Japan Travel pt.2 – Odaiba

Yay! Procrastination! In this post I’ll talk about my trip to Odaiba, but I stopped in Shinjuku (Kabuki-Cho) and Shibuya briefly as well.

Initially I didn’t think we’d have enough time to go to Odaiba. It’s at the far south end of Tokyo, and we were staying in the north (Ikebukuro). However with a few train switches, it took maybe an hour or more to get there.

On the way, we stopped in Shinjuku, which is very close to Ikebukuro. My father wanted to get some travel pamphlets at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. The building is quite spectacular and the front garden pretty.

It was incredibly clean and no huge crowds of pigeons, unlike Washington D.C. But otherwise, there wasn’t anything to do. After getting those pamphlets, we walked around a bit. I didn’t even research anything about Shinjuku, so I had no idea what to do there. The only area that I had heard of was Kabuki-cho, the red-light district, and that sounded a little not “family-friendly”. We walked around aimlessly, and saw a bunch of people and flashy buildings. There were a bunch of movie theatres, pachinko parlors, arcades, and restaurants. My dad wanted to try this donut Mos Burger, even if the rest of us were stuffed. I took a small bite, I have no idea what flavor my dad got, but it certainly was a lot different from American burgers. It was more soft, very juicy, and had mayonnaise. It was a little strange for me, while better in quality than a McDonald’s burger, it was just very different.

I’m not exactly sure what I ended up eating here.

We had no idea where we were, but I turn around too see this lion statue, and then I realized it. We ended up in Kabuki-cho afterall.

I recognized the lion and courtyard from anime and games. There were people lounging around on the courtyard, I initially thought they were homeless, but now I’m not really sure. They were plenty times more clean than San Francisco hobos. But otherwise, Kabuki-cho looked pretty “clean” in the day time, I wouldn’t have thought it was the red-light district. Then those extravagant, fancy signs I saw were mostly likely love hotels. But we didn’t stay for long, it was time to go to Shibuya.

Kabuki-Cho

I love Hachiko!

It took us two to three tries to correctly get to Shibuya. My family and I rode the same train back and forth from Shinjuku to Ikebukuro, and back. We didn’t realize that we had to switch trains. Shibuya always sounds like a great place to go. Tons of young people, fashion, trendy-ness and such. Except my timing was wrong. It was a weekday (no street fashion or young people), and it was pouring (barely anyone at all). I recognized some Shibuya landmarks and areas, (sadly a lot from the Nintendo DS game, The World Ends With You) such as Hachiko’s statue, 109, Dougenzaka, Tower Records (which is still in business here)

Dougenzaka

We ate some ramen in Dougenzaka. It’s famous for its sloping hill and has many trendy shops and restaurants. We just ate regular old ramen, but it was still good.

Maybe all the people were here? Almost everyone’s in work clothes though.

Next time I’ll have to plan to come on a weekend because there was so much I wanted to do, but couldn’t. We didn’t have enough time to do much, since we wanted to save some time for the trip to Odaiba.

The trip to Obaiba was probably an hour or so from Shibuya. I can’t really remember, I sorta nodded off. The good thing about a long metro ride is that it’s easy to grab a seat (sorry old grannies, gramps and little children) and just watch the scenery pass by. Most people on the train are watching TV on their cell phones or playing handheld games. (Ugh. There’s this one guy with a rose pink PSP. I was so jealous.) Some people go to sleep, I always wonder how they know when to get off at the right spot…

I spy… a Gundam!

We transferred to the Yurikamome line, which is a new unmanned rail that drives above buildings, in between skyscrapers, and on top of the Rainbow Bridge. It’s quite a pretty sight and a nice change of view.

I took this on the return trip, but you can see Tokyo Tower in this picture.

Odaiba is located on an artificial island and it’s a relatively newly developed area. It’s mostly filled with amusement parks and entertainment centers. The Yurikamome line stops at different parts of Odaiba and it’s quite easy to get to different amusement parks. We got off at the Daiba (not Odaiba) stop and I was worried we would have trouble finding the life-sized Gundam statue, but we could stop it from the station, and all you had to do was walk straight towards it.

Odaiba’s a nice area and it has sort of a commercial park feel to it. The parks are nicely kept, there are fountains, statues, picnic areas, etc. At the time of my trip, the Gundam was finished, but the actual event was to start in a week or so. However you could get pretty close to it and take pictures. I was hesitant to go up to it at first since it was raining and the grass was extremely muddy. But it’s a Gundam! A huge one! I expected to see Japanese teenagers taking pictures with their phones, but I was also surprised to see men in their work clothes doing the same! It was still raining a bit and was cloudy, but I still got up as close as I could and took pictures. I’m sure most of you have seen pictures from other sites, but for those who haven’t, here they are!

