Getting settled in Utsunomiya

We got up Monday morning, took the free shuttle bus back to the airport from the hotel, and used the money they gave us to buy bus tickets from there to Utsunomiya station.  My card didn't work at the ATMs, so we had to use Jamin's for everything big, and I'll have to pay him back when I get my card working.

Here is the first shot of Sky Tree from the bus.  It was pretty cloudy all day.

We arrived at the station a little before 1:00, and since we weren't supposed to meet up with Charlie until 4:30, we decided we'd walk there and take our time looking at things, eating lunch, and so on.  We briefly stopped at a large shrine along the main road.

Stairs up to the main part of the shrine.  It's pretty striking in the middle of a busy city street.

Jamin looking at the large torii in an open space in front of the stairs.

We climbed up some side stairs instead of the main ones, but they worked around to the same point.  There were a few different buildings up there, but this one seemed most interesting to me.

A long line of torii leading to a shrine that had a small table with offerings to a local god, I suppose.  It looked like a few people had left some food, including convenience store bread.

There were I believe four kitsune (fox) statues just outside the front doorway, three of which had red bandanas tied around them.

I didn't take many more pictures today, unfortunately.  It's mostly just been typical Japanese city streets, which I've photographed enough times in the past, I think.  However, Jamin and I spotted this as we were walking.

Somewhat unfortunate Engrish, though definitely not the worst I've seen.

The shrine didn't take too long to see, so we went the opposite way down a side street towards some castle ruins, I think.  The maps said that, but we didn't make it that far.  Instead, we saw a shopping arcade on Orion street and decided to walk through looking for food and interesting stores.  We stopped to eat at a Matsuya, where I got a "hamburg" steak (more like meatloaf) and egg meal, and Jamin got some gyuudon (beef bowl - beef on rice), to which he added a raw egg, stirring it in.  I've tried similar, but didn't care for the nearly raw egg, as you may recall if you read my blog from two years ago.

After the meal, we went to a store in the arcade that was all anime-based goods.  It was actually several stores in one building, each on separate floors.  We looked around for most of the remaining time there, but didn't end up buying anything.  I might go back later for something though.  They had lots of used figures for good deals, music CDs, DVDs, and a bunch of doujinshi and other books.  For manga, though, you can't beat Book Off's prices, so I didn't even look through them here.

As it was getting close to time to meet up, we left and walked the remaining two miles or so to the school where Charlie teaches.  I didn't have an actual map, so we were relying on reading the signs and talking to people to get directions.  We found what I was pretty sure was the school wall, and a teacher standing at a nearby corner, so I asked for directions to the specific area I wanted in order to confirm, and even though I was the one asking, he immediately turned to Jamin to respond.  The same thing happened when we talked to the crossing guard in front of the main gate, and, really, every time we've talked to anyone so far.  It's already getting a little annoying, but the real problem is that because he's here, everyone assumes he speaks Japanese and talks at full speed without enunciating, making it harder on me trying to actually understand.  I generally get it, though.  Just not used to hearing the language like that quite yet.  Well, I shouldn't say that.  Many people spoke to me as if I were fluent during previous visits (probably in hopes I was so they didn't have to worry about it).  But now that I've got an Asian with me, they assume I'm not.

We met Charlie outside the school, after giving up waiting for him inside because we weren't quite sure where inside we would see him.  I was actually surprised they let us in, but it was after class hours, with just the clubs still around, so I guess they weren't too worried.  By this point, it had started raining enough to warrant an umbrella, and that kept up for most of the rest of the day.

He led us down the street to his apartment, where we dropped off most of our things (including my camera) and took a short break before going out to the stores in the area.  We first went to a Hard Off/Book Off (same company, different types of products).  The Hard Off was for old hardware.  We got an ethernet cable to use with Jamin's mini wireless router he brought, and they also had a bunch of old games and game systems, really old CRT TVs, oscilloscope, and other cool stuff.  I ended up buying a cheap PS2 game (Memories Off Duet, a visual novel I know only by name), and a few random manga for practice later (one of which turned out to also be a currently-airing anime, which I didn't even realize until after I bought it because I didn't check the title).

