Day 7 - 10 - Our Somewhat Successful Trip to Tokyo Part Deuce

So after going to sleep pretty late (about 3:30AM) I woke up a few hours later at about 7:00AM, a tad later than my planned 6 o'clock wakening. Tim was kind of awake as well, and after making a bit of a raucous so was Joey. Chris was falling in and out of consciousness and Clare was sleeping like a rock. I told Joey I wanted to leave by about 7:45, and between one of Chris's semi-conscious states I told him the same. We went back downstairs to pay for the second night, as well as a luggage lock for our bags, and started getting ready.

At about 7:50, which was about as close to target as I could have expected to get, we left the hostel and made our way to the train station. About 8:00 rolls around and we're rolling. We had made plans the previous night to meet at one of the exits of Tokyo station, the station pretty much in center of Tokyo which happens to also be the station we would need to transfer at to get to the Tokyo Game Show. We get to Tokyo Station and begin walking to the other train line we're supposed to take. We walk. And walk. And walk. And then see a sign.

900m to Keiyo line.

It is at this point that I realize how truly large this station is.

And how truly fucked our plans are.

I make a mental note to leave from the Game Show about 45 minutes earlier than previously planned to give us ample time to make it to the station and find the meeting spot.

We finally get to the line we're supposed to take. This is the first stop the train makes and there are literally hundreds of people there, including a few westerners wearing the tshirts of some gaming website. We get on the train and after a few stops I decided to ask them if they were going to the Game Show. They said "yes we are" in a French accent and the rest just nodded. I asked if I could follow them to which they just nodded again pompously. How did I know it was a pompous nod and not simply a noddish nod? Well a) they were French and b) they kind of ignored me after. Fucking pricks...I guess centuries of military defeats and being best known for a fried potato that arguably never came from France at all will do that to a people.

We got off the train about a half hour later and frankly, didn't need to follow them at all. It seemed everyone that got off the train was heading to the convention and swarms of hundreds of people made their way to the show. We stopped by a booth quickly to buy Chris's ticket, a stop that probably set us back in line about 500 people.

We walked out of the train station and passed by a building with a menu/directory on the front of it which I decided would be a good place to meet.

Dane: "Ok guys, 3:45PM we're meeting right here ok?"
Minions: "Ok!"
Dane: "Ok, so where are we meeting?"
Minions point
Dane: "Good, here's a treat"
Dane gives Minion1 a pastry and Minion2 a new Tom Clancy book.
Minion1: "Wait, 3:45 right?"
Dane sighs...
Dane: "Yes...Jo...er...Minion1"


Taking great misery in the foreshadowing of future events, I decided to ignore it and plunge on ahead. After seeing this


on the way we started to get a bit excited, partly because for the first time all weekend a plan had actually worked out flawlessly, but mostly because we knew we were going in the right direction. Finally after about 10 minutes of walking we reach the line to get in. It's about 9:15AM and the show didn't start till about 10AM, but already we were over a thousand people back, and thousands more seemed to be piling in. The sun was out in full force which didn't help much, but I killed some time watching two of the people behind me engaged in a vicious Pokemon duel to the death. It seemed like almost everyone there was carrying either a Nintendo DS or a PSP. There were also a ton of foreigners there, this picture in particular made my day. Where's Waldo?


At about 10:15 our line started moving and not long after we were inside. I have to say I was pretty overwhelmed at first, kind of like a little kid in a candy shop. I just walked around the place for a good 20 minutes with a huge grin on my face bowing to all the booth babes (or booth companions as they're called in Japan)


. I guess that's kind of creepy. Many of the big companies hand out these huge bags that are meant to hold all the junk people hand out to you (promotional flyers and press kits and such). After walking around for a bit this guy pulled me over to one of the booths. The booth basically had a few benches with a Japanese girl sitting on each of them.


They would hand you a phone and teach you how to play the game, and even though I couldn't understand anything, I managed to pick up the word Jan Ken and figured the game would be pretty self explanatory (rocks paper scissors = Jan Ken Pon). I lost the first game to which my Japanese girl gave me a sad face and a sumimasen. We then played another game which i didn't understand so I just pressed buttons and must have done something right because afterwards she started clapping her hands and cheering for me, at which point she said "win!" and handed me something that was in Japanese.

