Merry Christmas!

Lee celebrated the day in the Japanese tradition, by working.  Yes, on a Saturday.  Due to the Emperor's Birthday and other holidays displacing school days, they had the KIT staff work a Monday class schedule on Saturday, after a normal Friday on Friday.  Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  We thought we'd finally get a Christmas together...there's always next year, right?  And next year, Christmas is on Sunday, so they'll have to work even harder to louse it up again.

We promised at the end of the last post to show our Christmas setup, which is currently dominating the whole dining room table, so here it is:

Note: The small plastic fish is a gift (to Lee) from a male student who informed him that it is sea bream and that gifts of this particular fish give good luck.  This particular student has also tried to give Lee chocolate and yogurt.  We're not sure if he likes him or, you know, likes him.  (Lee: I only accepted the fish because he asked me twice with passable English and that level of language skill needs to be encouraged around here.  And, it was a less strange gift than the attempted yogurt, so, progress.)

We do wish we could be celebrating at home with family, but that will happen soon enough!  Now we're celebrating with some good food and some appropriately Christmas-themed movies like:

The Long Kiss Goodnight (Lee: I really liked the part where she fast-roped down the Christmas lights, breaking all the bulbs)

Die Hard

MST3K: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

Love, Actually

We hope your Christmas was full of food, friends, and that all letters to Santa were answered!  Only one more Japanese Christmas for us...and stay tuned for our next blog post, which should hopefully involve vast quantities of monkeys.  You heard me - monkeys.

Merry Christmas KTC Billboard and Christmas Ikebana

KTC has a sign out front wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, and we'd like to share it with you:

You may remember the angel from this lovely piece of propaganda.  They're also reminding people to take the entrance exams and advertising how wonderful KTC graduates are.

The Ikebana Club also does a special Christmas arrangement every year.  I really liked last year's, but am not so much a fan of this one.  Lee is definitely not a fan.  It's a bit too pink, girly, and impractical.  (Lee: and lacking is aesthetic virtue, don't forget that)  Of course, this year it's also not alive, and so is more of a problem for me and my packrat tendencies.  I'm sure Lee will accidentally push it into the trash when the time comes.  (Lee: or before...)  Unless I pack it in with the Christmas decorations first.  The wreath:

We've also got our tree out and fully decorated.  This year our Christmas display it is quite a bit less sad than it's been in the past.  We'll show that picture in the next post.

Enjoy your Christmas Eve!

Bonenkai 2010

Yes, it's that time of the year again.  Get drunk and naked with your coworkers on a school-sponsored trip, and don't even come in feeling awkward about it on Monday!  The Japanese do indeed have some good ideas.

This year we were back at the ryokan we went to for our first Bonenkai, so this post pretty much sums up our weekend.   Re-reading it, except for a different female roommate and not giving the toast (which was not plum wine this time), it was the same, down to the meal courses, karaoke, and snoring.  (Lee: I think there was one new course that was good, sort of a little seafood casserole thing.  But I might have forgotten it from the first time.)

We seem to have neglected to mention the entertainment the first time.  Every year we get three performances, either a traditional Japanese stringed instrument or that Taiwanese troupe from last year, the same couple singing the same Spanish songs, and a third one that actually changes.  The first year, it was Taiko, which is probably my favorite thing about Japan, and it hasn't been seen since.  Last year, it was karaoke.  This year, we had a group of three traditional stringed instruments played for us.

Another change was the karaoke venue.  Last year, we found that the preferred venue had closed, and I headed back to the hotel before a new venue was found.  This year, we went to the place they found last year, and let me tell you, it is the trashiest karaoke place I've ever been to and was totally awesome.  It looks like it's a motel that charges by the hour, except that it's for karaoke (and charges by the hour).  The price is also about on par with the atmosphere, so it works out well.  I certainly had a lot of fun.  Lee tried to sleep but was largely thwarted by ambient noise and various other people sleeping in that room coming and going.

The bus ride to the ryokan makes one rest stop along the way.  I got a couple of nice pictures of the beach at the rest stop; the day was overcast and the waves were appropriately waving:

So, Bonenkai proceeded very much as previous ones have but gets a little less exciting each year.  It wasn't a bad time, and we enjoyed hanging out with coworkers, but we might throw our own (better) party next year and sit it out.  If only there was a way to get back our portion of the faculty dues that fund it...as always, check out Flickr for some more pictures.

