The 3 stooges

So… today was a pretty tiring day for all of us. We woke up pretty early at lyk 7:40 am-ish after going to sleep at 2:30am that morning. Man… pretty bad… but we had to… it was Disneyland !!
unlucky though.. garmon and david we’re still pretty dead but were getting much better hopefully tomorrow they’ll be pretty good.

Anyways… the usual usual 3 stoogeys mee, gaykee and jeff headed off to Disney land, which was pretty pricey, about… 5,800 yen ( about $80 at our current exchange rate). This involved JR passes to Tokyo from our hotel and then transferring trains to Maihama taking about 50 minutes. The walk to the platform for Maihama was like the biggest workout man… theres lyk 3 flat escalators ( just lyk at the airport) and 3 decending escalators along with a massive long red path that we had to follow to get to the platform for Maihama. I feel sorry for those guys that catch the trains to and from Tokyo catching that line everyday… they must have fully tank calves or something T__T.

Anyway, at Maihama, the Disneyland monorail is right infront of ur frace at the exit. Its pretty rip so we kinda walked to the front gate only took about 5 minutes. man.. the front entrance wasa sight to be feared. At this point, the queues were fully massive, extending about 30-40 meters maybe… each moving about as low as a snail =.=” we fully stood in linefor lyk 20 minutes and took lyk 1 step. This was only at 9:30 am!!! On a working weekday! WTF… imagine it on a weekend.. =.=” pretty hectic >_> .

Well it was here that gaykee made up the greatest idea suggesting to come back at 6pm for shorter lines and cheaper tickets. Good work.: ) On the way back to Tokyo we all fell asleep on the train, and everyone keeps looking at us. I don’t understand this,

From here on out, it was kinda boring until late arvo. We decided to go to Shiyuba and have a look around without garmon and david. Its fully let down though… unless ur a girl, then ur gonna be fully happy. Theres a place called 109, which is completely dedicated to female clothes, and teenage female fashion wear. *sigh* it was about 8 floors in size, that’s a lot of shopping =.= Unlucky. =(

We ended up walking around aimlessly, looking for food and shopped in a few shops, just the usual usual. I think we couldn’t find the fully good places so Shibuya seemed kinda crap at the time. After wandering aroung for about 2-3 hours, we came across a Pepper lunch!! Japanese style xP! Yeah but, we didn’t go there. xD we had chosen to go to some ramen place under the station. It was pretty alright actually, first time having ramen! heyhey ”

After lunch we went back home to the hotel for some RnR (ie/ rest and relaxation, home, bed, sleep, red nosed reindeers). It was here… some unlucky stuff happened to me. I had my mums digi-camera in my pocket of my jacket, which was on my bed. After eating and bumming for a while in the room, I knelt down to lie down on the bed… and heard a crack and a pop sound. What happened was that I had just happened to kneel down exactly on the screen of the camera which was “hidden” within my jacket. Man… fully… sucks =.=” mega unlucky to the max =(. Right about now I kinda raged pretty hard.

Anyways at about 5pm…. BACK TO Disneyland Time!! ^^ this time… the lines were lyk 3 meters long!! Pretty good man xD. Apparently, people were lucky to get 5 rides in for a whole day, but we did it in about 4 hours =) good stuff ^^. we did the pirates of the carribean ride, massive water mountain ride, some crappy jungle cruise, 3d movie animation thingy and some shooting game. Jackee was being too pussy and woosed out of the massive water mountain ride.

Instead jeff and I tanked it xP and got an on-ride photo =) tried to do gangster pose but ended up looking lyk a douchebag . Ah wells. Anyways after that we got hungry, so we bought some crappy lunchbox thing xD costed lyk 1300 yen… about 18 bucks, coems with a mickey mouse looking lunchbox, with barely any fries a small drink and a pretty small and crappy burger =.=”.

From here, we went to “tomorrow land” which actually isn’t that futuristic =[, but jeff fully loved it so it was alrite. The 3d movie and the buzzlightyear shooting game were pretty alrite I guess. But mostly the attractions we’re quite similar to the ones from the American Disneyland, apart from the water ride and the shooting game, which I don’t remember going on.

