Tag: Miscellaneous

The Queen of Poor Financial Decisions

So, I spent a lot of money today.

Today was our free day in Tokyo, so we decided to start the day with a quick trip to Starbucks for some drinks while we wait for the crepe place we intended to get breakfast at to open. By the time we had arrived at the crepe place I was pretty full on sugar, but luckily there was a beef skewer place just next door that was also opening, so I chose to get one of those instead. Nothing will top the beef skewer that I got at Nishiki Market, but it was still pretty good!

We also decided to visit Book-Off, a well known secondhand book/CD/video game store that held a surprising amount of Pokemon DS games. While most of them were 3DS games, I did manage to snag a copy of Pokemon Platinum for only $25 which I think is an unbelievable steal. The cartridge looks really cool too! I’m very excited to play it when I get home and see if there’s a save file on it (though I wouldn’t be surprised if they wiped it before putting it on sale). Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of it and am already in bed, so here’s a picture of a really cute cat statue that I saw later in the day instead!

We then took a train to Tokyo station to find Character Street, a well known chain of shops under the station featuring a lot of popular chain stores like Disney, Pokemon, Kirby, and more. I didn’t find too many things there that I really liked, but I did get a cute cat sticker, a pressed coin from the Pokemon store, and some cute sweets from the mini Kirby cafe!

After a pit stop in the hotel to devour our goodies, we made a change to our original plan to go to Ginza and decided to stay in Akihabara and visit the Muji and Uniqlo stores here. I didn’t find anything interesting in Muji, but this Uniqlo store did have the Splatoon 3 shirts that I was looking for so I picked up two of them!

Splatoon was truly my downfall today. After visiting the Uniqlo store, I took a trip to the floor below to look at some video games and Pokemon merchandise. While none of the Pokemon merchandise caught my eye, I did see something else that made me excited… the Splatoon 3 Special Edition OLED Switch. Yes, it’s something I passed up at the beginning of my trip, but here I would be able to purchase it tax-free and save nearly $100 compared to how much it would cost in America. Cloud my judgement with the Splatoon and Splatoon 2 art books thrown in… I stood no chance. But I got a really good deal on some really amazing merchandise that I know I’ll use! So I’m happy.

After lugging all of my Splatoon merchandise home, we had to find a place for dinner. We decided to visit a sushi place that our professor had recommended us. The food itself was really good, but somehow the server or the chefs managed to forget about half of our order, so we were stuck there for over an hour. It was pretty affordable, but unfortunately I’d never go back just because of the bad experience we had.

To end the night, me and a few others decided to have a movie night in Skylar and Liam’s room and watch Bullet Train, a comedy/action movie set in a Shinkansen in Tokyo. The movie was actually really funny, and I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would! Tomorrow we will be going to TeamLab Planets, which I’m REALLY excited for because it’s a really iconic location with a lot of good photo ops. I think we are also visiting Diver City, which will probably have some cool merch spots! I’m sad that my time in Japan is moving so quickly, but I’m having so much fun that I don’t regret any of it.

Breaking Ground

While today started as a chill hangout with our entire group together for the first full day, it ended with a LOT of “waku waku” (the Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound of your heart beating intensely).

Megan, Jessica, Jasmine, Skylar, Liam and I started the day by heading to a local cafe and bakery for breakfast called City Bakery Shinagawa. I ordered the french toast which was a TOTAL score (the bacon on top was the real king of the meal), and also got a small table roll because I enjoy eating bread by itself.

After breakfast, we had a couple hours to kill before we boarded the train to Kyoto, so we decided to visit the aquarium that was connected to our hotel. Quick aside: I cannot stress enough how insane our hotel was. Connected to it was two pools (one of which was heated), an aquarium, an 80-lane bowling alley, four practice golf range simulations, 11 movie theaters (one of which was an IMAX theater), and more, not including the food court or other restaurants just around its perimeter. I wish that we had been able to stay longer to capitalize on it, because it was kind of incredible how much could be fit into one hotel complex.

I digress, back to the aquarium! I am definitely spoiled by the Georgia Aquarium, but this aquarium had a lot of really cool (albeit much too small) exhibits and some animals that I don’t think I would have seen anywhere else! Namely was the capybaras, which were SUPER cute but gave us some mean glares as we took pictures of them. We also got to watch an otter performance that was very cute!! My favorite part was when he grabbed the mic and yelled into it, because I too would do the same thing if given that power. Thankfully Jessica got a video of it as my phone was on the verge of overheating.

Otter yelling, my favorite kind of yelling.

There was also an assistant robot who could do the Ievan Polkka dance (there were a lot of popular English/TikTok songs too, but who cares about those?) and a tube where the fish could swim over you that housed a massive manta ray. A large portion of our group also went on this giant swinging ship that was right at the entrance to the aquarium, which was fun to watch!

