Japan Trip 2010
Day Three

Concert day today! And here we have Chad squinting in the morning light.
Tokyo Dome City in the background on the right.

We walk by this river everyday, except on days we take the Metro line. It’s just beside the JR Suidobashi station.

The stairs in Japan have 1 line railings for people going up, and the rest for people going down. In Singapore we don’t need such things, because everyone just goes for the escalator and stands on the right.

It took me 3 days to realize the numbers beside the station was actually the number of minutes it took to get there, and not station numbers or something. xD

8.30 am. We’re heading to Ghibli Museum today, the studio that did Spirited Away.

I started wearing the old gloves I brought today, because I couldn’t feel my fingers after a while in the super cold wind. Then I realized there were holes in them. So un-glam! Time to add new gloves to my shopping list.

Chugging along to Nakano.

Trains here have overhead compartments to store your bags. Useful no?

Dress code for trains in the morning: black and beige.

Arrived at Nakano.

Had to change tracks to another line.

There were about 6 lines here. Got a bit lost.

I was snapping away while Chad did most of the ‘figuring out where to go’. xD

Found it eventually. The orange line to Kichijoji. 11 minutes!

Here comes our train.

Snapping random shots from the train…

Like these.

11 minutes later, Kichijoji!

So pretty! Looks like moms and their daughters.

Rather huge station. You could change to the KEIO line here as well.

Outside the station.

According to Chad, the park was 5 times bigger than the station. So as long as we walked in the right direction, we would eventually come across it.

So ok, we started walking!

More interesting covers.

Do not smoke while walking. You’ll kill the person walking behind you.

Cool shop front.

Check out the spider detail on the signage.

Sure enough, we reached the park!

More bald trees. Not blossomed yet.

Checking to see where the Ghibli Museum was.

It wasn’t listed on the map. mmm.

They had little wooden boxes to hold these maps for us to grab.

Parks are cold. Bought more hot cans to warm ourselves :D

Came across this red themed shrine.

Chad says his lens can’t capture the whole thing. Not wide enough!

I wasn’t too keen on shrines and temples, since we had our fill the last time we were in Kyoto.

I’m guessing the family here still uses it, although it has a ‘Don’t touch’ sign on it.

Family of Akita dogs belonging to the same residence as the well.

We walked in the general direction of the museum for a while looking for any thing that says Ghibli Museum.

Saved! 610 metres away! Shit that’s far.

Eventually we arrived!

Nice detailing on the sign~

Even on the gates.

Inside the gates. Everyone was taking photos with this huge ‘receptionist’ on the left.

Unfortunately, the tickets for the day was sold out. You can only get tickets at Lawson convenience stores. Should have gotten tickets the day we arrived. Didn’t know it was going to be so hard to get ._.|||

Chad’s plan to buy art books from the museum to resell for profit was ruined. So we pushed on to this park behind the museum.

To find a lone Sakura tree that thought it was time to blossom.

Standing under a pink tree was kind of strange…

But beautiful.

We found more blossoming trees beyond that one.

The pink flowers and blue skies made for great scenic shots.

Not 100% bloom, but nice!

We sat at this table for a while, taking in the scenery, watching people walk their dogs, kids picking up Sakura petals. So relaxing! No such park in Singapore. Would most probably sweat to death sitting in the sun.

On the way back to the station we saw this Kimono shop. Everything was hand made in there. The sandals alone costs thousands. :X

More strange flowers outside the shop.

Tribute to Studio Ghibli in their shop display.

The shop owner’s car. Max old school.

More cute signs along the main road.

Decided to catch a bus to Shinjuku from here.

See the guard there among the bicycles? His sole responsibility was to guard the bicycles! He paced up and down, looking over the bike contents while we waited for the bus.

No direct bus to Shinjuku, so we went back to Kichijoji station instead.

The bus we took. The roads and pavements were so narrow, I was like 1 feet from the bus when it drove by. Scary.

Deciding what to eat while exploring near the station. Chad hates salmon and ramen. That effectively ruled out half of Japan’s food.

More eating places. Some were closed, or didn’t look very appetizing.

This place looked interesting and cheap. So we ate here :D

Lucky they had photos on the machine. Could see what I was ordering. Was quite disturbed by the bald guy in sunglasses. I think he must be the boss.

Ordered the “Best Seller”.

Coupons from the place. Chad insists we should keep everything, although we will most probably never get to use them again.

Here’s how it looked inside. There’s a cartoon drawing of the bald guy on the staff’s shirt too.

This looked spicy.

Very, very rich soup, but it still doesn’t go overboard, unlike a certain ramen chain in Singapore. I don’t think Chad will have another bowl of ramen in the next few weeks. lol.

They had the most advanced toilet I’ve ever seen. When I stepped in the cover was closed, but opened automatically, and it had a green LED glow below. After you flush, the cover closes by itself again. Ooooo!

Shop exterior.

We dropped by this 7 floor MUJI.

Same boring pastel minimalist style things in the Singapore MUJI stores.

7 floors of beige.

Chad found this escalator graphic amusing. It says don’t hump the escalator.

Every area has their own unique floor, er, metal thing. This was just outside Kichijoji station.

Off to Shinjuku. I remember Chad saying in a few hours time we’ll be able to see Sayumi live in person! lol.

At Shinjuku station we couldn’t find the concert venue on the map.