After that, we stopped by the supermarket and got some groceries.  I mostly picked up non-perishables that I could eat for snacks and light breakfasts, and an old karaage bentou (fried chicken with rice and some small side dishes) for dinner.  We spent the rest of the evening talking and making plans for the next few days, and went to bed a little after midnight.

We're now waiting for our luggage to arrive.  Charlie left for work a few minutes ago.  As soon as we get our luggage, get cleaned up and repacked, then we're heading out to Tokyo for a few days to tour around Akihabara and Asakusa, possibly among other places.  I won't be bringing my laptop, so no more blog posts at least until we come back Friday night.

Wrapping it up, the last few days in Japan

Sorry this post has been so long in coming, but I'm finally going to wrap up the remainder of my trip to Japan.  So here you go.

Our first stop was the Docomo R&D facility.

We were allowed to take pictures inside, but they said for personal use only.  i.e., no posting to websites or showing people.  So... with restrictions like that, I didn't bother taking any pictures.

They actually had some pretty cool stuff in there.  For those who don't know, Docomo is Japan's leading cellular communication company.  Some of the stuff they showed us included an application for cellphone data analysis.  The phone companies track where each phone is at any given time, and therefore can tell how many people of what gender and age are in a given area at a given time of day (approximately.  Not everyone has a cellphone on them at all times).  They were showing how this can be used in city planning, and they're working to make it more readily available and useful to those in the government who could benefit from it to help with decision-making.  It's kind of a cool idea, and (unlike recent developments with phone companies back here in the US) they said that the data is purely an aggregate, so you can't really see who is where, just how many people and the general direction of movement.  It has potential as a quick mode of surveying the area to make building decisions.

That was a lot more detail than I intended.  They also showed us several new technologies in development.  I'm not really sure how much I'm allowed to say about them.  They're working on the next generation past 4G, which has speeds of up to 2GB per second (!), and should be widely available in Japan in about 2 years.  I'd assume something similar would be coming to the US sometime around then, too.  They showed a demo of that and said it's already functional, but the tower technology isn't yet placed around the country, so they can't release it.

They also showed us several new gadgets which are probably more secret, so I'll just give general info.  There was a device that transmitted sound through your bones into your ear instead of listening through a speaker.  It didn't seem to work that well for me.  There was a translator where you spoke in Japanese and it would write it out in English.  That's been done before, and it all depends on the quality of the translation.  There was something that could pick up trace body chemicals from your fingertips and breath (things you frequently use on a phone) and use that to monitor your health in various ways.  That one sounded really impressive, but the demo we saw in action was a little weak.

We also watched a whole bunch of videos showing the future potential of a lot of these technologies.  The first video was cool, but seemed pretty far-fetched, but then when they showed us how much they've already gotten done of what was in there, it made it seem like maybe it would actually work at some point.  Probably not for another 10-20 years, and not exactly like they showed, but still.

Alright, moving on.  Our next stop for the day was a fishing and farming village.  We got to pull up cages that were hanging over the edge of the docks, used to catch fish.  Two of them had octopi in them, and there were also a few fish, hermit crabs, and an eel.

One of the nets with its catches.

This octopus got out of the net and was trying to escape.  Everyone was taking pictures and watching it crawl across the gravel.  Lots of them (especially the girls I could hear) were talking about throwing it back in the water, but not too much later one of the fisher(wo)men killed it with a hook.  It wasn't very pleasant to watch.

A view from the docks towards the village.

And here's our octopus friend.  We had lunch in one of the buildings there, and it included some tempura (good this time), vegetables, seaweed, rice, and after a while, one of the octopi that had just been pulled up and cooked while we ate the rest of the meal.  I had one chunk of tentacle (they just cut it up with scissors...), and while it didn't taste bad, it was really hard to swallow.  Extremely chewy and rubbery.  And I'm sure knowing where it came from didn't help, either.

We then left the fishing village and went to Jougashima, a small, scenic island.

