I packed in the morning, waking up at 6:20 in order to finish some laundry.  Unfortunately my clothes were still wet even after 2 hours of drying.  (I later found out that the dryer coil was tangled up.)  Not the greatest start of the day, but it could have been worse.  I finished packing my clothes (my khakis were still a bit wet) and headed out.  I took the red line to the blue line then off to the airport.  For just 5 hours of sleep, I was pretty well awake.  Apparently I was the last one to the airport, though I found the group at about 7:55.  I was probably the only one who took the El.  We went through security pretty quickly and ended up waiting for a long time for the plane.  I ended up eating at McDonald's (Bacon, Egg, Cheese biscuit meal).  Josh was going to eat at McDonald's, but then ended up abandoning us in favor of eating "healthier" options.  The group sat around talking with others as we waited for boarding.  Lauren was taking some interesting pictures of Domo-kun, which I thought was a fun idea, so I also took one of it.  We talked about some Japanese cultural things to expect and also about Matt's speaking habits.  Josh said he tended to make everything he said into more of a question, which I think is about right.

We arrived at Narita with it being 3pm locally.  After getting through customs (which was pretty barren, fortunately), we started to get bombarded a bit with Japan.  I tried to get money from the ATM machine, but it rejected my card.  I wasn't too worried since I had backups, but I had a lot of problems in Europe with ATMs accepting my card that I was hoping to avoid.  We eventually got on the bus that would take us to our hotel.  One thing I began to notice was how loud our group was.  Part of it was the excitement for finally being in Japan, but I think we were kind of being obnoxious and rude.  Nobody else on the bus was really talking.  There wasn't much scenery from the aiport.  It was mostly trees and roads and then a bit of an industrial setting before approaching Shinjuku.  The traffic was pretty unbearable, and it ended up taking about 2.5 hours to get to our hotel from the airport.

Our hotel was pretty nice - four stars.  We were in the south tower, eleventh floor.  First thing after putting our stuff away was to get cash from the ATMs at the post office.  The machines happily accepted my card, and I finally had some cash.  We ventured around the Shinjuku shopping area near our hotel. A bunch of us went into Club Sega to take a look at the arcade there.  Many people were smoking in the basement.  I had become so spoiled from Chicago's ban on smoking, that seeing it more often in Japan was a little startling.  Steve played Street Fighter IV (not released yet in the US) and made it through the story mode pretty quickly.  We ended up eating at a random place not too far from the soba restaurant that much of the study abroad group initially went to.  We were directed downstairs to eat after some confusion that there actually was a downstairs.  I ended up just ordering french fries since I didn't know what kind of meat was in the pictures, and I couldn't read the kanji on the menu.  Steve had a bit of trouble ordering since he wanted just the plate, though apparently he could have gotten a set that came with rice.  The waitress did not speak English, but I was able to sort out the ordering pretty easily.  We ate our meal and then left.  On the way out Dan tried to say gochisosama deshita (thanks for the meal), but stumbled a little bit.  The cook grinned and finished the phrase for him, which I thought was pretty funny.  We headed out and wandered a little bit before finding other group members.  Dan was trying to find DDR, but evidently it's too old and nobody plays it anymore.  He really wanted to ask some Japanese girl to "dansu" with him.

Caleb and I turned on the TV back at the apartment.  We thought Japanese television was pretty terrible.  We found it interesting that a lot of the channels had an obscene amount of text on the screen, in addition to often having a PIP of some guy's reaction of the program.  I'm curious why there are often subtitles for programs.  Is this because of the amount of homonyms in the Japanese language?  Do Japanese people just like reading TV?  I'm not sure.  Anyway, we went to bed.

I ended up waking up at about 3am, slept a bit, then woke up at 4:30am. This time I didn't feel like going back to sleep, so I just surfed the internet a little bit.  Caleb finally woke up at about 7am.  Since we were up, we decided to wonder a bit.  I wanted to find a business card case and some Calpis / Calpico drinks.  We wandered quite a bit further trying to find a food department, but everything was closed being early in the morning and Sunday.  We ended up at a 7/Eleven where I found this mixed fruits Calpis drink.  I really enjoy this drink and wish it was more prominent in the U.S..  I only see it at Mitsuwa and occasionally Chinatown.  It's pretty amazing to see every tiny alley is filled with more stores and people.  Alleys in Chicago are just filled with trash and bums.

