[Day 16 - Shopping in the rain] -and- [Day 10 - Shimabara and Kumamoto :<]

I didn't do much of note today... I switched my Nikko day with a shopping day from next week because it's raining today (typhoon's comin in... it's pouring right now >_>) and it's supposed to be decent weather next week. Also, Mrs. Black can come to Nikko, too, if I go next week, which is an added bonus for both of us... she really wants to go there, and I like having a traveling partner. So my new itinerary looks like:

Sat - Tokyo Edo Museum, Sumo, Akiba (horray for staying indoors during the typhoon...)
Sun - Harajuku :< and Meiji
Mon - Kamakura
Tues - Studio Ghibli Museum, last minute souvenir shopping
Wed - Nikko, packing
Thurs - Playing with the puppy (:<), packing, going home

That's it! Today I shopped in Shinjuku and Shibuya. It looked like they were setting up for a festival in Shinjuku, but it's probably tomorrow... and it will be raining.... I might stop over depending on how the day goes and how hard it's actually raining.

I went back to OIONE up to the goth/loli/etc floors and got myself a sweet jacket ^_^ I got another jacket later at 109 ^_^;;; fall's coming... jacket season! I've also been having a lot of Krispy Kremes... there's one nearby, and if you're waiting in line to buy something, and they are making donuts (they always are), a lady comes out with a tray of hot donuts and gives you a free one :< Nom!

The rest of this entry will be me talking about my day 10, going back and filling in some of the gaps of my blog when I couldn't use the internet.

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Shimabara greeted me with the usual blast of humidity, which I'm used to by now. It turned into rain later, which I'm also used to >_>

But I did everything before it rained, except getting back to pick up my bags at the hotel. I started off by seeking out the big reclining Buddha, which is one of the big Shimabara attractions. The way there is through a covered shopping arcade (those are common in Kyushu, it seems...), which was nice. There were many regular stores and also some carts and shops selling fresh produce and, most of all, flowers. There was a small garden with some little fishes in it, which was a nice break in the shop row.

Near the end of my shopping arcade trek, there was much to-do over a high school (? maybe? middle school?) taiko(?) drum group, which was really cool. I filmed part of their performance, so I have something better than my blurry photos to remember it by (I was being jostled a lot by little old ladies -_-;). They were fun to watch, though I didn't know why they were there. I had also passed a group of Japanese cheerleaders on the way to the arcade (so cute ^_^;)... hmm...

I made it to the Buddha site, which was a shrine with a huge cemetary, which was cool in itself. At the main buildings of the shrine there were some other statues that were also really nice... I would've gone just to see those and the vastness of the cemetary, with a big mountain in the background (very cool about Shimabara). I wound my way through the cemetary, where the stones were so close together that you could really only walk on the prescribed path to the Buddha unless you were trying really hard. Then it was up some stairs to the Buddha, which was really cool. It's the longest or second longest reclining Buddha in Japan, and the carving was really fine. I couldn't fit it all in one camera frame because you could only step back about 10 feet from it >_> but I did my best, and took a movie to remember later.

Walking back through the arcade, it turns out that all the high school orpossiblymiddleschool action was revolving around a store. I wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but it appeared that they rented out or were loaned a store for a few months, and bought, made, or were given some wares to sell, and this was their big opening day. Everything in the store was well priced, and all the school girls (and a few school guys) were all cute and eager. I got a lunch bag (¥100) and a really cute little figure which I think is Jizo (¥300). I hope the girls didn't mind that I took their picture... at least I didn't take one of the cheerleaders, though I probably could have... they were all peppy and stuff.

Also, finally, my duffel bag being unable to accommodate my growing Kyushu souvenir pile along with what I had brought along, I bought an inexpensive rolling bag at a department store, which was a tremendous help for the rest of my journey. It will probably also prove useful on the way back to the US. Also in the department store, I tried the cup-dispenser-type vending machine for the first time. They carry hot and cold drinks. I don't like coffee and it was hot out so I got peach Hi-C. Peachy deliciousness ^_^ The cup falls down, then the ice, then the drink. It's cheaper than the regular vending machines because there is less waste, I suppose... providing a paper cup is probably cheaper than a plastic bottle, ne? At any rate, I like the cup vends. On the way out of the store I got a pastry with some shredded veggies and... ham?... in the middle. However, the binder for the veggies ended up being more mayonaisey and less cheesy than expected, so I only ended up eating about half ._. They love mayo here, heh.

