hello
I was supposed to write about my trips to San Diego and Tokyo a while back but I never did. Doing it now…
December 15th-17th, 2024
Just some work training and walking around the village and mall after work
Yuzu Scallop Carpaccio and Grilled Halibut
we have marugame udon at home dude
we have shake shack at home dude
December 18th, 2024
Used Chase ™ rewards to book room at the Manchester Grand Hyatt. It’s a nice room!
yup it’s a hotel room
Just killed time walking around the Gaslight District and picking up some drinks until my dinner reservation.
midway christmas edition
Didn’t know they had Christmas effects for Midway… I couldn’t swing a way to get on at night since I planned to come back Saturday morning for it and didn’t want to pay for admission twice. But It’s a good view already even from afar anyway.
food @ animae
I chose one fine dining place to eat on my trip here. Apparently you’re supposed to get their Wagyu beef steak thing, but I wasn’t really in the mood for that since I eat a lot of steak already, so I opted to get their Pork Tomahawk Tocino instead. I wasn’t expecting too much from a pork dish, but it blew my expectations with every bite. Think of it like a super deluxe char siu dish.
December 19th, 2024
San Diego Sea World!
Mainly chose to came here to ride Emperor since my brother has been a roller coaster maniac for the last year and a half and I’ve let it seep into me a little bit. It’s a decent ride; probably its biggest fault being too short but it has good elements otherwise. Electric Eel is worse than Discovery Kingdom’s Superman as there’s a little brake run at the top that I don’t think Superman has since Electric eel runs three cars instead of Superman’s two cars. Manta and Arctic Rescue are kind of similar as they’re both launch coasters, but I’ll give the edge to Manta for it’s opening launch being more memorable.
Favorite animal exhibit is the penguin exhibit – Emperor penguins are the “hardest” to keep as they’re supposed to be kept in a colder temperature than the other penguins. Dolphin shows were good fun and getting your hand cleaned by the cleaner fish is tingly!
December 20th, 2024
San Diego Zoo
Looked at animals. Favorite is the Galapagos Tortoises for just crawling around for centuries. Fuck the polar bears for hiding each of the three times I came by to see them. Assholes.
December 21st, 2024
USS Midway (CV-41)
Just did a quick speedrun as I’ve been here before in 2018. Went through the bridge and decks. Had to brush up on my plane knowledge since it’s been a while since I’ve held a post as 提督.
December 28th, 2024
Fly to japan
tfw no balls to fly zipair and save money
Landed in NRT, Keisei Skyliner to Ueno and bunch of other shit to check in to hotel in Ariake. Took a walk around Toyosu Senkyoku Banrai to try to grab a bite from whatever was still open.
The omake for getting the bowl is supposed to be a cup of sake or Oolong Tea – since I didn’t want to drink alcohol, we got those tiny little cups of Oolong Tea. Thanks!
December 29th, 2024
Think I tried to take a nap but didn’t get much sleep. Decided to walk over to Tokyo Big Sight at about 01:30, camped around until the line started forming at around 03:30.
the second promised land, after akiba
It’s cold outside! Luckily you can take turns leaving to go to the conbini and use the restroom as you wait in queue, so no need to worry about pissing your pants like I initially was.
I lined up for West block 4 first to pick up some stuff at the Yuzusoft corporate booth, then picked up some doujinshi and items in West block 1 (Idolmaster/Kantai Collection) and East block 1 (Blue Archive). Didn’t note that there was anything to my interest anywhere else.
hoodies, blankets, books, bags
For every 10000￥ you spend at the Yuzusoft booth, you get the little plastic ema things. Apparently those go for a ton of money on Mercari/YAJ, so you could technically buy whatever you want and then make your money back selling those online…
I was tired as fuck at about 13:30 so I called it quits and went back to the hotel to sleep. I realized that simply marking down which booths wouldn’t be good enough for day 2 due to the huge crowds and I’d need the additional time to re-map my opening route.
December 30th, 2024
I made my maps! Except I had one flaw with the East 4-6 map… I had it upside down! You actually enter from the ‘bottom’ of the map, not the top from East 1-3… didn’t realize it until I was already in East 4-6 lol
Left at about 02:50 to line up at 03:30 again, this time entering from the East blocks rather than the west blocks. Sadly the first booth I got to (しらたまこ) was already a good 150 people deep when I got there, so I took my losses and went onward.
After picking up most of the regular books, I went back to the wall booths I skipped and were able to pick up a few things. Most limited stuff starts selling out by 12:00-12:30, then ‘good’ books sell out by 14:00-15:00, so time is of the essence!
books and shit
Main lessons I would take away from my Comiket experience if I were to redo this would be:
- If Comiket is important to you, absolutely get a hotel in Odaiba/Ariake to camp out in the early morning. You’ll be ahead of everyone else who needs to take the train to get onto Odaiba, and those opening minutes are critical to getting what you want!
- Pick like 2 or 3 wall booths MAX that you want limited stuff from. There’s going to be a line for them and waiting in those will inevitably eat up your precious time to get other booth stuff. You can only wait in so many booths before other booths’ limited items will sell out, so pick your battles wisely!
- You must go through the catalog in advance to map out the circles you want to visit, and only those circles (at least on your first pass through; do whatever you want after you’re done with your route). You don’t have time to casually look around for things that will interest you, as you only get 5 hours each day(11:00-16:00).
Of course, if you wanna be casual, go for it… but to me, making it to Winter Comiket is the whole reason for my trip, so it’s important to me…!
ok it’s late and i need to whack off and sleep bye
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