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.

Inokashira park again

I went back to Kichijoji and Inokashira park, ate some ramen and had a nice day. The ramen shop was a tiny one down this odd street I don't go much (by WEDsday English cafe. That's not a typo) and the ramen was delicious but the music was almost painful. Just really wacky annoying odd shit. It was humorous for a bit, but it got old fast.

Anyways, I really just want to share some pictures of Inokashira in the winter.

This is on the way to Kichijoji from my house and still technically in Mitaka, I think.

Here's a nice shot of the shrine in the park.

Here's a different angle of the lake.

Yeah, these shots aren't in chronological order. Give yourself a pat on the back if you noticed that. Blogger changed how the order of how you upload things and it's frustrating me because I was used to the old style.

Here's the temple from another angle.

Here was an odd beverage that I've never seen before.

Make of that cartoon character what you will. I'm just impressed with the macro mode of my camera. The preview looked terrible but the end result was nice.

And I'll leave my last post of 2008 with an HDR shot of Inokashira.




Happy new year everyone!

Festival in Mitaka

Right now I'm organizing my photos. Since I've been fighting with blogger to upload photos easily, (Dear Blogger staff: Your photo uploading is obnoxious, and why can't I just stick things in Picasa straight on to blogger? You can blog from Picasa, why not the other way around?) I've been looking at all the photos I didn't write about.I'm not going to say much, but there was a huge festival in Mitaka on September 13th and 14th.

I have written about some festivals in the past and I've been to a lot more. What makes this one special is it was literally right on my street. It was pretty crazy watching it go by right in front of my house. There are tons of pictures here and some pictures from Kichijoji here, which is one train stop away.

I shot some videos with my camera, and they are of a big drum that was rolling around town:

Festival in Mitaka: Giant Taiko. from Keith McCreary on Vimeo.
It was really loud and could be heard several, several blocks away.

There was also a dance performance at the shrine really close to my house.

Festival in Mitaka: Dance performance. from Keith McCreary on Vimeo.

It was a lot of fun. Check out the galleries for more pictures, but here are two that I'm quite proud of.

Hanami

At the end of March and beginning of April in Tokyo is Hanami season. Hana means flower and Mi is to see, so hanami literally means flower viewing.

Hanami involves going to a park and hanging out with friends, snacking, and most importantly drinking.



It's quite a popular activity, to the point that Japanese businessmen sometimes skip out on work to enjoy hanami. Also, every major park is quite crowded.

Like everyone else, I took a ton of pictures. The first ones I've shown you were from Yoyogi park. There were a LOT of foreigners in Yoyogi. I'd say maybe 1/5 of the people in the park were non-Japanese, which is a really high percentage. The weather was nice on Saturday, March 29th. I drank quite a bit that night, and had quite a blast.

The following day it rained. I took some time to walk down to my local park and took some pictures on the way.


While it was cloudy, Inokashira was nice and quite crowded.

The entire park was completely full. I've never seen it even close to that busy.



Kichijoji was crowded as well. I felt like my neighborhood was all of a sudden the popular hang out.


During the week, I took some pictures around town. This was outside the window of my school.

On April 2nd, I took some time to take some more pictures at Inokashira, since it was a much nicer day.









The following Saturday, I returned yet again to take some pictures. It was really lovely and delightful despite how crowded it was. Everyone seemed to be having a great time.



This is a snack called Dango, which is a sweet snack made of rice cake and is quite like mochi. Mine was miso flavored, and quite delicious.

Here is the shrine by my house. It was best during hanami, no question.

Even the turtles were enjoying the day.

I've seen one or two turtles, but never this many.









On Sunday, April 6th, I went to a Fertility festival, which I found sadly a bit disappointing. Later on, I headed up to Wakoshi in Saitama to hang out with my friend. She took her to a park close to her house and it was unbelievable.

Unlike Inokashira or Yoyogi, the park in Wakoshi was practically empty. Also, it was the most gorgeous one during Hanami. Don't get me wrong, Yoyogi and Inokashira were both amazing, bu they were city parks. This was much more of a suburb park and less dramatic, but more open.

I also liked this scooter.




The typical "to prove I was there" picture. My hair and jacket are much shorter now.



As you can see, it's almost barren. It's only about 25 minutes outside of Ikebukuro and almost completely deserted.


I was a bit shocked at how some people, especially the women, dressed for going to the park.

After that day, all the cherry blossoms had fallen which basically ended hanami. It was quite a moving experience, and even though I was busy almost every day with school, I'm really glad I made time to see what I could.

This last picture was a building in Ikebukuro I saw while changing trains. It's quite unrelated, but I really like it.