I realized I never took pictures of the onigiri place called Onimaru in Osu…. here’s two I ate for breakfast
I like the one on the left the most, it has some chicken shit on top with some egg salad and a shiso leaf in between. My brother hates shiso leaf, but I think it adds a nice accent to the food.
Made it to Nagoya station while struggling with some bags in time… Since I wasn’t rejected at the shinkansen gate this time, I was finally able to get my ekiben for the trip!
For getting a shinkansen seat view of Mt. Fuji, it seems you need to pick the side that has two seats. I took a few pictures of it because it’s supposed to be hype, but I already saw Mt. Fuji very clearly last year, so how many pictures of Mt. Fuji do you really need…? I could be spoiled though…
soooooooooooo lucky
I was freaking out about whether or not we’d have luggage space on the bus from Hakone-Yumoto to the hotel since as we were getting off at Odawara from the Shinkansen, in my mind, every one of these fuckers getting off the train are going to their ryokan too in Hakone… but my fears were unfounded as the bus we took was practically empty! I do think I start to worry a little too much when my plans start to get de-railed, so we should try to relax and just let things happen… even if they don’t always go right it’s not the end of the world.
Made it to the hotel after walking uphill on a relatively steep hill. Maybe there’s an easier way to get up there I missed… lol
The room is really nice! I mainly wanted this place for the private onsen here. It’s just a little square with hot water, technically, but when the water is being refilled you can really smell the sulfur of the water! It’s nice to be able to use an onsen without anyone else around, though we did use the main bath without anyone around either. I know when I checked earlier there was only one room left at the hotel, but maybe it’s more empty than I thought…?
It’s nice to be able to finally sleep in my own bed again. We were sharing the same bed since last week in two different hotels, and our last hotel had a smaller bed than the first one… so it was a little ギリギリ, but we did ok!
Here is dinner! I was a little worried since there were a few bad reviews of this place, but I think it was quite good. I wouldn’t say it blew me away by any means, but it’s definitely a solid meal and each bite is unique. I don’t know if I could keep eating multiple course meals like this, though. Generally I prefer to just have like a one dish specialty from a restaurant and maybe a fun side dish and have at it, as I think the multiple course little bit of food in a dish is somewhat pretentious. It was a good call to not make any fancy restaurant reservations for this trip in hindsight. Probably the most fun thing was the conger eel and burdock fried in the tofu – I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it! The main dish was a bowl of rice and beef, mixed in with vegetables – the vegetables complemented the base rice without the overuse of sauce that one would normally see at a gyudon place like Yoshinoya or something.
And lastly here’s the really stupid thing I wanted to do. Bathe next to my daki!
beware of feet
There’s another mjg tourney going on, so I was playing in the bath… hopefully my skin doesn’t fall off from bathing in the acidic water for so long! Today we are going to visit Motohakone to look at the Shrine and balk at the line for the famous peace torii, then eat an Owakudani hard-boiled egg! It’s probably just a hard-boiled egg at the end of the day… but let’s be excited for being touristy!
Good morning! Waiting for friend to wake up so I have some time to kill.
Yesterday we went to Okagean! It seems to be a more upscale Komeda’s Coffee, serving actual food instead of just breakfast bread and sandwiches… I opted to get an oden set and a warabimochi latte. I think warabimochi can sub in for boba pretty well… Maybe this could catch on in the west if someone picks up the idea.
Mustard is quite strong as a condiment, so I’d just go with the dark sauce… I want to say it’s something like hoisin sauce but I’m not 100% sure. It was ok, for some reason I thought it’d be miso oden but it’s a good snack to get started for the day.
For our last day in Nagoya, we chose to visit the Toyota Commemorative Museum! Note that this is not the car museum located elsewhere in Nagoya… This foucses more on the production of textiles and automobiles, rather than showcasing specific vehicles, as Toyota initially started out as a textile company, then branched off into automobiles in the 1930s. When you start to see all of the machinery and technology in play when processing cotton back then… It makes sense that the mechanical engineering knowledge can be applied quite well towards making cars. Unfortunately I’m not an engineer so a lot of the details are lost on me on how the machines work… but at least they look cool!
We head back to Nagoya Station soon after to eat miso nikomi udon at Yamamotoya Honten. The soup is quite rich in miso flavor, but the udon noodles are a little bit tougher than I would like… It’s still a really good dish and worth trying. I opted for cochin chicken as my meat. I think you could go without any meat if you’re on a budget, but I’m not… I was also curious with the tofu – It’s ok. Just focus on the udon here.
