Samurai No Yume

Learning How to Fly - House of Air Trampoline Park

2010-11-14T00:20:00.000-08:00

We were having fun at the local trampoline park House of Air. My friend took pics. Thought I would share:

Dodgeball Time

Floating is a useful skill.

Target Destroyed.

Practicing for the Snow.

Dead tired.

Dinner Afterwards

An old video:

Lawrence Goes to Japan - Day 5

2007-12-26T15:23:00.000-08:00

Day 5 was the day to check out the Ginza shopping district. I'm not a big shopping person. But I always remembered sentences from Japanese class that went sort of like, "We are going to Ginza!" I had to know what this magical place that all Japanese people go to in Japanese textbooks.

Another shot of the crazy train station.

After we got off the train we decided to grab some food at a "Nice Sit Down" place according to Brad. So we checked out this restaurant on the corner.

My friend Jeanene had a waffle pancake thing.

I had a steak dish, but I failed and forgot to take pics. Food must've been yummy.

One thing that was kind of cool is that you had to sign your name on the waiting list. And I knew how to write Smith in Japanese. "Sumisu". (John Smith is probably the most common foreigner name used in Japanese class.) When the guy called our name he commented how cool it was that I knew how to write it in katakana. Win for Mr. SUMISU!

Ginza is a designer shoppers dream. For almost any huge designer there is literally a BUILDING for it!

Ginza Shopping District Intersection

Video of one of the intersections.

So that being the case me and Brad didn't do much there haha. Jeanene though had the time of her life.

OM NOM NOM NOM

So while we were waiting for J to finish shopping we wandered around the area.

The "Sit Down Place" that we went to had very small portions so we were still a little hungry. So I grabbed some yummy Takoyaki balls at Gindaco

Takoyaki Balls at Gindaco in Ginza

We sat down at this really tranquil park. And enjoyed our foods.

Whew that was good!

WATCH OUT. THE Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission is WATCHING YOU.

I think it might be broked.

After we met back up with J we decided to try and check out Harajuku. We didn't expect to see the Cosplay girls there that day, but we wanted to kinda scout it out first. Unfortunately we didn't plan on going there before we left our hotel so we had to try and figure it out with the subway map. I wish we had used the Tokyo Transfer Guide.

I guess the Japanese don't like comfortable benches. Might be a sign of weakness to foreigners.

So we got off at Yotsuya station or something.

We thought that it might be close enough to Harajuku to walk.

I asked for directions from this dude (I think he was a police officer or train officer). He said it might take like 30 minutes to walk. A slight understatement.

You kind of knew you were on the wrong stop because there were too many normal people. Like these kids coming home from school.

Walking Around Japan

Oh, there were school girls too. Let me show you them.

Whats that ancient device that dude is talking on?

Where normal Japanese people live. I wonder if thats supposed to be a design on teh building or those pieces just happened to be cleaner than the rest of the building.

Where normal Japanese people buy stuff.

There was actually a healthy amount of construction going on around Tokyo.

So yeah obviously we were in Japan so we so mostly saw Japanese restaurants. So it was interesting to see non Japanese places like this Taco place.

Don't see too many of these over there either.

So long story short. We walked for almost an hour and didn't find Harajuku. Went back to the hotel and found out we could've taken a train that gets off right at Harajuku. :P

So after some sleeping, we checked out this place that had Yakitori. It was in a basement. Really hole in the wall type. Good food though.

These salty sticks were oishii!

http://www.livevideo.com

It was YUMMY. I had the combo plate. I liked them all except for the liver one. Bleh.

Then it was time for sleep. Stay tuned for Day 6!

Lawrence Goes to Japan - Day 4

2007-12-26T10:52:00.001-08:00

Today is a new day! What are we going to do?

Instead of always taking a left from the hotel (This just happened to be the direction of the train station) today we shall take a RIGHT. Yeah you heard me right, a RIGHT. We like to think outside of the box on this trip. Turns out there was plenty of cool stuff to the right of our hotel as well.

Some other hotel tower.

So many bikes everywhere!