I walked around a bit more and then decided to head to the other building. The building is separated by a little outdoor walkway, so I passed through that and went in. I went over to the square-enix booth at about 11AM and waited an hour in line to see the Final Fantasy XIII presentation which was freakin amazing. Again while waiting in line everyone was just chatting away or playing their PSP's. After leaving the presentation room I walked by a little fenced off area where people would just sit down and play their DS against each other which I thought was kinda neat.

This room was far more crowded than the previous one, and it was almost unbearable at some points, so I decided to leave and head back to the other building. I entered the walkway and saw this


For those that don't know, this is cosplay. Basically, people dress up as anime characters/video game characters and the outfits range from awesome





to just plain ridiculous.



I probably spent about an hour out there taking pictures of all the cosplayers at which point I went back inside. I had kind of seen all I had to see at this point so after pacing around a bit more I decided to just go over to the meeting spot to look around. I went to the pastry store over there and got something to eat, and then just happened to pass Chris at Subway. He'd pretty much been TGS'd out as well. Alright I thought, 2/3 isn't bad, maybe things will continuing going as planned!

Maybe not.

3:35 rolls around and we head over to the meeting spot to wait for Joey.
3:40 no Joey...
3:45 a very pissed off Dane

After pacing back and forth around the building with the anger building up inside of me I finally catch a glimpse of Joseph Kotarek.

4:20 upon making I contact with Joey I throw my hands helplessly in the air, give him a passionate "Dude...what the hell?!" and as he's about to say something, turn around and start walking. At this point rather than being at Tokyo Station half an hour early it looked like we were going to be there 5 minutes late. We get our tickets and hop onto the train, and luckily no one said a word because I'd had 35 minutes to prepare Joey's eulogy (I would later inform him that he is "not allowed to speak to me for a very long time").

We get to Tokyo Station and it's 5:05PM and, just as expected, we have no idea where the exit we're supposed to meet at is. We start walking frantically around the station walking up almost every exit we see until finally at about 5:20PM we decide to go above ground and walk around the station from there. After a minute of walking, in what had to be the biggest stroke of luck I've ever had, I spot Tim waiting on a pedestrian light. He said they couldn't find the exit either, which made me happier because technically if everyone's lost then no one's fucked up.

We went to go meet Claire who was sitting down across the street and all decided to head over to Roppongi for dinner and drinks. We had dinner at a decent restaurant over there and were contemplating going to a bar, but Chris was on antibiotics, Tim had had a rough evening a few nights before, and Joey was never a big drinker to begin with. I was really not in the mood to argue about or plan anything at that point, but I had printed out a Roppongi pub crawl equipped with the times of all happy hours, so we decided to go for it and made our way over to the first bar we saw


Geronimo's! Sounds awesome. We went in and there was no one there yet so we started to get the party rolling. After a few beers a Japanese couple came in. Roppongi is known to be a very popular foreigner hang out, so oftentimes Japanese will come to practice their English and meet foreigners. Either these two were no different, or my boyish charm transcends all boundaries, language barriers included, but we wound up talking most of the night and they even invited me to a sake bar next time I'm in town.


10PM rolls around and we all decided to leave. We're all walking to the subway station when Clare and I decide we aren't quite done yet, and we have about a half hour more before we need to get back to the station, so we go find another bar to grab one last drink at. We cross the street and the first bar we see that I recognize happens to be Bar Sheesha, a Hookah Bar. I thought I'd convinced the guy at the entrance to give us half priced beers but it turned out it was happy hour anyways. The place seemed really chill, and I kind of wished we'd gotten to spend a bit more time there. We took some pictures with the bartender


drank our beers


and made our way back home to pass out.

Sunday was pretty much spent checking out of the hostel, looking around asakusa a bit (unfortunately I didn't get any great shots of the temple)


and going to Akihabara. Akihabara is Tokyo's electronics district, which was cool to see, but I didn't really see anything I needed and there weren't really any great deals there. After Akihabara we decided to go home, bought our shinkansen tickets, and left Tokyo.

I must say though, I will return.

Tokyo is freaking awesome.