I didn’t get the other side since I didn’t want to get separated from my family, but at the front there were some TV crew filming the Gundam. I’m not too sure what they were for, but I assumed it was for news or something. The detail on the Gundam is amazing. Too bad I couldn’t get any closer.

Afterwards my family and I went to Palette Town (no, not the town in Pokemon). It is a mall/entertainment complex. My brother wanted to go to the Toyota Megaweb, which is a showroom/museum for Toyota cars.

This is the second Toyota showroom I went to on my trip (the other being Ikebukuro’s Toyota Showroom). This one is a lot larger and more interesting by far. Mostly because there’s a showroom area, a Toyota history museum, a “Universal Design” show room, and some other areas I didn’t go to. You can ride their automatically driven cars to each area (at a small fee).

There is an odd assortment of “Universal Design” inventions on this wall

The Universal Design show room showcased inventions and devices and such, and the Toyota history museum showed all sorts of retro cars (not just Toyota’s). I’m far from being a car expert (heck, I don’t even have my license yet and I’m 18). But since my brother’s a car nut, I get dragged to these places. But it’s not as super cool as the Toyota museum in Nagoya, which is more of a museum than a showroom. It has demonstrations and such, showing the making of cars using robotics, etc. The other half of it is about making textiles and was also really cool. (Toyota was like a branch of a textile company called Toyoda I believe.) Yeah. Well. Like I said, I don’t know anything about cars, but I do like museums.

A huuuuge Hello Kitty Ferris Wheel

Going to different parts of Odaiba is pretty easy because of the Yurikamome line. It stops at many places in Odaiba, so you don’t have to walk that much. I didn’t have time to go to the amusement parks and other technology museums. There’s even the famous Zepp Tokyo Hall here and many people were in line for a concert.

I someday want to see a concert in Japan.

Truthfully I’ve never heard of Odaiba before that Gundam was made. However it seems like a very fun place and has a lot of potential, as new attractions are being made and developed.

I’m thinking of doing one last post on Asakusa and Akihabara. Anyways, thanks for reading!

-shirokiryuu

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Ponyo American Dub Review

I haven’t been watching anime lately, actually almost none. I’ve been so lazy to do anything at all, except I did watch the Perseids meteor shower a few nights ago. But I decided to wake up my lazy self to watch the morning show of Ponyo, which premiered at midnight in America. This review is spoiler free (I hope so) and I don’t actually talk much about the actual events of the movie.

Story

I did a good job of not spoiling myself before going into the theatre, so I had no idea what to expect. The story was very simple and didn’t feel as epic or deep as Spirited Away. However it was very charming and a very heartwarming. The storytelling is very straightforward and didn’t go off in odd tangents like Howl’s Moving Castle. It has a very lighthearted tone and was very humorous. I found myself laughing out loud with the audience quite a bit. There is a lot of imagination in this movie and is very much seen through a child’s eyes. One more thing I appreciate about Miyazaki films is the adult characters are portrayed as more caring and the children don’t act like brats. Sosuke seemed a little too mature for a 5 year-old, but he was such a caring and sweet kid I don’t care. Even the “villain” Ponyo’s dad Fujimoto wasn’t evil at all, instead he was just a concerned father trying to prevent the world from being unbalanced.

Not once did I feel uncomfortable or cringe at something, nor did I feel deeply changed by the movie. There was no big emotional drama and no tear-jerking tragedies. However it’s best to watch this movie and not expect something super deep and full of philosophical meaning. It really much a children’s movie and feels more like Kiki’s Delivery Service. But they’re both charming movies. It’s best to approach it with a lot of wonder and imagination. In that sense, it was a good thing. It made the movie very relaxing for me.

Animation/Art

Ponyo has a watercolor type of feel of it. The backgrounds are very bright and friendly, but a little simpler than Miyazaki’s other works. The attention to detail and huge amount of animation is amazing. Especially for seascapes, there are huge amounts of fishes and crabs, and they’re all animated. The animation may be simple, but the backgrounds are still detailed as ever. It’s not as epic looking or full of fantasy landscapes, but it’s beautiful in a different way. I especially loved the scenes where Sosuke and Ponyo ride in their little boat above the flooded town with all the prehistoric fishes swimming under. However the animation felt much simpler than Miyazaki’s later movies and reminded my of his older works.