The town is built right up to the shore in some places.  It had lots of hills and plant life, too, so you could get a lot of nice views.

Looking down from near the top of one hill, upon which sat a lighthouse.

I always like staircases like this.  Long, curvy, and a little uneven.  Plus, one side has a wall of greenery the whole way down.  It's a pretty interesting place.

Some aloe vera plants, I'm pretty sure.  They were growing in a few patches here and there.

Everyone else beat my group to the shoreline, because we were taking pictures.

Not my idea.  The girl who doesn't like getting her picture taken likes taking pictures, and had us pose like this.  She liked that I was flanked by stripes.

I saw that natural bridge from all the way across the island and wanted to go there.  While we did get closer, we didn't have enough time to actually go all the way over.

Journeying through the foliage.

Emerging on another great lookout point.

There was a long, low bench near the cliff with a sign on it saying it was a glider observation point (in Japanese).  Two older men, probably at least in their 50s or 60s, were putting together gliders, and proceeded to fly them around for a while while we watched.

Building a stack of stones.  I've heard that there are some legends about stacking stones in certain shrines granting wishes or something.  Maybe that was just in an anime, but it sounds like it would be a genuine Japanese superstition.

Dinner that night was nice.  More western style.  I don't really remember where it was... but that's a long table, which is the real point of the picture.

 We got word that the trip to the Imperial Palace was canceled.  Instead we'd be going to the fish market.  Yeah.  Fish market.  So a few of us tried to go that night to the palace anyway.

Tokyo Station again.  A different part.  I say again, because I took a picture of a nearly empty Tokyo Station last time I was in Japan, too.  This one wasn't quite that empty, but close.  Shinjuku station is actually the busiest in all of Japan, I learned later, and that's the one that was right next to our hotel, which we took to get here.

We arrived at the palace gates, only to see them locked up with a couple police on guard.  Since I was the only one who really spoke Japanese in the group, I was tasked with talking to them and getting information.  It turns out that you can't actually see the palace from outside at all. :/ So we made the trip for nothing.

Well, we did get a few pictures, but it was really late at night, so it was hard to get anything clear.  This is much brighter than it actually was, because if I posted the picture that's closer to reality, you wouldn't really be able to see anything but a light gray blur.

We walked around for a while and discovered that the sidewalk running all the way around the palace grounds is really popular for joggers.  We met up with a bunch of Japanese college kids who were taking a break and all talked with them for a while.  They were training, one of them planning to run I think a 100km race in a day or two.  Whatever it was, it was ridiculously long.

And thus ends... whatever day that was.  Monday, May 27.

Tuesday, May 28

Our first stop was Mitsubishi Corporation, which does a whole lot more than just cars.  There we sat through a long and largely boring lecture on the company, and were given packets of info.  It sounded nice and all, but I think most of it went over most of our heads.  I'm not really sure why they thought that it would be a good idea to have us sit and watch so many business presentations on this trip.

Then they wanted to show off Tokyo Station, which I'd already been to several times.  But this time it was the front entrance.  That place must be huge.  I've never seen the same entrance twice.

The main entrance of Tokyo Station.

Tokyo is making a bid for hosting the 2020 Olympics, and there were lots of posters and signs everywhere promoting it.  I'd feel kind of bad if they lost after all that.

Lunch was... interesting.  Not good, but interesting.

We had lunch at a nearby restaurant, where they brought out a bunch of vegetables (probably cabbage, mostly) and cooked them on a plate in front of us.  I'm sure lots of you have seen these types of things, since we have them back here in the US, too.

After frying the vegetables, they made a donut shape, poured in some sauce, then mixed it up some more and flattened it out.  Then they left, and it never solidified past that, so we just kind of scooped it onto our plates and tried to eat it.

The first dish was pretty plain, and not that good.  Then they brought out some more, and this time there was curry powder with it.  And we were expected to cook it ourselves.  I did most of that one.  It tasted a lot better than the first, but still not that interesting, and there was just too much.  We were mostly feeling done already, when they brought...