Walking by the Embassy was cool.  There were people exercising there.  When we walked by later, a small orchestra was playing. It reminded me of the way Millennium Park functions, though I guess the same sort of things seem to happen at big buildings all around the world.

The breakfast buffet sucked.  Except for the potato animals.  But otherwise, it was pretty bland and a terrible take on American food. 

Square-Enix pretty cool.  I actually had a lot of the merchandise already, so I didn't buy very much.  Square-Enix had finally brought an online store for the U.S.  The only caveat was that it took a month to actually receive any item from them.  They apparently shipped all the orders at one time to somewhere in Washington where they were reshipped out in the U.S.   It was need to meet Izumi Tsukushi and Yasuhiro Takamatsu.  They were more knowledgeable about development within Square-Enix than I thought they would be.  Square-Enix is a very interesting company in how corporate it has become.  Many of the other companies we visited seemed to have a more casual vibe. They did give us these nice branded pens, though.

The train map was pretty overwhelming throughout the trip, though I eventually figured out how it all went together.  This was really our first time on the trains.  Of course, being on any other train in the world that is not CTA, reminds us how bad the CTA really is.  Japan's public transportation system really is top-notch, even if the map is a confusing mess.  We never had to wait long for a train.

Akihabara was cool that last time I had been to Japan, but it really didn't seem all that special visiting it a second time.  There really wasn't anything I wanted to buy.  Maybe some of the problem was that the group I was with seemed to want to just go to arcades.  Again.  Though, I really liked Yodobashi Camera because of its huge size.  I ended up buying some Final Fantasy sheet music there since I did not find any at Square-Enix due to apparently some licensing agreement.  The piano book is pretty nice.  It's a "best of" collection that manages to have all my favorite songs.  Everyone managed to have a good time at Akihabara, and I think it was nice to revisit, even if it didn't have the same level of excitement.

There was a room set up with some of their older equipment. One was used for filming animation on multiple planes. Listening to the representatives from the company talk was pretty interesting. Earlier they had showed us an anime that is being released soon that is a mix of real-life footage for backgrounds, with CG animation. What is interesting is how the CG animation retained typical Japanese-style animation. I had asked about piracy, but I think he had dodged the issue. He basically just said that the Chinese seem to steal a lot from them.

Nakano Broadway was pretty cool. We passed by an interesting sock store called Copo that displayed "Here we have all kinds of socks." It was no joke. It looked like they had a few hundred different styles of socks in that tiny store. Upstairs there were a lot anime-related stores. A lot of the stuff they were selling was cheaper than at the Square-Enix store. I had figured that it would be cheaper elsewhere, but I wasn't sure which items I'd see again.Later that night, we ate at some touristy Italian resturaunt. Part of the group had been there the night before, but I didn't find it all that great. Splitting a pizza was at least cheap, but I've definitely had better Italian food in America. Afterwards, we wondered around a bit and went to the Krispy Kreme restaurant/factory where we were given a free donut while waiting in line. That kind of satisfied my appetite, so I ended up only buying one donut when I actually got inside. All around that area was the Shinjuku Festival of Lights. It was pretty neat-looking. There was this one gazebo where two people are supposed to go up and press any two of the buttons on the display together. It would then randomly pick a fortune and light up the gazebo based on your fortune. There were a lot of people in line. We also found a Mexican restaurant that we planned to eat at on another night.

Afterwards, we went to their arcade area in the lobby where we played a Gundam game they had made recently. The arcade game was pretty unique in that you would enter a rather large pod that had a large projected screen as if you were inside of a gundam. I didn't find the game all that great, however. It gave me a headache after playing because of the abundance of noise and the large screen with blocky graphics. Also, the normal playing price was $5, which I find to be way too expensive.