RoboCon: Nationals

In late November I went with many other students and faculty to support our Robocon team in Tokyo for the RoboCon Championship tournament.  The school was very happy that the team got in and spent some money publicizing this fact.  If you're unfamiliar with RoboCon, please read the Regionals post, so I can skip over describing the game rules and spend more time discussing this particular event and the food.

Billboard celebrating our design win at the regional competition

RoboCon was in Tokyo on a Sunday afternoon.  In order to be there for the afternoon games, our school rented a bus that left school at 10 pm on Saturday.  The drive is only about six hours long, so this schedule was kind of confusing.  This was not a special sleeper bus, but a typical coach bus with a bathroom.  It was also just barely large enough for all of us, so that everyone had a partner sitting next to them. To recap, this bus left at least six hours earlier than necessary to make a six hour trip and it was crowded.  We're not sure why they didn't just, you know, get a hotel in Tokyo and bus us over the day before, or alternatively, just let everybody sleep at home and then leave early on Sunday morning, but such is life. 

Rental coach bus

Sleeping for any length of time was difficult because the bus drivers (there were two) blasted cold air to wake everyone up before each of the three rest stops we made, cold air came in through the open doors during each rest stop, and sleeping in a chair isn't the easiest.  The Japanese feel that rest stops are crucial even when the bus is equipped with a bathroom and everyone is trying to sleep.  We arrived before 6 AM.  Our final rest stop involved "breakfast", consisting of a cold bento box.

I hate Japanese-style breakfasts, especially cold store-bought ones

Not tasty at any time of day, particularly bad in the morning.  Cold fish and rice and other things best not considered...fortunately I brought some of my own food.

This rest stop was also apparently a gathering point for a group of Impala owners.  There were about ten of them there.  Some had hydraulics.  I tried to get some footage, but didn't really get any good photos or video.  There weren't any other cars of that style or era, just the Chevys.  The things you'll see in Tokyo...I don't get it either, but when 100 million people gather in a reasonably small area, I guess you can have very specific clubs...that meet at 6am Sunday morning.

Bouncing American cars...not bouncing in this picture

We then drove through Tokyo and everyone was very excited about and trying to get shots of the New Tokyo Tower, an antenna that is under construction.  Apparently, you must specify new or old when talking to any Japanese person about Tokyo Tower, even though the new one is the Tokyo Skytree Tower and so should be the Skytree, but whatever.  We stopped near a famous shrine and let everyone off the bus in a back alley.  I stayed with someone who had GPS on his iPhone; I have no idea how everyone else managed to wander about Tokyo for a couple of hours and find their way back to the bus.  We've gotten lost WITH GPS on some other trips.

 

We saw the shrine, and I got a chocolate covered banana to go along with the granola bar and mikan (Clementine orange) I brought from home in lieu of the cold fish, pickled vegetables, and rice I was served.  We met up with some Japanese teachers and of course, they had to go see the New Tokyo Tower construction site up close and personal.  I had wanted to go find some more letterboxes, but also wanted to not get lost in Tokyo with no GPS.  Navigation took precedence, as we were a long way from the starting point and I had no idea how to get back.

Apparently this under-construction antenna is, like, a huge deal in Japan

I therefore got quite a few pictures of the New Tokyo Tower.  We stopped whenever there was a good view to photograph it.  It will be the tallest structure in the world when it's done.  It is not close to being done.  I don't see the point of going ga-ga over it quite yet.  Also, it isn't a building, so the bragging rights are lower at any rate.  There's nothing in this country going up that will be close to the size of the Burj Khalifa, no matter how big a cell tower they erect.

 

We weren't the only ones taking photographs of this half-finished antenna everywhere there was an opportunity.  It is currently a cultural meme, and apparently quite the thing; I think it's the only aspect of my trip I was asked about upon my return.

 

Once everyone was back on the bus, we went to the sumo stadium where the competition would take place and ate lunch at a hotel across the street.  This dish is "hamburg", ground beef prepared similar to meatloaf, in a hamburger-like shape, with cold sauce on it.  Why cold sauce?  I don't know.  Also note - we spent all the time between breakfast and lunch in Tokyo rather than driving to Tokyo.  Why?  I don't know.

After wishing our teammates good luck, we were given Santa hats, red cheering jackets, and crossed the street to wait until our team was called into the sumo stadium.