My brother wanted to pick up some jp Nintendie points for him…. what the heck is wrong with these denominations???
I asked the sofmap employee in a different section of the store if they had any 10000 yen cards and she must have thought I was a retard or something. lol
I didn’t know it until I scheduled this trip… but Cafe Stella by Yuzusoft has the background CGs taken of places in Nagoya. I only played like 2 hours so I know the main CG of Nagoya Station…
This is on the east side of the station, about where you can come out from the Higashiyama line:
Cool! There’s a few other places in the reddit post I linked, but I’m not too familiar with those… but this is good enough for me!
For my last meal in Nagoya, my friend hates eating chicken off the bone, so I had to go to Tebasaku Musume Osu myself…
First, the restaurant makes you specifically order 1 drink per person. The cheapest drinks start at 400 yen, so it’s kind of a racket… but it’s ok, I’m on vacation, but I could see this turning off regular visitors.
In any case… the presentation for this is nice with the plastic tags for each wing indicating the flavor. I like mayonnaise so I would say I like the mentaiko and mayo garlic ones the most. I probably shouldn’t have eaten the yamitsuki and super yamitsuki ones… I’m not particularly big on spicy food relying on chili pepper, so it ruined my palatte for a bit. It’s definitely expensive for what you get, but it’s a fun experience for every bite to be a different flavor!
demolished those wings…. hehe
I finished the night by doing an additional round of the mandarake and lashinbang nearby, and actually ended up picking uip some stuff from each… good call, even though I felt beforehand I wouldn’t find anything.
shoutouts to homeboy for getting two grim aloe omikuji cards… so now I can have one! hooray
Now onto the most expensive part of the trip… two nights at Kai Sengokuhara in Hakone! I’m a little scared of being disappointed, but hopefully it should be fun doing nothing at all in a ryokan…!
Janaury 3rd we open with a trip to Atsuta Jingu for rhatsumode – It’s supposed to be the most important shrine in Nagoya, housing the deity Amaterasu and one of the three sacred treasures, the Kusanagi no Tsurugi. Unfortunately, almost no one has ever seen the sword since it’s such an important item… but it probably exists there… right?
Admittedly it’s a little expensive to visit for hatsumode… You have to pay 1000 yen to pray at the main shrine (most people just pray a little distance away to save 1000 yen), pay 800 yen to visit the treasure warehouse, then 400 yen to visit the Kusanagi sword exhibit. The treasure warehouse mostly houses some documents, and given my inability to read anything in Japanese in there I’m just looking at a bunch of old scriptures. I’m sure they’re really important though. I can better relate iwth the Kusanagi exhibit though, as they have on display a good number of blades that are entrusted to the shrine for ceremonial purposes.
We head over at about 11:00 to Atsuta Houraiken, one of the restaurants that lay claim to having founded the hitsumabushi eel dish. Unfortunately, the queue to enter the restaurant was alread yat 14:50 at that time, so I was a little blindsided by the fact so many people had already come in advance to claim a spot, but no matter, we must eat here… So we head back to Osu to kill some time at the arcade until our time to eat arrices.
Our side dish is some fried eel bones. It only costs 400 yen and I was curious, so it’s hard to go wrong,.. It’s kind of like eating potato chips, but a little harder to bite through. You can probably skip it… We also have a tamagoyaki with eel mixed in. Also a banger, but maybe not necessary when it costs 1200 yen. The hitsumabushi itself is awesome – eel is the best I’ve eaten, and I prefer eating it with wasabi over eating it as an ochazuke over eating it plain. They do have a number of chain stores in the area, but since I’m in Nagoya, it makes the most sense to eat at the honten, even if it takes 3 hours to wait!
nice suu an kou bro
We didn’t have anything else planned, but after eating so much at 16:00 we weren’t sure if we’d be able to eat dinner… but my friend got hungry at 20:00, so it was time to eat miso katsu at Yabaton!
I do think the red miso sauce poured onto the katsu is definitely really good – I don’t think I can quite make a comparison against eating curry with tonkatsu as the flavor is quite different… but it’s good! They also have a few stores in Tokyo so you don’t necessarily need to eat this in Nagoya… but after seeing just about every Yabaton store have a line during dinner time, I figured we couldn’t go wrong eating here.
