An active weekend

It has been a fairly active weekend because it is the final weekend before classes start. We had a large campus tour on Saturday which consisted of about 2 hours of walking in the sun through campus. I video recorded the entire thing, but for some reason YouTube wont let me upload it, even after I split it up into different pieces so I'll try again later. Then after the tour they took us to  see a couple talks about campus activities, both having to deal with the annual culture festival the collage hosts. One was for the dancing group, who were trying to recruit 100 foreign students for some big dance. This I actually got video of.

The other was the marching band, where they want people who can play an instrument, or who are willing to learn how to play. Since the festival is in October, they will probably only teach people to play the 2 songs needed for the march. Unfortunately Neither I or any of the 3 others who came from GSU are joining any of these things, so we may make GSU look kind of bad, but oh well. Hopefully I find the Kyudo club soon, which I'm hoping will take up most of my time. After the two talks, we went to a Subway that was on campus. It was very different from American Subways. Firstly you order like you would at a Ramen shop, you have a little machine that you buy a ticket from, and just hand it to them and they make the sandwich.

Also they only have the option for a 6 inch. but they charge about what America charges for a foot long. And their drink sizes were tiny. Their medium was only slightly larger than out smalls.

Then after eating I just explored the town some more. Found a movie theater and a couple more smaller game stores, nothing really special.

Then on Sunday I woke up early to watch the new Kamen Rider, and other early around 7am Sunday morning shows. After that Alex came into our dorm and said everyone was going to Akihabara, which is a big shopping area in Tokyo with tones of video game stores. We had originally planned to go next weekend and spend Sunday looking over the material for class on Monday, but instead just about every international student in the guys dorm ended up going. So I  get ready to leave around 10:30. We ride the bus to the station, and then it was about a 50 minute train rider to Akihabara. Apparently we lucked out and got on an express line because people said it usually took 2 hours to get there.

The train rider was rather uneventful. I brought my Japanese stuff with me on the train and studied on the way there. Most of it was stuff I already knew. Then we get to Akihabara around 12:00 and we split off into groups, but we met up every 2 hours at the front of the station since none of us have cell phones yet.

I saw a couple very interesting things there while just looking around.



The advertisements around the main streets were very colourful.

There were girls all over the place in various costumes advertising either food, cafes, or other sales going on, and if you were interested in whatever they were handing out, they would "escort" you to where it was going and then go back to the street to bring in more people.

There was also a giant Gloomy Bear walking around.

This is a statue of The Colonel in front of the KFC we ate lunch at. It was the same as Subway, not for the amount you pay, in America you would get a lot more food, but since we were in a group of about 12, it was the only place that could sit all of us. The small ramen stands would have only fir like 5 people at a time.

There was a weird guy carrying around a doll with him like a child. I think these people are called Dollfies. They are obsessed with these dolls, and there are stores that cater to them with custom clothing, different body types for dolls, etc.

Kind of weird if you ask me. People will spend a ton of money on these things.

There were also some interesting stores.

This might have been a legit Apple Store, but we think it was a place selling bootleg apple products. Those have become rather popular recently.

This store caught every one's attention because it is practically the first store you see when you leave from the station onto the main strip of stores. we didn't go inside, but its funny how here they have these kind of stores blatantly out in the open, while in America they are usually hidden, and try not to draw attention to themselves.

Other than that we went to a bunch of video game stores, and collectible stores. Alex found a Neo Geo AES for about $100. A very good find considering in America they can go from $300 to $400.

This is his happy face.

I bought the belt that goes along with the new Kamen Rider that just started playing here in Japan last week.

I didn't want to buy any video games because I still want to make sure its ok for me to play them in my dorm room if i buy my own tiny TV. Once I get the ok the game buying will begin.

All in all it was a very good trip, we will definitely go back soon because there was just so much to see that we couldn't go everywhere. Even though we spent nearly 7 hours there.

Kyudo club on campus, ask them about joining, and then find out if there is a nearby bow/arrow maker because I didn't bring any of my equipment with me except for my glove and uniform.