Also added a little of my experiences on day 2 to previous post.

Day three, woke up in capsule inn. Managed to get around 4 hours sleep, felt tired as hell still. Another couple of onigiri from a 7/11 for breakfast and then sakurahime drops the bombshell that she left her railpass ticket in the first hostel, so of half the group goes to collect that. Myself, teg, tt, odin and stelf wonder around akihabara and end up in a Starbucks. Fuck I hate coffee, yet I got some anyway (brushed my teeth 3 times and can still taste it), we decide on leaving at 10, cos we expect holo to be late… Odin wonders off. We head to meet up point, and sure enough no holo, and also now no odin. Holo group finally gets back and teg sets off on Operation: Odin Rescue, to return a short while later with odin. Then spent ages either catching trains and looking where to exchange our railpass for the shinkansen.

Got that sorted and started the 2hour+ shinkansen ride to Kyoto, during which time odin notices he has left his bag in a locker in Akihabara, so had no gear with him for the 4 days we’d be spending in Kyoto/Osaka. Appears that someone has bad luck every day so far and today odin rolled it. Anyway, we get to the hostel in Kyoto and split into 3 groups, jecht no kanojou and sara head off for some shopping, odin heads off in search of new clothes and the rest head off to the main shrine in Kyoto.

At the shrine we stayed together for a while and gradually in true horror film fashion we kept losing people. Loads and loads of arches lined the path up to the top, and for some reason there was loads of cats too. The entrance part consisted of a 1000 and 1 ways to make you part with cash, mostly in the form of fortune stuff and prayers. I did spend 200 yen on a prayer, I’m sure we can find a photo of it some where… Anyway by the time we got to the top only 5 remained (teg can fill in what happened while they got lost) and I was totally fucked… and after all the mishaps earlier in the day it was dark by the time we got up there. So we didn’t stay long. Walked down in the dark, saw no yokai.

Left the shrine and ran into the rest of the group right as we left the exit of the shrine. Go to catch a train back to Kyoto and train is delayed so we end up walking a bit. Train > hostel > brief walk later and we end up with 5 of us in a soba stall. Holo can fill in this part, since I’ll be damned if I can recall what the food was. All I know is that I totally failed at chopsticks and that myself and jecht both had seconds 😡

Leave after a nice meal and decide to walk back a different way. Spot a love hotel on way back and a nice lady of the night hard at work. Walk back took slightly longer than expected as we ended up walking through a small shrine and taking the long route (AKA got lost) and culminated in teg riding a panda. Yes a panda.

here will add details later, phone + shit wifi is a pain. – ix

My body clock was pretty messed up, and I woke up at 1AM, 2AM and 4AM. At 5AM I decided that I couldn’t sleep any longer, and woke up. I had some melonpan and dumplings for breakfast. We had to wait until 9AM before we could leave because we couldn’t check out before then.

At 9AM, we left our suitcases in Tokyo Hostel and checked out. We had packed 4 days worth of clothes with us for tonight’s Capsule Inn and 3 nights at Kyoto, since we weren’t going to drag our suitcases all the way to Kyoto and back!

The only item on the agenda for the day was Akihabara. We all went to Minowa Station, stopping occasionally by the shops to buy food. After arriving at Akiba, we all went to find Tenya, the place that mit recommended for lunch. Mit would be joining us later at 12PM for lunch. Once we had found Tenya, we split up into smaller groups and went our separate ways, browsing the various shops around Animate and Toranoana. It was simply impossible to stick together as a huge group, since people are interested in different things. The huge crowds in Akiba also made it difficult.

I went off with Sara, Jecht, Ruby and Sakura and we explored Animate for a while. We didn’t buy much, because we’d have carry everything around with us to Kyoto and back. All the buying will be done in future trips to Akiba.

At 12PM, everyone met back in front of Tenya and waited for mit to show up. All I knew was that mit was wearing a black T-shirt, had an umbrella and was Japanese. Given that this description fit every other guy who walked past, it was quite amusing. Anyway, mit recognised us before we recognised him, so that was good. We went into Tenya and had to be split into small groups, since there was no way 12 people could be seated together (Japanese restaurants are often quite small). Tenya served tempura (given the name) and it was quite cheap and tasty.