Something that looked like a giant tongue.  It's actually a bunch of fish eggs, inside... something.  Egg sac?  Not really sure.  This one they cooked.

She did the vegetables like before, with the eggs sitting off to the side and not being cooked at all, until the end when she dropped it in the middle, chopped it into little tiny pieces, and mixed it all up.  We let it sit for quite a while after that, because no one really wanted to try first, and I don't think anyone was fond of the idea of almost-raw fish eggs, so we let it cook.  The red stuff was almost completely gone, whatever it was.  Instead, there were thousands of tiny eggs, about the size of a poppy seed, spread throughout the mixture.  We all tried some, but none of us really enjoyed it.  We left most of it there.  We weren't full, but after three not-so-good dishes, we'd all lost our appetites.

They brought two more sets of food, neither of which we even put on the grill.  I felt really bad for not eating it, but I couldn't take more of that cabbage stuff and the sauce.  The other tables were leaving heaps of food, too, but they all at least tried some of each.  One table actually managed to finish all five courses, but my friend there was obviously overstuffed and not too happy for the next hour or so.

Look familiar?

 Our next stop was back in Akihabara!  We only had about an hour 40 minutes to look around.  Nowhere near enough time to see everything.  I went around with my friends for a while, but eventually we split up and did shopping for our respective interests.  I bought a couple more games and an art book, then didn't have enough money or time to buy anything else.

Giant Vocaloid Nendoroid ad on the wall of the Sofmap store.  I think the big one is actually the fat, scary "Miku Dayo~" figure, but it's blocked so I'm not sure anymore.  Not sure why you'd want that.

Giant character art from one of my favorite artists, Kantoku.  I haven't watched any of the show it's advertising (Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko) but I always like Kantoku's style, so it made me happy to see it.

I just think it's funny there's a donut shop chain called Mister Donut.

After a depressingly short time in Akihabara, we moved on to Harajuku.  Well, I couldn't have bought anything else anyway, what with having only about 1000 yen left after everything else.  So I guess it's not that bad.  I only brought about $100 on the trip all together, so the fact that I managed to get everything I did is still impressive.

We are all chelsea.  I don't know who Chelsea is, but I assume it's that guy.  And now I'm him.  And you're him.  Everybody is him.

Looking down the street of Harajuku.  Once we got into the crowds, it was mostly girls talking excitedly and looking at all the shops, and guys ignoring everything around them looking straight ahead or talking with their friends.  Sounds like a typical shopping district.  Lots more girls than guys.

My friend fancied the fancy hat.  He didn't buy it.

Crepes are very popular in Japan, and if they actually looked anything like the displays I could see why.  My friend bought a strawberry cheesecake crepe, and it was pitifully small compared to the display.  Still, I had a tiny bit and it tasted alright.

Don't feed the shirts.  I actually thought this one was pretty clever.

Also clever, but...

Harajuku was basically a fashion mall, but I did manage to find a bottle of concentrated Calpis Water to bring back home, spending most of the little money I had left.  Much cheaper and lasts longer than getting individual bottles of the actual drink.

My group got bored with Harajuku after not very long, so we went to the nearby shrine.  At least, to the entrance.  The actual shrine was waaaaaay down the path somewhere off in the distance, and we didn't have time to go that far and back.

Illegal Disposal is forbidden!  Really?

And that's the end of that day.

Wednesday, May 29

The last full day in Japan.  We went to see a demonstration of kabuki dancing.  One man, supposedly a master of kabuki, but I don't remember his name, showed us a few sample performances, explaining the different motions and props as he went.  I studied kabuki back in fall semester in Japanese class, so most of it was pretty familiar to me.  He then had volunteers come up and join him in the performances, teaching them the steps.  I didn't end up going up, but probably about half the people there did.  He only did the female dances when the volunteers were up, for some reason.  In kabuki, both male and female roles are played by men exclusively.  So he showed us both types.