I guess, in the end was an alright day for us 3… apart from me breaking the screen on my camera… man… fully sad over that… But I think david and garmon spent most of their day going doctorsn ad staying at the hotel unlucky… hope they get better soon. Anyhoos =] I guess that was the jist of our day . Bobby

Nature calls… =]

i realised its pretty hard to find a tree in tokyo, so today we spent the day looking at nature. int he main city area theres liek 1 tree to every 200 humans or something but theres random national parks in between.

ok so back to the blog…today..david and garmon were fully sick in da morning…n bobby was being a douche so it was just me (jackee =) ) and jeff going down to eat breakfast which included sausages the size of jeffs ****, egg, bread, soup, rice and what not, except todays menu had deep fried chicken ( for breakfast?! ) , and salmon which only jeff ate but said it tasted like crap. Although it was a buffet we didn’t end up eating much and jeff sed he had a sore throat so yeah.. came bak to get bobby who ended up playing tekken with jeff for 2 hours saying “one more man one more” like 50 times =.=” oh yeah, now its me bobby and jeff in  one room and david and garmon in the other. so yeah i’m stuck with tekken freaks =( we eventually got outta the room and decided our day intinerary of shinjuku, tokyo central ( Marunouchi ) and Akhibahara.

First off…shinjuku! well umm.yeah..da place looked..really .. skyscraperish but on our map there said there was a national park. so off we headed, got lost a few times but asked for directions and eventually walked into a giant park in the middle of skyscrapers. It was actually quite out of place, but it seemed really popular and tranquil and serene so we exploited the ticketing system once again with child tickets, and got in for 50 yen =]

the park was..really colourful. i’d really like to upload photos but yeah..sorta can’t coz we forgot tobring cables..so it will have to wait! lots of cool people inside with tank cameras ( those huge black ones..) taking photos and stuff..one thing to note was that the people in japan are really nice, nobody looks really seedy or anything. tokyo has alot of people that speak chinese I realised, even the family mart and mcdonald counter people. in the park there was even one that appraoched us and spoke to us in chinese , then english which and was suprisingly fluent. anyway, the weather was awesome and we took some good photos, the garden was quite good and the flowers had differnet colours and contrasted quite beautifully. there were alot of black kois which i haven’t seen before so that was kind of cool too. no red pandas though even though the sign sed there was =( jipped..

we then got outta the park and headed back to the JR station for tokyo central, which seemed REALLY busy inside the station but once we got out, it was empty! we walked around and found a sign for the imperial palace and headed onwards. after an argument about how much the imperial palace would cost to get in, we were rly suprised to find it was free although they pointlessly handed out admission passes that were to collected at the end with the words “FREE ADMISSION”. we got in, and it was primarily a huge garden with a few old buildings but it was enjoyable nevertheless. the shops inside weren’t expensive as we had thoguht it to be but rather quite cheap with 100 yen ice cream and drinks, we sat in the smoking area unknowingly whikle bobby found himself amused by the “art” of cigarate smoke, weird guy =b eventually we got bored and got outta the place after some good photographs and commenced a long ass talk about having death ntoes and what we would do with it, with me being accused of being extremist, bobby a clear pacifist and jeff swinging both ways.

we headed back to JR station and went towards akhibahara. our hotel in ikekuburo which is actually an alright place, but liek 20 minutes from tokyo central. however we are quite clsoe to places like shinjuku , harajuku and shibuya which i guess is what counts but akhibahara is right next to tokyo. a bit about our hotel, it sucks compared to the one we had in OSAKA which was quite good but location wise it is right inthe middle of this awesome shopping street and so yeah.. its good imo. anyway back to our trip. We arrived at akhibahara the “electric city” and were met with lots of neon lights and electronic stores. quite awesome, but it was 3pm and we haven’t had anything since breakfast and were pretty sure david and garmonw anted to visit akhibahara too so we just poked around looking for food. we walked into this high roller building with expensive food and let the coin decide our fate, but it told us to gtfo so we got out. coming down the escalator we noticed a giant anime card convention with ppl playing cards.. yeah shocking. further down the escalator we heard loud chants and singing and were found a stage with two girls which we assumed to be jpop idols due to the large amount of fanboys hilariously chanting and dancing in front of them as they sang. i stood there taking pictures while bobby kept laughing and jeff kept runing away claiming them to be sickos and kept disapearing until we found him.  jeff fully plays tekkenon the street chucking random punches at me and bobby keeps playing air basketball with him, im da only normal one >=]. anyway after like 10 minutes of trying to take photos of dancing fan boys we walkedo ff until we eventually gave up and just settled for a burger joint called beckers. ate there for 750 ( teriyaki burger, fries and coke ) while the other guys paid 800 for some random ass burger wedges and coke. it was all kind of luck of the draw aas we just pointed at random burgers and mine happened to be teriyaki =] it tasted ok but i didn’t liek it that much. wedges > fries. we got out and wentback home.