I had brought my travel pillow to try to sleep on the bus.  I left it on the bus, thinking it would be unnecessary weight inside the stadium.  This was a bit of a mistake.  The seating in the sumo stadium is on the floor.  Carpeted, yes, and small boxes for your family or friends to join you in, but on the thinly carpeted concrete floor.

 

The playing field was the same as at the Regional competition.  Here, Asimo, the Honda bipedal robot, was one of the emcees and opened the competition.  It was a pretty cool opening (sorry, no subtitles):

Also no video, as Blogger won't upload it.  Click here.

After the emcees opened the competition, the teams were paraded out.  The teams promised to do their best, and the representative for all of the teams was one of our guys in his Santa suit:

Our guys were in the first match, and boy, we really hoped they didn't lose in the first match of the single-elimination tournament!  They didn't, thankfully.  They did lose their second match, and given the speeds we were seeing, that wasn't surprising.  They really only won their first match because the other team wasn't on top of their game.

Again no video, as Blogger won't upload it.  Click here.

Most of the teams were quite good and I think all teams finished the course this time.  Many teams lost because they were rushing, just like our A team at Regionals.  If I were a coach, I'd take footage of the last few matches of this competition and show it to my team with the warning that if they fumbled around the way these kids did instead of breathing and calmly, correctly, and as slow as necessary, doing what they had to do, they would have no excuses but their own incompetence.  I'd say it a bit nicer, but use the teams here as a deterrent to going too quickly and failing.

The one thing that I was really annoyed with was the fact that the cameras would zoom in if a student cried.  I know this is for television, but come on!  You've got some minors who feel as though they just blew it for their school on TV, and now you're zooming in on their shame?  That's really not right in my book.  I thought the "Hey, you just lost, how does that make you feel?" interview was a bit painful, but for the last few matches, these kids were really, really heartbroken and I would have hated to be in their shoes.

 
We didn't get any additional prizes, so went home happy to have gotten to go to Nationals.  We were given more bento boxes for dinner on the bus.  Cold fish and rice again!

We arrived back at the school after 1 AM Sunday night.  I was able to get a ride home from a friend who went on the trip as well.  Luckily I'd been able to sleep a bit on the bus, but it still didn't make getting to work Monday morning pleasant in the slightest.  The student who competed got to skip, but the cheering section was expected in class about 8 hours after getting home from the trip along with the teachers.  So, I was glad to go see the competition but the trip as a whole was kind of a drag. 

As always, Flickr for the full set (and one or two more of the Skytree Tower!)

The Rynearsons in Japan 3: The Rest of It

The next morning (Tuesday) it was time for my parents to spread their wings and go visit large portions of Japan unattended by us.  We stuck 'em on the correct bus to the station, and then they had to take a train to another train to get to where they were going.  We understand they made the first train, but had some confusion about the old Osaka Stations, called, cleverly, Osaka Station, and Shin-Osaka Station, or New Osaka Station.  They're about three minutes apart but you can't catch a train at Osaka Station that departs from Shin-Osaka.  They made good use of the fact that their tourist pass allowed essentially unlimited train travel at a fixed cost and rode the first-class car the three minute journey to catch a later train to their destination, Okayama.  Ana and I had visited Okayama earlier, and decided to base my parents out of it for this leg of their trip.  We got them a nice hotel right next to the station, and after they dropped their stuff off there, visited Koraku-en, completing the trifecta of the three most famous Japanese gardens in four days.  I heard that afterward they went to the same restaurant that we'd enjoyed when we visited.

Koraku'en Garden in Okayama, with Okayama Castle in the background

Probably the best vegetarian burgers on the planet from Natural Mystic in Okayama

The day after that they took the bullet train to Hiroshima to visit Miyajima, as we'd done earlier in the year.

Enviable weather for Japan in November, from the ferry to Miyajima

My mother is well known for a dislike of deer, but apparently ones on small islands on the other side of the world from her gardens are OK

View from the top of Mount Misen on Miyajima

The day after that they went to Kyoto and saw things.

The day after that (Friday) they went to Kyoto again, and saw different things.  When they were finished seeing those different things, they came back to our apartment in Kanazawa and Ana fed them lemon meringue pie and chocolate pudding pie, and I believe I may have convinced my mother that high-quality Scotch is a worthwhile commodity.

