Konnichi wa mina im back !

Back well ive been back since friday only now am i about straight from the jet lag. Ive managed to type up some of the trip. Heres the first half Typos and all my idiot groking over the daftest of things ...

Day 0 Thursday

Trip to london stated badly, the wheels came off my brand new case cheepo TJ hughes one not happy with that I can tell you. I got my self a new one at asda another 25 quid spend I didnt need.
We had a bit of a wander in london after locating the hotel. The room is a bit small had a great door hanger sign thing, took a pic or 2 in london.

Day 1 + 2 Friday and Saturday : The big (lack of) Sleep.

Friday: got up about 7 am

Friday in london. Had a bit of a wander then met James for dinner, ate at some pub not far from picadilly circus. Then to the airpot a regular tube ride and we arrived at the airport. located the check in to find dragon waiting. he gave us his little compressed vesion guide to Tokyo (Akihabara). we borded and more or less took off on time.

Friday night

12 hours on a plane its quite odd in its own way.. how time passes ..i suppose the overnight nature of the flight also took its toll. The plane was a modern 2 engine plane. this is the first time ive flown long haul. Impressive how they have a screen for each seat and a number of video and audio channels on demand. Watching shrek3 it took me 10 minutes to notice the audio was in Japanese.... lol... Spiderman 3 didnt grip me but I did find a Nicholas Cage movie called Next interesting.

At some point in the wee small hours (uk time) i was chatting with Dragon and taking a pic out of a door window of the dawn over siberia (some where round there any way) one of the cabin crew saw mwy camera and wanted to take a picture of us which i let him do.

These free drinks are good japanese beer , sake, juce, tea all available on request.

Landed 7am ish Saturday london time At some point in the night i reset my watch. Here its Saturday bout 3pm ish Tokyo time got thru customs and met the coach The lady from the travel agent was holding up a sign reading "SF Convation" gotta klove those losses in trans lation . Just over an hour on a coach watching the slightly different cars and odd road signs go by, we arrived at the hotel, they have disposable door cards printed with my room number and checkout day etc. cool idea.

After dropping stuff in our room went with Neil, Mort and a couple of others to Akihababra it really does have streets kind of like the set of blade runner in places and shops of stuff as I learn more I'll add to the simplistic 'stuf'. getting there is fairly simple from the Shinagawa Prince just head north on the khenin-tohoku / Yamanote line for half a dozen or so stops. To make travel simple a I got a Suica travel card kind of like an oyster card in london, a sort of pre paid credit card. But unlike an oyster this doesnt work on all the trains and buses, however on the up side it can be used in some shops for buying stuff.

hmm. shops Akihabara Electric town .... Well I think the first place we went into was KBooks i cant be certain .... loads of small shops on many floors shops for card games , shops for models, dolls, assorted stuff shops, This is a whole world of anime and game related stuff in one building . The next building was Gamers a more games oriented shop that had a blur of stuff.

walking down the street between the neon cliffs of the buildings someone mentioned food and neil spotted a nearby eatery the place was a sort of food bar where you sat at the counter the menu taped to the table in front of you. use full has pictures.

Usefull Phrase : Kore o Kudassai (while pointing) = One of those please

The food was good and interesting. Maybe ive been up too long but my ability with chop sticks seems to have deserted me..lol

Time for bed any how its now about midnight local time on Saturday tomorrow we fly out to sapporo after breakfast at a maid cafe.

Day 3 Sunday

Woke up of not feeling too bad a bit late so i missed finding the group for breakfast. I had cunning ly prepared my louggage rearangement so 5 minutes was all it took. we checked out leaving the bulk of the lugage at the hotel in storage and the overnight bags at left luggage.
Then it was out to the cafe. The mia cafe is a pleasant little plave , On reflection it is impressive how small alot of the eateries are. The cafe was a pleasent experience and im starting to see how all staff everywhere and even random people are so much more polite than back home

They laid on a lunch set specially for us, in fact the place opened over an hour early for us there were about 20 in the group. The ice tea they do here is nice , you know they have these little containers like those milk ones filled with a sugar syrup in for adding to cold drinks...
clever stuff...

The world of the maid cafe explored we had some time to kill experienced party members sugessted Shinjuku to see a temple where Cog explained the ritual of hand washing before entering such a place it turned out that in the park behind the temple there was some kind of dace festival being held , this had dispplaced the usuall crowd of Fashionistas that usually gathere there.

Time was ticking and so couldnt stay long as well the heat what making things heavy going the free fan from the dance festival was handy. wee soon had to return to the hotel for the transfer to the airport and off on a 1 hour flight up to Sapporo.

ive started listing some use full phrases i should comple a page of them.

On arrival it was still early evening so a short wander through the neon lined city was in order Ending up in a ramen restraunt with cog, natsuki and sdw. Ian and Neil H went elsewhere over all a busy 2 or 3 days .. for now some sleep.


