Let me explain what I mean by that by telling you the story of today.
So today I woke up to the sound of Demetri's voice, Skyping whoever.
It was 11 AM.
I didn't have any plans for today and I just kind of thought about it and I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to go back to Akihabara today to play some Street Fighter, since I hadn't played in a week or so (I was going through withdrawals LOL).
Eric comes to knock on our door.
He asked both of us if we wanted to go to Odaiba again.
The main reason to go to Odaiba would be to go visit Joypolis again (remember that indoor theme park with the Miles Edgeworth attraction and the Sonic stuff?).
Demetri had other plans. He was gonna go run around the city (literally) and then come back and do whatever until he would go to a bar somewhere.
Other than going to Akiba, which I could do but it was quite early in the day, I had no other plans.
So I decided that I might as well go with them.
Pretty much everyone besides Demetri, Kevin, Shunya, Jamar, and Valerie went.
So that means it was me, Eric, Maaike, Nathan, Josh, Sheryl, Lauren, Teresa, Lali, and Allison.
First thing was first, I didn't even freaken eat yet and I was hungry.
Eric had to go to a 7-11 to withdraw some money so I went with him so I could buy food.
We agreed with everyone else to meet up at the station
I ate something real quick and we met up with the rest of the group and we went.
The fare to get to Odaiba was freaken expensive since we had to take a private line to get there.
The group decided to go to a ramen place that had ramen from all over Japan.
It was kind of like a cafeteria.
I didn't really know which region was which, so I just got what Eric got (I doubt he knew either).
Everyone pretty much picked different ramens.
This one was the one that I got:
It was good, but I didn't think it was worth the 950 yen I paid for it.
We kind of wandered around the mall the ramen place was in afterwards.
We got out of there.
Allison wanted to go to the onsen, but nobody else wanted to go.
So we split off with Allison.
The rest of us went BACK to Fuji Television.
This time, there was some shit going down at the grounds.
It was some kind of event or festival or something.
We took a quick peek inside a nearby gift shop and the first thing I saw was this.
Other than that, everything in the shop seemed pretty normal.
We walked inside the building after and were greeted by several weird thingies going on at once.
I'm not sure how to explain, so I won't.
There were a set of escalators going waaaay up to a higher level, so we took them.
This is when I started to notice a strong influence of One Piece in their events and merchandise.
This level had some sort of gift shop (again) and with nothing else to look at we wandered inside.
They even had some Guilty Crown stuff!
...Inori's butt.
On the way back down, we were directed into some kind of hallway like thing showcasing a bunch of Fuji TV related things.
I saw some familiar things.
We saw an idol group perform back down at ground level, but I couldn't take pictures.
With nothing else to do, we left.
Next stop was Joypolis.
Last time we were there, we thought it was free admission and the rides cost money.
Nope.
There were both admission fees and ride costs.
So pretty much everyone in the group said, "Fuck that," and we left.
We had to walk like a good 30 minutes to get to our next destination, which was the Panasonic building.
To be honest, it wasn't super great.
Anyways, we got there after a long walk.
The Nintendo thingy that Josh wanted to see was on the second floor.
We got there.
It was literally 10 3DS's in a row and little kids playing them.
This was like the 3rd time Josh had failed us (the first being the Square Enix "studio" and the second being the Sony building). If today taught me anything, it was to not follow Josh.
They had a couple of other things to showcase too, but not a whole lot.
The rest of the time there was going back down to the 1st floor and looking at all the Panasonic products on display. It was actually cooler than the Nintendo thing cuz they had lots of demos and explanations of things.
We were nearby the Comiket building so we stopped by really quick.
At the time we were there, supposedly there was a conference that just finished about counseling students on which colleges they should go to.
As a result, TONS of schoolgirls came out when we got there.
I was in heaven.
After basking in the glory of the building and the schoolgirls, we were unsure of where to go next.
Maaike seemed to know what we should do and led the group.
This is where tensions within the group started to rise.
We accidentally left Josh behind because the doors on the subway closed too fast and it closed in front of him.
We had to wait 5 min at the next station for him and he didn't look too happy.
The fare was freaken expensive for just 1 stop and this got him asking why we were even there. He didn't see a point in taking the subway and he started getting pissed off at Maaike.
We ended up going to the Glico store in the same mall that the Uniqlo was in.
Everything there was freaken expensive so I didn't buy anything.
I did, however, get a free Hello Kitty custard thing at the shop across.
Afterwards we decided to go home.
But then people started arguing about which line to take back home.
It got to the point where Maaike just said fuck it, and she went off to where the line was.
It was kind of sad to see tensions so high in the group.
But it started to cool down a bit.
I tried talking to the group about Pokemon on the train and people lightened up a lot.
During the train ride, I asked if anyone wanted to go to Akihabara with me (yeah I still wanted to go).
Nathan, Josh, Eric, and Maaike were down.
The rest were gonna go back home, which was kind of expected of the girls.
We split ways with them and took the train to Akiba.
We tried exploring the parts of the city we hadn't explored yet, but they ended up being either shady alleyways or shops. We found another Gundam Cafe that was actually a cafe.
Afterwards we ended up wandering to the more familiar parts and going in and out of anime shops.
Good times.
On the way to an arcade I passed by a figurine shop.
One of the models out on display was a big Yoko figurine.
In case you didn't know, Yoko is my favorite character in any anime ever.
I have like 4 things with Yoko on it.
The figurine was 2000ish yen.
At that price, it was a steal.
The other stores I saw would've probably priced something like this at 4000.
I was at a heavy debate with myself with whether to get it or not.
I really wanted it.
But if I got it, I would never be able to go back to the casual anime status I was at before.
Also I didn't know if I had room in my luggage for it (since I had 2 other figurines I won in claw games).
How I decided it was, I would follow the rest of the group to the next door arcade. I would sit around there, and when we were done, we'd go down. If the shop was still open, I would buy it. If not, it was a sign that I shouldn't get it.
So we went up the arcade and they played a few games while Eric and I fought in Tetris DS (we developed quite the rivalry).
Down we went, and the shop was still open.
Yoko figurine: bought.
I don't have a picture of it, cuz Demetri would get pissed if I turned on the lights right now to take a picture of it, but if I remember later, I'll take a picture of it.
Glorious.
It is so nice.
This is now the 5th Yoko thing I own.
Anyways I went to go finally play some damn Street Fighter.
Nobody really played against me in my block and I got damn far in the arcade mode.
2 people played me.
I beat them both!
2-0 WITH JAPANESE PEOPLE, I'M THE BEST!
One was a mediocre Ryu and the other was an iffy Makoto.
I was really happy to have those legit wins against the Japanese people.
It was a very satisfying way to end my day and the train ride home was full of happiness.
Anyways, again, kind of a shitty day, but ended on a high note.
Tomorrow I will probably not go out at all, as I should be working on a paper due Tuesday.
So sorry if there's minimal content tomorrow.
I'll try to take a picture of the Yoko figurine.
No comments:
Post a Comment