Saturday Ana fed them crepes for breakfast and they took a break from the breakneck traveling - did some hanging out, reading books, napping, etc, and also walked up into the bamboo forest behind our apartment for an hour or so.  It's pretty nifty and it sounded like they enjoyed it.  I made pulled pork for dinner and Ana produced Kaiser rolls to eat it on, and there was pie left over, so it couldn't be called not a good day.

Sunday it was back to breakneck traveling.  We took them out to Natadera, which was mostly as impressive as we'd remembered - it truly is a world-class garden and pretty much nobody even knows it exists.  We had the good fortune of pretty good weather for being outdoors (on other occasions, my parents made good use of the waterproof jackets we'd recommended they bring, and the umbrellas we loaned them) and got some pretty decent pictures, some of which are not in fact pictures of individual plants like the hundreds that my parents took for later identification.  On the way out, we got black sesame ice cream and my dad ordered some udon to go with it, which ended up being sort of prescient, because our intended lunch destination had gone out of business without us knowing it.  Freshness Burger of Kanazawa, we mourn you.  Thwarted in our burger ambitions, we walked across the street to the fish market and went to another rotating sushi bar, where we mostly ignored the rotating sushi and ordered off the menu what we actually wanted.

 Natadera - generally worth the trip

 A few weeks later it might have been in full autumn color, but even a touch of it was nice

 Black sesame ice cream

 This is a picture of all the currently open Freshness Burgers in Kanzawa

We sensibly (didn't) stock up on dried squid - has so many uses of which we're thankfully unaware

After lunch we split up - the women to go shopping (my mother was pining for a Japanese vase) and the men to go get naps.  They got the vase, we got the naps, and then it was time for an adventure which brought true fear to their hearts - having dinner with my boss and his wife at their house.  They'd been kind enough to offer to host and offer some authentic Japanese cuisine to taste and Japanese people to talk to, though mostly in English, in which my parents can say more than "biru".  The food was excellent as usual, mostly
roll-your-own-sushi and tempura, with a soup and a few more small dishes I'm probably forgetting about.  To my knowledge, a good time was had by all and no major faux pas were committed.  Liberal applications of sake and biru lubricated the conversation and no mentions of my infancy or any embarrassing childhood anecdotes came out, for which I give thanks.

The next day, Monday, my parents started wrapping up their trip.  We put them on a bus to the train station, which they rode about 90% of the way to Tokyo, and then took a detour.  We'd wanted to give them one night at a traditional Japanese ryokan (incidentally, we'll have a new ryokan post coming up fairly soon) which is a hot springs hotel in the classic Japanese style.  I'd been aiming for a nice hotel but misread the price in the brochure (the method it listed varied by hotel, I thought it was the price for one room holding 2 people, not, as is sometimes standard in Japan, the 2-person room with two people in it listed as the per-person price) and they ended up with a really, really nice hotel.  I understand that they had a private hot springs bath on their sixth-floor screened balcony and real Western-style beds, amongst other luxuries such as an English-speaking staff.  Apparently, one couldn't see Fuji from the hotel, but they did see it from the train.  They were fed a traditional Japanese meal and either ate it or still had enough granola bars left so as to not starve.

View from their hot-springs equipped balcony

After their stay at the ryokan ended, they took the train into the city, stayed over one night, and caught a flight out early the next afternoon, not, I think, too much the worse for wear.  It was quite a trip and I'm glad they enjoyed it.  We're looking forward to seeing Kyoto ourselves this spring sometime.  Please note that we sorted through many, many hundreds of pictures and kept only the good ones in the Flikr set, so take a look there if you haven't yet.

Fuji

The Rynearsons in Japan 2: The Next Few Days

Another day, another garden.  We headed into the heart of the city, caffeinated my parents at a Starbucks, and visited the Imperial Palace gardens.  I've been in places in Tokyo that say pretty loudly "Money" (there is an Aston Martin dealership down the street from the school's condo, and there are two more in the city) but the district around the Imperial Gardens really belts it out.  We walked through some awfully ritzy neighborhoods before arriving at the gardens.  My impression, distilled from an hours-long tour, is that the stonework is really the highlight of the place.  There are some places were they've done neat things with the plants, but nothing really tops huge walls made by hand out of perfectly shaped 20-ton blocks.  The fortifications are mostly absent, having burned down hundreds of years ago in some cases and more recently in others, but the foundations and stones are there and they are really impressive.  Ana was looking for a letterboxing location that happens to exist in the garden, and I'm happy to report that it was found and papers stamped with various stamps and whatnot. The pictures of the garden are a better bet than my descriptions.

