Ueno Zoo, Shinjuku, and the Senji Matsuri Festival

Wah... two whole weeks without a word from me here. Oops.
Things got busy in school, with animation homework and whatnot. But a lot has happened.

We'll start off with trip #1: Ueno Zoo:

So... I took a ton of photos of zoo animals, but none of which you probably haven't seen before if you've gone to any other zoo. My class was there to document animal movements, so lots of sketching and photo-taking. One of the guys in my group was handling the videowork.
But I figured maybe these two animals you've never seen?

We got rained on at the zoo, so our travelling didn't take us very far. We ended up playing cards under a tent until the storm stopped. It was a lot of fun though just hanging out.

These girls and I got food after the fun. There's one more (she's holding the camera though).

... Although, now that I think back, I think I was with the wrong group. I figured that day we were just supposed to be with the people we've been working with in class and I found Yukiko-san.... My situation is different b/c the people at my table in class (table 7) consisted of me and one other guy. There used to be this girl too, but I guess she dropped out. So normally, the teachers just had us go to the other groups and work with them instead. And that's how I met Yukiko-san. So when we went out to document, I figured I should be with them again. But then, this week's class, I found out my "partner" had video-taped stuff by himself that day too. So... I wasn't with him that day.

And... I feel a bit guilty because now that I think back, since there was just the two of us at the table, I probably stood him up and made him work on his own....

Unless he was that random guy that was also with us... I don't know... didn't get much of a chance to talk to him. Don't remember his face either. He did say he was part of my group. Oops.

I'll just assume that he was and feel less guilty about my lack of understanding of the situation.


The zoo was a Tuesday trip. That Friday, I went to Shimo-Kitazawa, which I didn't take photos of, but did buy Final Fantasy 12: Revenant Wings at. My assumption is the place is a good shopping center for discounted stuff. But it's all outdoors n stuff.

I was there for an Animation film watching with a different class. Funny how the ones with the best graphics had the crappiest stories.


And onwards to Shinjuku with Midori... again ^_^

Haha! Look at me chow down on American food!
We went to TGI Fridays. Both of us miss American burgers. You have no idea how much you miss American food until you've taken a bite of a hamburger at TGI Friday's.

We also went shopping. Uniqlo had new t-shirts designed by Yoshitaka Amano. And boyfriend jeans, which are so comfy. And these capri-cut shorts....
But that's a great idea. Selling t-shirts designed by famous artists. And reasonably priced too (1500 yen each... about $12)
I spend about $100 there... hehe... oops again. So worth it though. It's Amano! Besides the obvious Final Fantasy love I have, he makes amazing printworks.


Finally, I went with Yukiko-san and Shizuka-san to Asakusa on Sunday to the last day of the Senji-Matsuri/Sanja-Matsuri (a festival of sorts). Took a lot of photos there too, but here's a taste of them:

That middle one is a guy.

Even the kids partake in the festivities. Carrying their own mini-sized shrines through the streets and banging on drums.

A very cool trip. Had my first tastes of takoyaki (essentially... fried octopus) and some other snacks I still don't know what they are. One of them was mocchi, though.

But it was probably the biggest crowd I've ever had to walk my way through. There were over 100 shrines throughout the whole of Asakusa so I was told. And the point was to parade it all over and shake it up and stuff. Meanwhile the crowds were so huge there was very much a lot of shoving and tripping to get close to these shrines to take a picture then out of these shrines' ways. I don't think you could have fallen though. Even if you did trip, you'd just hit a wall of bodies anyways.

It was incredibly fun to watch the pantsless men carry them around. The pantslessness wasn't a sexy thing though. Trust me.

But here's a video. Sorry for the jostling of the camera. There were a lot of people pushing past.
The Senji Matsuri - carrying the shrine - about 87 MB. Download it, then watch.

Square-Enix Party

Ah man. Square-Enix. My love!

If anything were to ever make me take back anything negative I've ever thought about Japan and actually convince me to live here, Square-Enix would be it.

I would so move here and put up with it all just for them... ^_^.

It's the convention center!

Mobile phone games took up a good portion of the convention.
So it was basically that and Final Fantasy series.

This lovely phallic symbol is the FF7 Potion. They made a big deal out of it. I'm not sure why. Stupid lack of Japanese skills.

Cosplayers! And there were ppl in the plant and the chocobo suit.

So a lot of the place was a "no photos" area. But I definitely saw a lot. There were a lot of stations for playing the latest releases and soon-to-come games... but the lines were so huge I opted not to try. Waking up at 7 AM, I didn't even get to the center until 12:30. And I boarded the trains at 9:20 or so. The convention closed at 5:00PM. Short amount of time, in my opinion, but everything runs on the train's schedules.