Dubbing

The dubbing in my opinion was quite excellent. I was skeptical because of all the huge stars and I thought it just a way to attract non-anime fans. However the voices and the localization of the script felt very natural. While I haven’t seen the original Japanese, everything felt like it fit in. Sosuke, voiced by Frankie Jonas, sounds like an actual kid and he sounds very true in his role. I found his voice very adorable, and instead of sounding like a bratty kid or an adult trying to sound like a kid, he sounded like the smart, sensible 5-year-old he’s supposed to be. Ponyo is voiced by Noah Cyrus and she fit her role quite well. Her voice sounded a little grating at first, but it fit Ponyo’s personality very well. The adult characters are well matched too. The pronunciations were very good as well (almost perfect) and they even left in some “-san”s and “sensei”s in there. I have to admit when it comes to the debate of dubs, I prefer “liberal, but smooth” over “literal, but sometimes awkward”. The script seemed to be well localized, it’s easy to understand for younger kids and all the jokes worked well. Some people say the translation is muddled, but I didn’t notice it, so I wasn’t bothered by it.

Audience

I was surprised how many young kids were in the audience, although there were a lot of teenagers as well. (I went to a morning show) I was afraid the kids wouldn’t be able to appreciate a Studio Ghibli film, especially with Ponyo’s weird transformation and the lack of super duper action scenes. But surprisingly they enjoyed it a lot. I overheard many of them saving to their mommies that they really liked it. The audience was filled with much laughter from both kids and parents. There aren’t many scary moments, although one kid started to bawl when they had to go through a dark tunnel.

Theme Song

Both the English and Japanese versions are disease to the brain. It never goes away…

The opening song is quite beautiful and the original is left in the dub version.

Overall

I enjoyed it very much, but since it’s such a lightweight movie, it’s not as memorable as Miyazaki’s other movies. However it’s still a very charming and beautiful movie. It’s hard to go wrong with Miyazaki.

-shirokiryuu

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Japan Travel – Ikebukuro

While Akihabara may be the top destination for an otaku, it’s not the best place to stay. Stores close quite early, there aren’t many restaurants, and not much of a night life (although Pachinko may still be open). Most travel sites recommend staying in nearby Ueno or Asakusa. I stayed in Ikebukuro, which the opposite side of metropolitan Tokyo, but since the metro/subway is so quick and cheap, it’s not a big deal.

My first trip to Japan a few years ago, I stayed in Nihombashi, but was a more residential area. Meaning, already at 7pm, the streets were dark and empty. While the convience stores were always open, there was nothing to do but go back into the hotel. Ikebukuro, on the other hand is completely the opposite. At midnight the streets are still packed and many of the buildings had bright flashing neon signs. There were many arcades, pachinko places, store salesmen yelling out deals on megaphones, people trying to get you into their restaurants, etc.

Also local bands and singers perform right on the sidewalk, promoting their new CDs, concerts, etc. Sometimes crowds will gather and take cellphone pictures (or the gaijins like me will try to record it) and the performers would pass out flyers and ads.

These guys were pretty good. They were called Capital Gain and sung a pop ballad. Also saw another group called Large Lucy. Yeah. Dunno about the names.

My hotel Sunshine City Prince Hotel was connected to the Sunshine 60 mall. Although the mall didn’t open around 10am or so, and closed too early for me to visit, I did manage to go to one restaurant. This restaurant is Namjaland, a sort of food amusement park made by Capcom. I had only expected to find dumplings, but they actually had four sections of “themes”, desserts, ice cream, dumplings (gyoza), and umm.. I forgot the other one. I was only able to go to the dumpling section and the desserts one, since it was closed the next day I tried to visit.

In order to get into Namjaland, it costs about $3 to get a ticket to enter. The dumplings section was decorated in a sort of traditional Japanese festival and each restaurant was like a little stand. It was very, very detailed, there were stores to buy masks and trinkets, and lots of decoration.  You could buy a few dumplings at each stand, and sample different styles and fillings of gyoza.

The gyoza were very delicious, and they ever had some weird things like rice bowl flavor. Some of the restaurants had machines where you put money and got tickets for food. Others I had to resort to pointing at the menu. There were some rides, but probably for children. I even saw people walking around with odd devices that I’m not too sure what they did. I think you could point them at special displays and they like.. tell you things about them on the little LED screen.

Whaaattt???? Eels?

Also this surprised me. You know how in Japanese festivals you can fish  for goldfish? Here they had goldfish and freshwater eels, and some other aquatic life. I would’ve totally done it, but it’s not like I could take them on the plane.

So cute!

I also briefly visited the dessert section, which was decorated in a European style. Either way, I was exhausted and stuffed, but I still had some room for deserts. I wasn’t able to go around this area much, but I did get to eat some strange pudding.

Ramen shaped pudding.

Yeah. I don’t know how it’s done. But it’s all pudding. Ramen pudding. (Except the green onions were candy bits). The caramel sauce was a little more bitter than I’m used too, but it was worth the 6 bucks to get it.

I didn’t get to look at the other sections, but I managed to pass by them, in attempt to find the exit. We passed through jungles, “romantic” castles, mirrors, glass balls and fortune telling stuff, I wish I could’ve seen more.

