Chuc Mung Nam Moi, people! Or Gung Hay Fat Choy, Gung Hsi Fa Tsai (Gong Xi Fa Cai for the communists) or Saehae Bok Mani Paduseyo, depending on your culture. I'd say Akemashite Omedetou, but those Japanese freaks don't celebrate the new year properly ;)

Now, let's see, where did I leave off? Oh yeah.

January 5th: Our first day in Tokyo starts with a slight snafu in finding our hotel, once again proving that Japan desperately needs street addresses rather than the block/district/city/etc. system. But what do I know? I'm just a tourist.

It also starts with me finding out that Toubu and Seibu are both attached to the Ikebukuro station--and that Toubu is west of Seibu, which is freaky because the Tou in Toubu means "east" while the Sei in Seibu means "west". I have no idea why this is, and I don't think I want to know.

After checking in at the hotel, Seiya and I immediately head to Yokohama, where we hit the Ramen Museum. We didn't do anything else in Yokohama, because, well, the Ramen Museum is something you have to plan around, let me tell you. The first floor of the Ramen Museum is a fairly run-of-the-mill museum, which runs old ramen commercials on its TVs and has exhibits on ramen bowls, instant ramen, and other stuff. But the bottom floor's the real draw here--underneath the ramen museum is a theme area, set to resemble a city street in the 1950s, complete with Hidden Fortress movie posters. Walking down the stairs, you get the standard "You're going back in time!" cliches, like the clock running backwards and the old posters. But once you're down there, it's Ramen Time.

As far as I know, the best ramen restaurants in Japan are invited to be in the Ramen Museum, and every place sells mini-ramen for sampling the best ramen in the country. There are bigger bowls, too, but those are for chumps--well, and for the people who waited the 45 minutes to get Sapporo-style ramen, which is understandably rare in the Yokohama area. Even though I'm not the biggest fan of pork in the world, this place was awesome. Anyone who has ever had instant ramen (and since many of MT's readers are either college students or in the tech industry, that's a whole lot of you) owes it to him or herself to hit up this museum and try it out. It's that good. Come hungry, since you probably won't be hungry for about a day and a half afterward, too.

January 6th: This is the day we headed to Akihabara, where we bought things. And bought things. And bought more things. I had to buy a new piece of luggage to hold all the crap, but that was easy enough, since I had come into the country planning to get new luggage anyway.

Among other stops, we went to Toranoana, where they have a shrine to Moetan, the English phrasebook for fanboys that you can see in the top left of 510. It's a frightening monument to what people in Akihabara can do. I'll have a picture of it up once I hit up Seiya for the CD he made of our vacation pics.

Other highlights of the day in Akihabara included playing a whole freakload of games at Asobit City, which is now my favorite game store on the globe, due to its tradition of having a row of TVs dedicated to letting people play games that aren't out yet. I spent some quality time with Donkey Konga and Seven Samurai 20XX, which will be the subject of my next rant, and watched the Japanese discover EA's Lord of the Rings: Return of the King game.

I had to go to Gamers, so I did, and that was the only place in Japan I found Magic cards that I could give to my friends... as well as a very "special" card game that I had to get for a few other friends.

To complete my day of being a complete fanboy, we ate dinner at the Taishou Romandou, Sega's theme cafe based around its Sakura Taisen series (which I call Sega's Star Trek--once you work in that franchise, you'll never lack for work again).

The Taishou Romandou was probably the most expensive meal I had in Japan, since the kaiten zushi lunch we had in Shibuya (yes, we did see Hachikou, and even met a friend there) was only 100 yen a plate. Damn good prices for some pretty good food, that kaiten zushi.

But wait, my day as a fanboy wasn't over! I stayed up until 3 AM to watch Chrno Crusade, which is far too short to do the manga justice. After listening to the Chiba-sung ending song, I promptly fell unconscious, exhausted from the effort of being so nerdy for a day.

January 7th: This is the day we did stuff actual tourists should do. A trip to the Meiji Jinguu in the morning was perhaps the most peaceful time I spent in Tokyo, and that includes the time I spent sleeping in my hotel room. Seriously, the Meiji Jinguu, which borders both the Harajuku and Yoyogi stations, is the kind of place where you can forget that you're in a major metropolitan area, and think that maybe you're in the woods or something.