 Rocks that rock - that is a full-size tree behind them

An area of the Imperial gardens with a smaller proportion of rocks

 Serious walls

Letterboxing supplies retrieval

After visiting the Gardens, we went back into the really ritzy district looking for lunch.  We toured through several floors of the very, very fancy mall  / subway station before settling on a Chinese place for lunch, which was very decent quality for the price and quite enjoyable.  I think everyone had plenty to eat, and then we retrieved our bags from the coin lockers (stashed so we didn't need to go back to the condo) and caught the train back to Kanazawa.  I think most people slept through most of that trip, and six hours later we got off the bus we'd taken from Kanazawa Station to our apartment, where we fed my parents pre-prepared pasta and sauce and collapsed into sleep.

Good Chinese food

The next day Ana and I both had work, so we left my parents briefly to their own devices in the morning.  When it was getting close to lunchtime, Ana went home and guided them from the apartment to campus, where we showed them our lovely concrete and the few gardens on campus.  That accomplished, we went to a rotating sushi bar for lunch.  If you're not familiar with rotating sushi bars, instead of ordering there is a track that goes around the entire room, with food that constantly circulates.  If you see something you like, snag it off the track and eat it, and color-coded plates will let the waitstaff tally up the cost correctly at the end.  There is a menu and you can order specific things from the staff hanging out in the center of the track, but that's less fun.  After lunch, Ana and I went back to work and sent my parents downtown to our local major garden, Kenroku'en, that being the second of the big three.  As you can see, Kanazawa was, as usual, gray and dreary. 

 Back in Kanazawa

 KIT gardens

 

 Apartment view

We regrouped around dinnertime and walked down to a local okonomiyaki place, which we described in some detail in our second-ever blog post.  Between Ana and I we interpreted more than enough of the menu, and remembered enough about how to cook okonomiyaki on the hibachi table, to allow dinner to be a success.  We have a couple of crappy cell phone pictures.

 Not remotely Japanese pizza

The Rynearsons in Japan 1

Technically, that's sort of the topic of this blog.  However, in this case it is being written about my (Lee's) parents making good on their threat to visit us here, which they did this November.  November, because it is just late enough for the plants to be asleep in New Hampshire, where their plant-related businesses reside, but still early enough here for our plants to be pretty much awake, and not covered in sleet.  November being a month when we have no special time off from work, we were able to give my parents some pointers and assistance in planning, but not to actually guide them around the country very much.  Thus, we have pictures and stories from us and them, and also from them exclusively.  We'll share some of both in the next few posts.  For the full set of pictures, see Flikr.

They flew into Tokyo on a Friday night, such that I could leave work after completing my class obligations and meet them in Tokyo Station.  I'd given them extremely detailed directions on exactly where to meet me in Tokyo Station (the information center closest to their arrival platform) and how to arrive at that point.  I was much relieved to find them there and not need to rely on plan B, wherein they would call my cellphone from a payphone of indeterminate location and tried to describe to me how they got there.  I found them less dazed and confused than I had anticipated after the roughly 30-hour transit, and we were off.

 This is about 0.5% of Tokyo Station - I recommend a map and compass

Ana had a faculty meeting that day and thus would not arrive in the city until around the time I was planning to have my parents asleep, and the task in the intervening time was to feed them their first not-airline-food meal in more than a day.  I had a Chinese place in mind in the subway station nearest the school's condo (subway stations have many, many restaurants, and stores, in Tokyo - many stations are the size of malls in the US) that I'd been eying on previous trips.  We stood outside it, examining the plastic food replicas and deciding what to order.  I knew what kinds of things were generally available and could read enough of the characters to have a pretty good idea of what we were asking for, and I wrote them down to be safe, but upon trying to get a table the staff waved us off saying that they were full, so we ended up going to the substantially less adventurous imitation-Italian place down the hall.  It was good enough, and my parents discovered the magic of  "ビル", or the fact that the Japanese word for beer is "biru" and that it is one of the few loan words that the Japanese have taken from English that they regularly understand when it is still pronounced by a native speaker.  After that, we went to the condo, put out the futon (plural like moose), were joined by Ana, and went to sleep.