came back, found garmon and david still in bed, havingbeen in bed all day =/ hope they get better, garmon seemed healthier and said he was feeling better so after a bit more rest ( bobby and i playing tekken with jeff playing pokemon ) for another 2 hours we got garmon and went out for dinner. we found a noodlep lace that was empty ( amazing as even at 4pm a 2 level yoshinoya was packed ). Another thing to note was that food seems more expensive in tokyo, but other products seemed a bit more competetive. All the food in the typical noodle shop seems pretty much the same, its either curry ( which has no meat inside..although it says its meant to have 3 differnet types ), noodles in udon or soba or some sort of meat on top of rice. prices were ranging between 430-650, and we were pretty content ( cept for bobby who ate sooooo slow and ended up getting nuggets and maccaz ) . on the way back we found a clothing shop where i got a pair of wrangler jeans for 2.5k before we headed to our beloved family mart and stocked up on drinks and bread for david’z dinner. rather than saving, we have changed our budget plans to finding ways to spend rather than saving as we only have liek 5 days to go. but we haven’t been to shibuya and harajuku yet ( waiting for david and garmon to heal so we can go together ) so its all gud. need to get souveneirs still..man i wrote so much…coz im bored and jeff and bobby are just playing tekken =.=”.. gnites!

Not Getting Out Means Getting Sicker

For the two previous days that I haven’t blogged, I’ve been on my deathbed with a wheezing cough, a pulsating headache, a sore throat and a runny nose. I’ll write a short recap before I get to sleep because unfortunately I’m still sick.

…You know I’m not actually sure what happened. All I know is James went exploring by himself because we we’re all too tired and he found this amazing place. I was quite sick so I was at bedrest the whole day. The other went there with him that very night and they both came back satisfied that they went to Yodayabashi Umeda. Coincidentally, that’s the place David and I wanted to visit but we couldn’t be bothered, that time when he bought from First Kitchen.

The next day, because he had to check out before 12, we planned to get up early. Unfortunately, James, Jeff and I were too stoned and we woke up a bit late. After we packed up our stuff we checked out, then headed to Osaka JR line. Boarded a JR train to Shin-Osaka before getting off to catch the Shinkansen. However, we had booked seats for the next train that was coming in half an hour and to make things quicker, we just boarded the coming Shinkansen sitting in the non-reserved area. The train ride was three hours and even for a bullet train that they called a superexpress the trip took a long, long time. At first, we didn’t feel the bullet train was that fast but speed picked up and we zoomed across the cities in between Tokyo and Osaka.

Three hours and we dragged ourselves off the Shinkansen, luggage and all. The train riding still wasn’t done. We now had to catch a JR train to Ikebukuro which is like 20 minutes away from Tokyo via JR but only like 15 or something minutes away via the metro (or the subway). We took the JR and it was not good because everyone was going home and the five of us had to stand for the whole way and we were dead tired already. We just wanted to get to our next hotel.

Once the gruelling train ride was over, we hopped off and I began to feel even sicker. He wandered about in the cold climate searching for our hotel. We had googled it to be the Sunroute Hotel at Ikebukuro when we were checking how many stars it was. How wrong we were. After ten full minutes of struggling to move, dragging ourselves and our luggage we arrived at the Sunroute hotel; inside it was warm. He breathed at ease as we desperately pulled out the hotel coupon. Heavy sighs were let out after we realised it was the wrong hotel. Our hotel was at the Ikebukuro Theatre Hotel. Pushing out into the cold again we trudged the streets in search for salvation, a place to rest.

When we finally did find out hotel, we signed in as quick as possible and moved all our stuff into our respective rooms. I, defeated, collapsed on the bed unable to move a muscle, unable to speak full words. I ushered them weakly to go eat as I lay on the bed dying. WIth the energy I had left, I forced myself underneath the sheets and closed my eyes, awaiting their return whilst resting my weary head.