Also swung by the local Matsuzakaya department store food paradise floor to pick up some Tochiotome strawberries. This variety is tochiotome from Tochigi prefecture – I suppose they are ok letting other people grow their variety of strawberries (these are from Aichi). It seems like they discount their fruits at night, so for me it’s a good deal to pick these up for 2160 yen instead of 3960 yen, so I feel like I won here! They do taste better than the strawberries we have at our American grocery stores (maybe about 30-40% better, if I had to approximate). I wouldn’t eat these regularly… but it’s worth trying for sure!
The next morning we stopped by Komeda’s coffee to have proper ogura toast! Our hotel breakfast buffet has a station for it…. but I need a professional to help prepare the toast for me: Here it is:
The azuki paste is ver wet and easily spreadable compared to our hotel’s azuki paste… so this spread on very easily! The butter and azuki complement each other very well on the fluffy yet crisp toast. Highly recommend! It’s also cheap with this and the coffee set for only 540 yen.
First up today is Inuyama Castle! I don’t personally know too much about it… but it’s an original castle, versus those that have been destroyed and rebuilt, so it carries a lot of significant historical value. One must note however that the castle has extremely steep steps, so it is definitely not ADA compliant. The top tower offers some nice view of the nearby river and town. The area outside of the castle also features many chain ropes for presumably what should be long lines. I think it’s nice to see, but I couldn’t imagine having to wait to get into the castle… that would simply be too much.
Next up in Inuyama is the Meiji Mura museum! A while ago some dudes were noticing that a lot of the old buildings from the Meiji era were being destroyed and was like, damn we should try to preserve these buildings before they’re all gone, so they set aside some space here to relocate all of these buildings for historical preservation. I like that most of the buildings are furnished such that they seem like they could be in use as of today while being accurate to the time of when the building was dated, making it feel very alive. Unfortunately my friend slipped on some steps and sprained his foot so we had to cut the visit here short, but this was definitely an unexpected surprise! Do be prepared to walk a lot though as the area is very open and spacious.
Killed the rest of the night back at home eating mickey D’s and goofing off at the arcade… seems like my friend can walk a little bit but not too much so we will just play mahjong fight girl at the arcade all today today (1/5/26)! cya
Happy New Year! Today we are writing from our hotel’s free space that has free drinks:
Technically it’s already paid for with the room… but all the stuff Dormy Inn offers makes it worth it to me over other hotels…!
So after my Shinkansen mishap on January 1st I arrived 3 hours later into Nagoya… New station and new train lines, so I have no idea where anything or what is (not that I knew my way around Tokyo lol). With time to kill we started looking for a restaurant in Osu, but they’re all obviously closed since it’s New Years…
So we deecided to eat street food! I got to eat an imo filled taiyaki, a cheese menchi katsu, some soup filled dumpling, and some yakionigiri (not pictured cause I ate em lol).
We took a quick look through the used goods stores – the Suruga-ya doesn’t have doujinshi in the R-18 section,but the nearby Lashinbang and Mandarake have a good selection, so theoretically speaking, I could live in Nagoya!
The two arcade chains in Osu I am familiar with are reversed – normally I’d consider Game Panic to have *every* game based on my experience with the Kabukicho store, but here they’re just limited to music games (probably because they only have one floor in the building it’s in), whereas the Taito Station which is normally *eh* has everything instead! It’s quite awkward, but perhaps we should be spending our free time when bored there for the remainder of the trip… There’s also an independent arcade named King Joy close that has a lot of rhythm games as well, but opens late – so amusement options are abundant!
We deciced to head to Nagashima Spa land for January 2nd and opened with breakfast at the hotel buffet. Since we’re in Nagoya, the specialty items here are eel hitsumabushi and kishimen (wide noodles):
Yummy! Though I might have eaten just a slightly bit too much, I enjoy the variety at the Dromy Inn hotels, even if it is rather expensive.
We got a ride on Steel Dragon 2000, 4 on Hakugei, Arashi, and Acrobat. We were enjoying Hakugei in the early morning as we could get a ride in about 10 minutes, though we took a break and waited a long time for Arashi and rode Acrobat and by the time we wanted to ride more Hakugei, Steel Dragon was closed due to winds, making everyone else stack up at Hakugei. All good things must come to an end, so we paid for one express ticket for a last ride and went over to Nagashima Onsen.
