agroove

modified shorten illustrated post

“hey im thinking of going to Maizuru park to check out the fireworks and take some pics, wanna come?”
“sure, bike there?”
“nah theres going to be too many people, like 30min walk”
“ugh, its so far, bike would take like 5-10min”

Convenience Store
“hey lets get some food first before we get there”
“ya i should get a drink anyway”
…
“man what you buying, you taking forever”
“you mentionned the spicy chicken, now i have to get one”
“did you see that other girl at the til? she’s like… non stop staring at me, or you”
“no? was she cute?”
“well… ya i guess?”

Maizuru Park
“man we totally couldve biked here”
“i want to get yakitori, i havnt had one forever”
“i want takoyaki”
“lets see how much it is”
…
“ikura desu ka?”
“500yen”
…
“wow i want nothing, even yakisoba or sausage is 500yen”
“good call on getting food first”

Fireworks

*pew pew *bang bang *ahhhh *wooo
“freakin i have the chuo-ku flag in my face”
“freakin i have trees in front of my fireworks”

After dinner
“hmm i wonder what im going to do tomorrow”
“everything costs money”
“not if we bike to…”
“the park and sit around?”
“chill at the beach!”
“you want to go to the beach i want to go to?”
“if its sunny, sure?”
“oh i thought you mean now, haha i was thinking its kinda weird that you want to go to the beach now”
“dood obviously tomorrow, its like 11pm, how far is your beach”
“like 30-45min biking?”
“wth, if we go itd be like 2am when we come back”

“see if we biked to the park we couldve got here in less than 10 min”

“whoa cool cars”
“i wonder if alarm will go off if i take pics of it… eh its like 12 something am”

ikinomatsubara beach
“wow wth are we doing here”
“look theres ppl playing with fireworks over there”
…

“whoa it’s like a private party”
“and everyone is staring at us gaijins cause we have bikes at 1am at a beach”
“man it looks so fun, everyone playing fireworks, beach vball, throwing ppl into the water”
“i can imagine the group of ppl i’d do this back home”
“yeah me too…”

“man i need a shower when i get back home”
“shower at 2am sux”

• # days of travel: 6
• # photos taken: 200 – 300
• # of trains+subways taken: 20+, cost: 45000yen+
• best place visited: harajuku, best place shopped: akihabara, most expensive place went: mt fuji
• # of harajuku girls saw: 5-10 =(
• # beers drank at nomihodai: enough to puke 3 times
• number of times caught the waves and surfed: 5+
• amount of riding time in FujiQ: 10min or less? from 10am – 5pm
• hours taken to hike up mt fuji: 6? hike down: 2
• most expensive items bought: 2100yen for 7 sticks yakitori, 22500yen shinkansen, 700yen instant ramen, 4500yen ayu beach towel
• amount of $$$ spent on avex goodies: 4500yen + 6000yen
• longest stretch of no showering: 48hrs?
• amount of $$$ spent: $700 – 900

*aug 25: super update on flickr, stupid 200 pics limit that erased my old pics

im going to write the most condensed blog ever

obon week is a week long holiday, one of my friend Kelvin came down to fukuoka from tokyo to sightsee on Sunday, took him to Dazaifu and Fukuoka Tower, and then ate at a Yattai, like a night market food stand, for some sexpensive dinner, then we left on Tues, and i head to Tokyo, stayed at my friends place in Oimachi, went around Yoyogi, Harajuku, Akihabara on weds, Akihabara has maid on the street and 6-floor hentai store, and Harajuku is so cool, but the funky girls only comes out on Sun, then had nomihodai at night, and then went to Gaspanic with Clement and Neil in super gaijin town Roppongi, and then puked and trained home at 530am

few hrs after drunkness, went with the same drunk ppl, to Enoshima, and i finally went surfing for the first time, i had a near death situation (seems to happen everytime when i try new sport), but man, surfing is pwnage, even though its like THE hardest sport ive ever tried so far

walked around all day on friday – Shinjuku, Harajuku, Shibuya, Shibuya is like the biggest place ever, with a billion ppl everywhere, like fireworks everyday in Vancouver, but regular day, and then at 8pm omw to Mt Fuji at night, Lynn missed the bus, GG… she came next day though, so ya next day errbody went to FujiQ Highland, for the best rides in my life: super ultra ride with flipping/rotating chairs (14times, world record), 80 meter uber tall ride (another record i think?), and super rail gun ride that goes up to 172km/h, you cant even put your hands up in the air b/c itll just fly off or something

after all that in the day, we climbed mt fuji at night (such awesome planning ;p), where they have 0 garbage can and the most expensive instant noodles ($7cdn for a bowl) and everything else ever, and it was so freeaakin cold at the top, i stopped watching the sunrise for some heat, then i rushed down the mountain from 530am in 2 hours, and non-stop transit all the way to kobe to see janet at 2:30pm, and all my fav jpopers, i saw sowelu, ai otsuka, koda kumi, boa, elt, trf, ayumi hamasaki etc, but they were all 1cm tall b/c somehow we had the worst of the WORST spot for the concert, and kinda ruined it for me, so i made it up by spending $$$ on avex goodies (btw janet i bought the ayu beach towel and boa hat off the web ;p)

