Greetings from the center of the universe, everyone. Not a whole lot has happened so far, mostly just taking a flight, being less productive than I probably should have for a coding project and getting distracted with the in-flight entertainment console and SM64DS. Out here in Japan things seem to be superficially high-tech, kinda cramped, and marked by a faint whiff of cigarette smoke. So basically a shinier version of my stints in Taiwan, with more Good Burger moments. Alas, I will be nodding off for sleep here, it's just past midnight.

Picture Time!:
* Behold my underwhelming gallery of phone pictures. There's not that much interesting about them beyond showing a few quirks of Japan Airlines and general life in Japan, which depending upon what you're into, might actually be somewhat interesting.

# of Streetpasses:
* 6

Yen Left:
* ¥50000

Item(s) GET:
* Jet Lag

>Item GET
>Jet Lag

Good to know you arrived there safe and sound, Tracer. Hope you can take some interesting pictures of yourself with your face cut or obscured by miscellaneous objects and events.

Back after a long and bit of a tiring, if fun day. Today started with getting some general advice about working in Japan as an expat after breakfast, which was surprisingly reassuring. Apparently it's fairly common for Japanese firms, particularly those that operate with English-language offices to "baby" expats relative to Japanese employees, which I would suppose would be handy for not immediately scaring them to other firms. A particular quirk of Japanese office culture I was informed of is a strong emphasis on straight shooting, if you bungle something, management tends to not be interested so much in your excuse for it but rather your acknowledgement of your shortcomings and how you plan to improve upon them. There is apparently also a much stronger sense of risk-aversion in Japanese corporate culture and society for better or worse, which leads to some interesting stuff on the financial end. For living as an expat, it is apparently both fairly easy to live comfortably in Tokyo on a seemingly-modest income, and fairly easy to outstrip your income. The primary "money pits" that I was informed to be mindful of were transportation (especially cabs), entertainment, and to a smaller extent "convenience shopping".

Afterwards, there was a bit of an episode getting lost in the domestic terminals of Haneda airport to meet some friends of family who will be tagging along, which while annoying, was a good exposure to infrastructure in Tokyo. There are a number of parallel mass transit systems that are used in Tokyo. During the trip to and from Haneda, I wound up riding on the Rinkai Line of the Tokyo subway system, which is apparently insignificant enough to have half its stations glossed over by the JR map that usually makes the rounds on the internet; transferred over to a monorail line at a station called Tennozu Isle; and then from there had some misadventures involving color-coded shuttlebuses that run between the different terminals of Haneda. One of the primary things that hits you right away about mass transit in Tokyo is how nice everything is relative to American counterparts. Along with how much more convenient things become when you get a Suica card instead of paying for a ticket every time you enter a station... And also how fast fares rack up. Today I went through something on the order of 2000 yen just going from station to station in Tokyo. As of this point in time, the final stop of the Tokyo Monorail in Haneda Airport is also a testament to the strength of kawaii culture in Japan, and a kindly reminder that the whole lark about Japan being bought out by Nintendo that made the rounds back in 2011-2012 does have a kernel of truth to it.

After that, there was a belated lunch at a food court in a local... Not sure if it's closer to a "grocery store" or "department store". It was a rather interesting exposure to what the fast food scene looks like in Tokyo. There's clear-cut "local" fast food, and "foreign cuisine", which much like foreign cuisine at home, is rather humorously mutilated from its source. Whether or not it actually tastes good is a fairly hit-or-miss matter, some dishes do, and some most assuredly don't.

After lunch there was a bit of a crunched trip to Akihabara for sightseeing and shopping. The part of "Akiba" most tourists care about is located along the eastern half of the ring formed by the Yamanote Line. In the process of heading up to Akihabara from Shinagawa, you pass through some of the busiest train stations on the planet. Which also have some of the fastest trains on the planet pass through. Unfortunately for you Shinkansen buffs, moving, crowded trains tend to be really annoying for spur-of-the-moment snapshots, so I racked up a string of "near misses" for shots this time around. On the train rides, I occasionally saw some people playing video games on the train, and I saw a LOT more people using phones on the train. Unfortunately, Japan's parade of colorful and hyper-advanced "Galapagos phones" seems to have by and large taken a back seat to homogenized smartphones, especially iDevices, though given that I saw more than one person juggling multiple phones between pockets on the train, it could be that the said flipping and sliding oddities may still be lurking being quietly used in the shadows.