After that, we went to the fish market, an art museum, and a very small kabuki museum.  The fish market really wasn't that interesting, and the others had no pictures allowed.  The art museum was focused on the Japanese feeling of the four seasons, and how it's important to their culture.  I learned about that a couple semesters ago, too, but I saw it a bit more in depth in the museum than just what we talked about in class.  We mostly mentioned food and things, but it applies to a lot more than just that.  They seem to take it into every aspect of daily life, so the seasons are very important to them.  Having only been to Japan in the summer, that now makes me wonder what the other seasons would be like.

Outside the kabuki museum, my friends found a random store's mascot character and posed for a picture.  I've never heard of Gunma-chan before, but he had all sorts of merchandise inside the store.

Then we had the formal debriefing, where everyone talked about the things they learned and differences and similarities between the countries, and all that.  It was nice, but nothing I can really write about here.

Then, our last dinner.  We went to a restaurant near the hotel, and had nabe.  Well, I think that's what it was.  They never called it by that name, but it was Japanese hot pot at least.

Each table (for six) had two pots of boiling water, and a few plates of beef and pork, along with a bunch of vegetables.

We put in all the vegetables and meat, let it cook (it only took a few seconds, really), and pulled it out and ate it.  This meal was absolutely delicious!  I would have loved to have more of it, but I think it was probably pretty expensive.  They must have saved the best for last.  I left still a little hungry. :(

After the meal, one of my friends was trying to get rid of all her remaining yen, and really wanted to go to karaoke.  So a couple of us went along with her.  It was better in some ways than my first trip, but harder without a native-level reader to use all the controls.  I ended up having to figure out how to work everything, and we lost some time because of that.  Still, with only three people, we each got to sing quite a bit.  All in all, not too bad of an experience, but I wouldn't have considered it worth paying for (she paid for all of us).

We then spent a while looking for a suitcase for her, since she had bought too much stuff to fit into her original one.  We found a small bag in a clothing store, then thinking that would have to suffice stopped looking and I led everyone into a game store where I wanted to look around.  And lo and behold, at the back of the store, a corner for luggage.  To be fair, the store had more than games, but we were on the game and movie floor, and the luggage was completely out of place.  Interesting setup.

The next morning, we all gathered bright and early, around 7 am (after having an even earlier breakfast) with all of our luggage and departed for the airport.  I spent almost the whole trip home watching movies, including Wreck-it Ralph (first time, good movie), The Dog of Flanders (first time, good but kind of sad), The Hobbit (second time, awesome), and I think there might have been something else.  I didn't sleep at all.  I did try reading some of the manga I bought, and made it about a third of the way through one of the books with the help of my phone dictionary.

Flying over Alaska, or thereabouts.

It was a great trip.  I'd love to return to Japan again someday.  I might even try to make it an annual or biannual thing if I can afford it, but that might be pretty hard.  I'd really like to see it in the other seasons, though, and explore more of the countryside.  Maybe go up north in the winter, where there's tons of snow.  Stuff like that.  Anyway, those are adventures for another day.  For now, I'll have to be content at home in the summer heat of Virginia.

Thanks for reading.  I doubt I'll be posting much more to this anytime soon, but hey, you never know.

Chinatown, Cup Noodles, and Culture Festival

Yesterday, after breakfast at the hotel, we moved to the Yokohama prefecture government office (essentially like a state government building).  There, we learned about the area more specifically, including a long but interesting and enthusiastic presentation from a tourism department representative.  It was kind of interesting to get to see inside, and the workers there were formal but not unapproachable, which was nice.

We were let out onto the roof again.  More places in America need to let you do that.

Everyone on the roof.

There are three towers in the city that foreigners nicknamed King, Queen, and Jack.  The government office has the King tower, and from that building we were able to see the other two:

The Queen tower, as seen from the roof of the King.

The Jack from a skybridge in King.

And the King itself from the front.

 On the way to lunch, we passed a cool monument with mirrored pillars.

The tourist official was a pretty fun guy, and he led us to Chinatown, where we ate.

One of the gates of Chinatown.

Cute hedgehog buns and other treats.