We were all hungry so we grabbed some curry from a CURRY ONLY restaurant. The curry dishes were around $10 and tasted GOOD.

Woody Allen? What is he doing? Magic?

OM NOM NOM NOM

We saw a cool mustang on the way back to the hotel.

A cool Mustang in Shinjuku

If you wondered what a railroad crossing in Japan looked like...

Walking back to the hotel.

After recovering from a slight food coma. We decided to check out Akihabara. Akihabara is known as teh "Electric Town". There you can find many of the latest electronics, manga, anime, phones, etc. Home to the roaming Otaku. My kind of place!

Train station was nuts!

Train wasn't too bad.

Now thats the kind of ad I don't mind seeing while riding the metro.

Saw a cool NSX outside of the station.

More vending machines. Notice the english graffiti. Lolz.

Moo haha.

We checked out the Gigo Sega building first. It was basically an arcade with many floors.

They had a cool Gundam game. The game is networked, and they have these cool pods with controls just like the anime.

It also has this screen in which you can spectate the action happening in the room.

They also had this cool card game that allowed you to bring your own game cards and interact with a video game machine.

There was a bunch of floors. Some with the more familiar fighting games like Tekken 5 and many different versions of Street Fighter and variants.

Tekken 5 in Sega Gigo in Akihabara

After checking all that out we checked out the rest of the neighborhood.

Here is a cool game I saw installed on a PC. Its called Perfect Cherry Blossom or(東方妖々夢 Tōhō Yōyōmu.

????? Toho Yoyomu

One cool thing about Akihabara is that the farther you get in the alleys, the better deals you find. However the chances of the store employees speaking English are even lower than the prices. We saw used Wii systems for $50! (They ran out lol) We considered buying a bunch of new Nintendo Wii's and bringing them back to the states, because they had plenty. Unfortunately, they were region locked. You can only play Japanese games on the Japanese Wii. This was the story with a lot of the video game stuff in Japan. Phones also do not work here in the States. And unless you really needed Japanese characters on your keyboard, you probably didn't need a Japanese computer.

A cool S15 I saw on the street.

Who needs a ipod video/touch? They have sony PMPs!

Saw this funny Perfect Cherry Blossom game while we were walking around.

When it was time for Dinner, we chose an Indian restaurant and guess what, we got CURRY. Yum.

They had a few stores with more than just electronics and look at what we found.

Wat?

On the way back to the Station we saw this Sil80.

We have the Nissan 240SX in the states but it has a slower engine, and doesn't have the flat headlights.

They had this yummy mochi cream place next to Shinjuku station.

So Akihabara was very fun. If I lived in Japan I would probably be there everyday. But unfortunately its not so great if you want to bring stuff back to the states. :(

Lawrence Goes to Japan - Day 3

2007-12-19T13:36:00.000-08:00

Alright so yes we slept a lot. But TODAY would be the day we actually attempted to figure out the subway system.

But first! The stomach hungers! Time for some breakfasts somewhere. Its around 8am now. It was also cold as the depths of hades.

Yet another vending machine. This one with teas. I enjoy the strawberry tea much.

Here are some buildings in the morning.

O so THATS why everything is so clean.

Saw this while we were walking around. It was in front of a Korean BBQ place. Man those koreans are KINKY.

We ALMOST went and got some McDonald's for breakfast. I mean who could resist a MEGA EGG Sandwich?!?!

We were TRYING to find something Japanese for breakfast. On the way we saw this Karaoke place.

Why is he grabbing his balls? Must be a GREAT place to sing.

Finally after we could take no more, we decided to go to Lotteria. I had never been there before. And it seemed as good a place as any.

We had some breakfast sandwich thing there. The fries were tasty.

So after finishing the most important meal of the day. It was time to tackle the subway. Luckily I found this great site called the Tokyo Transfer Guide that showed you exactly what trains to take on what system and for how much. Very useful! I used it to figure out how to get to Daiba, which had Sega Joypolis and Muscle Park.

It was an adjustment getting used to the Japanese subway. Hitchhiking didn't seem to work...

So far so good...

This transfer point at Shiodome did not have a lot of people.

A quick clip of the ride to Daiba.