After that, we went to the top of the Tokyo Tower, which is surprising, given that at some point in my life, I was afraid of heights. I got over it at some point, though I'm not sure exactly when. But I certainly got a flash of it from the lowest observation deck on the tower, where you have the 'privilege' of looking about 150 meters straight down. The view from the top was nice, but it was nothing compared to that of Hinomisaki lighthouse--though that may just be bitterness on my part, because the day was too cloudy to see Mt. Fuji.

We then went back to Akihabara to buy stuff for other people, indulging our fanboy sides a bit more before going back to being tourists again and hitting up Shinjuku at night. Unfortunately, the seedy Shinjuku of legend is mostly gone, replaced with a business district, so we didn't see anything shady during our quick li'l tour of the area around the station. Which means that unfortunately, I didn't manage to get a picture of any underwear vending machines or other stuff that Tokyo is infamous for--but I suppose I shouldn't be too disappointed, given what happened in Hiroshima.

January 8th: About five minutes before we're about to head off to Kyoto on our way back to Osaka airport, we get an IM from Genjitsu of American Cosplay Paradise, the site that will soon be running a MegaTokyo cosplay contest. Turns out that his Tokyo stay had been extended by a week, meaning that he was sleeping in net cafes and playing a lot of OutRun 2's Heart Attack mode.

So we met with him at Hachikou, made fun of him (while seiya made fun of me for getting a nosebleed on the train while looking at the strategy guide for some mech game or other) and wandered Shibuya for a while, when we saw the greatest commercial ever. As you may know, Shibuya has gigantic TVs on the sides of many of its buildings (and dammit, that SMAP song was playing on one of them, making it at least once a day that we heard the song), and we got to see a man in a broccoli costume fight a man in a carrot costume, to "Everybody was Kung Fu Fighting". (added 1/23/04: some of you have informed me that this was stolen from Daddy Day Care--a movie which I carefully avoided. I stand corrected, though it was still weird as hell to see on the side of a building and in Japanese)

Did I mention that Japanese TV is weird and great?

That night, we stayed in Kyoto, wandering the area and finding out that yes, Virginia, Kyoto has only two businesses--hotels and temples. Well, Nintendo might count too.

But we decided not to head up the Kyoto Tower, given that we'd just been to the Tokyo Tower, and just wandered the stores. Then, we crashed and got ready for the flight home.

January 9th: As we were about to head out of the ryokan, the woman in charge said to us that we HAD to go to this one garden nearby, and, being American, she promised us samurai. And while there were no samurai at the garden, it was yet another place of serene beauty we found in the middle of a city.

Then we went to Osamu Tezuka world, which was basically a couple of bookshelves, a gift shop and a theater. It would've been disappointing if we hadn't seen an episode of Tetsuwan Atom/Astro Boy made exclusively for showing in Kyoto, so that turned out alright.

Then we headed to Kansai Airport, and that's my trip to Japan in a nutshell.

Some random things that don't really have a place in the chronological narrative, so I stuck them at the end:

- I counted 23 McDonald's while I was there, and not one Burger King. Don't ask me why I counted McDonald's, because I don't know either.

- You remember how I said the bathroom attacked Seiya on that first night in Osaka? Well, it's because he decided to test the "shower" function on the toilet, without actually sitting on the toilet, as it was intended. He walked out of the bathroom sheepishly that night, saying "There's no real good way to explain this..." with a wet shirt.

- I wanted to, but I never found time to just ride the Yamanote line in a circle for a while and watch people on the train. Oh well, I had plenty of time on the shinkansen.

- Governor Ahnold wanted to declare state bankruptcy while I was in Japan. If it weren't for the job that was waiting for me when I came back, I think I would've stayed.

- Rosenqueen, from Disgaea and La Pucelle, is a semi-real store. It's in Messe San-o, behind the boys' live and next to the Konamilk. I bought a Prinny shirt.

- Buying omikuji (new year's fortunes) until you get "lucky" doesn't really work. At least not for trying to get Daikichi.

- Never, ever go to the boonies for about 4 days after New Year's. It's all closed.

And with that, I leave you. Next time, why Seven Samurai 20XX is not a complete disgrace--though it's not exactly an epic, either.