This place is supposed to be a well renowned onsen, so I figured we should give it a try. Unfortunately there’s no instructions in English about how to proceed with payment and all the things you have to do.. So we spent a good twenty minutes wondering what the fuck to do. Since I went through a lot of pain, here it is:
You buy your ticket for the onsen, enter, take our shoes off and keep your shoe locker key, obtain your dressing locker key from the front desk, change at your locker into your yukata (keep the locker key with you while you shower/bathe and keep the shoe locker key in here), enter the shower dressing room locker and put your onsen clothes there (keep this locker key with you as well – you should have two keys with you now as you bathe. Sounds simple but we fucked this up in unimaginable ways. Hehe
Umm… it’s nice? The baths are supposed to be alkaline water and have a whole bunch of health benefits, though if they actually do I have no fucking clue. I think the most interesting bath was the carbonated water bath – you can see the bubbles in the water cling to your body and rise up. I’d want to try tasting the water to be honest, but with how many men having been in it already, that’s probably not the best idea…!
After making our way back to Nagoya, headed over to Torikai Sohonke to eat some cochin chickenL
We have an oyakodon, fried chicken, and a tebasaki chicken wing. The Chicken is slightly undercoocked, most likely to let the natural flavor of the chicken come through along with presumably cochin chicken eggs: very runny and slimy – I like it, but I know some might not. Chicken wing has a good seasoning on the exterior and the fried chicken was the best part being piping hot and moist.
rurudo is having a pop-up shop, and luckily…. they are now in Nagoya! I really wanted to see the 1/1 Eve in person, and man it is beautiful:
tfw too poor to own 1/1 scale figs
Looked at it for a good minute………. it’s awesome and I’d love to have it! Not that I have anywhere to put it…
With the remaining time we chcked out the three melonbooks for Nagoya – stores 1 and 2 are clearly defined, but store 3 they popped up for comiket is in actually like some random ass room in a random ass building. It was funny to find becuase we were so confused walking into the building trying to find it
Anyway, I want to relax! Tired from comiket and walking around everywhere (tfw untrained fat ass).Probably take another bath tonight, hopefully when it’s more empty. Don’t have anything planned for tomorrow…
Hello! It has been a few days since the last entry as I have been preparing for each comiket day and been thoroughly beat after each day! As of right now I’m on my shinkansen to Nagoya, though I fucked up trying to bring 4 (four) pieces of luggage onto the shinkansen. It’s not allowed, so I had to bring my pieces to Haneda Airport, repack my stuff and leave two pieces with of luggage with the baggage storage. It’s 700 yen per 24 hours for each piece; not necessarily expensive but does provide convenience. Good piece of information to note for the future for traveling…! I was a little stressed getting separated from my travel partner but I think I made the best that I could of the situation.
Anyway, back to December 29! Not too eventful overall; since the two of us are still jet-lagged we agreed to wake up at 3 AM to get in line for Sushi Dai in order to retain our jet-lag buff for Comiket. It seems people either love it or hate it – It’s omakase sushi at a decent price (~7000 without extras?), but you have to show up when they start taking reservations in person early in the morning. Most agree at about ~04:00 to get a seat; we got there at ~04:20 to be able to get a table for 09:00. Since we’re up at this time anyway as of right now and we can walk to the restaurant, it’s not difficult for us… but I can see it being difficult to make the trek out here if you’re not already on Daiba/Ariake since the trains don’t start running until 05:00.
I ordered a tons of extra bells and whistles to make it expensive, but I don’t mind… The special orders were tuna cheek steak, cod milt (the brain looking ass thing), and the clam in the shell. I like the staff’s enthusiasm for foreigners (because i am a filthy 外人) and had a good time the last time I came last year, so I really looked forward to coming again and had a good time!
Grim Aloe recently got a christmas outfit on Mahjong Fight Girl this month, so we needed to visit an arcade to roll… We visited Round1 at Diver City and walked past Sega Joypolis (which has paid admission… which we didn’t want to pay to find out if they had cabs or not), so the only reasonable course of action was to…. go back to Akiba! lol
(pictures of the grim aloe cards go here after i take them out of the bag when i get to the nagoya hotel)
Friend’s preferred arcade is Tokyo Leisureland, which is on it’s own building (the Leisureland on top of the previously mentioned Don Quicote is known as Leisureland 2). I was able to get both skins within 35 rolls, though my friend wasn’t quite as lucky and had to get around 120 pulls (though he wanted the other rate up cut-ins for Grim Aloe, so kinda bad but he got everything now). I suspect we’ll be playing more MFG when we have nothing to do in Nagoya, so let’s get to know Aloe-chan better…!
