wyred dot nu

Breakfast at McDonald’s! Haha

I had planned to visit Fuji Mountain today. But because my colleague, who had just went to Japan about half a year before me for his honeymoon, told me that I must visit Hakone if I like quiet and serene places, and that Hakone was just south-east of Fuji mountain. Thus, I went there instead.

Using my JR pass, I had access to some of the shinkansen lines and I took one down to Odawara, which if I remember correctly, is a 50 minute journey from Tokyo.

From there, I took another train up north to Gora. Here, I bought a ticket that brings me around some of the places in Hakone.

I didn’t expect a lot of tourists to visit Hakone. How wrong I was. :(

First part of the journey is taking a cable car. It was a long wait. Then the ropeway, which is just another cable car ride through the hills. I enjoyed this part the most because I got to sit down. My feet was still aching from previous days.

大文字(Daimonji)

As my cable car passed through this area, there was a brief weird smell which I assume, is the smell of sulfur.

Fuji Mountain!

The cable car ride ends at Togendai. Here, I bought a hot chocolate drink and some “mochi” for my friends and myself. There were good. Very good. (*´д｀*)

The final part of the sightseeing in Hakone involves taking this fancy ferry across Lake Ashi.

Pirate ship!

When the ride ended Hakone-machi, it was almost time for sunset again. While waiting, I had some nice hot takopachi.

Fuji Mountain… again!

After that, I took a bus ride down back to Gora while having a short nap. From there, the way back is the same as the way I came here.

Back in Asakusa, I went to this small conveyor-belt sushi restaurant for dinner. Had like 10 plates of sushi. I remember the bill was around 1500yen.

My legs are aching! ( >_<)

But that didn’t stop me from sightseeing in Japan! ヽ(｀Д´)ノ

Today, I planned to visit Nakano Broadway, which I learned from Danny Choo’s post that it was another otaku heaven. Check his post for many photos which I didn’t take.

From Asakusa, I took the train to Ueno. Before I took the next train to Nakano, I decided to explore the park there.

Shinobu Lake

Then to Nakano Broadway.

Along this long corridor to NB, there was a family restaurant called Lotteria. I had my breakfast here. The burger had a half-cooked egg which I loved.

The taste of liquid yolk and meat. ヽ(´―｀)ノ

The first 1 or 2 floors were normal shops, 3rd and 4th had a lot of anime-related shops. There’s also quite a few costumes for cosplayers. Mandarake had quite a few shops here too, and they also have a few more on the 4th floor which are used as storage rooms.

After that, I headed down to Sunshine City. I wanted to take a look at Otome road, which I thought was somewhere along the way, but I probably took the wrong path as I didn’t see any female-oriented shops along the way.

There was a tower here, around 60 storeys tall. On the 60th floor was an observation deck where I spent most of my time hanging around. Then I remembered Japan’s early sunset so I spent about 2 hours here.

I chose a seat where I can see the sunset and it just so happens that Fuji mountain was also in the same direction. I had spaghetti for lunch and had orange tea while reading a Haruhi novel on my PSP.

Halfway through, there was a commotion from some of the children and they were running around. Looking out the windows, I saw a blimp and it circled around the building before it floated away.

Then came sunset. A woman in her 40s sitting on the table next to mine had a mug of beer ready and already basking in the orange light from the setting sun. You could see the shape of Fuji mountain clearly. I had my digital camera filming the sunset as I stared blankly at the scene.

After it was over, I set off for Tokyo Tower. I didn’t go up the tower, just walked around the area to see it. My feet was aching badly so after a look, I went back to my hotel to rest.

Though I’m getting used to everything here in Japan, on my way back to the hotel, I felt lonely and homesick all of a sudden. And when "Dango Daikazoku" (Clannad ED song) started playing on my discman, it only made the feeling worse… (´・ω・｀)

I slept from 1am to 9am. Had my morning coffee and went out to meet Z. He’s accompanying me around a few places today too.

We were meeting at Tobu Asakusa Station, near my hotel. There are 2 more stations at Asakusa area which was what confused me at first.

I wanted to visit the Tokyo Big Sight. An exhibition center where many doujinshi/cosplay events are held. It took us an hour of train rides to get there. I still can’t forget this beautiful Japanese girl with short hair who was standing in front of us on the train to Big Sight.

On the right side, that’s the Fuji Television building.

Earlier, I had looked up Big Sight’s website and noticed the 2 events held today, Comic City and a cosplay event. First, we went to take a look at Comic City at the East hall. I don’t know if it’s just me but I noticed most of the artists there are females. I was given a catalog when I paid for the entrance fee. Perhaps I’ll check it out when I’m free.

We tried to look for any FFXI related doujins but sadly, there weren’t any. We left shortly for some nice hot takoyaki outside in the cold. Till now, I still miss the cold weather there.

We went to the West hall next, there was a huge cosplay event going on inside, but we didn’t go in as I didn’t want to make Z pay for the entrance fee for something he doesn’t have interest in anymore. Just looking in from the outside was good enough for me.

We then left for Meiji Shrine. There’s some celebration going on, I think it was the 3-5-7? So the area was pretty crowded. The road in was of granite rocks. Here at the shrine, I bought a small "omamori" charm, for good health of mind and body. There were many other different charms like love, fortune and traffic safety.

3-5-7 is a festival for young children, so you can see a lot of them dressed in colourful clothes.

A wedding ceremony was also carried out on that day! Lots of people were watching as the newly wed couples walked slowly.

Next we visited the inner gardens. I was expecting to see lots of flowers but sadly, they were gone. According to Z, it was the wrong season for flowers.

The inner gardens of Meiji Shrine

We headed to Shibuya for dinner at an unagi(eel) restaurant. Delicious :D

After dinner, he had to start heading back home. So I went exploring Shibuya on my own. Shopped for CDs at Tower Records and had coffee at StarBucks.

From the second floor of this StarBucks restaurant, you can see the train station and a crossroad in between, you can see lots of people walking around.