Akihabara is a place to nerd out really, really quickly, and a place go broke in about as much time. While it is called the "Electric Town" and truly does hold up as a mecca for all things involving solder and PCBs, it's also a locus of "otaku culture" in Japan, which leads to stuff like the AKB48 cafe which I didn't visit, and the 5-story Kotobukiya store filled with anime and game merch that I did visit. It's also a lesson that in Tokyo, you can get surprisingly far even with a pitifully weak understanding of Japanese, even if you'll find a lot of stuff gated off to you and restaurants to be the bane of your moonrune-deprived existence.

That said, at "Akiba", I was there first and foremost for video games, which there wasn't exactly a shortage of. At Akihabara, there are two types of stores: The ones that are good to browse, and the ones that are good to actually buy things from. An example of the former is Super Potato, a store that takes up the 3rd through 5th floors of a little hole in the wall across the street and a block down from the Kotobukiya shop. Super Potato has a really impressive selection of retro games, and is heavily steeped in a general "gaming culture" vibe. On the same floors as the games from yesteryear, you can pick up merch and OSTs. The 5th floor is taken up by a small arcade made up of Sega Naomis that while dingy, always has something going on in it. That said, heaven help you trying to buy anything in Super Potato, especially with the non-Anglophone staff. For places that are more practical for shopping, shops like Trader or outlets of chain stores like Sofmap are much more helpful. While Trader wasn't quite as good of a deal as Sofmap, it had better organization, and carried retro games and consoles in its main shop on Akihabara's main street. Shopping for video games in Akihabara is also a great way to find out about how not all markets are created equally. One of the most glaring examples would be that of a game that I picked up from my run to Akihabara, Panzer Dragoon Saga. In Japan, PDS is yet another RPG from a console that did okay-ish domestically and can be had for around 2000 yen. Now... America on the other hand...

So that marked my second day out here in the center of the universe. The remaining days will most likely be a bit more mobile and involve less changing of money, but in the meantime...

Picture Time!:

* The phone camera struck again, this time with a bigger gallery. Unfortunately, the gallery was kinda insanely huge and needed shuteye, so will attach links in SOON™.

Gallery's apparently too big for singular upload to imgur, so... Part 1.

Aaaand, part 2.

# of Streetpasses:

* 34 [spoiler]Would probably have been more if hands weren't occupied with a bag full of loot in Akihabara.

Yen Left:

* ¥19712 [spoiler]Ideally, this figure will not drop as dramatically until I get to Pokemon Center two days from now.

Item(s) GET:

* Jet Lag
* Suica card
* Sega Saturn + Controller [spoiler]This is especially valuable for me since a lot of the Saturn's games either were never localized, are a pain to emulate, or are dramatically cheaper in NTSC-J format even after hurdles of importing are factored in.
* Saturn Memory Card
* Panzer Dragoon Saga
* White Japanese 3DS
* Dragon Quest 7: Warriors of Eden
* Guild01
* Inazuma Eleven 1-2-3
* Monster Hunter 3G with Frankenstick [spoiler]Bought it for about the cost of a Frankenstick at home, so seemed like a worthy deal.
* Ace Attorney 5 [spoiler]No guesses for what series I've been meaning to get into in the near future.
* Ace Attorney Investigations 2

Will do, though will have to thin out in-progress backlog a bit first. ^^;

Remind me, AAI2 is a sequel that is enjoyed best in sequence after the other AA games? Or also appreciable as a standalone game?

Reactions pt. 1:

Hmm... curious about the longposts in the museum. :P Poetry? Constitutions?

How were the woodcuts & fans? Lots of kimonos I see...