I picked up the Akihabara Bento lunch box I wanted. It seems kind of generic with just the logo of the visual novel slapped on top… But it’ll be fine. Friend did a first round of Melonbooks 1, and we went back home to our hotel. After not being able to find anything particularly interesting to eat around our hotel, we settled on eating at the nearby Saizeriya. Most people seem to enjoy ragging on Saizeriya, but after trying it, I don’t think it’s bad Italian food for the price. Is it amazing? No, not necessarily… but for the price you’re paying each item, I think it’s a good value. Obviously if you want something a little more gourmet then sure, stay away, but if you need something convenient, why not?
Day 1 for our interests is mainly the Blue Archive section, and for me West hall for two corporate booths. We lined up at 03:30 AM like I had planned for east hall, though we found out that that is actually not the play for getting to the front of line to enter Comiket first with the AM wristband. It’s a weird system where they take everyone who comes early and puts them in a separate standby area, while they start to allow anyone who walks up at around 05:45 to start waltzing in to the waiting area… It’s puzzling and makes no logical sense, but we’ll try to take advantage of this fact tomorrow…
We pared our lists down between us such that we split about 3-4 wall booths each, allowing us to move to our own individual aisle booths quickly after picking up our items in common. If you’re not familiar with comiket booths, popular booths get placed along the “wall” of the convention center – the idea being that since longer lines will form for these booths, being placed against the ‘wall’ allows for space for lines to form either within or outside of the building to facilitate order and reduce congestion. So, if your circle is along the wall (for this comiket, section A or ア), the circle you want to visit is probably at least moderately popular – so you need to plan carefully in how many you want to pick! Both of us got what we wanted on our initial list in about an hour, allowing me to move to West hall for the two corporate booths I wanted to visit.
The line for my first booth was cut off shortly after I entered it, but I didn’t know it at the time and was so confused as to why no one else was lining up behind me shortly after I got in. I was thinking to myself, man maybe lining up for this first was a waste of time if no one else wants this shit, but it was only later that I saw other people get rejected trying to enter the line. I eventually made it to the booth counter after about 2 hours, so I was lucky to have made it in time! I initially just wanted to pick up a full graphic parka, but I ended up adding a few more things after I realized how much other people would have wanted to join the line…!
We split our loot back at home and planned our approach. Since the adult section was split into two different halls (456 and 78), we agreed that I would take halls 78 and he would take halls 456. I ended up with wall booths only in 78, and for him a mix of wall booths and fighting his way through ロリ島 for some isolated aisle booths. Our plan for entry this morning would be to watch for when entry to the east hall waiting area starts and dash in – we started to see people entering the line at 5:45 AM, but we didn’t have the courage to jump out of our spot in the ‘early’ standby queue until a few minutes later. This put us immensely ahead of where we were on the prior day, so I was hopeful to get started. Unfortunately I made it to my first booth and saw how long the line for only that one booth was despite making it there at about 11:06 and my emotions were starting to sink as this would jeopardize the rest of the booths I planned to hit. I finished that one at about 11:35, finished another at 11:45, then got stuck in the next one until 12:30…. luckily my friend finished his side of halls 456 quickly, so he was able to jump in and finish the rest of the things I hadn’t been able to get to yet. I did miss a few items from the first and third booths, but all in all I think it worked out since he was able to get everything else. Having a partner for comiket is quite useful…! thanks bwo
With my newly found free-time, I explored 456 for myself. I wanted to visit しらたまこ, but the line for that was quite literally the longest line I have ever seen for a wall booth and immediately noped on getting in line for it, as I would most likely be there for the entire day and only needed some acrylic keyholders from her booth. It proved to be a good choice as there were a number of things I was able to pick up that I initially passed on to not overburden my friend’s first route through the hall. For this event, the touhou section and doujin music CD was across the convention center in south hall, so I made the trek across. Their hall is so nice and empty without having to push and fight your way through crowds… But that just means that r-18 goods are the most powerful, right? hehe
After wrapping up my final items, my friend said he likes to go to melonbooks afterwards to pick up any loose items. Like bro… you just spent 6 hours waiting out in the cold to shop for 3 hours… and you still need more? So Melonbooks normally has 2 stores in Akiba, the ‘1st’ store in the main street, and the ‘2nd’ special event store a little ways off the main street. But for Comiket specifically, they open a pop-up 3rd store, this time at the 4th floor of the UDX building. There’s specifically some melon-chan goods I wanted to pick-up, so we went there and found the area to be quite spacious, even if the line to check out was absurdly long. It’s definitely a contrast to the normal Melonbooks shopping experience, where you gotta maneuver around other people looking for cunny goods with you.