Day 4 Monday

Interesting places here guided by the ever dependable natsuki , poll town an underground mall under one of the main streets od saporro , odori park is a single block wide an 10 or so blocks long park in the center of the city , saw only one end of it to day i wat to see the rest later because at onre end is the sapporo tv tower a smaller versionn of tokyo tower went up interesting views from there a walk took us to the clock tower building , looks kind of american shaker church in appearance after getting a little lost we arrived at the saporro beer museum , interestig place theywere growing hopps in front of the building lots of displays of the history of the brewery and the brewing process , there was a japanese language only guided tour the beer samples were good i must try the dark german brews when i get ack to compare , japanese beer is basically modeled on the dutchgerman larger sort of model based on my head the following day beer purity law is in effect . from there we ventured out to find a street car passing tv h on the way. the tram took us to mt moi wa
a cable car took us part way to the top and a mini bus the restof the way fine views from sapporo to the sea.

coming down cog directed us to the tram whie he went to visit a shrine some of us decided to join him interesting place returning to town it was early even ing me natsuki ian and simon went to a restraunt where we had to leave our shoes at the door . while the evening was still young we took in the ferris wheeel on top of the building opposite the hotel
it was a good view , got some night shots of saporro we finished the night at m's piece a little 1 room bar on the 3rd floor of a building near the hotel it was here i firsst learend of the custon of a cover or table charge *(most places will give you some bar snack s in with the price ( around 1 am saw us call it a night ( the guy in there spent the evening playing many western classic rock from the large collection of lps that adored the little bar.

Day 5 Tuesday

experienced the local underground this morning feels nicer than londons , the hokkido shrine was interesting from there we visited the local zoo to see what a japanese zoo was like , i can say its like many of its kind in england with some unusuall animals such as a hippo , wolves and an interesting tropical bird house
the petting zoo raised a giggle when some one said do you think theyll have some cat girls in there ...sad i know but there is worse to come

tried shaved ice for the first time , very nice it was too learned a new word or 2 as well ichigo - strawberry , its also becoming apparent in a lot of places vending machines are used to hadle money , tickets provided from these are then exchange for goods , it strikes me as im tying this up that as the ticket has a value and words printed on it its a good way to order stuff if you dont know the language.
we tried to visit the chocolate factory torist attraction but found it closed due to company misdeeds involving sellby dates interesting looking place though

our return to the centre of sapporo enabled us to leave the underground at the far end of odori park leting us walk its length and enjoy the sights .

evening wore on and food hunt was called on our way out we met dragon who told us that he has pass a certen kind of vending machine ... this sparked a minor hunt before giving up and getting food at a ramen bar i must say this ramen stuff is good.. it basis is a large medium sise mixing bowl filled with noodles and a soup stock on to which is added a number of things such a slices of meat , egg, bensprouts , spring onions etc , the stock is made usually to the taste of the person ordering eg mild to spicy hot

after food our wandering took us past a shop that had some sci-fi figures in the window , alien terminator , ultra man and the like we went in near the door was some anime stuff and mecha models behind this was the sodom and gomora of pron outlets i left after just looking round the corner too much pheer for me

our return to the hotel bought us back to the hotel where i picked up a couple of trinkets, an some melon cream soda which i have found is rarhter nice.
back to tokyo tomorrow

Day 6 Wednesday

bought a few trinkets from the hotel shop before we left and the short flight took us back to tokyo arriving early afternoon the day was stil young and natsuki was looking for somthing and had located a street in the Asakusa disterict where were gathered catering supply shops .. that description does not prepare you for an entire street of shops selling stuff to set up and run a restraunt , kitchin furniture shops , uniforms , cash registers , cutlery catering utensils , plastic display food , and kife shops ... wow check out the photos .

and a shop doing coffee brewing technology had a huge glass thing just next to here was a large temple complex with a huge central shrine , very busy as it is in a central town area
the place is called the asakusajina shrine the the sensoji temple is part of the same site

back thru akihabara we tried a japanese steak house i suppose you could call it .. more like gloryfied burgers but hey it was interesting .

Day 7 Thursday

Registered at world con dwarfy i got some of your money back some interesting stuff on the program mostof it unfortunately in japanese
early not so sf related items included a talk on hot spring etiquett which was informative even if it was done as a plug by a nearby establishment , an iaido demo was interesting i do have some video of it if any one is interested

* bugger the video is lost it didnt copy from my camera :-( *

I caught the end of a panel on heroines in anime though interesting had reached a for me any way a point of character and situatioin analysis similar to o level english lit.

the con book is thick and heavy i may have to post it back

ate at an onomiaki place interesting its kind of like 2 savory pancakes with veg and meat and stuff between them.

Konban wa from the land of the rising Hi fi

Lts gone on thes few days and no time to write it up ... erm london took photos ... inflight moives shrek was good in japanese dub , funny in english though, Akihabara a gold mine of manga , models, figures and other exotic stuff ;-) .. up for 40 hours straight need rest... maid cafe good ....... flew to sapporo 　its near minnight on sunday here which means its 4pm ish where you are. Il try to get my diary of this trip posted when i can just lost a load of typeing caue this terminal cut me off :( .

time running out cant upload photos

till later mina.
Jawa

Day 0 travel to london

Traveling to london tomorrow then fly out the day after. All the circus that is a busy international airport on the Friday before a bank holiday Awaits us. I probably wont be able to post till we get to Japan, have to see.

till later Mina

It begins then

Ok I've set up this thing to send you guys post cards From my Japan trip a bit quicker than surface mail. While im Away if I get chance / Tinterweb access I'll be Putting stuff up here . With a day to go Im still not packed but I do have all the Clothes and stuff in a big pile:

Clothes
Cash :-)
Passport
Tickets
Camera
Suitcase
Assorted stuff
walkman <>

Hope this lot weighs less than 20 kilos at 6900 yen per kilo Xs baggage is a major wallethurt.

Hmm well better get on.