Are you SURE this is the right train?

Finally after a quick ride we arrived at Daiba station. Here is the Fuji TV Station building. I didn't know it was at the time. I was just taking a picture because it had a random ball in the the building.

Nice View!

Wait a minute... I thought we were in Japan?

USA A OK!

There was a mall in between the statue of Liberty and the building with Joypolis in it. So we checked out a few things...

Ah those Japanese, with elevators in the backyard.

Wat?

Uh...

We eventually arrived at Sega Joypolis. We were there on a weekday so it was relatively empty and we were able to get in most attractions right away.

One thing that kinda got annoying is that they explained each ride every single time. Along with showing us the "if you have any medical problems you can't ride" card every single time even though we were just on the same ride.

Getting ready for a track and field game.

They sure have some GREAT attractions here at Joypolis.

There was a nice view outside.

More engrish.

After we had gone on pretty much every ride. It was time to check out the rest of the building. We went up the escalator and saw this place:

With Brad being a avid strength trainer, he got very excited! Muscle Park is a cool place with a bunch of games you can play. There is bowling, baseball, pushups, etc. I think for prizes but we sucked at all of them so we didn't win anything.

Ladies and Gentlemen we call that a whiff.

One very cool thing that they had there was a small scale Sasuke (known in the US as Ninja Warrior on G4TV) course. If you've never seen or heard of that show before, check it out here:

We of course HAD to try the course out.

A scale model of Mt. Toriyama on the show. We were too big to fit on that course.

What am I doing here? I need to hit the gym!

This guy could do the course in his sleep. :P

After embarrassing ourselves at Muscle Park we checked out more of the little shops in the building.

What is Brad's mom doing here in Japan?

This place looked like OLD SCHOOL japan.

This train made a wrong turn into the building...

After this we had some rat meat at a local restaurant and our bowels were never the same again.

Thats it for Day 3!

Lawrence Goes to Japan - Day 2

2007-12-19T00:23:00.000-08:00

Our first day in Japan! It was a good day to check out the surrounding area without alcohol goggles.

I forgot to bring some hydrocortisone so I needed to grab some from a local store. Luckily for me they have plenty of convenience stores in Japan. AM PM, 7-eleven, Special K and a bunch that I've never heard of, but I'm sure they probably exist somewhere in the US. Convenience stores in Japan are fairly similar to the ones in the US. Except pretty much everything is Japanese branded. Perhaps you've enjoyed a Pocky or a bag a shrimp chips and thought it was tasty. Now imagine a whole store full of such tasty treats.

Yummy

Where's all the American food?

After I picked up what I was looking for, we decided to get something to eat. After wandering around Shinjuku for a little while we decided to try this place called Don Don. This place was interesting because you were supposed to order your food at a vending machine at the front of the restaurant. (Japanese people really LOVE their vending machines)

Vend me baby.

I was able to read the labels on the buttons well enough to help everyone order something appetizing. I had the chicken katsu. My companions had steak.

Gaijin use chopsticks wow!

Mmmm.

While I was at Don Don nature called. So I got my first glimpse of a Japanese restroom.

Uh, where do I sit?

LUCKILY, I did not have to perform a number two, just a number one. So I was safe for now. Later in the hotel I was able to look up how to do it.

After the tasty meal we decided to explore Shinjuku a bit more.

Here is a video of a woman who tried her best to combat the leaves on her sidewalk with a small broom.

So what's next. How about we check out one of the many huge electronics stores we see here around Shinjuku.

Here is a quick walk through Sakuraya.

For some reason Sakuraya had a very happy girl with bunny ears for a mascot.

Wat? I b a bunny wabbit.

I wish I had video taped the little dance routine they were showing on a very nice sony lcd tv in the store. But perhaps I was too entranced.

I believe this was Yodobashi camera.

Here you can see how cool new tvs are. You can clearly see the monkeys TOW UP BOOTY in HIGH DEF.