When I awoke, I still felt sick. Jeff came knocking and I asked him if he would take me to the closest Family Mart which was apparently just right next to the hotel. He gladly accepted and even helped me buy the thing. I went there looking for chicken noodle soup but just settled with some mushroom soup which was pretty delicious. When the soup was made everyone else came back. Thankfully the other guys took care of me also and gave me some more Panadol to try and fix me up. I’m truly thankful for that, I love you guys. Then…sleep.

The morning was dull because the window in the twin room I shared with James allowed us to view the wall of the next building. No morning sunlight peeked into the room like in the Osaka Hotel. What’s more is that, they didn’t have a warm toilet seat or a deodoriser either in the Theatre Hotel. We all missed our Osaka hotel. I found that the triple room was extremely cramped and dusty. I wished we hadn’t left Osaka. This hotel however, offered us breakfast. Although James and I weren’t ready to get up, we didn’t want to miss a hotel included breakfast. So we got dressed, half awake, ripped out the coupon for the 29th and took the elevator to the third level. The room was rather small, as was the rest of the hotel, but generally the food look okay. Due to my sickness I had a loss of appetite but it was a buffet, so I took all that I figured I could eat. I only ate through half of it and James only had one piece of bread. Maybe we just weren’t in the mood for food. After all we were pretty dead.

When we got back upstairs we headed for their room, 820. It appeared that David was hit with a sickness too and we was struggling to move. He said his body felt really weak. They all said it was probably because he had that greasy burger meal at Wendy’s downstairs last night. So to work around that, we tried to check out a place where David didn’t really want to go. After a while, we chose Ginza and headed out.

When we got the Ikebukuro station, we asked the lady how we could get to Ginza station but instead of pointing us towards the JR line she told us we had to go by subway which was bad considering we paid a fair amount for the JR pass. Even so, we took the subway to Ginza. When we got there, there was nothing really. Just buildings and cars. It looked like a regular cityscape. After ‘walking around aimlessly’ for a few hours trying to look for somewhere to eat they eventually found a McDonalds. Jacky got a McChicken meal, James got a meal of some sort and Jeff got two McPork burgers. I sat and ate my own headache up. We then wandered up to the Sony Building to check out what they had in store. We saw laptops, headphones, mp3s, TVs and you know, the general electronic range from what Sony has to offer. When stumbling across a portable dvd player, the film Rent was playing. Because there were subtitles on the bottom, James and Jackee tried singing to it. Fully lame moment. But for some reason I want to watch that movie now.

When we finished visiting the Sony Building, we headed back to Ikebukuro and back to our hotel. David, surprisingly was in the lobby looking pretty healthy. He told us he had been vomitting all day but he now felt better. Still in the early afternoon and still feeling sick and tired, I slept on my bed while the rest of them interchanged from the laptop, to the ds, to the psp. Finally, we went out for dinner and due to the majority of building restaurants being over 20 venues and David and I still a little sick, we ate at a small Udon place. My dish was rather good, I had some egg udon thing. David ordered normal Udon with two side dishes of chicken or something. Jackee and Jeff ordered the same thing, it was some kind of a set with cold udon and curry rice with a side dish. James ordered the beef rice with udon. That guy fully loves rice to the max.

David and I retreated back to the hotel while James, Jackee and Jeff headed out to check out Sunshine 60. When they got back they told us of the wonders of that place. There was ice cream and hot chicks and amusement parks of sorts. If I get better I’m definitely going to eat ice cream til I get full.

Starving to Shop

James and I were awakened by knock on the door. The visitors were of course, David, Jackee and Jeff. They arrived at the time we originally planned to wake up the previous day; we forgot to set our alarms. After sluggishly pulling ourselves out of bed, we got dressed and got out and about. The weather was cold as the weather forecast had predicted but the regardless Jeff and James sported the Australian thongs and Jackee and David wore thin jackets. Our plan today was to visit the HEP (Hankyu Entertainment Park) but due to the crazy city streets we ended up walking through a marketplace alley similar to that of the crab street but it was covered up overhead.