i took the night bus home at 11pm and got back at 7am monday, did the biggest load of laundry (even threw my shoes in there), and then went to work, where i pretty much did no work, but my boss said i totally looked like i worked all day, kewl

i finally went to eat 食べ放題 (all you can eat) here, and it was 焼肉 (bbq)! man it was soooo good, but i couldnt as much like when i went to とんかつ大将 – the uber massive fried pork place, all because i ate lunch lol, so i was a little bit disappointed in myself, and also i realized that, its so much harder to eat uber b/c i had to wait for the food to cook so many times that, i just feel full so much faster ;/ there were weird rules at the place to eat all you can eat, well first you take off your shoes at the restaurant and put it in this locker, but thats normal in japan (wouldnt you like that amrik? everyone barefeet and eat with you!), but like… you cant reorder until you finish all the food on your table or something, and that you can order atmost 5 orders of the same thing, so here, luke cant order anything, atleast thats the eng translation, maybe they just dont know what theyre talking about

on sunday, i went to 三井グリーンランド,　an amusement park in 熊本 – Kumamoto, its about an hr and half away, and it was like 4 times playland size, but only 2 times amount of rides in playland lol, well actually i think theres like 20 rides including bunch of kids rides and other stuff, and then whole ton of random stuff, the place was soooo huge lol… there were the reg rides, and dangling leg rides, a ride that you stand (that one was pretty cool actually, if only it had more drops), a completely-not-wet log ride, and then a everything-wet-including-underwear log ride, speaking of log rides, they give you like… optional plastic bag to wear when you go on so you dont have to worry about getting soaked lol, it looks so dumb, but i paid the price for not wearing with soaked boxers for about half of the day

so ya, its a bad picture, but look at the background on the left side of the picture, its like white ish dots, cause thats ALL WATER splashing up from the drop lol… there were also big swimming pool that was $$$ if you buy admission separately, like 4 haunted house (freakin one of them was actually so freaky, like super dark elevator and hallways with billion corners), ultraman shop (yes ULTRAMAN), masked rider live action (yes i actually saw the REAL MASKED RIDER!), and a -30 deg ice cave, and you’d think, ya sure, -30, well, inside the wall is actually all ice, and theres ice sculptures, so its like -5 or 10 probably, but it was one of the best part of the park

i just like the pic on the left i dont know why (bigger size pics are all on flickr), and the picture on the right was taken on the wall in the girl bathroom at the pool, in front of the squatting toilet… ya i dont get it

so with all that in the park, how much does it cost? well admission is 1200yen i think, all ride pass was 3600yen, or get both for 4700yen or something, pool is 1200 or 1800yen, but you can also get admission+pool for 1900yen, train ride there and back is 2000yen in total, plus bus both way 780yen, but you can also get both way train and bus+admission for like… 800yen less or something i dont remember, its like a math problem, but no matter what you choose, the answer is “too expensive”

yay i got my camera back, got new battery and charger i think, while they wrapped the camera and the parts in like 5 layer bubble wrap, but whateva, it was good timing because i went to the fireworks yesterday, gawd there were a lot of people, good thing i took the subway, i had to get packed on like what you see in those tokyo subway, but atleast i was being sandwiched by girls in æµ´è¡£s instead of business men in sweating suits (though the girls were probably sweaty too cause it was sooooo hot), the fireworks was at Ohori koen, and it was the longest fireworks EVER, 1.5 hrs of shooooooo, booom, punnnn, then the wooos… ahhhs… i took quite a few pics, but then afterwards i realized, i didnt take any of the girls, i guess its still too strange for me to just take pics of random people, and i also dont look like a gaijin or else itd be ok, i still have to go buy my own yukata, theres another firework coming out around here, i dont really care about it but id go just cause then i can wear the yukata, and then really take some pics of かわいい girls lol, or the ones holding a smoke, sleeve rolled up, and with total attitude

i went to see Pirates of the Caribbean on the weekend, first time watching a movie in Japan, and like usual theres popcorn and stuff, and then i saw someone eating a bento box, WTH, dont eat dinner while you watch movie in theatre pls, the movie was subbed, so thats good, i was laughing at some part, but i couldnt laugh out loud because it seems that only i got the joke, and the translation in Japanese totally doesnt have the same effect, so i had to laugh in silence, like… LIS or !(LOL) or something

Starfox for ds lite comes out tomorrow, i think i want to go get it, and then i should really reserve my 新幹線 ticket, 2 weeks left til i go tokyo, time to spend $$$$ and go surfing!