Our dinner at the restaurant was corn soup, rice, and, pictured above, mabodofu/maaboudoufuu.  I can't say I understand why Kanade (Angel Beats) likes it so much, but I can understand why everyone else thought it was super spicy.  I didn't particularly care for it, but I don't really like tofu.

After lunch, we were free to explore Chinatown.  I went around to a few shops with a large group, but when several of them decided to go to "Doctor Fish" and have them eat the dead skin off their feet, I decided to move on on my own.

Doctor Fish at work.

You don't usually see black ice cream.  This one is black sesame flavor, apparently.

 I was thinking about buying some little animal figurines that I found at one of the shops, because they looked really cool and I thought they could add to my family's collection, but they were way too expensive.  $30-40 for a 2-inch mouse carved of some sort of black stone.  They had jade and gold figures, too.

We walked past the other side of the monument that we saw on our way over, and I found out it was for the Japan-America Treaty of Amity and Friendship.

Bluegrass Bus - Traveling in Style.

Our next stop was the Cup Noodle museum.  At first, I was thinking this would be kind of a waste of time, especially when I walked in and the first room was literally empty except for a massive staircase and a giant inflatable Cup Noodle cup.  It ended up really being a museum to innovation, telling the story of how the noodles were invented and each of the major additions over the years, and relating that to how people can work to come up with all sorts of new things.  It also had some of the most creative displays I've seen in a museum, but the whole thing was pretty short overall.

This was my favorite room.  It used the miniature trees and various lights, some on tracks, some still, to show a whole short movie in shadows on the wall, with words scrolling by for narration and everything.  It was really impressive.

That's going to take a while to clean up.

They had one of those trick perspective rooms.  This is the first time I've seen one in person, I think.

Switching sides.

While my favorite exhibit was the shadow room, my favorite activity was definitely making our very own instant ramen from scratch.

The workroom.  We all put on bandanas and aprons and sat through instructions before getting to work.

We got to mix the dough, shape it, run it through the flattening machines, and cut it into strips.  It was pretty fun.  Then we watched them deep fry the noodles (which is how they dry them to be preserved and ready for instant rehydration) and they gave us the exact ones we worked on in bags that we drew on and labeled ourselves.

My finished product.

They also gave us a normal bag, I guess in case the ones we made didn't turn out well, or just to compare.

Then, on to dinner.

Dinner that night was at a karaoke place, but we didn't actually get to do karaoke.

This was definitely the weirdest dinner yet.  Since it was a karaoke place, they didn't actually have much real dinner stuff.  We got some sort of fish/daikon salad (with the little white eel-like fish that I can't stand), pizza, breadsticks, fried chicken bits, onion rings, and pudding topped with coffee (which I had one bite of before realizing what it was and giving it to someone else).  They were served in that order, with a good 5-10 minutes between each dish, and in rather small amounts.  Very strange meal.  For drinks, we had orange juice, some sort of brown soda (Coke or whatever), and... cold coffee.  I didn't know that was a thing, but no one willingly drank that that I saw.

For the rest of the night, several of us went to the mall, which was basically like any normal mall in the US.  This one wasn't geared towards tourists at all, which the others we've been to have been.  I still found something I liked though, and ended up buying a cheap K-On! Azusa figure.  Actually, it's in the same set as the Yui one I bought last time I was in Japan.

Today, we went to Nihon Minka-en, an outdoor museum of all the different old Japanese house styles for the past few hundred years.  They actually moved real houses to the museum area, and let you walk around inside most of them.  We also had a fairly fluent tour guide, an older man who obviously knew all about and loved the houses.  It was a pretty interesting tour.

Various tools used to make the houses.  Rather than nailing the pieces together, they would fit like an interlocking puzzle, so pieces could be replaced as necessary, and in this case transported more easily to the museum.

The roofs of several houses.  You can see thatched, ceramic tile, and stones on wood shingles.  The stones hold the wood in place.

This was outside the samurai's house.  Water runs into the bamboo stalk, and when it fills up, it tips, pours it all out into the pond, and falls back into place with a light clatter.  I've heard that it was supposed to keep away small animals and such.  Not sure if that's true.