The marketplace was contain stores upon stores of Pachinko Parlors and slots, however coupled with massage parlours and what we assumed to be multiple brothels. Most of Japan’s marketplaces are filled with Pachinko Parlours anyways, so the only thing that surprised us was the easily accessible availability of prostitution. We walked completely off the track but found a store that looked strikingly boring. The shop was called Mandarake, an although they sell Hentai and Yaoi items, the store is actually pretty good. Damaged goods are sold at an extremely value-for-money price and David, Jeff and I bought to our hearts content. I got my cheap PSP here for 12060 yen which is $194.75. Although it didn’t include a battery and a manual, and it was scratched a little bit along with its box being partly damaged, the deal was more than worthy as the PSP was a limited edition coupled with limited edition headphones, a buster sword phone chain (that I gave to David for finding this store and this specific package) and the game, Crisis Core. We also bought a couple of figurines here for a decent price.

After getting out with satisfied with our purchase, we headed out of the marketplace and wound up outside of a Shrine. We walked in rather uncouth and ignorantly charging straight in whilst a man slowly walked inside and washed his hands with a metallic spatula thing at a small well. At first, I was unsure what he was doing but we found he was actually praying. After we. well awkwardly tarnished his hands by making him take a photo of us, he actually walked up to a bell and rang it. He then clasped his hands together and began to pray. Feeling strangely unwelcome and a little bit unknowing we left without looking back.

After a short while of walking around randomly and seeing the first KFC in Japan and eating a delicious meal at First Kitchen, we finally found the HEP. Entering the building of 9 floors, we were overcome by like…alot of hot chicks. Like…alot man. Like a lot of hot chicks. But then again, the majority of Japan is just hot chicks man seriously. Like alot of chicks man like alot. And seedy old men who go to maid cafes and lazy fat guys who play at the pachinko parlours but like alot of hot chicks man.

We took a glimpse at all the clothing stores on most of the stores until David and Jackee found a pretty interesting store that sold fob fashion called Semantic. It took us a long time to decide but we want but I’m pretty sure we were all happy with what we got. From what we saw outside, there was a huge ferris wheel overlooking the entire city of Osaka and after buying some shirts we headed to the top level. The ride was 500yen and it was well worth it. The view from the top was breathtaking and although David and I were scared shitless that the Ferris Wheel would screw up and our carriage would break off, we both took it like men and enjoyed the sights.

After the 15 minute ferris wheel ride we headed upstairs to the Sega Joypolis, two levels of just arcade games. Japanese arcades are nothing like you’ve seen before. It’s nothing like Galaxy World. They are always have at least 5 levels with one level dedicated to just prize games (you know, like, plush toys from claw vending machines and toy crane machines), another two to online games (like the pod room Mobile Suit game, and a touch screen card game where you face the cards on the screen and move them around to fight), floors for video games (like general arcade games but much more) and some more pachinko parlours. The Joypolis was so much more as it had some rides forabout 600yen. We were a bit sceptical about the price but we all did pay for the rides we wanted to go on.

The attendant helped us buy a ticket for 5 people which cut the price down to 420yen. David and I wanted to go to a scary Japanese horror house with seals all over it whilst James and Jeff wanted to go to some shooting ride. After arguments, we finally convinced Jackee to come with us and we all bought the ticket. So Jackee, David and I entered the house while we gave the remaining two tickets to James and Jeff. The room was dimly lit with a wooden dinner table and wooden blocks. At the head of the table, up on a wall, a grudge looking woman was hanging there with her arms outstretched. The man who spoke English told us ‘There is no god in this room’ which doesn’t sound so alarming but if spoken in Japanese, it sounds a little scarier. He would’ve otherwise said ‘kono heya ni kami ga nai’ or something along the lines of that. The other two were rather reluctant to put on the headphones but then when they did, they covered their faces as soon as the room lights went out. I felt pretty abandoned and tried to ask them to open their eyes; I didn’t to face it alone. I’m sure David did but Jackee was shit scared. He grabbed onto both our arms as we sat there listening to an older woman walking around carving up body parts. Her voice was devious and scary. From what I translated she wanted to ressurrect her dead daughter with random body parts. She began chanting and the ground began to shake as there were cheap scares involving loud banging and lightning strikes. When hell’s gate was opened, the woman on the wall lit up and pushed a strong wind against us. The room then lit up the blue that makes white look like it’s glowing in the dark. Then the light flashed out. The girl began to speak again saying “Mother, where are you? Where are you…? Mother…” which quite frankly I could barely hear because all of us were screaming. I was continually screaming out ‘What the fuck?!’ just because it was that scary. Finally, the daughter killed the mother. After a dead silence, we hear a knock on the door and preparing ourselves for the worst, we just realised that it was the guy who led us into the room. He promptly lead us out.

