Traveling to Tokyo and Tokyo Game Show! Silver Week Adventures: Part I

This year was a rare occurrence in Japan. 3 different national holidays aligned together to create what Japan calls "Silver Week" (Wikipedia does a good job explaining what it is). This, combined with some mandatory holiday hours I needed to take for working over the past weekend gave me a ridiculous 9 days off of work from 9/19-9/27. In an even more perfect storm, this also happened to be the weekend of Tokyo Game Show. So I planned a route through Japan's 3 big metropolises and set out Friday night. 

The most efficient way for me to traverse all the way to Tokyo was by taking the shinkansen, or bullet train. It's fast. While expensive, it gets you where you need to go, and I'm glad to have experienced it. I did find it humorous that to keep up with the idea of speed, even when the train stops, the boarding window is extremely small, less than a minute I would say. 

That morning I headed out to the Tokyo Convention Center for Tokyo Game Show (TGS). It was quite a scene. Hundreds of thousands of people had convened for the event, where companies showed off their newest video games and gaming technology. 


Different companies had massive stages constructed where they debuted new products, had concerts, and live demonstrations. There was so much to do, but unfortunately I learned too late that many of these things required people to queue up for up to 3 hours before even getting the chance to try a game or see a performance. Due to the sheer amount of people and things to do, the best strategy was apparently to look at the schedule days ahead of time, pick the 1 thing you really, really wanted to do, and go at opening and line up for that particular thing. 


Yet since I did not do that, I was able to explore a variety of stages at the show, stumble upon some cool performances, and watch other people demo games instead. Notable highlights were seeing the gameplay reveal of a newly announced RPG I hope comes stateside, The Last Guardian gameplay demo and life sized griffin, as well as a piano performance from the composer for the game Gravity Rush.

On the evening between the first and second days of the show I passed a street performer named TJ Ken rocking out. This is the second time since coming to Japan I have seen an amazingly talented street musician, so just like last time, I bought his CD. Here's a video of why I was compelled to support him.

I asked one of the locals listening to TJ Ken where to go to eat, and on his recommendation  I met up with a few other ALTs and grabbed a good dinner at an Italian restaurant in the area. Isaak, Jefferey, and Chiara were also at the show and stayed in Tokyo, we went on a few different adventures throughout the week.

Day two was another day spent wandering around the show and taking in the scenes. For friends who cosplay, apparently that is quite a different scene out here. Cosplayers have odd cult celebrity statuses, and spend pretty much the whole day modeling for the flocks of photographers who seem to come to the show just to take pictures of them.  This photo sums it up pretty well.


I was also surprised at how little merchandise was in the merchandise area, and that much of the cool swag had sold out halfway through the FIRST day. But I am coming to realize in Japan limited quality is not viewed quite the same way. They are rather obsessed with "limited" items (ex: McDonald's has a new item each month). So rather than a supplier looking bad for not stocking enough of a given item, it is seen as something more valuable, and if you didn't get what you wanted, it's on you since you should have made it a higher priority. So I did not get a sweet TGS hat like I wanted, but I did get a pretty cool banner type of thing as a memento, and the plus side was I had more money to spend later in the week.

Overall I am glad I got to experience TGS, and if I get the chance to go again I now know the strategy of how best to experience the show.

Shrine Reopening Ceremony

 

Last month  on Sunday the 9th, Samantha, one of the ALTs in Tottori, posted an invitation to attend a very rare ceremony in the town of Kawahara where she teaches. This ceremony was held at a small, old shrine which had just had necessary structural renovations done. In order to do the renovations, the diety had to be temporarily moved, and thsi ceremony was to welcome the diety back to its shrine. So standing in front of this shrine in the rain, the crowd and local news crew watched as ancient cultural traditions were performed for the first time in decades.  From my understanding, performances were something that no one in the audience had the chance to witness before, and portions of the performances used to be reserved only for royalty. I've compiled clips here to show you what we saw.

Quick Trip to Yonago

My friend Tim, another ALT, makes a habit to go to new restaurants every Friday in the other big city in my prefecture, Yonago.   Tottori sits on the eastern side of the prefecture, and Yonago sits on the western side. So after work on Friday September 11th, I caught a train out to meet him and a couple other ALTs to grab some food at an all you can eat restaurant. Much like an american buffet, this Japanese restaurant had a variety of stereotypical regionally popular foods. In this case that meant instead of pizza and hamburgers, it was sushi, curry, omelette rice, and other usual Japanese dishes. The food was good and the massive quantity was much appreciated! 

I decided to stay in Yonago for the next day to check out the local sites. Tim and I ventured over to the Yonago castle ruins, which provide a spectacular view of the city, the famous Mt. Daisen, and the man made peninsula city of Sakaiminato. 

After sightseeing we headed to a delicious cafe on another ALT's recommendation. Land and Years was a pretty stellar restaurant, with a cool atmosphere and delicious food. Tim wrote a review about the restaurant here. What I thought was particularly fun about the restaurant was it's location. It was styled very much like a loft above a store in a shopping strip, with a skylight added in the middle with couches and tables to lounge around in. If I lived in the area I could see this being a fun place to hang out and relax during an afternoon.

That evening before I caught my train back to Tottori, we met up with Maria, another ALT and went on another culinary adventure. This time we went to an Indian restaurant by the station.  Apparently there is a notable Indian population in Japan, so the Indian restaurants are run by Indians who prepare rather authentic meals. Much like every other meal in Japan, it was delicious and a great way to end my weekend excursion across the prefecture.