I didn’t want to post a picture of myself all battered from the heat and traveling… but this restaurant looked so cool. TOO BAD I’M BLOCKING THE RAMEN!!

Other things I did was eat. I ate ramen of course, at a random place too. I forgot to get the name of this place, but the ramen was absolutely delicious. What I noticed what was different from the ramen place I ate at the U.S. where I get chopped fried garlic, at this restaurant they provide pickled garlic cloves and handheld garlic crushers for your ramen. The place was very clean and the service was very friendly. You could also see the cooks work in front of you! I’m too sure what I got,  I think it was pork flavor and stewed pork.

Before

I also ate okonomiyaki, but at an actual okonomiyaki/manja grill. The middle of table was a huge flat grill, and it was so hot, I was scared to put my arms on the table! You first ordered what type you want, i.e. seafood, bacon, kimchi, green onion, etc. however, they give you the ingredients in a little bowl (the batter was on the bottom) and you have mix and cook it yourself!

After

Luckily my mom is pretty good at cooking okonomiyaki, so it turned out nicely round and even. We didn’t know what manja was, we assumed it was the same as okonomiyaki, but it was a little different. It had no flour batter, so it was impossible for us to flip it nicely, so it turned into some strange stir fry. Also you have to get the food quickly, otherwise it’ll burn. (Later we found the on and off switch)

Also my family and I stopped by a cat lounge called “Nekomise 2nd branch”. It’s basically a nice air conditioned room with couches, massage chairs, a small library of manga and book, wireless LAN, and a bunch of cats you can play with. A lot of the cats were sleeping at the time, but they were really cute. Before you enter, you had to santitize your hands and you pay after, depending on how long you stayed. It costs 200 yen for 10 minutes, but it’s cheaper if you stay longer. Also, lots of people were taking naps here, since it was so humid outside. The room and cats were super clean. I’m slightly allergic to cats, but I didn’t sneeze at all!

I wish I had more time to explore Ikebukuro, during the afternoon. There were a few pretty good anime stores a walking distance from my hotel, animate, K-Books, and Mandarake. I noticed that there were more catered to fujoushi (girl otaku), than their Akihabara counterparts.

Okay, one last cat picture. I think this is a Scottish fold?

Next time I’ll talk about Odaiba, and a little about Shibuya and Asakusa!

-shirokiryuu

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Stuff I Buy in Japan

Hey, shirokiryuu here! Life’s been a little hectic for me, I’m about to become a university student (UC Davis anyone?) which scares the crap out of me. However I still got a chance to spend a few days in Tokyo. It was very exhausting, but a great experience. I’ll be writing some posts about some the things I did and saw.

Most otaku, when they reach the  “paradise” of anime, Akihabara, they buy things like hard to get doujinshi, figures, anime, artbooks, etc. Me, however, I like buying junk. Seriously. Look at the stuff I got.

Let’s see.

1. A Nyanko-sensei pillow (Natsume Yuujinchou), the pillow wasn’t included, and the reverse side has the black “Nyanko-sensei” from the second season.
2. Black Rock Shooter cup (I wanted the white one, but I grabbed the wrong box),
3. a minature Shinsengumi coat and sword replica (Hijikata Toushizo’s), I got it…because it was cute.
4. RX-78-2 gashapon to commerate seeing the life-sized one in Odaiba. I got it on my first try!
5. a fake bowl of Udon from Kappabashi street. This thing’s awesome! I wonder how they’re made…
6. an Aspergillus oryzae gashapon. I got it on my first try!
7. an “Infinite soybean” Mameshiba version (you can push the soybeans in and out forever). Based on this series of shorts. These beans were so popular and they were many displays and products of them.
8. A random shirt. I have no idea what it says. That dog is really cute though.
9. A charm for driving safely. I’ve procrastinated getting my driver’s permit, because I just know I’m going to hurt someone if I ever drive a car.
10. Project Diva, the Hatsune Miku game that came out in early June. Although this I wouldn’t consider this junk. Problem was that the first day I looked for it, it was sold out everywhere I looked (and at a nice price of $30). Finally on the last day, my family had to stay in Japan for 10 hours in transit from Indonesia to the U.S. Yeah. Still sold out, except one place that sold it for $51. In hindsight I should’ve preordered it and could gotten that cool Nendoroid Petite Miku. BUT WHAT’S THE PAST IS THE PAST. RAAAARRGGHHH
11. (not pictured) Lots and lots of flyers and tissue packs.

EDIT: That shirt was a Monster Hunter shirt with a cat on it. *facepalm* I only realized this today when I saw the “Capcom” on the sleeve

What type of stuff do you get/would get in Japan?

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