After the aquarium, we hurried back to the hotel to get our luggage and make it to the train station in time for our train to Kyoto. Getting on and off the train in a timely manner was the most stressful part, but I played Tears of the Kingdom for the entire ride and thoroughly enjoyed it (while also stopping periodically to take videos of the scenery passing by). Once we got to Kyoto, though, the real intensity began.

After a short walk to a VERY nice restaurant, we come to realize that we’ve just walked into a very nice, very expensive ten course dinner. For anyone who’s not familiar with me (first of all hi :D), I have always been a super picky eater and the food in Japan was my biggest concern when planning for this trip due to my limited palate. All of that was completely chucked out of the window tonight as I was sitting almost directly next to the director of our entire program who planned this dinner. I think that I tried more completely new food tonight than I have in the last year.

In its entirety, we ate: some weird little beef ball, a piece of red snapper, some mixed vegetables, a whole miniature squid covered in mustard, miso soup which contained a piece of fish and some vegetables that I could have mistaken for bricks of tasteless jelly, some sashimi that consisted of tuna, salmon, and tai (AKA Red sea bream? I think?), some professionally made sushi consisting of tuna, salmon, and rice, wasabi, the weirdest egg/jelly/bean drink that was expectedly disgusting, some bacon slices that we steeped in cooking broth in a process called “shabu shabu”, a set of fried shrimp tempura and fried lotus root, another soup of indistinguishable origins, and two small ice cream scoops that were vanilla and soy milk flavored respectively. Do you see where the “waku waku” was happening? I also treated myself to a peach fruit juice that was a nice palate cleanser from all of the horrors I put my body through during dinner.

Despite my obvious reservations with the menu we were served, I am proud to say that I at least tried every single thing that we were served. While some of them were hard to swallow (literally), I am surprised at how far I was willing to push myself out of my comfort zone; I think it’s the first of a few big milestones that I will reach while being here.

Tomorrow will be another incredibly packed day, as we’ll be on a bus tour of Kyoto for almost the entire morning and afternoon. While I am looking forward to seeing the sights that the city has to offer, I could really use an extra hour of sleep.

A picture of the manta ray from the aquarium. SO CUTE!!

Celebrating my Inner Child

Today was by far my most anticipated day of the entire trip, and I can confidently say that it was 100% worth the hype.

After taking a quick pit stop in Asakusa to visit a retro game store we had managed to miss yesterday, me and Megan headed to Nihombashi to meet up with Fabian and Pavel for our Pokemon Cafe reservation. After spending an embarrassing amount of time (and money) at the Pokemon Center Tokyo DX, which was connected to the Cafe, we were able to check in for our reservation at 12:30 and get seated.

Honestly, the food in my opinion was REALLY good. I got the Pikachu themed meal, which featured an omurice shaped like Pikachu’s head, with an egg tail, a pokeball topped mac and cheese, and a hamburger patty on the side. There was also a salad (which I didn’t try) and a fried shrimp (which I did try and really like), but I think my most favorite part was the mac n cheese. The shells were shaped like Pikachu although it was hard to tell under all of the cheese, but it was super cute!!

Pavel ordered the Eevee themed dish, which I believe was a bread bun with clam chowder and something else with shrimp in it. Megan opted for the Pikachu soufflé pancake, which I ordered later in the meal and fell in love with. Fabian decided to order one of the special sets, which was a Pikachu themed ramen bowl that came with this cute Pancham steamed bun. We also all got our own themed drinks, which included a latte with a picture of Rayquaza drawn on it, Sprigatito and Fuecoco soda floats (melon and apple themed respectively), hot chocolate, and this cute drink set where you mix your own chocolate milk. But the best part about the entire experience was hands down the show.

Right after making their last call for orders, a large Pikachu comes out from behind the kitchen and puts on a show for all of the diners. Typically he’s wearing Pokemon Cafe attire, but because of the special event he was wearing a Chinese-themed outfit that was still super cute. Remember how I said that the seats we had been given were important? We ended up being right next to a majority of the show, which meant that the experience was AWESOME and felt super personal for me.

After a lot of speaking in Japanese that I didn’t understand, a lot of cute running and dancing around the cafe, and a performance of ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It’ (a true classic), he scurried back to the staff room so we could finish eating and make our way to the ever-looming merchandise wall.

I am not ashamed to say that this was, and likely will always be, the most expensive day of my trip in terms of merchandise. While it wasn’t outrageous, I did purchase quite a handful of small goodies and trinkets that I certainly don’t need, but definitely wanted. The picture shown is not just of the Pokemon Cafe merchandise (the Pikachu ditto plate, the small chef pikachu keychain, and the gengar silverware), but also of some things I got from the Pokemon Center next door (gachapon figurines, a very fluffy pastel Rowlet, and a hefty hoard of charms and stickers). Some other small wins from today were a Korok keychain that I won from an LoZ ichiban kuji (a lottery with a set number of prizes) and a Mega Lucario keychain that I found on the ground very far from any Pokemon Center or other merchandise store. There’s also some small things that are not pictured because I had forgotten to include them, which are a canvas tote bag and a pair of wooden chopsticks themed after grass types in Paldea.