It was here in these camera stores that we got our first taste of interesting Japanese electronics. They had phones that had 10mb internet and looked awesome. Some even ran windows mobile. UNFORTUNATELY we soon found out that most if not all of these phone would not have any hope of working in the US. SHITE! was so irritated by this fact that I silently rebelled by adding my own test text to a the bottom of a Lenovo thinkpad screen in the store.

Ha! Take that superior Japanese electronics!

I must admit I was pretty amused at what was already on the screen. haha. It was interesting seeing thinkpads in a store, usually you can only order them online in the states.

After the camera stores we wandered around aimlessly in Shinjuku. And found plenty of Engrish to enjoy!

So that about wraps up day 2. Where are the night pics you ask? Well there are none because after walking around all day we attempted to take naps and slept nearly 16 hours clear into the next day. Jet lag rules.

Lawrence Goes to Japan - Day 1

2007-12-18T01:47:00.000-08:00

So the day had finally arrived! We got to SFO and had a fairly uneventful run through airport security. We switched up our USD to JPY at the currency exchange place in the airport. The flight on Northwestern Airlines was also fairly uneventful. This is illustrated here:

Our plane.

The food was meh, but they did have an interesting entertainment system. It allowed on demand movies, games, and music. Our devices of course were not functioning correctly so they were useless.

We got to Narita Airport in Japan and quickly got through customs. They have a new procedure now that requires foreigners to give their two index fingerprints along with a photo. More information on that here. After getting through I found myself very amused with the very blue uniforms of the airport security staff.

I guess they didn't approve of me taking free photos of them.

To be honest the airport seemed exactly like SFO but a little more dirty. Not a good start imho. As soon as we got out of security I spied one of these bad boys:

Nestle, mmmmmm.

You might not be able to see it well in the picture, but under the drink bottles there is either a blue or red tag. Blue means cold drink and red means hot (or maybe slightly warm) drink. Warm and cold drinks in the same machine? WAT?

So now it was time to figure out how to get to the hotel. For some retarded reason I was sure I could look at some signs and just "figure" it out. Here is what the map looked like:

Not impossible to figure out, but kind of daunting at first glance. Luckily I knew one of the more useful phrases of the Japanese language. Eigo de Wakarimasu ka? Or do you understand English. :) So the helpful train ticket sales person was able to tell us which train to take, which was leaving in like 8 minutes.

So we wait for the train and get on. We hop on the last train and everything seems to be going well so far. Unfortunately, it turns out that the train tickets we bought had ASSIGNED SEATING. And our seats were in the very front of the train. So we basically had to drag our luggage through nine cars of the train while curious Japanese watched us. What really made it interesting was that in between the cars the "joints" of the train were moving around like crazy. It felt like we were on some crazy torture obstacle course!

Traveling through the gauntlet.

"Why didn't we take the limo?"

After traveling through hell we finally got to our seats. On the train they had a very convenient led display that showed us where we were in the train system.

So finally we got off the train and had to figure out where to go from Shibuya station. We actually should've just got off at Shinjuku but we are idiots. So we decided to look for a taxi. This was my chance to use some of my Japanese skill! I kindly asked this lady:

"Is there a taxi stop in this vicinity?" (in japanese of course) and she replied that she wasn't sure. Turns out it was literally 20 feet to our left. Ok maybe Japanese people aren't that smart after all? :P

Random bus we saw while waiting for a taxi.

The taxi ride was interesting. The taxi door opened automatically, which was cool. And the car was so small it barely fit any of our luggage. So we were smooshed. We gave the driver our address and he popped it in to the taxi's gps nav system! Very cool seeing taxi drivers using technology. After getting over the initial shock of being on the wrong side of the road we managed to get to our hotel.

Not the biggest room in the world.

We of course had to go somewhere on our first day there so time to explore our surrounding neighborhood!

Yes McDonald's is literally everywhere.

Everything is so colorful here.

It seems like Pachinko is SUPER popular here. There is a parlor around almost every corner in Shinjuku. Here is a quick vid of one of the back alleys:

So after checking stuff out it was time to eat. We checked out this small place in the alley and grabbed some Ramen, Gyoza and some Beers. I was able to successfully order food! But to be fair the Japanese make it pretty easy. Every menu has pictures of the main dishes so you basically could just point and order. But I used some JAPANESE. HONESTLY I DID.