After picking up our items there, we attempted to go into melonbooks 1st store but balked at how long the line was, went through 2nd store really quick then had C&C curry before heading back home to pack up to leave early the next day! (but then the first paragraph happened lol)
nothing too exciting today just changing hotels from Kanda to Ariake in preparation of comiket
Turns out carrying 3 luggages around between stations is a pain in the ass…. and I need to do it three more times!
You *can* check in to a hotel without all guests present… but be sure to have them provide their passports in advance!
Went to Tokyo Sea Life Aquarium to kill some time… They have a good number of tanks but I think in general they’re poorly decorated and have small windows for the amount of guests that were there. I took pictures of some cunny:
Wasn’t sure what to do afterwards, so went to Shibuya to look at the light novel exhibition on display. Displays are nice but as far as goods sales it’s mostly acrylic stands… so a little boring.
On my way walking over to the Iyoshi Cola I walked through the mall and to by surprise the fucking Panda Express is popping off with a line… Took a quick peek and yup they are serving chow mein and orange chicken! Yes it’s good but I wouldn’t eat that here, but I suppose if you’re a true 日本人 then eating that stuff is quite exotic!
Got the Japan Edition and some bottles of syrup to take home. Yes it’s overpriced as fuck at 800 yen for the bag of soda but whatever such is life
Couldn’t find anything I was interested in eating so I took a train to Gotenda to eat Osaka Ohsho:
The gyoza wasn’t as amazing as I remembered, but Osaka Ohsho will have a special place in my heart as being the first meal I ate in Japan when I originally landed in Osaka in 2022.
After that I just chcked in to the hotel and was thinking aout fucking everything up as far as my trip goes, like buying way too much in Akiba and not having room for more stuff later in the trip / things I’m going to buy at Comiket. For future trips I’d definitely just start out with Comiket first since I know what the limited goods I’m going to get will be. Also need to study japanese more since I keep having to play the English card and exercise more so my body doesn’t hurt lol :^)
bit late on this one but at least i don’t have to play mahjong (bad tourney edition) anymore! because i lost hell yeah
Woke up at about midnight; went to the hotel breakfast at 06:30. Didn’t bring my phone for some mindfulness shit, but they had some fun pickled items as well as a tempura and soba kitchen. It was a little expensive at 2000 yen… but whatever I didn’t really want to go grab food from 7-11.
Went to melonbooks at about 9:40… There were a whole bunch of other folks lined up and to me it seems absurd but I guess everyone else wants cunny too! I was eyeing Akagi Rio’s newest tankoubon ‘deluxe’ edition when it was announced for release a while back, so I couldn’t help myself to it. Admittedly it’s really expensive and really big but… fuck it lol
Picked up the last onahole I marked to purchase at love merci, took a look through Suruga-ya Akiba Station and Radio Kaikan and Animate; nothing too much noteworthy but there is a huge tcg scene in the Radio Kaikan building. I suppose Tokyo is a metropolis after all, so makes sense that they’d come here to play. Ended up picking up that game box I mentioned earlier cause fuck it lol
Met up with a friend who’s here for year end concerts. Originally was going to eat Tonkotsu Marugo, but he couldn’t handle the wait so we option selected into eating at Tsujita Ramen. We do have it at home but he said it’s not as good as the ones in Japan (I suppose I would hope the Japanese restaurant one is better).
Not pictured is the little slice of yuzu they give in the ramen bowl for you to squeeze on to your noodles. It’s a little different from what I’m used to at Mitsuyado Seimen where they grate the yuzu peel into your noodles, but this is pretty good as well!
Followed him around radio kaikan and don quixote and bic camera for him to buy some stuff, nothing particularly exciting, though by the end of it we were ready to get dessert! I had this on my list at the Senren Banka collab to eat a yuzu soft (a play on the company’s name, Yuzu Soft):
It’s corn flakes on the bottom, soft serve with yuzu syrup and candied yuzu peel. I quite like it a lot, but it’s really expensive at 850 yen for the little cup. Worth trying once, but probably not more than that.