There were many places in the shopping arcade pumping in water from the Shimabara fresh water springs, which are another great thing of note about Shimabara. You're supposed to drink from those little fountains, but... I didn't. Even when I read somewhere that you are allowed to/supposed to do something, I'm often still unsure about it unless I see a Japanese person do it first, heh. I'm afraid of offending someone, or possibly their religion. I always feel a little bad when I go to shrines and take photos... oh, well. I do it anyway.

I walked down the street to the "carp stream," which supposedly holds about 1500 koi. I reached one end and there was a group of fish, but I didn't see any a little further down. Walking down further meant getting further from the other places I was trying to go, and it wasn't really worth it for the carp, so I enjoyed the little group for a while before moving on. Also it was hot... ._.;

I walked in the nice heat to an area that has some old samurai houses, which were really cool... old thatched rooves and everything. You can even go inside. The one I went into had a life-size diorama of the samurai and his family eating, which was cool. Also, down the middle of the street there, there's a channel through fresh water constantly flows, which back in the samurai days provided the households with fresh water.

I walked back to the hotel after that... I wanted to make sure I got a ferry to Kumamoto. It started raining on my way back, but it wasn't so bad. I didn't visit Shimabara Castle, which I could see lit up from my hotel window the previous night, but I saw it from pretty much every angle except up close, heh.

I took the ferry to Kumamoto, which was a pleasant ride, though it was too hazy for photos of the distant mountains to come out. ._. Then I had to take a bus to the centre of town. At first I found Kumamoto a little depressing, because it seemed a bit industrial and devoid of bustle (I like bustle...!) and also the weather was dreary, which didn't help my perceptions. My hotel room wasn't too bad... no window though, haha. Such is the business hotel. It was clean and contained a bed and that was good enough for me. But all this combined with having a difficult time finding accommodations in Beppu (apparently, it was a holday weekend! >_>) made me sort of sad and irritated.

I went downstairs to the convenience store for a snack, and when I looked out the window... hustle (e.g. bustle)! It was raining but I just went :< toward the bustle, without my umbrella and camera ._. which was unfortunate but oh well, such is the impromptu magnetic pull of bustle. I walked down a small, busy street and found... a covered shopping arcade! What a surprise! What was nice about it, though, is that it was around 9 or 10 and totally full of people. The arcade and the many side streets coming off of it were full of restaurants, bars, clubs, and some of those more dubious clubs with the pictures of pretty ladies on the outside :< hee

As I walked down the arcade I saw lights... sound... ye..no! Pachinko, damn. But then...! Crane machines ^_^ This place was a bit different... the people who own it made up their own games, usually involving moving some mundane object (like a slipper) rather than the prize itself. Then, you get a prize for completing the task. Yes, I got a thing. ^_^; Partially because the guy who worked there was nice to me and kept moving the thing to help me get it more easily, hee. It would've been impossible otherwise, though.

I also found a cute bakery that features many animal-shaped baked goods. My favourite were the turtle-turtle-turtle stacks, which was a big, medium, and small bread stacked on top of one another, each made to look like a turtle. They actually looked like they might have been melon pan... o_o; all sugary and stuff, and their shells were coloured. I wanted one as a souvenir but, as you could imagine, it wouldn't have kept well. Instead I bought a kuma-shaped bun (in Kumamoto :<) and a mango-apple juice box and took it back to my room for dessert. ^_^

The kuma bread is the only evening Kuma(moto) picture you get, because like I said, I didn't have my camera. His eyes look a little creepy because they got messed up on the way home ._. but I promise it was cute!