After we got out, we looked for James and Jeff who told us it was the shittest ride ever. It was apparently the ‘most douchiest ride ever’. The slow 3D rollercoaster gave them no excitement whatsoever and they sat there extremely bored. The only thing that it achieved was giving Jeffrey a headache. We enjoyed our ride however. Who knew that scary shit like that would be so delightful.

We could see the sky outside darkening even though it was around 4. Nonetheless we went back to Umeda and James and Jeff split ways with us to go eat dinner. Jackee, David and I stopped by the AM PM with the really cute cash register chick and bought some food. We went home and dicked around for a little bit before James and Jeff came back. Jackee then watched Good Luck Chuck on David’s PSP whilst James, David and I rewatched Harold and Kumar 2. Jeffrey played the DS; pokemon.

Everyone then dispersed after the screenings and we all called it a night….at 10 pm.

Split Paths

The view looked warm and promising as we got dressed anticipating a good day. Stepping out of the hotel, we could feel a cool rush of air but a complimenting sunshine at the same time. Suffice to say, the weather was perfect. We first off stopped by the local Family Mart and people bought some bread and some morning supplies. Thereafter, we got some instructions from the hotel and took the subway to go to Osaka Aquarium.

Lots of photos were taken as we walked through floors of aqualife. After checking out crazy big fish and tiny schools of fish we walked backed to Osakako station and headed back to Minami. When we did get there, the party split into two with me and David following our own agenda whilst James, Jackee and Jeff went to do what they wanted to do.

David & Garliath
David and I got a bit lost at first exiting Namba station but eventually we did find our way to Den Den Town after continuously referring to the maps on the streets (god bless Japan). We passed by an arcade and we knew we had to Tekken it out. The game was as tight as spandex. After having some evenly matched rounds we headed straight for the Maid Cafe that we had so reluctantly walked away from the previous day. Walking up the stairs, my head was getting light and my heart pounded faster, although I’m not sure whether that was a good thing. David must’ve felt the same way too. We were greeted by a cute Japanese chick dressed in a maid’s outfit and bunny ears.

She led us into the ‘rabbit forest’ with her electronic oil lamp and sat us down before she proceeded to bring us the menu which was inside of a small photo album; each page had one different dish. We laughed at her extreme cuteness and marvelled at the range of hot chicks within the maid cafe. The food was pretty delicious too as it should be for its price. The main one who spoke to us, Kurumi, we found loved Code Geass and Lucky Star. During our time there she did a short jig from the Lucky Star theme song and got on her knees and said ‘Your Highness’ to David, when he told her he cosplayed Zero which preceeded him putting his two fingers outside his eyes as Lelouch does. Unfortunately, we were unable to take photos with them and we left satisfied fully, but partially depressed that we would never be able to enjoy their company ever again.

Unfortunately, we didn’t go for the massage due to our incompetence in Japanese and their lack of understanding English. Instead we walked all the way up to that Crab street thing and looked for shirts to buy but everything was just too expensive and out of our price range. We also came to the realisation that there were too many female clothing stores and Japan is the best place in the world. After walking all the way to Hommachi, we boarded the subway train and headed for home. Because David was too tired and we got lost part of the way due to the extensive underground passages of Umeda station, he ended up buying a piece of chicken and some burger that cost him 600yen.

James, Jeff and Jackee
After David and Garmon left, we entered some restaurant to have Udon. It came with some weird deep fried vegetables and it was served with rice. The pricing was pretty decent coming up to only 420yen. When we finished, we asked the old lady at the restaurant where the place with the big crab was but unfortunately she led us down the wrong path and we wound up at some place called ‘Big Camera’ which was like a department store selling pretty much anything electronic. It was rather crap because it was only two levels. After being bored with the store we wandered around aimlessly and wound up at the Australian cafe we previously encountered. Entering in search of directions we talked the lady at the counter who happened to come from Melbourne and she told us about what life was like in Japan as a non-Japanese speaking person. Luckily she gave us directions to the big crab. Unluckily, Jackee got us lost. As a result, we had to continually ask other locals. Eventually we stumbled upon the street and then walked down until we reached Hommachi. We didn’t realise we actually hit Hommachi until we got there. On the way, we bought McDonalds (medium fries; no difference just better oil) and came by a really cheap lolly store and James bought a shitload of Meiji Chocolate, Jeff bought a lot of bags of lollies for 100yen, some random bars and a banana kitkat while Jackee stacked up on random lollies. It was rather ironic because upstairs there were treadmills and the bottom was just all candy.

