Launching Over Japan

I can finally get down to some serious blogging again now that holidays are wrapping up. So where did I end up going on January 1st? First of all I went on the Shinkansen to Nagano. What a nice little town. Here are some pictures:

Downtown Nagano.

Everything was Closed!

At Nagano Station.

After I discovered that everything was closed, I got back on the train at headed to Tokyo for more fun. I walked around all afternoon, got tired, got a hotel and went to sleep. The next day was Emperortastic. We got let in the imperial palace with about 20000 other people and I got the closest I will ever get to the emperor of Japan. Yes, that’s right. When you write letters and send them to, “Dear Japan”, they go to this guy.

Nice Horse!

Flags getting in way of emperor!

That’s bullet proof glass of course!

He spoke for 30 seconds and that was it. But he only makes an appearance twice a year, and I got to see it. Not bad at all. Afterwards we walked through the palace grounds and took some cool pictures:

Me, James, Melissa and Baby!

Cool guard tower!

James James, Melissa and Baby.

Will finish this entry later..

Okay, I’m back. So let’s continue with this entry. After the short and inspired speech by the EMPEROR OF JAPAN, we headed off to lunch. I had myself some yummy curry and rice. James Stone suggested a trip to Akihabara, the heart of electronics shopping in Tokyo. So off we went, on the old Yamanote line. I made a comment that trainspotting the Yamanote would get boring rather quickly. Since it comes every 4 minutes and looks exactly the same time. “Look there it is. Look there it is again!!”

This was my first visit to Akihabara, and I must admit, I got the shock of my life when I got out of the station. Look and see….

It’s the Mecca of all that is sacred in the world.

You will not see this in Edmonton.

There are two places that I will mention. Kbooks, which is the homeland for all that is Anime and Manga. I almost died when I went here. You can find anything. Anything! I need to spend more time in this area of Tokyo. After that we went out for dinner and then headed back to James and Melissa’s house in Gunma-ken. I got to sleep there, and in the morning I headed out back to Senmaya.

Warning: If you are going from Tokyo to anywhere past Sendai, take the bullet Train. Do not take the local trains. Why? I had to change trains 5 times, and then take two buses for a total travel time of 10+ hours. In the future I will take the bullet train. I will never, ever do that again.

So that in a nutshell was my trip to Tokyo for New Year’s. I’m off to Tokyo again for Anime Expo Tokyo on the 16th, so I’ll try and update again at that time. I’m off for now. Take care everyone!