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I decided that I wanted to go to the Studio Ghibli museum, little did I know it would be a lot of trouble and a near impossiblity. I had to buy tickets at this machine at the drug store which I had to wait like 20+ minutes for. The clerk helped me with it, but the darn museum was booked for my whole stay -- boo. Now worried, I went back to the hotel and inquired about Kyoto. Apearently ryokan don't typically allow single guests, so thats out, but I did reserve my seats on the train down there.
After that I consulted the French sounding guy who worked at guest services as to what I should do. He refered me down to Asakusa, a more traditional part of Tokyo. There was a temple down there and tons of shops. I got a chance to shop for all the random things my friends wanted, green tea powder, a small samurai statue, and geta. Mikey's feet were pretty expensive -- like 8700 yen. There were only a couple samurai statues, too bad Pete didn't want a Geisha. And hopefully I got the right tea for Julz.
After that I took a boat down the river. There I saw a boat that looked a whole lot like the Mon Calamari pickle ships to me (see album). Otherwise I couldn't see much else. I saw some cute graffiti, by the riverside. It was a nice break though, I had been sweating all day ... well everyday actually. The boat reached its destination in the harbor at 3 so I decided to wander back to Akihabara, there was a cute little Fruits Basket towel that would be pretty handy to have.
There are a ton of little kids with their mothers (occationally their fathers) running around Tokyo with Pokemon books/guides. They go around the stations collecting Pokemon stamps. Its pretty cute, especially when you see one wearing a Ash hat or something like that.
I had finished my purchaces in Animate and was walking down the street when I spotted Chris and Tak walking in the opposite direction. I poked and then punched (not very hard I thought, but then I'm a brutish American) Chris in the back and asked if I could tag along with them again. I was especially in need of a dinner date since I hadn't eaten anything since the last time I ran into them but that crepe and strawberry shaved ice for lunch that day. Oddly enough their lunch had been shaved ice as well. I followed them back to Animate and Comictoranoana, where I bought what ended up being one of my favorite doujinshi from the trip.
After that we hit a 50 yen arcade in Shibuya, well 50 yen for everything, but the rhythm games and Time Crisis 3. They had a DDR machine, I couldn't resist, even though I'm terriby out of practice. I also had to continue my tradition of getting people to play DDR (or Pump it Up) with me. It used to be part of my gauntlet of tests a guy had to go through in order to consider him dateable. You don't have to be good, you just have to be willing to try, and to not care about what you look like. As they were both anime/viddy game nerds, I was really surprised to find out they had never played. I thought every anime/viddy game nerd had played it at least once. Maybe its different in England. I got Chris to try first, though mid-way through, he hopped off like Noah had and got Tak to play. He also got a picture of him doing it. We played a couple more games, including this cute Azumanga themed Puzzle Bobble game and then went food hunting.
Dinner was ramen, which is fine by me. Spike says a man can't live on carbohydrates alone, luckily I'm not a man. I'm pretty sure I would die if I ever tried that Atkins/South Beach fad. Chris was very disapointed that they didn't have gyoza, but settled on onigiri. Unfortunatly they didn't have an umeboshi like in Fruits Basket. Though Mikey abhors umeboshi so it might have been better that Chris did without them.
I like hanging around them, there weren't many people at West Point and in the army that talk about nerdy things. The closest thing to a West Point anime society was basically the couple of us that gathered in Bobby's room to play DDR and watch fan subs.
I think its pretty
amazing and not so amazing that I managed to run into them again. Its
not so amazing that we'd both go back to Akihabara, just that we'd do
it a basically the same time.