Monday, January 5, 2009

Kichijoji and Hard Off again (important note at the end)

Today, I went to Kichijoji yet again. You my notice I go there a lot. It's because it's close and I like it. Also a lot of my friends like to hang out there. We went to this delicious Thai restaurant called Peppermint Cafe. They have a lunch special for 980 yen you get an entree, a salad bar, unlimited rice, and unlimited soup and for 200 yen more you get drinks (iced/hot coffee, orange juice, apple juice) and dessert. The entree was good but not great, but the salad bar was delicious and one of the two soups was incredible. I'm not sure how many bowls I had, but it was one too many.

After that, my friends and I went to Lush, a cosmetics store. Everyone besides me and Monchi is a girl. I got a chance to take a picture of Monchi but they told me to stop, because apparently you can't do that in Lush.

Monchi was wearing his new suit. It kinda blended with the background. Hopefully, you will see a lot more of Monchi in the future.

After Lush and a bit of walking, we saw a marching band randomly in front of a department store. Apparently it was the 35th anniversary, but I wasn't sure if it was the 35th anniversary of that store or the company, as that building does not look 30 years old.



After they finished, someone contacted me about a find at Hard Off yesterday. As I said, Hard Off is a used electronics store in the outskirts of Mitaka (and many other places). The find was a HUGE TV for 3150 yen (about $35). They said it worked but was a little odd, but for a price like that, it's hard to beat, so we got it and brought it back home.

It worked but it sure was odd. At first, occasionally the sides would discolor and then return to normal for seemingly no reason. It's the same type of discoloration you get when a magnet gets near a TV, but it kept correcting itself after it happened. Then after watching it for a while it seemed to stop doing that. Even so, 3150 for a TV that big with an odd glitch like that, it's still a good deal.

And that box on top... That's an "AU box", which I don't fully understand, but it plays DVDs and TV. The TV comes straight from the internet, but looks flawless, so I'm wondering what the deal is. Is it TV over IP or just some odd modified cable style setup? Anyways, besides a 2 second lag when changing channels it works fine. Apparently the AU box also allows you to 'rent' movies, get pay channels and something when you hook up an AU phone. Since there wasn't an AU phone (mine's Softbank) we couldn't test that out. Anyways, it was working fine as is.


Important note:
Today I also bot a 18きっぷ(kippu) or 18 ticket. What that means is it's 5 days of unlimited JR train usage. It's called 18きっぷ because when you turn 18, that winter you are supposed to travel. With this I intend on going to Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Nagoya, and places in between. What this means to you, my readers, is first off I'm going to have a lot of odd stories to post. Secondly, I might not post much between the 6th and the 12th, as I'll be busy doing things. This trip is a large part of why I bought my new camera, so you can bet I'm going to take a lot of pictures.

I'm really excited about this trip, as I really don't leave the Tokyo metropolitan area very often. It may not look so on a map, but Japan is a huge country and there is a lot to see out there. I'm really excited that I get this opportunity to do this. A few more things are the 18きっぷ lasts between December 10th and January 20th and costs 11,500 yen, or about $125. I can use any JR train, but if I use a shinkansen (bullet train) or special train, I have to pay extra. What this means in reality is a one way trip to Osaka is going to effectively cost me 2300 yen ($25) when a single express train ride would cost 14,460, or over $150. Of course, the trip will take around 8 hours instead of 3, but even 8 hours on local trains would cost me about 9000 yen.

Anyways, to make a long story short, I'm going on a trip, I might not right much, and it's hardly costing me anything for transportation.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow! I don't check your blog for a week and you've been updating everyday! :)


Happy New Year!

Keith said...

Yeah, I've been trying to get better about posting. No more epic essays that take forever to write with a million photos and plenty of small posts with a few pics.

Happy New Year to you and everyone who reads this!