I arrived back this afternoon, about an hour later than expected an I’m just going to blitz through with bullet points :D

Good stuff about being in Nagoya
- discovered RADWIMPS and even purchased オーダーメイド :D
- rediscovered some J-Pop and J-Rock that I hadn’t given a fair chance. Makun even introduced me to some new ones and we did some sharing which was odd for us :)
- I love the way you’re made to feel in Japan as a consumer. The “Irasshaimasen!” when you enter the store is a thing of beauty and I can’t wait to get to Korea and see what it’s like there ^^
- I like Asian girls. Not in a scary way, but I just have more of an interest in them than Western girls and obviously I was exposed to more of them than I am at home ^^”
- Seeing Makun again after a good few months was awesome. It’s one thing talking rubbish over Skype but an entirely different thing in person xD

Now feel free to go and check out the gallery over here :D

Notice to LJ readers
The format of the posts might change over the next few posts while I figure out what was causing my bandwidth to go away :P

NOTICE
I got an e-mail this morning from my domain host saying that I had exceeded my 2GB bandwidth per month so if the site goes down for a bit you’ll know why. Livejournal posts will still be there though :)

NAGOYA 05
I’m sorry that there was no post yesterday. Makun and I went to Nagoya central to check out some of the big department stores and Bic Camera. I had said earlier in the week that I wanted to check out the snazzy Japanese phones and I was not disappointed when we got to Bic. They’re awesome o_O . I’m not entirely sure what sort of phone I’ll get in Korea but I hope it’ll be at least partly as snazzy as the JP ones. After the phones and games at Bic Camera, we headed to Tower Records. If I had loads of money I would have bought a bucket full of CDs based purely on the looks of the album art but alas I do not :P I did find a nice K-Pop section and was tempted by a ‘Twins Repackaged’ album which had the entire first album by Super Junior and a VCD with music videos and ‘making of’ videos but I decided against it.

We needed some food so we headed up to the food floor and after walking round and round for 20 minutes, decided on a little shop to eat at. We both had pork cutlets with miso soup. rice and noodles :D It was great and I honestly had trouble moving afterwards. Next stop was the male department store which turned out to be a place where your money could just be drained from you in a ridiculously short amount of time. I think I’d have looked pretty awesome because of my skinny and tall build but literally couldn’t afford it with the money I had bought with me. I’ll wait until Korea me thinks :P

NAGOYA 06
We had both decided that we wanted a quiet day so we hung around locally again. First we went to Uni Qlo to grab some t-shirts for Makun and I saw some stuff I might head back for. Actually, just as I am writing this I’ve gotten off Skype with my parents and I’ve got some extra Christmas money to spend so I’m going to check out some outrageously pointy shoes [a la Oguri Shun] or a nice jacket. Anyway, after Uni Qlo we headed out to a CD store to pick up some Gackt CDs and some magazines.

We needed some foods from the supermarket so we grabbed some bento, some pizza and some Pocky. The bento was great and then I scoffed all the Pocky in one go. I did share a little with Makun but I’m terrible when it comes to Pocky >> No, really I am…

We finished the day by having yakuniku and it was great. Now I am fat :D

Today was meant to be Johnny’s Store day but it didn’t happen. We checked out a map for the store in Nagoya and thought we knew where it was from the Shinsakae-machi station but we couldn’t see it and ended up walking all around for ages before giving up and heading to McDonalds outside Fujioka station. It was bitterly cold today and the strong winds made the walk around Nagoya quite unpleasant >>

I was just looking at the maps and stuff and found out a little about the store and I don’t think I’ll be bothering to look again. I expected a little bit more to be honest but I’m sure it’s a haven for the female Johnny’s fan :P It does mean I get to save some money and go blow it on other shiny things at the DVD store later in the week xD I apologise for anyone who was waiting to hear about it but we do plan on heading to the zoo tomorrow :D

We didn’t take any pictures in town today but we did buy some Qoo and here’s a picture:

From Japan '08

Not long after writing the earlier entry, Makun woke up it started the day for this entry. We both did our online things that one does in the morning and then headed out for some shopping for food and for Makun to show me around the local places. We headed out to a book store to have a look around and I was reminded how awesome book stores are in Japan. They’re just such appealing places and generally have music as well. I did see a lot of ‘Tohoshinki’ stuff which I took pictures of so that people could share my disgust >> We stopped off afterwards at ‘Pan de Coma’ for some buns and savory goodies. I had a Doraemon bun :D

Across from the book store was a Matsuya store which sells casual clothes. I decided to nip in on the off chance that there might be some RUSS-K stuff and…there was :D As you’ll see from the image below, I went for Massu’s t-shirt from the poster xD I was considering buying a jumper too but they were quite expensive and I thought I’d wait until later in the holiday before committing too much money. Plus, we’re going to the Johnny’s Store tomorrow…

From Japan '08

After that splurge we headed to Makun’s university for him to check his mail and for him to withdraw monies. On the way back to the apartment, we went to another CD store and then to the supermarket to grab some nibbles. We dropped the shopping off at the apartment and headed round the back to the temple. It was nasty weather so there wasn’t really anyone there [read: no-one at all] but it was a nice walk. Back at the apartment we just chilled out and listened to music. Makun was in charge of the playlist and we got some good J-Pop goodness.

