Pictures (part seven): Kamakura, Yokohama, and Tokyo

Well, this is it, you guys.

This is the last post.

You must be heartbroken, I know.

I recommend filling the void by going outside and doing something exceedingly awesome. Like hang-gliding. Or singing odes to semicolons.

You can, as always, read the correspond posts here (for Kamakura and Yokohama), here and here (for Tokyo), and here (for pictures).

Because people asked for a bigger version of the class picture from before, here it is.

Note that my male sensei (all the way on the right) looked like that approximately all the time. This would be why we loved him to death.

Okay, here're the pictures from Kamakura and Yokohama.

Here's the big Buddha.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand that's all you need to see of that.

Remember how I said that there was a crazy story associated with the shrine I visited? Well, since TWO whole people asked for it, you get to hear it. If you don't want to read my spazzing, you can just skip ahead.

Okay, so basically this shrine was built by the wife of Minamoto Yoshitomo. Yes, THAT Minamoto Yoshitomo.* While he was off fighting the Heike, she was wanting babies. So apparently she decided to build a shrine so that she could GET babies. In addition, she built the shrine so that it would help defeat the Heike.

How did she do this?

Well, there's an extensive garden associated with the shrine. This garden has two huuuuuge ponds with a bridge going over them. One of them is the Genji pond because it has white flowers, and the other pond is the Heike pond, because it has red flowers.** The Genji's pond has three islands, because the word for three in Japanese (三, san) sounds the same as the word for childbirth (産, san). The Heike's pond has four islands, because the word for four in Japanese (四, shi) sounds the same as the word for death (死, shi).

And that is the short version of the cool story associated with the shrine.

*The leader of the Genji, who overthrew the Heike. Also, he became the first shogun.

**The Genji's color was white, and the Heike's color was red.

Here's the bridge leading to the shrine.

Here's part of the Heike's pond, with the red flowers.

Here's the bridge from the side.

Here's the hand-washing place.

Kind of flashy, don't you think?

That's a stage which important ceremonies are performed on.

These are the steps up to the main shrine building.

This sign says to please not tie fortunes to the trees. I guess they must have had a problem with that.

Here's the Genji pond. It's kind of hard to see, but the flowers are white.

This was just awkward.

These were some really strange mannequins we ran across on our way back from dinner that night.

(There was also a mannequin that looked like it was seducing another mannequin. I started laughing hysterically, and no one else could understand why.)

THE CROSSWALK THAT TRAIN MAN WALKS DOWN AT THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVIE. (It's the one under the overpass thing. AAAAHHHH!)

Here's the gate into Asakusa, a district of Tokyo that's supposed to be like Edo-era Tokyo (or Edo, as it was known at that point).

Inside a mall at Asakusa...

A street in Asakusa...

We couldn't figure out what all these guys were doing.

Then we realized that they all had some sort of portable gaming device and were having a tournament of some kind.

Akihabara at night!

I figured this would be a somewhat appropriate picture to end the blog with.

In any case, it's been fun, guys. Hopefully, it's been at least fractionally as enjoyable to read as it has been for me to write.

Overall, this entire trip was an awesome experience, and I feel like I learned a lot, thanks to my senseis and my host family and my language partner and all the random people who weren't afraid to talk to me.

If I wind up in Japan after I graduate (which I most likely will), I'll probably wind up writing a blog again, but until then,

This is Squid, signing off.

じゃ、またね。

And then I GEEKED OUT

Hey, look a class picture! (Which for some reason is uploading really tiny. I dunno why.)

This is what we look like for maybe five minutes a day (teachers are on both ends):

And this is what we look like the rest of the time:

Today has been a day full of me being a geek to the fullest extent. Be forewarned, lots of spazzing in the post ahead.

So we got up this morning, grabbed breakfast at the hotel, and then took the train to Tokyo. It turns out that our hotel is RIGHT in the heart of Akihabara.

Me: !!!!!

Classmate: What? What's wrong?

Me: This...this station. OH MY GOODNESS, THIS STATION.

Classmate: ?

Me: Okay, you see that walkway? At the beginning of Densha Otoko, THAT'S THE WALKWAY DENSHA_OTOKO WALKS DOWN.

Classmate: You are so weird.

Me: *does an Akihabara dance*

So we went to our hotel (WHICH IS RIGHT ACROSS FROM THE WALKWAY THAT DENSHA_OTOKO WALKS DOWN), but it was too early to check in, so we just dropped our bags behind the desk and headed out. It was mandatory for us to go to Asakusa for some reason, but after that we were free. We wandered around Asakusa for a little while, and then went back to Akihabara, where we tried to buy tickets for the Ghibli Museum only to discover that they were sold out for both today and tomorrow. There was much sadness, needless to say.

So then I went and exchanged some money, 'cause I only had about 8000 yen, and I wasn't sure that would be enough to get me through the next three days. And it took frickin' forever, and was like having a chunk of my soul carved out, 'cause the exchange rate was 83 yen to the dollar. 83!

Me: Uggggggh, that was not worth it.

Classmate: Hey, at least it's not really your money.

Me: But but but but 83! AUGH. I probably won't even use this money...

And then I walked into a bookstore and walked out 4500 yen poorer. Whoops. (But they're books! So they're education! Maybe. Marginally. Okay, so I bought things that probably can't be considered educational in the slightest. BUT IT'S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS.)

