Since i mentioned that i fell sick on day 4 of the trip, our plans to Hakone for sight-seeing got cancelled. We decided to do head on to Ikebukuro to do some shopping. My bro forgot his camera battery which was charging back at the dorm, so the only pictures taken there were courtesy of Kar Meng.
Some random park at Ikebukuro whilst we were asking for directions again at conbinis.Hereon, there are no photos to log our journey sorry ><. We just headed off to Sunshine Mall, took a stroll and checked out Animate + Mandarake. Ikebukuro is known to be the otaku haven for girls, so the stuff that was sold around the shops here are mostly catered to girls. This place had a ton load of BL/yaoi goodies for sale but we found some pretty normal goods to grab at too. After our little otaku hunt, we went for a more normal shopping Mall, Tokyu Hands. They practically had all sorts of funky stuff here for sale, ideal spot for grabbing souvenirs. Top floor of Tokyu Hands building was a pet store with a Nekobukuro (Cat cafe where you can go in and play with the cats for a fee). Unfortunately it was getting late and we couldn't spare time playing with cats. I'll leave you with some night photos of Ikebukuro, on our journey back to the station.
It was time for dinner, and we headed back to Kinshicho to try out an all-you-can-eat cake shop for the price of about 1000+ yen for an hour. The cakes in Japan are really good! It is something everyone must try when paying Japan a visit.
The selection of cakes we were allowed to choose from.
Outside the cake shop.We had eaten enough for our money's worth but were feeling a bit queasy after so much sweet stuff. Headed back to the dorm and called it a day.
Day 6
Comiket's first day! Truth be told i wasn't really looking forward to this but i had to at least experience what it was like at the biggest convention in Japan. Due to horror stories of long queue lines and packed trains, we took off from the dorm in the afternoon. I'll leave you for a bit to savor the pictures taken on our train ride to Tokyo Big Sight.
Tokyo Big Sight, an awesomely huge place that held the Comiket 79 event.
The crowd around here is pretty sparse at the moment but there were still a lot of people.
We followed the flow of the crowd and wandered around aimlessly into a small portion of the event. Hell by the time realization dawned upon us, we were at the section catered for the women market. Look at the scary line formed almost completely by women.
Otakus are not only limited to guys...
Flowing with the sea of people to head on to the commercial booth areas.Once we arrived inside the commercial hall, it was so jam-packed with people that everyone was pushing us through. I only lined up for the Pixiv commercial booth to get their artbooks which was a fairly short line of about 30 minutes. Other booths like Nitro+...we couldn't even find the end of the queue after walking for 5 minutes from their booth area.
Look at the crowd...and this was supposedly not the peak hour anymore.
Dolls from the Azone booth i think.
One of the poster girls for a booth that had an ass and boob as their mascot character. She wore something inflated at her rear end to stay true to the mascots.
Another of the poster girls, this one with the boobjob instead of the buttjob.
Booth selling Queen's Blade goodies.
Our meeting point every 30 minutes in case we got separated by the crowd.
The Type-moon booths were closed when we arrived, but hell the whole booth area was hellavu cute.
Art by Koyama Hirokazu i think, one of the lead artists for Type-Moon.
Can you find Neko Arc?
More scary crowd shots.
...And again.
Some big saw deco outside of Tokyo Big Sight. We were on our way back to the station after our little traumatizing experience.I can't recall where we took these, but it was on one of the changing stations before he headed straight home to our dorm.
After putting off our stuff at the dorm, me and bro headed out to Akiba again to pick up last minute stuff. I went on to invade Toranoana whilst bro went to Yodobashi to take a look around. We went searching for dinner after that but most of the vegetarian restaurants were closed during this time of the year T.T So we took a simple meal of salad, seaweed, and plain porridge back at the dorm.After dinner, we went for an artificial hot spring which was actually a public bath house that channeled in hot spring water from elsewhere. It was quite an experience to be in our full glory around everyone , but like they say, when in Rome do as the Romans do. That night was actually pretty cold but after the bath, the cold didn't really affect us anymore.
Day 7
Last day, free and easy. Didn't really have anything planned out. Took some pics of K's House after our breakfast to commemorate our stay.
Since it was free and easy, we headed for Asakusa again to pick up last minute souvenirs. We passed by one of Bandai's buildings and are greeted with these cute monuments.
These are just roadside flowers...the flowers here are so perfect-looking that it almost seem artificial.
Here we are at the market street before Sensoji Temple again.
Tried some hot Amazake a.k.a sweet rice wine which was pretty good. Not to mention pretty shopkeepers too.We returned to the dorm soon after to meet up with the staff of K's House for some photo-shooting session.
The manager of this place has good taste...With nothing else in mind and the weather being extremely cold on the last day, we strolled to the small temple just next to the dorm.
Our lifeline while we were staying at the dorm.
An outside view of K's House.It was about time then to head to the airport. After checking in our luggage, we explored the international terminal of Haneda airport.
Wait...are we still in the terminal?
I hope you enjoyed the pictures. The aim of these post are to let you experience like you are personally at the places itself. Of course there are a lot of limitations but hopefully everyone got to enjoy as if you are partially there!