This was probably the most interesting house.  Commoners weren't allowed to have houses over a certain size, and weren't allowed to use straight wood for their beams in the roofs (that was reserved for the samurai class).  Whoever built this house cheated the system as much as possible.

In order to have a larger house, he built two right next to each other and opened the wall in the middle.

A fire burning on the inside, with a pot hanging from the ceiling.  These were on adjustable-length poles so that the heat level could be controlled.

The second cool thing about the cheating house: those not-straight beams are awesome.  He had a real eye for it, and managed to turn what was supposed to be a disadvantage into a really impressive and elegant addition to his home.

Some of the thatched roof styles used plants - specifically Japanese irises - on the top to hold the thatching in place.  This swampy area is growing those irises, presumably for use on the houses in the museum.

After the Minka-en, we got to do something I never thought I'd actually be able to experience.  We went to a school culture festival.

We returned to Yokohama National University for their Seiryo Festival.  They don't have any school events even close to this in the U.S.  All sorts of clubs had stands set up selling food, and there were lots of events happening all day all over the place.

One of the first areas of the festival, lined with stalls on one side and packed with people on the other.  These things are a big deal.

One stall was using anime to advertise.  In particular, the poster on the right is the most popular current-season show, Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan), which I immediately recognized.  They're selling curry rice.

We went to see some a capella performances.  Apparently, it's a pretty big thing at this school, because there were a few dozen different groups scheduled to perform throughout the day.  We stayed for just a few of them.  The first one was doing some English songs that I was vaguely familiar with.

In another building, I found acoustic guitar performances and listened to a couple of those, including one of my favorite songs, "One More Time, One More Chance", which was used in 5 Centimeters Per Second.  He did a decent job, though clearly not as good as the original.  I still mouthed all the words along with him.

I found a guy dressed up as Hatsune Miku (no picture), and then later a girl dressed as... Kaito?  I think?  But if so, it was a weird version of him.  Anyway, I got a picture.

The next big event we saw was a martial arts demonstration.  They showed a few moves as normal for these things, punching and kicking at the air, but then they went into a short series of actual sparring matches, which were really fun to watch.

This picture was after those, when they were doing choreographed throws, demonstrating various defensive techniques.

Other than the real spars, I think my favorite part was when they were showing how to defend against knife attacks.  One person would use a wooden knife to stab at the other, who would dodge, grab some part of the attacker, and throw them down, sometimes also disarming them in the process.  At the end, they also had some two-on-one fights, which I'm not sure if they were choreographed or not.  The club leader took on one knife-wielder and another member at the same time, constantly knocking both of them down.  So I guess martial arts like that can be used in more than one-on-one fights, but you rarely see it for real.

They also had a live rock concert on stage after a while, but it was too loud for my tastes, so I didn't stay there long.

Eventually, it was time to go, and we went to dinner at the same karaoke place again.  This time, it was a bigger room, and we actually got to do a bit of singing towards the end.  I didn't, because time ran out, but others did.  The food was also better proportioned and made more sense this time, and was served mostly all together.  Slightly different dishes.

After dinner, most of the others went to a small amusement park by the lake and Cup Noodle museum, but I decided to head over to a Book Off I had located (by asking the person at the hotel desk) and buy some manga.  I'm not really into roller coasters, and while the ferris wheel is huge, I've ridden in them before, and already seen the city several times from high up.  And I think that's most of what the park had, so I wasn't really interested.

I ended up buying a few random manga again, along with a few old Playstation 1 and 2 games: To Heart 1 & 2 and Valkyrie Profile (only 500 yen!).  I figure owning a Japanese version of VP gives me at least a reasonable claim to be able to play a translated copy on my computer rather than having to buy it used from someone for over $100.  And maybe I'll eventually learn enough to actually play the one I bought, too.

This entry took way too long to write.  Gotta go to bed; it's already after 1 a.m. here.  Tomorrow's our last full day here, and therefore my last entry before I go home next Thursday.  Coming up in tomorrow's post: zen meditation.