Walked around for a long time, looking at other maps and WIFI hot spots to check Google earth. No luck! Neither of us remembered what the name of the hall was. Doesn’t say on the concert ticket.

We walked quite a distance, and was quite sure we were lost…

Before we spotted the concert venue on this map. Tokyo Koseinenkin Hall! It was well over 600m from the station. No wonder it wasn’t listed on the map. Out of range.

Relieved, and with a few more hours to kill, we walked around the area for some shopping.

Chad was still looking for his zoom lens, and me, maybe a spare battery. I decided not to buy in the end. $125 for a battery was argh!

Funny English signs.

Takashimaya, one of the largest departmental stores in Japan.

Everything inside was max high end.

And very expensive. So out we went. There was a supermarket on the ground floor though. We’ll most probably drop by again to get snacks for the folks back home.

Here’s just how big it was, from across a bridge.

Trains running under the bridge.

Chad said these were famously good. But the queue was insanely long, so we didn’t get to try any. Maybe next time. :]

Heading to Lumine, the next largest shopping place in sight.

There was a Lumine 1, 2 and 3. Much like the Parco superstore at Shibuya. Massive.

Bridge crossing into Lumine 2.

The same stuff inside Lumine as Takashimaya, so out we went. That’s Shinjuku bus station.

More linked shopping places. Shinjuku has the most number of large linked shopping centers.

Uniqlo mega store over there. We went back in later in the week.

Tired of international brands, we headed to Kabukicho, famous red light district in Japan.

Rows of host and hostess clubs mixed in with food places.

Chinese food!

I’ve never seen a shop use it’s wall as a menu…

Came across this. Apparently the Prison Break guy ate here before, and they put a picture of him out front. lol. Marketing ++

Deeper into Kabikicho.

Sleazy banners of all kinds.

There were pimps around every corner. Is that a gorilla?

Yes, doing a peace sign too. American club apparently.

This particular street was catered towards the female crowd. All host clubs.

Host rankings on massive billboards. These guys remind me of the people working in Shibuya 109-2.

Some of them most probably work as hosts at night.

Eventually made our way to the concert venue.

There were wotas outside, with huge mats of photos sprawled out for trade. Most of them were in their 30-40s. We did spot a few girls and teenage guys inside though.

I guess they started selling the merchandise early. Since the queue was a bit short. We joined in the queue…

And started to go through the list of things to buy for the other fans back home.

About S$400 and 2 re queues later, I got most of what everyone wanted. Chad couldn’t comprehend why I was doing this without charging any additional service charge for buying and bringing all of these stuff back to Singapore.

I couldn’t explain either. I just felt like helping and didn’t want to be so mercenary for once.

It was at this point that I realize Chad runs away from me when I carry Morning Musume stuff in public. lol!

Stopped by freshness burger to sort the random pin ups. Inside these A4 sized envelopes are random photos of the idols. After opening all 12 of them, only 3 of them wasn’t on the list to get. Had to go trade with the wotas camped outside. Never traded photos before. New experience.

Had some light dinner before the concert. This was, not good, compared to their burgers. Eww.

Went back after the meal to attempt trading with the wotas for the 3 photo sets. They were very friendly, and they seemed to all know each other. I only had to ask 1 person, and he went around to the other vendors to see who was willing to trade. Eventually I got what I wanted, save for the Lin Lin photo. Absolutely no one wanted to trade her photos. lol.

Waited around till about 5pm before they opened the doors for seating. They broke up the long, winding queue into batches, making sure not to obstruct the usual hall visitors, unlike Singaporean organizers.

We had 2nd row tickets, towards the left, marked in pink. The hall had 2062 seats, 2 floors, all sold out! They didn’t allow any cameras in the hall, the following shot was from my iPhone.

This was the view inside the concert hall. The 2 guys in front were in their 40s. The one on the left was a super Sayumi fan, and he had the largest pink light sticks I’ve ever seen. Think runway air traffic controller sized sticks. The one on the right was a Reina fan, decked out in blue. He was talking to everyone around him. He asked if we were coming for tomorrow’s concert as well. We said nope. Then he said to enjoy this one since we were coming for only one concert. ^-^

The concert was of course, nothing short of omgwtfspectacular awesome!
But it’s going to be a couple more weeks before they release more photos of the actual concert. Only managed to find these 3. The one we attended was the very first one of their 3 month tour. Will add on to this section once they release more photos.

This was about 9.30pm, after the 2 hour long concert. Hot and sweaty. Check out the hardcore Kamei fan in orange on the left. Yes most of the front row people looked like that.

I collected my cameras. There was this box where you could put in gifts and letters to pass to the idols. I didn’t know! Regret not preparing any letters in advance. haha!

Outside the concert hall. People were changing, milling about, discussions all round on the concert and the girls. You could tell who was a fan of who just by the colors they’re wearing.

Satisfied! I was in my standard 40th anniversary concert attire for this one. haha! :D
I regret not bringing any empty plastic bags to hold my wet T-shirts. Had to hold it all the way back to the hotel. xD

Some shots of the available concert merchandise.

Each singer had a specific color, so there were colored tshirts, towels, glow sticks and other coordinated stuff for you to show your support.

I bought this very bling bag just to put the concert stuff. My normal sling bag was overloaded. That was about it for today. Still suffering from concert high, I was planning on going for another one tomorrow. Chad was feeling a bit creeped out after the whole experience though. :]