So on Saturday I went to the free Tour of Akihabara. I am glad that I went, the tour was good It, the equipment was a little strange(it was a little radio that I guess had a range of a few feet, it I was not in a few feet of the tour guide I couldn't hear anything), mine kept on cutting in and out. The only thing that sucked was that it was raining and I think it was building up to a typhoon.
One of the participants had kindly let me use his umbrella,since it was big enough for two people. I had found out that he was from Korea, and his name was DougJae,(I had found out that he was going to goto London to study English) I thanked him many times and after the tour and after we got our "presents" I had asked him is he had to been to the Sun Mall before, he said that he hadn't and so I would take him there and show him around. But first he wanted to get an alarm clock, so after he had gotten the clock we had left Akiba and headed to Shinjuku transfered to Nakano and
headed for the mall.
Walked around the floors, I had picked a few figures and two Nightwish CD's. We had gotten something to eat in the mall, and then he asked me if I have ever been to a spa bepfore, I told him that I haven't. So I thought that I would try it out.
Of cource it was still windy and raining for pretty much the entire time. So by the time we got to the spa my feet where soaked and it was a little cold, but I had my coat with me. The spa was all the way out at Hana-K something...Darn I should of worten it down...Well any way I have a map, and I know that I needed to take the Sebu-Shinjuku line to get there, it was about 17 stations away from the staion...
Well like I said that it was thew first time that I had every been to a spa before let alone a Japaneses spa. I was a little uncomfortable at first but I got used to it and it didn't matter that everyone else was naked except for a towel.
Dougjae and I had tried everything, the sauna, the steam room, the out door pools and the personal jet baths, where where my favorite, they had powerful jets that massaged your back and feet, I have a very stiff broad shoulders so if felt soooooo good.
One of the tubs I missed judged the depth the sitting area so kind of fell back and I dissterbed the water a bit, one of the other guys in there said something in Japanese, I didn't understand what he said but I knew it was about me. Oh ya I was the only one that was a visibly an outsider...It didn't really bother me all that much.
So after a few hours of relaxing Dougjae and I went back to Shinjuku, it was about 10:30 or so at night and It was the first time I was out so late, well any while we where walking we had run in to people wanting us to partake in activities with the Japaneses girls they had. But they didn't look like gang members, they looked African in color. One handed me a card, I was used to people handing me stuff on the street, so I thought nothing of it until he told me that he had this great place, Which I replied "I'm good thanks", he persisted it "free to look and see what we have" I turned him down every time. Then not even 2 min's later another one walked up to me and said something I can't really remember what he said first but he said that I could touch for 4000 I said no thinks, then he said 3000, I just walked past and said no thanks. and then about another moment later another one had said "Gentleman, I know a good place for you I said no thanks, "Come on you only live once", Every time I said no.
Well anyway We had walked and found a place to eat and I had Octopus balls, and he had meat on a stick...I can't remember the Japanese for them...But it was soooo good.
After dinner we headed back to the station it was after midnight and I cough the last train home and got home around 12:30am. So for about 12 hours I was out and about. Before we parted Dougjae and I had traded emails and he even gave me his travel book, which was in Korean, and recommended a few places to check out. like Asakusa, Roppongi Hills, Odiba, Ginza and Daikanyama.
I'll update my photo page soon.
So all and all Saturday was a good day...And what have I been doing for the past two days..Well...I had lost all my pictures on my ipod...well more accurately..one time when I plugged in my ipod 1500 pics(my entire collection of Dollfie pics) I had went missing...I tried to to a system restore that didn't work(with Vista if you do a system restore it only restores changes made in programs and stuff and not actual files) I had a back up of all the pictures on my ipod, but they where in a .thmb format(which is the ipod format for pictures), Well with lots of reading forums and downloading several programs I can recover the images...but the only thing is that since I have a Nano, the biggest resolution of the pictures are less than 200x200. (ithmb files contains 4 files, with the ipod, one is the thumbnail, T.V sized and full screen mode in ipod terms anyway and another one.)
But since my Nano can't out put to TV all the pictures I try to make bigger end u looking really fuzzy...the good thing is that I have all the pictures on my External Hard drive back in Victoria. So I have been trying to recover those lost pictures.
4 comments:
Wow, that sounds like a great day! You are catching the tail end of rainy season there... and you have never seen a storm until you have seen a Tokyo storm! Hoo boy. Many combinis still ought to have Y100 see-though umbrellas, which are better than nothing...
It's great that you ran into someone who became a friend! Will you go back to the spa on your own? It sounds like you had tako-yaki and he had yakitori. Joanne and I wanted to open up a tako-yaki restaurant over here called "Got Me Squid Balls!" :D You will notice these being sold on the streets from carts in places like Shibuya.
Funny that you went out on the Seibu Shinjuku line -- I travelled that train every Wednesday to Higashi-Fushimi for one of my classes. Sounds like you went to Hanakoganei. What did you think of the more rural areas of Tokyo?
Kabuki-cho in Shinjuku can be a crazy place... yakuza are pretty different from gang members over here. The guys on the streets in suits are low-level gang members, and their job is to make sure customers come into their employers' "massage-parlours". Don't even make eye contact! Don't try to be polite; they will just chase you down the street if you keep on talking to them.
Too bad about your ipod -- I had a similar experience. I had to go into the ipod memory manually and pull off all my songs, put them back on the computer and re-load them onto my ipod. What a pain!! >:( I hate computers...
Have you heard anything about the Nova bankruptcy? This will be a big deal to foreigners trying to make a living in Tokyo...
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/business/news/article_1368919.php/Thousands_of_foreign-language_teachers_lose_jobs_in_day__News_Feature_
PS -- re: your experience at the spa; Joanne says it's a good experience for all white people to be a minority in another country. Changes your perspective!
Hmm, that link was cut to pieces. Try putting all of this together in one big URL:
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/business/news
/article_1368919.php/Thousands_of_foreign-language
_teachers_lose_jobs_in_day__News_Feature_
Ya I think it was Hana-Koganei, Well a lady from the tour gave me an umbrella, so I was ok.
I forgot to mention that many trains where stopped/delayed due to a typhoon.
Ya there is a stand in Akihaara and on the weekends I have seen a stand out side of the Ueno Zoo.
The only thing is that I don't think where where even close to Kubuki-cho...it was just out side of the train station and a close to the Studio Alta building.
Ya it was tako-yaki, when they arrived the fish flakes where still moving from the heat.
The yakiori was really good, cept the chicken rapped in bacon, it wasn't really all that good.
I'll try, but I will have to rely on my memory a lot to get there. Dougjae recommended the Ooiedeonseu spa Odaiba.
So maybe I'll check it out.
I didn't really see all that much since it was dark but it isn't like the city, a lot more quieter, but I saw a Pizza Hut there of all places, (I have also seen a Subway while walking from Harajuku to Shinjuku) it was really nice, which makes me want to visit Koyto sometime soon.
I had to restore my ipod settings so I lost everything, so it's a good thing I copied a lot of my music on my laptop. And 99% of those pictures where off the net, and about 90% I can get back again off the web.
I haven't heard about the Nova bankruptcy, I'll check out the link.
You can get some really good views of Fuji-sama on the Seibu Shinjuku line. I remember taking pictures from the walkway at the Higashi Fushimi station (which unfortunately didn't develop).
If you liked Tako-yaki, you should try Okanomayaki. It's a very similar vegetarian version, except shaped like a pancake. It was difficult for me to find in Tokyo though, it's more of an Okinawan specialty.
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