Headed home to crash for the night and found the hotel cleaning staff tucked my daki in. Very good attention to detail; I wasn’t necessarily expecting them to clean or replace anything in the room, but I suppose I wouldn’t put anything away for them either even if I knew about it.
I got my e-mail back from the e-earphones store saying the earphones came in from their Sendai store, so I went out back to Akiba to pick them up. Since I was already out… I decided I’d line up at Tonkotsu Marugo again, since I’m an expert at waiting in lines! (more like I actually have nothing better to do)
I got the most expensive 特上ヒレカツ plus set menu. If I’m gonna eat something, I’m gonna get the most fancy one… Assuming it’s not that much more expensive, hehe. It’s very nice! I wouldn’t say it’s out of the world, but it’s a very well done tonkatsu. The miso soup was particularly bold.
loot today is less in quantity… but not necessarily any less cheaper :^)
OK, onto day 3! plan is to see the aquarium and shibuya for some soda and the manosaba manga advertisement in the station. cya
well technically i missed a day…….. life will go on
The last two times I’ve flown out to japan have been in the morning domestically and landing at night in Japan… I was a little worried about not adjusting properly, but I popped a melatonin pill and was able to catch about 3 hours and 1.5 hours of sleep on the plane. It wasn’t entirely restful, but I was able to get through most of the day just fine!
Normally I’d say I don’t really hate any food… but opening the package and seeing Fritos made me really disappointed… I guess I ate Fritos lol
Food was OK, I was more impressed last year with the food. Maybe the first meal is ‘breakfasty’ food (I don’t think Fritos is breakfast food though) since we took off at about 01:00… Maybe the food on the flight back would be better.
I purchased a 15 day unlimited on Ubigi but I seem to have redeemed a 14 day 30 GB sim instead… I’ll have to purchase a 3 day 1 GB at the tail end of the trip. Should be done with refreshing C107 menus by then so I think we can make the 1 GB last as long as we stick to hotel wi-fi for data heavy stuff.
Headed to Asakusa first, but nothing’s rellly open at 7:00 AM… I opted to get a gyokuro matcha latte at Starbucks (the menu explicitly says Tall, so I was rebuffed when I tried to order it as grande) and chilled until stuff started to open up. Also killed more time at the Donki until the lunch spot was open… Came across a Hina Nendoroid and was like, well, why not? It’ll be a good addition to the office desk.
Think the must-eat item is the Asakusa Menchi Menchikatsu – I was 2nd in line to pick one up and the line just kept getting longer after opening up at 10:00! It has a nice crunchy exterior yet a meaty, oily beef/pork mix inside. I could easily eat 2 but I need to save room for lunch…
Kyoto Gyukatsu! I first ate here when I went to Toronto visit for an /mjg/ meetup in 2022. Normally when you think of katsu you’d think of pork or chicken… but beef also works well with it! Normally I do like rare meat, but this is a little bit too much, so you can place your sliced meat on the little candle warmer thing with a dish on top to cook your beef more. I’d say it’s a little bit short of the Kobe beef melt in your mouth fattiness, but each bite is still nice as you can choose to dip your beef in soy sauce, gyukatsu sauce, citrus soy sauce, Kyoto curry, or my favorite, the spring egg mix.
I took the Tsukuba Express from Asakusa to Akiba – if you take metro/jr I think it’s a little messy, so this is the best ‘direct’ route to it. Except for the station exit out of the Tsukuba Express being a little bit further from JR Akiba… so got lost for a few minutes lol
Trader headquarters: Picked up a single onahole. The onaholes here are cheaper than pop life M’s, so I would get what I can here with regards to that. I did want to pick up this used to get into the series… but after thinking about it I don’t think I really want to start an eroge hardcopy collection… takes up too much space cause those boxes are big!
e-earphones! They have a few floors dedicated to different audio equipment. I specifically already knew what model of earphones I wanted so I didn’t look around too much, but they do have a section where you can try aftermarket IEM tips. I previously got large tips for some Sedna Xelastec IIs, but over time they started folding upon themselves because they are presumably too big to fit in my ear comfortably. I ended up getting some new tips by Sedna called Mythril (sp?) that have steel rings at the end of the tip to prevent it from collapsing on itself. I think it adds more soundstage by ensuring a fixed distance between the tips and the iem exist, so I went with those in the medium size. Unfortunately they did not have the blessing3 Aqua in stock, so they have to ship it from Sendai for me to pick up tomorrow. What customer service! I would like to come back again in the future to try out new tips again or pick up something fun.