So I opted to go to the Mega Theater Program, which was where they were showing all the sneak peeks to upcoming games.

And I was one of the last ones allowed in. Like 4th from the back.

But that was sheer amazement and I'll try to be minimal in my raving about it.

Fistly... Kingdom Hearts 3. We got a revealing of one of the armored guys from the "secret" ending of KH2. And then there was a split screen between him, Sora, and Roxas which only says that they are all connected. My opinion, KH3 will be a story about how Sora came to be such an important person. The prequel, if u may.

Next on my list of happiness... Final Fantasy 13. There are 3 titles being released under the name FF13. That's Final Fantasy 13, Final Fantasy Agito 13, and Final Fantasy Versus 13.

FF13 looks most interesting, and an interesting note, the thing is already dubbed in English. FF13 stars a female lead who was chosen by the gods to destroy the world which had fallen into a sort of tyranny by the authority's need to maintain control. I think this one may have a bit of politics in it like FF12 too. For PS3.

FF13 Agito... I didn't get a plot, but it has to do with cards, but the battle system is not set like so. I don't get it. But you start out in a school. Where people wear capes. For mobile phone.

FF13 Versus... they quoted Shakespeare. "There's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." They also said it was a fantasy based on reality. Where this "reality" bit is, I have yet to see. Your main character is a male lead who controls possessed swords. And the scene they showed was of him taking out an army w/ these possessed swords who had come to kill just him. Lots of graphic goodness. And blood, there's something new. For PS3

Then they showed of Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core, the prequel to Final Fantasy 7. This one stars Zak, Cloud's friend and the guy he got his costume from. It goes through how Sephiroth became the big bad guy and stuff and more stuff. For the PSP.

Then more stuff on cell phone games, none of which I remember since I am not in to mobile games (we really don't have them in the US).

Followed by Drissidia, a game they released in honor of their 20th Aniversary. Dissidia is like Mortal Combat, except all the characters are from the Final Fantasy series. And 3D beauty. For PSP.

Final Fantasy Advent Children: Complete. More stuff added in and finalized movie to be released this year on Blu-Ray HD.

The only Nintendo DS game I heard mentioned in there was "It's A Wonderful World" which is set in a completely modelled version of Tokyo. And you can swap outfits. It seemed to be a key feature.

Outside the Mega Theater, a point of interest is the joint project between Nintendo and Square-Enix combining Mario and Dragon Quest. Although I think the final version is like a Mario Party or something. Not sure... too much of a crowd.

And in other news, Dragon Quest: Swords will be released for Nintendo Wii.

Oh, and FF12: International Version is coming out. Seems there are new summons? I can't be sure. I didn't finish FF12.

I feel a strong renewed sense in my love for gaming. Can't believe I left FF12 unfinished back at home :-(.

To play games or do homework? Hehe. I would so move here if it meant I could spend every waking moment with Square. I guess that makes me a fan.

And this? Yeah, this was in the train station, but I stopped and stared for a bit.

Here's what a day's worth of drawing and computer frustration led to:

Cat-waving animation

Watch out. It's 24 MB. That's what I get for finding a Preview version of Adobe Premier on the web. They don't let you do anything. No control over alpha-channels, no multiplying (hence why these thing looks faded). Heck, you can't even combine still images into a clip to edit as a whole. All you can pretty much do is cut, paste, and change opacity. I need After Effects. Otherwise, doing the computer stuff in Japanese is going to suck.

Puh, it's still shakey. Used a pencil to draw this, that's probably why. Technical pens would probably cure it, but I figure I'm going to be editting everything in Photoshop later anyways. I kinda like the shakiness, not in this piece by itself (it looks odd w/ such a mechanical movement), but I think it will go well with the rest (this is only a piece to the Junior-year project I'm doing).

The #1 Band of Japan

KAT-TUN - Japan's pretty-boys

That's pretty much all you need to know. Just look at the user's icon. It's enough right there.

Thanks Jane for giving me the link. I was laughing my head off.

They also really really like Avril Lavigne here. Ugh... "Hey Hey You You I don't like your girlfriend!" It's on repeat everywhere.....

Marz photos

Taking photos at the club was difficult. Low light and the fog/smoke blocks the camera's flash.

These were the people I went with. The girl in the green top is Noroi, the one I knew from the train.

My vantage-point from the balcony. I feel like a dork/wuss for not going down there, but ah well. Maybe my inability to withstand the loud music is a sign that that's true.

The band, Auto-Mod. They weren't all that bad, but like I said before, the volume is what made it unenjoyable to listen to. Still, performance-wise, it was cool. Particularly liked the dancers (you can see them here. The guy w/ the torch is ones of them There's a girl in white at the bottome too).

Maybe I should have stayed long enough to hear Baal. Their myspace music isn't all that bad.

