In Nagoya, that's where.
Seriously, I travelled through Nagoya twice over the last week and both times it was a veritable winter wonderland, but you get into the city boundaries and, oh! It's spring!
I want it to snooow!!
So, where did we get up to last time? I think I'd done Christmas day, right? I guess that means the next thing on the list is the family visit. I was down at the station bright and early on Sunday to await their arrival. It was chilly, but not cold, y'know? If it was cold maybe I would have felt a little more Christmassy... Sorry, I'm labouring a point.
First lunch, though for the poor guys it felt more like dinner, here in Japan was a firm favourite of mine: inarizushi and kitsune udon. But jet lag, and not the friend of unfamiliar eating techniques, did rear its ungly head and despite valiant efforts it was not a wholly appreciated meal. No matter, there were lots of times to try Japanese food, and plenty of cheap Italians if that didn't work out.
Let me see, what did we do first? Well, obviously first came checking in to the hotel which, let me tell you, was posh-central. I mean, it had its own waterfall! The rooms were pretty standard, I thought, but you did get a lot more channels on the TV than Shugakukan gets. There was even a golf channel. Talk about high-class entertainment, eh?
So for a first day's activity we went for a stroll around the nearby areas of Shijo and Sanjo, via Teramachi. Didn't really do much but wander that day, as everyone was pretty tired by everything that had happened and were more than happy to just look at stuff for an afternoon or sit in a Starbucks. Dinner at Saizeriya (I knew it...) and an early night.
I've just wracked my brains for about 10 minutes and cannot for the life of me remember what we did on Monday. Sleep, most likely. But Tuesday did actually involve doing something, and that something was a trip back to Fushimi Inari. Skipping out the fiasco of my inability to buy tickets properly (stress of having an audience, I swear) the trip turned out to be very good, even if there was not a cat to be seen the whole time. Maybe they had all gone to Ueno to hang with that cat biker gang I was told about. Regardless, everyone was suitably impressed with the tori and the subsequent view of Kyoto, even if climbing a small mountain doesn't do much to help the recovery of jet lag. Dinner at Capricosa (not even surprised...) and an early night.
Wednesday was a proper shopping day, which left Andy and I to wander about Teramachi for 6 hours, with me showing him the shops that I love and him managing to find reasons to dislike each one. He wasn't impressed with Yellow Submarine, wasn't impressed with ABC Mart, wasn't impressed with SofMap, nor with Kinji... He was impressed with Book Off, but it did shatter his dreams of finding a cheap manga to take home as a show-off-to-my-flatmates present, as the choice is just mind-boggling. Oh, he wasn't impressed with Steam Detectives, either. What he did do, though, was find me a clothes shop called Right On that does some pretty excitingly cheap clothes, and also beat me in one of our two games of Tank! Tank! Tank!, which is still a stunning game. I want to fight those giant buildings, though, the ones on the intro!
Thursday was New Year's Eve, if you remember, and so we decided to do something cultural. Arashiyama's bamboo forest is certainly very spectacular, even after already seeing it once, though I think I prefer it at night. Green tea ice cream is also just as good a second time. That night we planned on finding a shrine and witnessing a Japanese New Year, so with a recommendation from the hotel we set off in search of Mibu Shrine just a little way from Shijo. It took us a while, but we did find it in the end. We didn't get our supposed free sake, though...
And now it's 2010. Good stuff, eh?
Friday saw us attempting the impossible with a trip to Nara to see the big shrine gatherings for the New Year. The train was eerily quiet that day, but we were reassured when we arrived in Nara proper and saw the crowds, many equipped with arrows, symbols of good fortune. The deer were nicely tame that day, as well; almost too tame, I found when I attempted to get rid of the last of my deer-sembei and got mugged by the things. Seriously, the number of people was pretty staggering, hundreds of them lined the streets and queued at the more popular food shops. There was also a sighting of the first 'Happy Bags' of the year; bags of unsold stock that shops sell off at random to people willing to pay a bit less than the retail price. I got a BB gun that doesn't really work and a Stitch-themed notebook. Not a bad haul, I thought.
Saturday was Osaka day, and another day of swimming through a sea of people, this time shoppers. First port of call was obviously the Pokemon Center, where I picked up another gift for Louise and got really excited. There was a New Year thing going on here, as well, and in a Crystal Dome-style challenge I won myself an Entei keychain whilst the family watched with a mixture of pride and concern. Andy was keen to explore the Umeda area, so we seperated and went off in different directions. Mum, Dad and I went to the highly recommended Den Den Town, the supposed 'Akihabara of Kansai' and home to Gundam shop. And WOW is that place incredible!
Can you see it? It's the one with the giant Gundam painted on the side! I was *this* close to buying a ZAFT Uniform, but instead settled for a Super Gundam (Master Grade) and Geara Zulu (High Grade). The shop also had an actual size fist of a Gundam punching through the wall, which was superbly impressive, but unfortunately came with a sign that asked me to not take a picture of it. Tch. Other highlights of Den Den included Kid's Land, an 8-storey shop of all things kid's might conceivably want. Action figures, models of pretty much everything, RC vehicles, t-shirts with slogans from anime on them, a whole floor of frighteningly realistic BB guns... it was spectacular.
On Sunday we set off for Tokyo, and I'm actually going to leave that for a second post, as this one's getting pretty long and I feel like splitting the two trips up.
Thanks for reading.
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