After that, it was finally late enough for us to check into our hotel room, so we went back and did that, and I being the spazz brain I am, LEFT MY CAMERA IN MY HOTEL ROOM UGH WHY AM I SO STUPID.

So then we got on the subway to Shibuya and I realized I'd forgotten my camera and it was too late to go back and I cried inside. (That was a very badly constructed sentence. But you know what? I DON'T CARE. I am too spastic right now to care about lyricism.)

So we got off at Shibuya.

Me: The buildings are very tall.

Classmate: Yup.

Me: There are lots of people here.

Classmate: Yup.

Me: ....why would you want to pay that much money for a haircut?

Classmate: ...because you're Japanese?

Me: ....is there anything here other than pachinko and shopping?

Classmate: Nope.

Me: Right, I'm ready to go.

Classmate: Okay.

So then we got on the subway again and went to Ikebukuro. And I GEEKED OUT. Because when I walked out of the station, I KNEW EXACTLY WHERE I WAS. Because there was the weird sculpture thing that Shinra's dad gets harassed in front of, and there was that place that they walked past in the first episode, AND, HEY, I KNOW THAT INTERSECTION!

Me: OhmygoodnessthisissuchanoutofbodyexperienceohmygoshCeltyridesRIGHTPASTTHEREinthatoneepisode.

Classmate: You are so weird.

So then my classmate headed back to Akihabara, and I attempted to find The Park. (Anyone who has watched the anime will know what I'm talking about.) I had the following to go on:

It has to be near a subway station ('cause in That One Episode Mikado and you-know-who take shelter in a subway station).

It has to be in Ikebukuro.

It has to big enough to hold approximately a hundred people.

I narrowed it down to three, and went to the first one. It wasn't it, and it was waaaaaaaaaaaaay too small. So having figured out the scale on the map, I was able to cross another off the list. That left one possibility, which was close to the East Ikebukuro subway station (certainly within running distance).

So I started walking. (And had that weird jazz song that they always play in the random scenes running through my head.)

And I proceeded to get extremely, extremely lost. Or, technically, I went in the right direction, but was way, way too far north, and it was starting to get dark, and I had promised to meet a classmate for dinner, so I had to head back.

So I never actually got to the park, which makes me so sad there are no words for how sad I am.

I did, however, get to see:*

Ikebukuro station (including a bunch of the places where the Yellow Scarves are harassing people later in the series)

The area where Russia Sushi is (obviously Russia Sushi doesn't actually exist, but the neighborhood does)

The overpass that Seiji sees "his love" on in one of the super early episodes (where he's all, "I HAVE FOUND YOU, MY LOVE" but you don't realize how creepy that is yet)

The overpass that Mikado, Kida, and Anri are standing on in the first opening

The intersection where Mikado, Kida, and Anri are standing in the second opening

The road that Celty gets chased by traffic cops on (plus she's always on that road)

An elementary school which looked creepily similar to Shinra/Shizuo/Izaya's high school (I would hazard a guess that they based the building off of it, 'cause that's what they do in anime studios when they don't want to come up with a background but don't want to use a real building.)

The overpass that the Yellow Scarves beat the music guy up on

Things I did not see:

Men in bartender outfits throwing vending machines

Anyone wearing a yellow scarf (that made me both happy and sad)

Dollars (but then again, how would I tell? MAYBE THEY WERE EVERYWHERE)**

People with knives

So then I hopped on the subway and rode back to Ocha No Mizu, and then walked to Akihabara (and stopped by my hotel room and picked up my camera). Then I went to the Tokyo Anime Center (I'll be going back there tomorrow to actually buy stuff, 'cause they have (a very limited selection of) Higashi no Eden merchandise) and then I met with a classmate, and we went out to dinner (which, by the way, Dad, cost 530 yen; toljaso).

Then we met with another classmate, who wanted to go to a maid cafe, so I walked them over to a maid cafe and then ran like the dickens, because I did not want to pay 3000 yen for a glass of water. So instead I wandered around a lot of stores, and realized that while you can find Neon Genesis Evangelion and One Piece stuff wherever you turn, there is NEXT TO NOTHING for Durarara!! or Higashi no Eden. Probably because they're not as popular because they're weird.

Oh, but then I wandered into this store which turned out to be selling dojinshi.*** And there was half a floor devoted to Durarara!!, which would have made me happy, except that 99.9% of it was IzayaxShizuo. UM, NO. Hate =/= love, last time I checked. (The remaining 0.1% seemed to have no pairing...or were KidaxIzaya, WHICH MAKES EVEN LESS SENSE!)

So then my knee was killing me (I think I've just been walking too much this week, and it hasn't had time to heal, like it normally does) so I headed back to my hotel room, and that's where I am now.

I dunno where I'm gonna go tomorrow, other than the Tokyo Anime Center. Might wander around Akihabara a bit more, might go down to the 160 used bookstores in Kanda.... Hmm, decisions, decisions. If I have a LOT of time, I might try to go back to Ikebukuro and find that park (but it's 結構遠い).

Anyway, sleep time for me! G'night!

*Because Durarara!! is set in a real place in Tokyo (and named), many of the settings are based on real places. This is both because it's awesome to set an anime in a real place, and because a lot of the time animators don't want to double as architects and build a whole place from scratch. This has actually become a fairly common practice recently.

**I am very sad, because there has been a rash of Dollars sites, and they are all LAME and full of people typing in chat speak. C'mon, people! DOLLARS! The pinnacle of awesome!

***Fan-made comics. Usually porn.