Stumbling across Hommachi station, we boarded the train and got back to the hotel way before our scheduled meet with David and Garmon. We sort of fell asleep right after we got back.

——–

After everyone was back to the hotel we all, except David, went out for some curry before dropping by the local Family Mart to buy some more Calorie Mate. When we did get home, we did random things for a bit before having a rather epic game of Mafia. David is just too good at that game, continually guessing who they two mafias are within the first 10 seconds of the game, but there were exceptions and he did get some wrong. But mostly he was correct and his deductions were just too professional. He was a pretty L character throughout the game. It was crazy times guys, seriously. Anyways we made this fully random video.

The Journey So Far

We woke up too damn early only to arrive at the airport 2hrs prior when we could have gotten there an hour later than that due to it being a domestic flight. The wait wasn’t too bad though; we all met up at around 4:45am. After exchanging awkwards converation with the parents eyeing us, secretly worried and discreetly against the entire idea, we hugged them (also awkwardly [minus David]) and entered the inner parts of the airport.

All of us, having had nothing filling for breakfast, entered the airport food court, only to see that McDonalds was the only ‘restaurant’ open. We all bought some food before heading to gate number 56, awaiting our plane ride. We unknowningly became burdened with the job of having to help passengers escape should anything bad happened during the flight. That was only because James and Jeff accepted the seats near the emergency exits with ‘more leg room’, as the flight attendant had so sweetly informed us of, asking if we would like to trade our seats for those.

The flight was perhaps far too long for a supposedly one and half hour plane ride. My thighs suffered greatly even though we had some ‘more leg room’. I sat uncomfortably next to a man who cursed under his breath and preferred to read his newspaper rather than look outside from his window seat or engage in light conversation with us as the older white man did with David and Jackee in the seats behind us. I think we all just ended up sleeping for about an hour between takeoff and landing.

Gold Coast airport is currently still in construction. We had to get out of the plane on these steps or something. You know, the ones that you see in games like GTA or something. We were all a bunch of lost cases trying to figure out where our baggage claim was and where we could check-in for our next flight. After travelling back and forth from T1 and T2 we were told by a worker in T2 that Jetstar check-ins were all done at the domestic side (T1) even though it’s an international flight. When we lined up ready to check-in, we were told we had to wait half an hour before we were able to do so. So we sat…and waited.

When we were ready, we checked in our luggage and relaxed at the food area, just outside of the customs. We stole a woman’s internet time after she abandoned her internet kiosk and we just spent our time watching youtube videos. After waiting for about an hour or so, we passed through customs and hopped onto our flight to Japan.

There was only one white female flight attendant on that whole crew. The captain and his co-pilot however, we’re also white but everyone else was Japanese. This nine hour flight was perhaps the most gruelling nine hours of our lives. We did nothing but eat overpriced, undersized food, sleep and eat our own food. It was nice of Jeff to purchase the entertainment which Jeff and James had but were kind enough to give to me and Jackee during the last 4-3 hours of the flight.

After suffering some heavy jetlag, we filled out forms of sorts and trudged out to collect our baggage. After doing so, we went to get our JR passes. Then we quickly boarded the Haruka Express and headed towards our hotel. We also realised just how not cold it was in Japan. Seriously, it’s like 13 to 15 degrees on average. I was extremely disappointed with my load of thick clothes that I brought for no reason in by gigantic oversized suitcase. The train ride felt so long. All we wanted to do was get to our hotel and sleep.

When we finally got to Osaka station, we still had to ask for directions to Dai-Ichi hotel. A very kind and helpful trendy local around the age of 30 or so helped us out and asked some other people if they knew where it was. After pointing us in the right direction, we dragged ourselves towards the hotel. Upon arrival, we checked-in quickly and took an elevator to the 26th floor. We didn’t expect to see what we saw. Our hotel rooms were bitchin’. It was everything a hotel room should be and perhaps a little more. If I was to name everything it would take forever but some cool things were a water boiler, tea and coffee satchets, a fridge for personal use, AC and heater, TV and a nice little bathroom with included toiletries. There will be photos in the near future after we figure out how to work James’ camera.