Shinjuku Parties

Ah, so Golden week consisted of first, that trip to Tokyo City that I previously posted, on... and then 2 very interesting parties in Shinjuku.

I've told this story to several people w/ various info added in, but here's that night for the rest of you to read.

First party was an international one in a small bar. The premise was a meet and greet with free drinks. So you got to meet all sorts of people, most speaking English or Japanese in there. And you saw all the stereotypes too. The white guy trying to take a Japanese girl home. The Japanese girl trying to get a white guy to take her home. The super tall white guy who's swarmed by Japanese girls wanting him to teach them English. The old pervs who are there for drunk girls and free drinks.

But of course, there are normal people there too who are actually there b/c they want to meet international people.

Those are the ones I ended up talking to... after we got over the "no, I am not Japanese and I am not looking for an American white guy". Once they realize that's not why you are there, they approach you differently and suddenly, you're a tourist too looking for friends.

But the ones that stick in my mind as fun to talk to were all Japanese guys and all have previously been to America for schooling of some sort. So it was fun.

So I left that party with a guy named Nari and we hung out in a coffee shop for a couple of hours before meeting one of my new friends at the train station to head to another party.

Let me back up a bit.

That other new friend, her name is Kristen, although she calls herself Noroi. She's an English teacher and attempting to start up a career in alternative modeling (think as in... cyberpunk w/ costume makeup). I met her very randomly on a train bound for Atsugi. What happened was, we were in the same cart and the train stopped at Sagami-Ono and we were forced to get off. Neither of us knew what was going on, so figuring out we were both not Japan natives, we went off in search together as to what to do next. The train was just disconnecting some carts it seems and we had to move to a front one.

But story short, we talked a bit, then went to karaoke until 1:00AM at which time she invited me to a party in Shinjuku, telling me it was a harajuku-ish one. Lolita girls and stuff going to a party.

Sounded fun.

So let me explain something else. When she said Harajuku I figured happy-go-lucky wild people my age since I met those "Free hugs" people in who were wearing the outlandish fashions. And when she said Lolita, I figured, cutsey Japanese girls in gothic doll dresses just looking dark but are actually really sweet and love it when you take their picture. Not many are actually goth... they just look the part. Like porcelain dolls.

You'd get that idea too if you ever visit Harajuku. It's a very young place to hang out. And very varied. I love it.

So the party we went to was very much a goth party. A goth/cyberpunk/fetish party. And quite frankly, I was very uncomfortable at the strangeness of it all. Don't get me wrong, I like weird, but this was beyond anything I'm used to. Nudity on stage during a band performance and the feeling up of the nudity was something bizarre to me, if not artistic in the way the girl moved on stage. All the things that are associated with the eroticism of goth.

Good thing Nari was with me at the time. I'm glad he was open enough to go and venture out to this club w/ me. Without him, I'd have been stuck there until 7:00AM. And quite frankly, despite the oddity of it all, the music was much too loud for me. I couldn't go downstairs b/c it physically hurt from the strong bass.

The funny thing was the majority of the guests were foreigners. More than 50% I think.

We probably left after 2 hours of it and spent the rest of the night walking around Shinjuku and then hanging out at a McDonalds (the only cheap thing that was still open) until the trains started again (aroud 5:00AM).

I got home around 7:30AM

So that was my first all-nighter in Shinjuku. Fun right? Maybe I'll add pictures next time.

Tokyo City

Today's trip was to Tokyo City and the Imperial Palace. So the Palace was off-limits. But I took the time to go to the Imperial East Gardens since they were open today due to holiday (It's Golden Week, but of course, the word "week" actually only means "Thursday and Friday" in Japan holiday lingo). Of course, the garden part itself was closed (convenient, right?), but the park was really pretty. Imagine... the imperial family owns all that and can close the whole thing due to royal functions. Isn't that interesting?

Oh and the whole thing is surrounded by a moat!

Tokyo City! Very clean-cut and pretty here. And ritzy. Definitely didn't eat or buy anything in here. A small cappucino was about 600 yen ($5.00) here in one of the cafes. I guess it could get worse, but still. I'm not paying $5.00 for a coffee.

The Moat!

Um... so the entire trip I didn't bother to learn any of the names for all these photogenic sites. Here's a pretty building.

A very beautiful little pond. Right beside the garden you aren't allowed to go in.

Another shot of that pond. I like this one! ^_^

Me in front of a bridge.

And to give you an idea of just how big this park was....

I'm standing in the middle of the park here. All that paved goodness is part of the park. Far away closer to to the city is the Imperial East Gardens. Where I'm at, I think the bridge is to my left.

Imagine the president owning Central Park and he can close it whenever he wants. Must be lucky to live in a place like that.