In a daze from the heaven that I had experienced for the first half of the day, Megan and I worked our way back to our hostel to pick up our lugggage and then turn around and jump on another train to head to the first planned event of our trip by the school at the Grand Price Hotel Shinagawa. By this point, my brain was in a fog and my feet were killing me, so after heading to exchange our JR rail passes and grabbing dinner as a group I was ready to crash. My inner child has been fully satisfied by this experience, and I am so grateful that I was able to live it with my friends and fulfill it to its fullest potential.

Tomorrow we will head to Kyoto to meet up with the KCG students that we’ll be doing the game jam with. I’m very nervous, but also pretty excited to see how different the vibe is in Kyoto compared to Tokyo. I think we are also going to the aquarium attached to our hotel tomorrow (if my feet can handle it). I am quite literally fighting the urge to nod off as I write this, but as always, I’ll end with some extra photos.

The Glory of Asakusa

Ever stumbled into one of the largest festivals in the city you’re visiting by pure chance? It’s pretty incredible.

We started Day 3 with another visit to the Tokyo Skytree, both to visit a small coffee shop that we wanted to eat breakfast at and to clean up any loose ends we might have missed in the massive mall. After we had our fill of expensive boutiques and character stores, we decided to explore the other side of Japan: the traditional shrines.

Visiting the shrine was actually an afterthought to the ramen shop that we wanted to visit for dinner, a place that looked like a small local store that turned out to be full of tourists like us. But the food was good! As someone who’s never had real ramen before (and ordered a dipping ramen instead of the more traditional pre-mixed bowl out of a need for control) it was definitely an intimidating experience, but it really was delicious. As we were eating, we heard a group of men chanting outside as they slowly passed the shop… but we didn’t think anything of it.

To end the night, we decided to visit the Senso-Ji temple, a Buddhist temple that was sprawling and breathtaking. It wasn’t super busy because it was so late at night, but there was a drum performance happening which we stopped to watch amongst all of our picture taking. We did notice that there was a banner displaying the dates from May 19th to May 21st, and were surprised by the idea that we had managed to visit the shrine during a festival! We decided to go back tomorrow to see the shrine during the day, and look at what festivities they might have during this celebration.

We could never have been prepared for the gravity of what we had so luckily stumbled into, which turned out to be Asakusa Sanja Matsuri: one of the biggest and greatest festivals that Tokyo had to offer.

To say that there were a lot of people there was an understatement. Towards the beginning of the day (up until 11:30, maybe noon?) we were able to get up close to a lot of the main attraction, which was a parade of shrines being carried throughout various parts of the temple grounds with lots of chanting, deaf-inducing whistle blowing, and good atmosphere. But once we had left the main area and began to wander through the side streets, which were packed with stores and restaurants, the crowd became an ocean. The festival is said to attract over 1.8 million visitors in its 3 day runtime, and I truly believe it now that I’ve been in the middle of it.

Getting to see something so integral to the culture and religion of Japan was truly fascinating, and we are incredibly lucky to have accidentally walked into it on a whim. It was also fun to walk through an area that we had previously seen closed up and ghostly the night before, now alive with people and chock full of goodies to buy (which I obviously partook in). But eventually my social battery had reached its limit of being shoulder to shoulder with strangers, and we hurried back to our respective hotels to recharge as we had on days prior.

For dinner, we decided to head to an American-themed diner for a look at Japan’s perspective of our culture (and also, admittedly, for a bit of familiarity amongst a lot of exhaustion for new foreign food on my part). It felt like being tossed 30 years into the past, and the atmosphere was cozy and fun despite not being something I think I’d ever find in the U.S. today. I had a cheeseburger and fries which was a very enjoyable meal, and we exchanged a conversation with one of the waiters who was curious about why we were in Japan (and probably why we were choosing to eat American food in Japan when we certainly have enough of it back home).

We ended the night by walking along the Sumida River and taking a peek at a couple of smaller shrines, though we could only access one of them as the others were gated off due to the time. It’s nice to experience such a saturated area of culture and then contrast it with the ability to quietly experience the edges of it solo, without the fear of being judged for being unfamiliar with the details.

Tomorrow begins my daily blog posts, which I am praying I will be able to keep up with. I am visiting the Pokemon Cafe tomorrow, which is my most anticipated event, so I’m sure there will be lots of pictures! I’ll end with some more miscellaneous pictures from the festival (I could create a photo album of pictures just from today, seriously.)