No, Really, I Am an American

Even though I was very happy and comfortable in a real bed, like many other times when sleeping in a strange place, I kept waking up at various points during the night. I went back to sleep easily each time, but still, weird. And even though I’d gotten little sleep the night before and such, I was still awake at a reasonable morning hour. I had more than enough time to take a shower and eat breakfast (Balance Up bars and a Mt. Rainier Cafe Latte Hazel Mocha — like every morning) and watch more J-dramas. What can I say? It’s way fun when you don’t know exactly what’s going on and the like.

The others came by at about 10:30 so we could check out and get something to eat. We ended up at a First Kitchen that was close to the station; I just had a coffee. Mike and Anna were keen on hanging around Shinjuku, so that left Steve and me to venture forth to Akihabara. I was a little surprised by the split up, don’t ask me why, but all and all it made sense. We had different things we wanted to see and the like. Mike and Anna were also kind enough to stand in line for an hour and however long for Krispy Kremes. I know, I’m gonna be home in like three weeks and stuff, but I wanted to bring some back for Masumi since she’d never had them before and she used to live in Tokyo. (She had told me in one of our lessons that the store set up just as she left.)

Mike and Anna’s great advice to us was to stick to the JR Yamanote Line. Otherwise there would probably be a lot of transferring involved. They said we would be able to take that to Akihabara and Tokyo Station for when we would meet up with them later. We parted company shortly thereafter.

I had one mission: find a reasonably priced Macross figure for my brother (my real one, not Mike). I’m a pretty crappy sister, so I really wanted to do this one thing from my brother. He’s only really asked me to find him some of this stuff, and I did my first year, but I wanted to try and find more. The problem with Macross is that it’s really rare, which translates to really expensive. I’d pretty much exhausted DenDen Town in Osaka, so I thought I would give Akihabara a try.

From Shinjuku Station to Akihabara it was gonna take us something like 25 minutes on the train. Lucky for us, it wasn’t all that crowded and we managed to sit down. The Yamanote Line reminded me a lot of the Loop Line in Osaka. It even had TVs we could watch, granted all the stuff was on a loop, but still, it was kinda cool.

Steve and I made it to Akihabara with no problems. I had my roll-aboard with me so I wanted to find a locker first.

The place isn’t unlike DenDen Town, maybe a bit bigger. There were a lot more Duty Free shops to me if anything, but otherwise, yeah. The only reason I was bothering with the place was because I thought there might be a better chance of finding something for Jason. We wandered down one side of the main street, popping into stores here and there — since there were so many Duty Free places I thought I’d check out if they had any backpacks while I was at it (mine has a big ass hole in the bottom of it that is currently being plugged by a black T-shirt; I could just get a new back…but I think mine has character…won’t hold John, though so that’s why I’m on the search). So far, I was out of luck.

Steve found a place on the map that claimed to be an Anime thing…for the life of me I can’t remember what it was officially called, but we thought it might be helpful since it was the only Anime thing on the map. Don’t get me wrong, there were anime stores all over the place, but this one had an official title or some such. Unfortunately for us, when we got to the building, it was closed.

I was getting kinda hungry by this point. We’d been there for something like an hour and so far, not so much. There was still a whole other side of the street, so I figured we’d find something to eat and then try that side. I couldn’t help but shake my head when Steve picked Mos Burger — the alternative was McDonald’s, but still.

On our way to Mos Burger, we passed two stores that looked promising. I made a mental note of their locations, but my stomach was growling and my hunger took precedence. Once our lunch was finished, though, we turned back.

The first place didn’t quite have what I was looking for, but I was pretty happy with the second one. I have to give Steve the credit on finding the thing, though. I mean, I can’t say I can never find Macross stuff — it’s more like finding Macross stuff that isn’t ginormous and expensive. I hope my brother will like this figure…

My mission complete, we found we still had plenty of time before we had to meet up with Mike and Anna. We decided to wander around a little more. It was during this time that we happened upon a Mac Store; it wasn’t an official one like the one on Midosuji, but it was still worth venturing in. They had all the new stuff on the first floor and second-hand stuff on the other three floors. While we were poking around the new stuff, I checked out the MacBook Air. Holy smokes that thing is thin!! I was flirting with it a little, but then realized it didn’t have a disk drive and was likely to snap in half if I mishandled it. Once again, this isn’t to say John is useless…he’s just heavy. (”Did he just go crazy and fall asleep?”) But much like Kaylee, it will probably take me another year to finally decide to get a new laptop or something.

There really wasn’t anything else we wanted to look at so we made our way back to the station. Steve asked me what I was interested in seeing, and I told him I actually wouldn’t mind seeing a major touristy area, you know, with people. I kinda wanted to do the whole Lost in Translation thing and see the famous Shibuya crossing, or maybe Harajuku with the chance of seeing one of the subculture groups.

We ended up going to Harajuku ‘cuz Steve said we’d be able to go to the Meiji Shrine. So it was another 20 minutes on the Yamanote Line going back the other way — we were practically at Shinjuku. I got another locker for my luggage and we were out of the station.

Unfortunately for me, there weren’t a lot of the Harajuku Girls around. There was only one group of people dressed up and I didn’t get any pictures of ‘em ‘cuz I didn’t wanna be a total jack ass.

The entrance to the park wasn’t that far from the station. In fact, it was just over the bridge. I was happy to see such trees and stuff around. I even remarked that the place kicked Osakajokoen’s ass in terms of nature. But then Steve pointed out the lack of cherry blossom trees. (So I guess Osakajokoen is still wicked cool.)

It seemed like there was a torii gate every five seconds, but in reality I think there were only five. Walking on the gravel and then stepping into the courtyard. I was amazed at how smooth it was; after walking through all that gravel I would have thought there would be more traces of such in the courtyard but not so much.

It was very quiet, tranquil even. I wondered if it was because of the time of day or if it was always like that. It was pretty cool.

After leaving the shrine, I made it a point to take a picture of the meeting place bridge. It was starting to get a bit more crowded; I just wished some of them had been in costume. We decided to find a place to sit down since we still had some time before we had to go to Tokyo Station. We ended up at the Wolfgang Puck Express restaurant that was just on the corner of Takeshita-dori.

Finally, after about an hour of sitting and having coffee, it was time to meet Mike and Anna. Anna had sent me several texts regarding Tokyo station. She wanted to make sure we didn’t leave the gates and to find the right exits. Initially, I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal.

And then we got to the station. Wow. Meeting people at the right gates must be a real pain in the ass. It was only mildly annoying for us, a phone call was involved, but it wasn’t overly evil. We wandered into the food court and the others had dinner while I had a Coke (I was still full from Wolfgang Puck’s). While we were eating, Anna said she wished our tickets were for an earlier train. Then it was a kind of, “Hey yeah, why don’t we just do that?” moment ‘cuz otherwise we would be waiting around in Tokyo for another hour and half or something.

We were in luck and were able to get an earlier shinkansen. We made it home a whole hour before expected. While we were in Shin-Osaka, we divided up the Krispy Kremes and then parted company. I told them earnestly that I was glad the trip didn’t suck nearly as much as I expected.

‘Twas a good trip had by one and all. Go Fight Club!!