Hi everyone, today I didn't quite get to go to as many places as in days past. My morning and a good chunk of my afternoon were taken up by touring a potential worksite conveniently just across the street from my hotel (which is the entire formal reason why I even got to take this trip to begin with). At my prospective worksite, I was given a tour of the grounds (which I have omitted since it takes ages to upload large galleries, and I presume it would be of limited interest), and found out, yes, there are companies in Japan that don't let you just waltz through their lobby up to their offices. While there, I was shown a surprisingly competent cafeteria that serves free breakfasts + lunches, different departments with some interestingly varied internal policies regarding dress and office conduct, and went through a Q&A session regarding life at the company and for an expat in Tokyo from a Briton who's been working in Japan for 10 years. While what I found out was somewhat reassuring in convincing me that I wouldn't have massively unreasonable expectations foisted onto me as an employee, I also found out that I kinda have a looming deadline for deciding whether or not to accept the offer the company has extended to me within a week. So... Yeah... Haven't fully figured out what I want to do on that front yet.

After the worksite tour, I went off to Senso-ji in Asakusa. It's a major shrine to Kannon that acts as a non-trivial tourist trap. While Japanese people may not be terribly religious anymore, they certainly have a mind for tradition, which there was no shortage of at Senso-ji. Whether it was burning incense, paying 100 yen to leave wishes tied to rods, or happily pitching spare change down collection grates, a lot of the visitors were rather eager to at least pay lip service to shrine rites. It's an interesting contradiction of ethoses. The shrine is built according to principles of sanctity and divine enlightenment... And it's completely ringed by modern buildings and amenities, including a kinda compact and rickety amusement part to the north, and the Sky Tree looming over all of Asakusa to the east.

On the way back to the hotel from Asakusa, I took the time to stop by the Pokemon Center near Hamamatsucho Station. It's a bit smaller than the buzz tends to make it sound like: a simple showroom packed to the brim with a varied and rotating stock of Pokemon merch of all imaginable stripes. Unfortunately, having a rotating stock also means that sometimes you won't be as impressed with the stock as you would have been a few months ago. As of right now, the Center's in full Diancie movie promotion mode... Kinda. There were a lot of Mega Evo plushes... But no Megazards. And no Diancie or Yveltal, so... It was a little interesting to pick at potential modus operandis. You can also buy systems and games there, if at much worse prices than at second-hand retailers like Sofmap, or even most department stores. That said, I was extremely tempted to pick up a copy of Japanese HeartGold, since it's out of print in most places elsewhere in the world and many used copies are minus one Pokewalker, but relented in favor of buying other merch. In the end, I wound up picking up a Bulbasaur for a sibling who requested one, and some stuff for myself. There's also this little disconnected annex called a "Union Room" where you can stop by to play some arcade games like Battrio and take part in a raffle for small prizes if you spend more than certain amounts in the shop. I found it a bit of a cute gesture, if a little inconvenient, but hey, I got some free stickers out of it!

Tomorrow I'll be headed off to Mt. Fuji, and then making more or less a direct beeline for Haneda. So my log for that day will likely be a retrospective after I get home.

Picture Time!:

There's only one gallery today, but it's a bit of a big one, so it'll be a bit late to come again.

And here they are.

# of Streetpasses:

* 107

Yen Left:

* ¥6476

Item(s) GET:

* Jet Lag
* Suica card
* Sega Saturn + Controller
* Saturn Memory Card
* Panzer Dragoon Saga
* White Japanese 3DS
* Dragon Quest 7: Warriors of Eden
* Guild01
* Inazuma Eleven 1-2-3
* Monster Hunter 3G with Frankenstick
* Ace Attorney 5
* Ace Attorney Investigations 2
* Mini art plate plus stand from National Museum
* Candy bento box with konpeito rice from Metropolitan Government Office
* Illustrated aerial map of Tokyo from above
* 5 advertising flyers acquired in about as many yards stepping out from Shibuya Station
* PSP data cable
* Bulbasaur Plushie for sibling
* Farfetch'd Plushie
* Tyrunt Plushie
* Amaura Plushie
* Pokemon Hanafuda Deck [spoiler]Probably one of my less sane purchases given that it cost more than the last two plushies combined, but hey, it's Japan. And it's Hanafuda.
* Helioptile + Heliolisk charms
* 2 sheets of Pokemon Battle Trozei stickers