Mandarake Complex: Apparently they didn’t have enough space in the original Mandarake Complex, so now they made a 2nd one! Unfortunately I didn’t find anything interesting
Lashinbang New Store: found the tashkent daki by Yuizaki Kazuya I tried to order off Yahoo Auctions before but the seller rejected my bid cause I was bidding through a proxy. Hooray
Melonbooks 1st store: Walked in and saw some c107 books, but I didn’t see anything that was like omg I need this… the fucking line to check out wrapped around the entire store so I was like nah fuck that. Go back tomorrow when maybe there’s no line
Sofmap: There’s a Majsoul collab in the 7th floor cafe but it says reservations only… They have a large collection of new and used eroge (separate floors). Cool to see, though I suppose it isn’t that different than Mandarake/Suruga-ya/Trader’s used eroge…?
Trader2: same as Trader headquarters but smaller really
Melonbooks 2nd: Nothing to really see cause they’re preparing for c107 on floors 3-5. Floors 2 eroge/h-anime is kinda bland and idk what they’re doing with this tokyo otaku store business
Pop life M’s: picked up 2 onaholes and a mini-hip
yostar official shop: pretty decently sized store in JR Akiba. I bouht some candy and a sticker of kisaki eating a crepe. No idea what I’ll do with it but it’s cute!
Akihabara figure tower: ok this is pretty cool and they have a ton of figgies but I don’t wanna deal with lugging it, buying an extra large luggage to pack it in.
space caiman: It’s an ‘art’ exhibit underneath a restaurant. Currently on display is a wani magazine event; was gonna go to get bonus shikishi with two tankoubons but one was sold out for yahiro pochi (actually signed, so it makes sense) and the reproduction shikishi for homunculus acctually doesn’t seem too high quality so I can pass.
yuzusoft shop: has a *ton* of stuff, but some of the things i wanted on their website was out of stock! can’t be helped.
noa is so short! so cute
ok i need to go eat breakfast after wasting 2 hours on mahjong!!! fuck you f***g for making me qualify i will resume later
here’s the loot i ate breakfast it was nice pickled vegetables and tempura yum shoulda brought my phone but i decided not to to be mindful lol
here’s the loot so far need to get ready for 12/27 bye
Hello I am waiting to board my flight to HND so let’s self reflect!
tfw ur childhood dream came true 3 times now
I built a new pc two weekends ago! the dram prices have been getting out of hand (if not worse now?), so I figured we might as well bite the bullet since it’s not like the next 9800x3d successor will be coming anytime soon….
r-18 legos
The motherboard/9800x3d/cooler came as a combo for about $450… it’s not cheap by previous standards but it’s a good deal now…. the SN8100 is definitely a splurge buy as I wanted to re-use my old Samsung 970s from 2019, but… it’s a two generation difference and I expect the build to last at least another 4 years, so fuck it…
i don’t actually know how to turn the lights off yet
I think in total it came out to $1800 excluding the GPU. It’s not bad but it’s definitely an unexpected expense. But did you know that a majority of Americans can’t afford a $1000 unexpected expense? I definitely don’t need a new PC as all I play right now is Mahjongers and Nightreign was running fine on my old pc, so more of a future-proof thing for when the RTX 6800 equivalent comes out later. Hooray for pissing money away frivolously!
Separately, I was supposed to be working out and exercising…. but I’d rather just roll around in my bed and check X formerly twitter for things to buy. TIme to see how punished I’m going to be when I need to walk my ass off in nippon. I had to take continuing education for my annual license requirements by year end, so I decided to take a lot of “personal development” units since the quizzes for them are generally straightforward. But really it’s all stuff I know, like how to be productive, how to concentrate, how to manage your time… but stuff I’m too lazy to actually do. Am I missing something bigger in my life to care about to get me out of living day to day by the motions? When it’s busy work time it’s like man i’m gonna be so productive in my vacation time but now that it’s here I end up doing fuck all with it. ):
I think for now let’s not worry about it as what’s done is done… let’s relax and enjoy the time! We shall see if I’m diligent enough to make a post every day this time (:
i put my itinerary here that i’m still updating if you’re curious