Around 7pm we decided we needed some food and headed for the local ramen restaurant. We had chicken ramen noodles which were awesome and made us feel fat :D Now I’m just writing this blog post…

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I write this blog post from my sleeping bag on a thin tatami mat on the wooden floor of Makun’s bedroom / living room / study. I’ll admit, despite being up all day and traveling all that time I did not have that sound a sleep. Getting to sleep didn’t prove as difficult as I had originally thought but once I woke up [about 6am JST] it was really tough to get back to sleep. I think the main problem is not having a pillow and not the wooden floor but we’re hoping to remedy that today. Makun’s still sleeping by the way, so keep it down…

Ok, well let me just round up the travel from London Gatwick to Nagoya International. I didn’t want to do an entire post about it because it wasn’t really that exciting and I wanted to have at least one image every post. The flight from LGW to DBX [Dubai] was delayed by about an hour and this was a bit disconcerting because I was scheduled for a 2.5 hour stopover in Dubai before heading out to Nagoya. As it turned out, we made some good time and arrived at DBX a little under an hour behind schedule. Due to the building of the new dedicated terminal at DBX, we had to take a 20 minute bus journey to the terminal which is annoying because you never feel it’s fast enough when you’re in a rush. I did end up walking at a pace down the long terminal to gate 43 and finding out that in fact I was there with plenty of time to spare :P I think I should mention now that this was my first time flying with Emirates and it was my most pleasant flying experience ever. Their entertainment computer was pretty hot and I ended up watching about 6 movies over the course of the journey.

Anyway, the journey on to Nagoya was pleasant again because the plane was pretty empty. I was sitting on the isle of a 4 seat middle section [2-4-2] and had it entirely to myself. I didn’t really make use of it apart from using the seat next door as a storage area but it just added to the feeling of space. The food was nice too and I tried eel for the first time. I enjoyed it but I think I will enjoy it more given more favourable circumstances. Immigration was about as pleasant as it could have been and this was the part that I was most worried about because it’s never fun to explain something to someone when their English is limited. Filling in the forms was fine despite the bumpy landing and I got through the first bit without any hassle. The guy looked at me and asked if I was from Germany. I told him no and he waved me through XD It wasn’t very busy so there was no waiting in queues and I got straight into the part where they take a picture of you and take your finger prints. I had forgotten to write Makun’s name on the form which she explained very well and helped me amend. Then it was on through to pick up my luggage which actually came a lot faster than I thought it would. In fact, I was worried that it would have gotten lost on the connection but there it was and after being sniffed by two sets of sniffer dogs I went to the customs desk to hand in my form. He was nice again and asked where I was from and what I was here for.

Makun was waiting in arrivals for me looking healthier than the webcam had led me to believe :) We had joked about there being a slow motion run, followed by an exaggerated hug but the mixture of my achey legs, my delicate hand luggage and too many Japanese people turned it into a bit of a lame affair ^^” Makun supplied me with a travel card for later in the journey and I bought a ticket for Y850 to get me to the underground line. It didn’t really end up taking as long as I had imagined to get from the plane to the apartment which was obviously appreciated. The walk from the bus stop gave me a chance to see some of the local amenities where I might be spending some money and stuffing my face.

I had seen images of the apartment already but even then it was pleasant surprise. It’s both bigger and just nicer than I thought it would be and there’s plenty of space for us both to occupy without getting in each others’ way. I do feel sorry for messing up the apartment though with Maki’s craving for the Internet. It’s operated through the phone socket into a server and then through RJ45 into both his and my laptop. The problem is the length of the cable. It doesn’t really afford me any room at all and as there is only one seat at the desk, it’s not the most comfortable. We’re looking at borrowing a wireless router from a friend though which would mean I could sit over the other side and use some Gundam model boxes as a makeshift desk.

As I already mentioned, we made great time in getting to the apartment so there was plenty of time for us to come in, get online, grab some eats [pizza :D], play some Wii, take some pictures of the apartment and wash up before heading to bed. I was starting to feel quite tired near 11pm so we went o sleep not long after.

I’m going to post about what happened today in the evening so look out for the next installment. You can access the Japan ‘08 gallery at any time by click the thumbnail to the right of the blog. Picasa is doing a great job so I’m going to stick with it.

*goes to wake Makun* ;D