After lunch, we split up again. Jecht, Ruby, Sakura, Stef, mit, TheThing, Sara and I went to a cat cafe called NekoJaLaLa and spent 90 minutes inside. The pricing was roughly 500 yen per 30 minutes and you had to buy a drink, which was quite cheap, thankfully. Inside the cafe, there were about 15 cats minding their own business. Before we were allowed to play with them, we had to wash our hands and read a list of rules. The top rule was “Please don’t do a cat violently”, which was rather amusing. Hopefully it was a poor English translation, and not something a previous customer had done.

Most of the cats were snoring away. Some of them woke up and became more active after we went in, since they probably knew that visitors = food! Inside the cafe, I took a load of pictures. The cats were all quite fat and cute. The staff showed us how to play with the cats and how to hold the ones which allowed you to hold them. We were also able to buy tuna for the cats, which they loved.

After the cat cafe, we wandered around more shops before meeting up with the rest of the group 7PM. (Need more details on a funny story about Japanese men fapping in the toilets). We went to Akihabara Station and waited for Vocalonation, who was going to have dinner with us.

After dinner, we made our way to Capsule Inn Kinshichou. (Funny story about getting lost on the way and naked men in the showers).

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Given that at the time of writing this, we have to leave and catch the Shinkansen to Kyoto, time is limited so I’ll finish expanding on the details later!

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So holo covered pretty much what happened until we split up so I’ll carry on with what my few random mishaps.

After leaving everyone else odin and myself went looking around some shops, I was still on a mission to obtain Mebae after all. Things kind of went to shit right away of course. First shop we come out and I lost odin, so I ended up looking around Akihabara on my own. After trekking around for a while I managed to find some shop with wall to wall eroge and hentai. It was the Holy Land. Sadly no dice on Mebae so I left empty handed again. Next shop I found was a multistory one with different things on each floor. Finally made it up to the 18+ and sure enough I found a copy of Mebae. Shop-san guy then started to ask if I spoke Japanese, and that the game would only work on Japanese computers, so I’m like “that’s fine”. Then he also gave me two free high quality posters of Mebae as well, so totally pleased with that.

Since there was another floor left I decided to go up on that too… Oh boy. This was 3D porn land. Pretty much just tits on every single DVD cover, with or without jizz on them, your choice apparently. Not wanting to look like I was embarrassed I stayed and looked around for a bit *cough*

My next epic fail was going in a shop that had figurines and seeing a sign that said there was more upstairs. Apparently it meant the 3rd floor, because I walked into some offices or something on the 2nd floor and got a few questioning looks. Even worse I got to the 3rd floor and it was full of crap figures I had no interest in >:(

A few times I walking into random cafe and had to get out before I was captured. An experience on the first night of a random maid in the street trying to get myself and teg into a cafe and then crying when we said no and begging us made me want to avoid being mean to a kawaii maid again.

As holo said we had already met up with mit, later on we met up with vocalonation too. Turns out vocal is the coolest motherfucker in Tokyo and knows pretty much every place to go. So we went to some restaurant for food with him. Not sure what it was, basically meat/fish in crispy stuff with shredded green stuff. Helpful, right?

After dinner we made our way to the capsule inn, vocal went home with plans made to meet us later in the week after we get back from Kyoto. Mit got dragged along to the capsule inn with us, since it saved him traveling home I guess.

Inn was fairly uneventful for me, some random western guy brushing his teeth kept eying up my phone I’d left in the bathroom on charge and kept moving closer to it until he was at the sink right next to it. Went for a shower in the public bath, received a critical hit from catching an eye full of cock on my way in. Didn’t stay long and went back to capsule to watch anime for an hour or two before going to sleep.

–ix

Better photos later, for now here’s our first view of Japan once the cloud broke.

Guess I’ll start the ball rolling in this. My first day was spent traveling down to London. All easy so far. Found hotel, spent hours waiting for TheThing to arrive. He arrived. We ate. Smooth sailing still.

Now bear in mind I’m from a small town, so I’m used to just walking to get places.

With that in mind myself and TT set off walking. An hour and 20 minutes later we have walked God knows however many miles around Heathrow and found no way in. So I shout and ask some cop who is on the other side of the fence. His reply? “You guys are making me dizzy walking around.” Thanks for offering to help earlier rather than just watching. Dickface.

