and it looks like we've got almost 900 pictures from all over Tokyo (and a handful from Chiba and Saitama), and we've also got some nice video we'd like to put up on YouTube if our connection would hold up. But for now, here's a quick photo of three GeGeGe no Kitaro cels we picked up today at Mandarake in Nakano. They were super cheap, at less than $15 for the three of them (1,260 yen), so we're happy.

The American stomach in Japan

2008-11-14T14:33:00.000-08:00

Yakitori is a very common food here. It's grilled chicken on a stick, but they serve many, many parts of the chicken (heart, liver, skin, cheeks).

They say the chicken is much fresher here than in America, so you can eat the chicken half-cooked (like you might order a steak medium-rare). So, we gave it a try.

BUT... Ryan and I have pathetic American stomachs that can't take half-raw chicken, so we both spent the entire night taking turns on the toilet. :p

I want to go find some crackers this morning to eat.

There is some sushi even we don't like

2008-11-14T09:39:00.001-08:00

SANY0145
Originally uploaded by keefry

Masako had us try a new kind of sushi... This is crab guts sushi. She said it was an aquired taste.

I think Ryan was really scared by it. :p

Our day with Masako

2008-11-14T09:34:00.001-08:00

SANY0154
Originally uploaded by keefry

Masako showed us around Tokyo on our first day... It was a wonderful time. She took us to a small town that was very off the beaten path, and we explored a few of the more popular sites as well.

This picture is in Ginza, outside of the Sony Showroom.

Flickr

2008-11-14T09:32:00.001-08:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Flickr

2008-11-14T09:31:00.001-08:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Teh Internets are Down.

2008-11-13T05:41:00.000-08:00

Sorry, we've been having some trouble with the hotel's internet connection, so we haven't been able to upload any pictures. It seems to be working better now, so we'll try to get some posts up tonight or tomorrow. We've been to a lot of different places, and we've got plenty of pictures!

The plane ride

2008-11-08T14:31:00.000-08:00

Back-tracking a bit here... Here are pictures from the plane ride. It was 13 hours long... and pretty much felt 13 hours long. Our layover was in Chicago. We went from Cleveland (CLE), to Chicago (ORD) to Tokyo (NRT).

This was the plane... A 777-200. It was huge. This is a description of the plane... We had seats near the very back. (For you LOST fans, that would have made us tailies.) Look at those first class seats. They lay flat into beds. That's downright excessive. Wonder how much they cost.

Narita (NRT - Tokyo's airport) is a hub for a lot of asian flights, apparently. Many people were flying to Hong Kong from Narita, which is another 3 short hours away.

This is Ryan tinkering with the entertainment system. There was a choice of several movies, which you could watch anytime, or you could listen to music.

I watched The Dark Knight and did not like it. Heath Ledger was great, I admit, but the movie was too long and I lost interest at a few points. And that low, raspy voice of Batman's was completely unncessary. OK, movie rant is over.

On the monitor, you could always look at the flight's progress. This was about 2 hours or so into the flight - we're flying over Canada.

Here we are flying over Alaska. You can't see it, but I'm giving Sarah Palin the finger.

And, jumping ahead several hours, here were are at Narita Airport.

I don't know why I'm making this face, but here I am with my new awesome yen.

We had a wonderful day yesterday with our new friend, Masako... I will make a post about our day with her tomorrow. We had a fantastic time and she was so sweet. <3

2008-11-07T11:30:00.000-08:00

This is the cool view that we have from our hotel window... Our hotel is very quiet, despite all the excitement going on outside. We have an awesome 7-11 right across the street.

ITADAKIMASU!

This is Ryan about to enjoy some food from a convenience store. The food was excellent, and very cheap. I got Fanta Melon soda (Fanta is very popular here), and Ryan got Pocari Sweat (it's kind of like Gatorade).

Tsui ni Nihon Jouriku!

2008-11-07T01:29:00.000-08:00

We're here, we're safe, and it was a surprisingly painless experience getting through customs. :) But we're both exhausted, so we're headed to 7-Eleven for food and drink galore (it's half past 6 in the evening here, and according to the laptop's clock (and some simple math), that means it's 4:30 in the morning back home. We already have some nice pictures and even some video (the video might have to wait until we get home), so stay tuned!

Ryan's Geeky Haunts (I hope!)

2008-11-03T02:04:00.000-08:00

A few places I'd like to check out at least once (the first two are in Akihabara, so literally minutes away from the hotel):

Super Potato - THE retro gaming superstore in Tokyo.
Yodobashi Camera - 9 floors of electronics. Yeah. NINE FLOORS.
Chiba Kanteidan - Games, CDs, DVDs, manga... I hope to spend a long time here.

That's all I've got for now, but stay tuned for more... especially once we're there!

places we're going, part one

2008-11-02T23:11:00.000-08:00

Cat Cafes (there's a small cover charge, but you can play with the cafe's cats!)
Ghibli Animation Museum
Suginami and Toei Animation Museums
Kitaro Tea House
Inokashira Park (a nice park where you can rent a canoe or a swan cycle-boat!)
Yoyogi Park
Fuji Television Headquarters
Akihabara

Packed and Ready

2008-11-02T21:49:00.000-08:00

We leave on Thursday morning.

We're all packed and ready to go now!

I'm practicing my Japanese until the last minute. I don't want to embarrass myself too badly.