So after dinner it was time to check out some stuff around here. We saw an arcade and stepped in.

Japanese Arcade right before closing.

We managed to get a few games of Initial D and Silent Hill in before they kicked us out. So now it was time to get some drinks. We wandered aimlessly for a bit admiring the sights.

Engrish FTW.

We ended up at a Japanese English Pub. The guiness there cost 9 bucks. OUCH. But it was all about the atmosphere. One thing I started noticing off the bat was that there was no tipping at all. I guess thats why the beer was 900 yen. heh

After wasting too much money we decided to stumble our way home.

Yes they have drunk a$$ foos in Japan too!

You like ladies?

Host bars are very popular here in Shinjuku. If you haven't heard of them you can learn more here. Not saying that we went to the female variety. I ain't saying NOTHING.

Pretty stuff in alleys.

Oh yeah, did i mention that it was a little nippy in Japan? Good thing we were able to purchase tasty warm beverages from vending machines which were on EVERY BLOCK. No really every block had a vending machine.

A delicious lemon drink.

Alleys in Japan seem incredibly safe. You don't feel like you are going to get jacked much at all. They also seem to really like bikes in Japan. They were EVERYWHERE. People would just lock the back wheel and leave them wherever. I guess no one steals jank cruiser bikes around Tokyo.

It's fun seeing English graffiti in Japan!

Wat?

Ok so that was Day 1. Stay tuned for Day 2!

Lawrence Goes to Japan - Prologue

2007-12-18T00:45:00.000-08:00

Irrashaimase! For those of you that know me I've been talking about going back to the motherland forever. I had a desire to see what real Japanese people are like. With my steady diet of anime, manga, movies, and strange variety Japanese television programming, as far as I knew, every Japanese person fought robots, wore a school girl outfits, and stole panties for fun. If this were the way it truly was in Japan, I still had to go and see it in person because that would be AWESOME.

Yes AWESOME!

A little background about myself. I am Japanese and black. My mother hails from the island of Okinawa, and my father comes from New Orleans, Louisiana. My mum did not teach me Japanese as a child, but I took many years of it at cal (atdp), lowell, and ccsf. Unfortunately, I only feel that I have the ability to communicate fairly well with small children in Japan. I have been to Japan before but I was only 3, so it doesn't really count. heh

So why have I not been to Japan? Well I can of course blame my parents for a good chunk of my life for not taking me there, but after I reached 18 I found that I was always working and spending all of my money on the expensive hobby known as cars. A friend of mine was heading over to Tokyo, and asked if I would be interested. This year I had actually attempted to save some money to go somewhere for vacation, so it seemed like as good a time as any to head to Nihon. It turned out, that after nearly 10 years of working and consumerism, I had amassed almost 40,000 points on my credit card. Which after a quick check with my credit card company, equaled a free round trip ticket to Japan. Yataa! My friend Brad was also interested in going and he doesn't really "work" for a living so his schedule was always open haha. (Yes he kinda works for blogtronix.com)

Our plan was simple. Stay about a week or so in Japan, and try and just get lost in the culture so to speak. The last week or so in November we spent time figuring out what we were going to try and do in Japan. It was decided that this would be a mostly Tokyo trip. With only a week to spend in Japan it seemed like it would be a pain in the butt to travel all over the island the size of California. So after noting down a few key places to visit like Akihabara, Harajuku, Shinjuku, Daiba, Ginza and a few others, we were ready to book the hotel.

Booking the hotel was simple enough. I also happened to have about 25,000 american express points, so I used their online hotel travel system to look for suitable hotels. I had a few requirements for living accommodations:

A) We had to have internet.

B) We had to have a tv with Japanese television.

C) We should try to stay as near to the center of Tokyo as possible.

After a bit of searching we came up with the Hotel Sunroute Plaza in Shinjuku. Its a 3 star hotel.

It had free internet, a tv, and queen sized beds.

So it would be perfect! Most of our details were set, so we were ready to go. We were due to leave for japan on Dec 7th. Ikuzo!