After settling down, we headed out to find something to eat. We came to a place which we had trouble with due to their lack of English understanding but mostly our lack of Japanese understanding. Apparently, they were asking how old we were and because we were under 20, we had to leave. It had something to do with alcohol, something, underage drinking. We ended up finding something that sounded somewhat familiar called ‘Yoshinoya‘ which was cheap and affordable. We, at first, had trouble understanding what the man was saying but later on, we found he was asking us what size we wanted. After having a first decent meal and our first meal in Japan, we headed towards the Japanese equivalent known as ‘AM PM’.  We bought some snacks and whatnot before heading back to the hotel to finally have a peaceful sleep.

Day 2, James and I were awoken at 8am by David, Jeff and James who apparently were up since 6.20am. They urged us to hurry up. After getting dressed and having instant noodles (we’re on a budget due to the fall in the exchange rates, etc) we headed outside. The hotel had free umbrellas that we could pick up as they predicted it would rain today. It did rain today. Dai-Ichi is a pretty good hotel actually; they’re rather considerate. We decided we would go straight to Minami. I think we were mostly fueled to go to Minami through attractions such as Den Den Town and that gigantic moving crab.

We had no idea how to buy tickets but another helpful tourist gave us a hand and taught us how to buy tickets. To stay within budget, we all bought child price tickets. We took the subway, accidentally getting onto a carriage that is considered ‘Women’s Only’. Rather sexist but I can see why they would have that. Come peak hour train times, you don’t want to get onto a fully packed train and have your ass fondled by some old perverted man that uses a packed train as an opportunity to get some action. Anyways, after realising that we all felt weird, although he did see other men on the carriage. However, I think we all knew that we should catch a carriage that isn’t designated for only women.

After arriving at our destination, we headed for the tourist information centre to get the know-how and the lowdown of what’s cookin’ in Minami area. Takoyaki, it seems. We headed at first down to Den Den Town. It was basically just a long street of all these electronic stores. And some awesome toy stores that sold an impressive range of anime figurines, gundam figurines, and other collectibles such as cars, trains and firearms. This entire street stretched down from about Central station to Wynyard station. Unfortunately, we forgot about our budget and began to spend on anime related merchandise and other items of value.

On the way to the main attractions we visited Taito game tower which was just like Galaxy World minus the loiterers plus 5 more levels. There were some amazing inventions for games, especially the Pod that a person can sit into to pilot a mobile suit. The rest of the day just resulted in us trying to look for somewhere to eat and mostly just checking out the various parts of Minami. Eventually we settled for some Udon. The ordering system was rather neat at this restaurant, of which its name I do not recall. There is a vending machine with the menu at the front of the restaurant. On this machine there are multiple buttons with the picture of the food and it’s price on each of them. What we had to do was insert the money and then push the button of whichever meal or dish we wanted to get. Thereafter, it would print us a receipt of which we would give to the restaurant employees and they would serve it to us when it was ready.

We also visited the famous marketplace that runs alongside a river. The one I’m referring to is the one with the gigantic crab. And be surprised, there isn’t just one, but three of the gigantic crabs. We took photos of the first one which wasn’t as impressive as the other two. We also forgot to take a photo of the Glico Running Man. Had we known who the hell he was, that would’ve made it a different story. We then wandered here and there constantly window shopping for items way out of our price range. We also did manage to find a 100 yen store (finally) and just bought a little more supplies. The thing is, actually, not everything there is 100 yen. Do not be fooled, my friends!

After all that walking, impulse buying and failing to save money, we headed home. A little earlier to arrive back at the hotel, we decided to go out on a limb and try to find a cheap place to eat out at in the Kita area. We didn’t want to go back to Yoshinoya but we would have to do that if we couldn’t find anything else. We eventually did find a place that sells curry rice for 350 yen and it was completely worth it’s cost. Then, instead of going to AM PM for supplies we tried out Family Mart. Jackee said he heard it was cheaper than AM PM but Jeff said the prices we’re pretty much the same. Anyways, I’ve decided to shop at Family Mart because I found Melon Bread and Calorie Mate. And my god, that was exciting.

At the end of the day, we found we overspent on unnecessary items and became frustrated for a short amount of time. But organising what we should do over the next few days and finally being able to communicate with people back home allowed us to relax a little. Wonder what tomorrow brings.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!