After this novel of an entry, I'm going to bed. Back to early days starting tomorrow. ^_^

Day Fifteen - Odaiba

So today, it rained. This was day 2/2 of making up for lost sleep, and it was nice ^_^ it also worked out for the best because it rained all day until around 4 ._.

Because it was raining, I chose an indoor thing to do in Tokyo, which was going to the Odaiba area. It's an artificial island that contains many futuristic, industrial, and otherwise interesting buildings. This includes the Fuji (as in TVs) building, which is all these pieces at 90-degree angles, with a big sphere set amongst them. To get there, you have to take this new train system that's pretty cool, actually... it's unmanned, and all new and modern. You go all woosh up and over the bridge to Odaiba ._. woosh...

First I went to Venus Fort, which is a big shopping mall with an old Roman theme, like the Caesar's Palace shopping mall in Las Vegas, except smaller. It was a good place to kill a couple hours, even though I didn't get anything. Across the walkway from VF is the Toyota showroom/info center/entertainment place, where you can do things like go on a ride where you sit in a hybrid car, which I did not do. I spent no time in the Toyota place, really, except walking through it to get to the giant ferris wheel.

Supposedly, it's the tallest ferris wheel in the world, as of 1999 (I think). I'm not sure if it still has that distinction, but it's still pretty cool. It was a nice ferris wheel and gave good views out over the water to Tokyo. I went up around dusk, so the lights of the city were just coming on. The whole thing made me feel kind of nostalgic and, of course, made me think about Honey & Clover :<

... :<<<<<<

Anyway... after that, I made my way over to Sega Joypolis, which is a sort of indoor theme park. Like most theme parks, it's the kind of thing where you pay a high admission price, and then everything inside costs money, too. I got the "passport" which lets me go on any of the rides without paying more, but everything else... food, video games, carnival games, etc... costs more money, of course. Annoying. ALSO ANNOYING which made me really sad, is that they were doing this stamp program where you get a stamp card and try to fill it up by going on a bunch of rides and playing 2 carnival games. Then you turn it in and get... something or other. I got my card filled up by 9.30 and headed back to the card place... it was gone! You had to do it by 9! ._. I was really sad about that. I don't know why it made me so sad, rather than just mildly annoyed.

Other than that, my experience was pretty good, although it made me miss my friends... everyone there was doing everything in pairs at least. I went on the spinning roller coaster, which was actually really painful... very very jerky. It's unfortunate, because it would've been fun. I also went on a bunch of virtual reality rides where a bunch of people sit in a car or something in a dark room in front of a screen and the car moves around, etc. Those were all pretty enjoyable. I also did three different things that were similar, except they were games... two shooters and one hang-gliding game. Those were interesting though not as enjoyable.

The only thing I actually skipped because I was alone was probably the coolest thing there (sadly) but it also had the longest line. It was a half pipe with giant snowboard shaped things attached to poles in the ceiling. One person stood on each end of the board, facing out in opposite directions, and the arms swung them back and forth, while they tried to spin the board around. There were four going at the same time and the team with the most points at the end won. It looked pretty sweet, I have to say.

I came away with some prizes, all won in the carnival area (I bought carnival tokens to get some stamps on my card, but... we know how that turned out >_>) and I have to say that Joypolis was fun... definitely a good way to spend a rainy day.

After all that, I came back to Shibuya again, cos all the restaurants in Odaiba were closed ._. I ate Italian again .____. mostly because I wanted to eat at a nice-ish sit down place after walking around all day, and it was the first and possibly only one open. There are a lot of places to eat that are open late or 24h, but most of them are very casual, or stand up places, or those little shops with one small counter with just a couple of stools. Wasn't in the mood for that. The place where I ate was called La Bohemme, I think, and the food was good and reasonably priced. I had some risotto... nom ^_^;

It's supposed to rain again tomorrow, but I'm going to Nikko, which is north of Tokyo, and home of the infamous "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" monkeys, among many other cool things. I'm pretty excited about going, even though it's likely that it will rain for at least part of the day. I walked through a bamboo forest in the rain in Usuki, so some temples and such in Nikko shouldn't be too bad.