03/10/2011
04/08/2011
Day 19&20 - It's almost over :'(
I would have made these into separate posts, but there isn't much need as they are not going to be too long at all. For the past few days, I've stopped with the travelling around, Per Se, I've seen what I've wanted to see in Tokyo, and I'm really just taking it easy now,
Day 19 we ventured to Ginza to get a sneak peak at the Sony Building, the guild book I have recommends checking it out, so anyway we get there a little early, it opened at 11am, so we walked around for a little bit. Ginza is one of the most expensive areas in Japan and that's a fact, word has it that one square meter of land here can cost around 10 million yen. It's a designer brand haven, you have Dior, Chanel and Armani are just some of the designer brands located here, with flagship stores! So £10 cups of coffee aside, we headed back to the Sony Building, with some high expectations! We are both massive gamers, I've been playing for around 20 years, and from what the guide book made out, we came to expect a whole floor dedicated to the PlayStation brand, instead we were treated to 3 PlayStation pods! Each showcasing old games like Yakuza 3 and Bleach, the big selling point for this building wasn't really the technology, but the aquarium on the lower floors which had little clownfish..
We left Ginza a bit disgruntled, and headed towards Akihabara, Dan was on a mission to get his last Japanese Final Fantasy trading card or some crap, either way we didn't find it! I managed to get a few presents for myself and others sorted, my showpiece item is the Kill Bill Vol 1 (uncut) box set I picked up in some retro toy shop, £25 is pretty good, considering it was sealed and goes for well over £150 in the UK (or did last time I checked.) We were going to check out one of these maid cafe places but to be honest, we bottled it! Eventually we were walking around near the hotel looking for grub and ended up settling for a TGI Fridays, which seemed like one of the cheaper places in the area. (Although I'm still in shock over the bill! nearly £100... whoops!)
Day 20 (Friday) Dan left early to check out a few Otaku places, mainly for that last card he's looking for, I went back to Asakusa, mainly to get some presents sorted, It's around 33 degrees here in Tokyo at the moment. After spending another small fortune on Japanese tat for people back home, I headed back to the hotel, we are suppose to be checking out some Japanese Izakaya called Gonpachi later (it's suppose to look like the place from Kill Bill) But it's probably a little unrealistic as it's a little bit more expensive than we anticipated and we gotta be up at 6am! We may just check out the Irish "pub" round the corner.
My next blog post will mainly be telling you when I am back in England, and hopefully to tell you if I've uploaded some of the 5,000 pictures I've accumulated.
Stay tuned, I will eventually post a few more pieces I am working on, I am working on an arcade piece I'm hoping to get featured on Kotaku and a food post!
Thanks for reading
Jamie Harvison
Jigger Jay
Day 19&20 it's almost over :'(
I would have made these into separate posts, but there isn't much need as they are not going to be too long at all. For the past few days, I've stopped with the travelling around, Per Se, I've seen what I've wanted to see in Tokyo, and I'm really just taking it easy now,
Day 19 we ventured to Ginza to get a sneak peak at the Sony Building, the guild book I have recommends checking it out, so anyway we get there a little early, it opened at 11am, so we walked around for a little bit. Ginza is one of the most expensive areas in Japan and that's a fact, word has it that one square meter of land here can cost around 10 million yen. It's a designer brand haven, you have Dior, Chanel and Armani are just some of the designer brands located here, with flagship stores! So £10 cups of coffee aside, we headed back to the Sony Building, with some high expectations! We are both massive gamers, I've been playing for around 20 years, and from what the guide book made out, we came to expect a whole floor dedicated to the PlayStation brand, instead we were treated to 3 PlayStation pods! Each showcasing old games like Yakuza 3 and Bleach, the big selling point for this building wasn't really the technology, but the aquarium on the lower floors which had little clownfish..
We left Ginza a bit disgruntled, and headed towards Akihabara, Dan was on a mission to get his last Japanese Final Fantasy trading card or some crap, either way we didn't find it! I managed to get a few presents for myself and others sorted, my showpiece item is the Kill Bill Vol 1 (uncut) box set I picked up in some retro toy shop, £25 is pretty good, considering it was sealed and goes for well over £150 in the UK (or did last time I checked.) We were going to check out one of these maid cafe places but to be honest, we bottled it! Eventually we were walking around near the hotel looking for grub and ended up settling for a TGI Fridays, which seemed like one of the cheaper places in the area. (Although I'm still in shock over the bill! nearly £100... whoops!)
Day 20 (Friday) Dan left early to check out a few Otaku places, mainly for that last card he's looking for, I went back to Asakusa, mainly to get some presents sorted, It's around 33 degrees here in Tokyo at the moment. After spending another small fortune on Japanese tat for people back home, I headed back to the hotel, we are suppose to be checking out some Japanese Izakaya called Gonpachi later (it's suppose to look like the place from Kill Bill) But it's probably a little unrealistic as it's a little bit more expensive than we anticipated and we gotta be up at 6am! We may just check out the Irish "pub" round the corner.
My next blog post will mainly be telling you when I am back in England, and hopefully to tell you if I've uploaded some of the 5,000 pictures I've accumulated.
Stay tuned, I will eventually post a few more pieces I am working on, I am working on an arcade piece I'm hoping to get featured on Kotaku and a food post!