Now when I have to review the kanji for cryptomeria (椙, incidentally) I think of these

The next morning we had to be up bright and early to make a train to Mito, home to one of the three most famous gardens in Japan, Kairaku'en.  Ana and I had been to the other two, so this would complete the trifecta for us.  My parents, being plant-and landscaping-centric people, had a lot of gardens to see on their trip and would be visiting all three of the most famous and good few more besides on during their visit.  Our prior experience with the Tokyo subway guiding us, we made the train easily and sat back for the trip.  This voyage showed both the city of Tokyo and some substantially rural areas out the windows of the train, and my parents speculated heavily about the Latin names of various plants they saw as they went by as they would do regularly for the rest of the trip.  I mention this especially because I'd recently learned several obscure characters for plant names, and complained along with some study partners about how pointless said characters were; my parents knew the names of the plants associated with those characters and pointed them out later on in this trip.  I afterward felt somewhat deprived of my good reason to complain about those characters.

What do you mean we need to be out the door less than eight hours after getting in?!

We arrived at Mito Station, which turned out to be a much larger station in a much larger city than I'd anticipated.  After caffeinating my coffee-deprived parents at a local McDonald's, we set out across the city to the garden, giving them an extended opportunity to see first-hand a representative Japanese city at ground-level that wasn't lengthened by more than one or two wrong turns.  One we got to Kairaku'en, we figured we were more on their turf, and ceded control of speed and direction to them.  Kairaku'en is famous as a plum-blossom garden, and thus must be stunning in February or March.  It's a little bare in November, but not disappointing.  We saw elements and styles that we'd not yet seen in Japanese gardens, and if we get the chance, we'll be back when it is in bloom.  There are acres of ancient plum trees.  We saw just about everything there was to see there, given the season, and got plum-flavored sorbet on the way out.  The other members of our party were skeptical, but I insisted and bought one for myself, whereupon they all tried it and immediately bought their own.

Entrance to Kairaku'en

Manicured trees

We had really nice weather

Interesting sunlight  through the conifers

Sorbet stand

We scampered back across the city to the train station, re-caffeinated them, and bought some fries to tide us over until our real lunch.  Mito is northeast of the city and there was a restaurant up there I'd been meaning to get around to going to - I figured my parents would have plenty of Japanese food later in the trip and that this was my chance to make the pilgrimage.  I'd read about it in the food blog of a foreigner in Tokyo who is a friend of my cousin (who lives in Tokyo six months a year) and he'd raved about it.  He also said it was small.  How small, we did not fully appreciate until we arrived.  I think we got there around 2PM, looking for lunch, which in most places is sort of a dead time of day.  Sunny Dinner, in some random not-very-important northeast Tokyo neighborhood, had an hour-long line.  We stuck it out, aiming to get four of the approximately eight seats inside.  It took courage and perseverance, but the reward was great, at least for the half of the party that cannot usually obtain outstanding burgers, which is pretty much the only thing they serve.  Other notes: I've never seen sodas that large served in Japan, and I'm pretty sure they must buy several smaller bottles of soda to pour into a glass to achieve that size, because the soda cost pretty much the same as the beers, which weren't small either.  At any rate, we found the place and we feasted, and my parents admitted to not having had burgers themselves in a year or so, and it was good.

It's about that big on the inside too

This is 50% of their tables, and there is a bar that might seat another six people...tasty burgers though

After the food, we were wiped, and retired to the condo for naps.  Post nap, we called up my cousin and met him at an izakaya (basically Japanese tapas restaurant) near his current apartment, for (what else) Japanese tapas.  There was sizzled chicken and sushi and tasty little kimchee blossoms and various fatty parts of animals, as the Japanese are wont to consume, and on the whole it was a nice, casual, low stress dinner.  After dinner, we took them to Akihabara, the electronics district, to get a real show of Tokyo neon and nerd-oscity but were disappointed to find them closing up shop at all of 10:30 at night.  What the hell, Akihabara?  What happened to playing Street Fighter 2 in the arcades until 1AM, then buying a laptop from a street vendor and taking it into a hostess bar where the hostesses wear cat ears above their French maid costumes to try it out until the sun comes up?  Do you always close down so early or was it just this once?  Sad state of affairs, if you ask me.  They're supposed to be setting the standards for the whole world up in there.  My parents professed being able to still sort of catch the vibe and managed to get some decent pictures despite it being dark.  Akihabara visited, we retired for the evening.

Tapas place

Akihabara, sadly low on neon