Anyway, finally got inside, bumped into Holo and Sarasmith at checkin, followed by former Doki staff Jecht and his gf. Teg not here yet. So we head on in, get ripped off in duty free, board plane. Teg not here yet. Pretty much everyone is now on the plane and some Japanese woman is eyeing up Teg’s seat. Teg finally arrives 3 minutes before they close the gate. He can fill in the details later on this.

Flight is uneventful, highlight is when TT spots some kid colouring in a precure book. We land, holy crap my ass is hurting from sitting down so much.

Soon as we leave the plane/walkway we are hit by a wall of heat and humidity. Anyway, immigration, get bags, Teg gets short changed 200 yen on his very first purchase in Japan and then we go looking for odinigh and sakurahime. Supposed to be meeting them at starbucks so that’s where we go. No one is sure what sakurahime looks like, so just randomly shout sakura into the shop. No one replies so we mill around a bit. I get my photo of odin out and I’m like “this is who we are looking for”. Jecht points right past me and is like “so him”. Sure enough odin is sat right near the door with sakurahime 😀

Anyway train to hostel we are staying at, take a load of photos, saw first sailor uniform school girl, hit up McD’s for food first then arrived at hostel over an hour before checkin… Decide to go to Akihabara… So we head on down to Akihabara, main aim being to pick up a sim card so we can actually get in contact with each other. So at this point nearly everyone piles into a tiny phone shop, cos why the fuck not? Myself and teg decide to go looking for porn instead and just wonder off checking out where the shops are.

So I grabbed a couple of railgun s2 mousemats/desktop mats and then found a new/wrapped copy of Tanukisoft’s VN “Mei Shoujo”. Success. My night was pretty much complete with that purchase, left me short of my main aim, a later Tanukisoft game, “Mebae”. But good enough for day one. Teg and myself decide to head on back to the hostel since we have no idea where anyone else is at this point.

So we take a walk back to where we think the station is, get there and are about to walk up to the map and see where we need to go when some random Japanese dude walks up to us and asks us where we are going. He tells us in broken English we should follow him for 2 minutes. We tag along and he takes us to another station entrance instead and leads us down to the platform we need and checks we have money on our cards to get on the train. So we thank him, thinking he was just been helpful, when he decided to bow and clasps his hands together, while saying “hungry”. We both dip into our wallets and each hand the guy a 500 yen coin. Apparently this is really fucking good cos he screams “woooooowwww” at us and then grabs and shakes teg’s hand while repeatedly saying thank you to us. We proceed to get the train back to near hostel, grab some onigiri and some piss weak cold tea from a vending machine and that pretty much sums up day one-ish.

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By Holo:

While in Akibahara, Ix and Teg split off from us and went and did their own thing. The rest of us wandered around Akiba a bit, checking out various shops etc. We decided to go to Big Echo Karaoke as the final thing to do that day.

While the pricing for the actual karaoke wasn’t that expensive (320 yen for an hour or something), it was compulsory to buy a drink and all the stuff on the menu had extortionate price tags… In the end the food costed more than the karaoke! Anyway, the rest of us all got into a room and surprisingly, we all fit in. The room was pretty big. Anyway, the machines that you chose songs on required song title/artist name entered in hiragana, so only Sakura and I were able to use it effectively. The songs had subtitles on the screen, but they were also in hiragana/kanji/furigana, so you had to be able to read to sing. Mostly people could only sing the first verse or so, because OP/EDs don’t sing the whole song, but the karaoke does the full version. The music video they played often had absolutely nothing to do with the song, and the remix of the song played was quite strange. It wasn’t just an off-vocal version of the song that would be released on the CD single.

So we messed about for an hour, before the staff rang us on the phone and told us time was up. We quickly scoffed down whatever food was left and left. We went back to the station and returned to Minowa Station. We did some shopping for tomorrow’s breakfast, which basically involved cleaning out the entire supermarket of melonpan. At this point some of us were hungry, and some weren’t, so the ones who were fine went back to the hostel first. TheThing, Stef, Sara and I were hungry and we found a cheap ramen place outside the station. After that, we also went back to the hostel.

Everyone was pretty tired after everything, so we didn’t do much and all went to bed.