Thanks for reading
Jamie Harvison
Jigger Jay
03/08/2011
Day 18 - Imperial Palace Gardens and Ueno Redux
Another rubbish weather day, it's still high 20's, I think 28 degrees today, but it was also very wet at times! Dan went to the big Mandarake store in Nakano, whilst I was on a mission consisting of two parts!
I was determined before leaving Japan to see the Imperial Palace Gardens, and today I had the opportunity to do so, Tokyo station isn't too far from Shinagawa, and only took about 5 minutes on the Yamanote line. Downtown Tokyo (Marunouchi) is an interesting area, especially as you get deeper into the Imperial Gardens, it's a very well kept park in the heart of a commercial district, skyscrapers everywhere.
I spent a few hours walking around the eastern park, I couldn't get a good enough view of the palace, but from what I saw of the gardens, it was worth my time and effort! (It was raining quite hard!) The gardens host various areas and old Edo period buildings like an old barracks and armoury, whilst also showing off the bamboo garden and pond. Left the eastern park to get a closer look at the commercial district and found the Nikkei building, seemed a bit boring today!
I eventually got to Ueno around 2pm, in order to complete task 2 on my mission, I was on the lookout for a new bag, mainly because we've accumulated a lot of tat/crap/presents for people/ourselves (delete where appropriate) and as such our original bags are now full and we and in need of a new bag. To cut a long story short, I walked all the way around Ueno Ameyoko market, before finding a cheapish bag to use to bring our stuff back. (2,000 Yen is reasonable considering all the other places were looking upwards of 9,000 Yen!) Once I picked up the bag I headed back to the museum to check out the science museum I missed from before, was interesting, having the English headset helped quite a lot with the referencing as it was all in Japanese!
Day 18 - Imperial Palace Gardens and Ueno Redux
Another rubbish weather day, it's still high 20's, I think 28 degrees today, but it was also very wet at times! Dan went to the big Mandarake store in Nakano, whilst I was on a mission consisting of two parts!
I was determined before leaving Japan to see the Imperial Palace Gardens, and today I had the opportunity to do so, Tokyo station isn't too far from Shinagawa, and only took about 5 minutes on the Yamanote line. Downtown Tokyo (Marunouchi) is an interesting area, especially as you get deeper into the Imperial Gardens, it's a very well kept park in the heart of a commercial district, skyscrapers everywhere.
I spent a few hours walking around the eastern park, I couldn't get a good enough view of the palace, but from what I saw of the gardens, it was worth my time and effort! (It was raining quite hard!) The gardens host various areas and old Edo period buildings like an old barracks and armoury, whilst also showing off the bamboo garden and pond. Left the eastern park to get a closer look at the commercial district and found the Nikkei building, seemed a bit boring today!
I eventually got to Ueno around 2pm, in order to complete task 2 on my mission, I was on the lookout for a new bag, mainly because we've accumulated a lot of tat/crap/presents for people/ourselves (delete where appropriate) and as such our original bags are now full and we and in need of a new bag. To cut a long story short, I walked all the way around Ueno Ameyoko market, before finding a cheapish bag to use to bring our stuff back. (2,000 Yen is reasonable considering all the other places were looking upwards of 9,000 Yen!) Once I picked up the bag I headed back to the museum to check out the science museum I missed from before, was interesting, having the English headset helped quite a lot with the referencing as it was all in Japanese!
Day 17 - Back to Tokyo!
Not a busy day at all, we left Kyoto early to head back to Tokyo, our last place of residence is a hotel "complex" right next to Shinagawa station, this hotel has it all, we paid £160 each for 4 nights stay at a saving of nearly £400 each! We are up on like the 28th floor looking out over the...erm car park! But it's still a nice view.
This hotel is quite amazing though, it's also quite a refreshing change from the hostels we've been staying in, although I can't fault any of them, we're talking different leagues here! The Prince Hotel Shinagawa has it's own swimming pool, bowling alley and cinema.
Dan wanted tosee Transformers 3... se we saw Transformers 3... twas alright, the 3D yet again was a big waste of time!
We went to some Hawiian joint for some dinner, it was quite nice, don't ask me what I had, as I barely know! Pinapples were involved though.
Day 16 - Fushimi-Inari-Taisha
Not a lot to blog about today, had a nice lie in! Then went to see the legendary area known as Fushimi-Inari-Taisha, it's essentially a bunch of strategically placed red gates, which just look amazing!
Fushimi-Inari-Taisha (伏見稲荷大社?) is the head shrine of Inari, located in Fushimi-ku, Kyoto, Japan. The shrine sits at the base of a mountain also named Inari, and includes trails up the mountain to many smaller shrines.Since in early Japan Inari was seen as the patron of business, each of the Torii is donated by a Japanese business. First and foremost though, Inari is the god of rice.Merchants and manufacturers worship Inari for wealth. Donated torii lining footpaths are part of the scenic view.This popular shrine is said to have as many as 32,000 sub-shrines (bunsha (分社?)) throughout Japan. (Source Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fushimi_Inari-taisha)
Here's some pictures!
We got back to Kyoto late afternoon, we were going to head to A-Bar, but it was just too out of the way to be honest! So we found this amazing Steak/Burger place called "Hamburg and Steak," It was ludicrously expensive, but by God! It was amazing!
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