The motion capture studio was pretty neat to see. There were a bunch of cameras inside the building that would be able to capture the actors. It seems like it would be hard to act without a real environment, but they seemed to be able to pull it off. We returned to the "Fun Theater" where we got to have a Q&A with Namco and representatives from the company that developed Ace Combat.

After Namco Bandai, we went directly to Karaoke. It was a great experience. We sang stuff like Anyway You want it, Bohemian Rhapsody, Knights of Cydonia, Wannabe (spice girls), and some video game songs. I tried a Japanese song by L'Arc~en~Ciel, but I found it hard to read the characters that quickly. Afterwards, we explored a little bit more, but by that point we had seen most of the area already. We did find a bowling alley, which we wish we would have seen earlier in the week.

That morning we went to the Character Goods Street. It had a ton of specialized stores and areas for characters like Doraemon, Legos, Peanut Gallery, and Domo-kun. It was really neat to see all the different specialized merchandise that I didn't really see at a lot of other stores.

We went to Harajuku and expected to see some Japanese teens dressed up in stuff like cosplay or lolita fashion, but they didn't seem to be there that day. We popped into a lot of different stores, but didn't really find much.

We decided to walk to Shibuya since we wanted to see the famous crossing. It was quite a sight. We walked through it and then went up into the train station so we could take pictures from a higher distance. After that, we at an Italian restaurant where I got carbonara pizza. We decided to leave Irvin since he decided to get his haircut while we were there. It was to take a few hours and cost quite a bit of money. The rest of us went through Yoyogi park. It was a very nice park with a lot of people out and about. It was getting pretty dark, so we decided to head back to Harajuku. As we were leaving we became hungry and had some crepes. It's interesting how popular crepes are in Japan. I don't really see them much in the U.S. After that, we headed back to our hotels to sleep.

We were supposed to all go to this sushi place, but three of us (Dan, Dan, and I) did not like Sushi, so we went to the Mos Burger across the street. The burger was pretty good, though I guess I was expecting more. It was pretty much like any other fast food burger.

After that, we went to an elementary school where we had a Taiko/Koto lesson. We learned to play the Taiko drum as a group. It was pretty hard to do, only because we had to try to keep our form balanced while we were playing the drums. I think if we took that out of the equation, it would sound better. We had to form smaller groups to make up an original performance. I partnered up with Dan and David. Our song was okay, but we spent a lot of time just trying to think of something to do.

Lindsey had learned to play the koto while we were doing the drums, and later made a performance with the sensei. She had learned quite a bit in a small amount of time. After the Taiko part of the lesson, a few of us took a brief koto lesson. The rest of us talked to the college students that had came in to perform on the Taiko drums. The faculty there had brought us all donuts from Mister Donut. They were really delicious. As the lesson came to a close, the teacher told us about the area and how the river there was named after the milky way. It was a very nice opportunity to visit the area, and was a real cultural treat. I'm glad I got to experience it.

After that, we at the train station after going back to our hotel. We then looked at the Bic Camera store there, where I bought a Final Fantasy Dissidia book.

Today was a big day for sightseeing. Kyoto was pretty different in comparison to Tokyo. It seems like there is a lot more historically cultural things to see.

The first place we went to was the Kyomizu temple. We had to walk up this street first that had a lot of vendors. It seemed very touristy. However, the temple area was one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to. The colors of all the scenery seemed very vibrant for late fall, and the view from the top of the hill was very nice. I was able to experience drinking some of holy water there. I had to reach out using one of the cups with the long handle and fill it with water from the waterfall above. This place was probably my favorite place in Kyoto.After that, we traveled to Sanju-Sangendo. It was a neat temple that had 1,000 soldier statues along with around 30 different diety statues. It was an interesting remind of how much the Final Fantasy series uses different mythological creatures in their games and was interesting to see some of the origins.

Kinkakuji was also very nice, specifically for it's Golden Pavilion Temple. This place had actually been a desktop wallpaper for my Macbook for a while, so it was instantly recognizable when we had finally seen it. We left there and went on to Toei Uzumasa Movie Land. The first thing we saw was their huge gift shop. After that, we walked around a bit and saw the different sets where they had filmed some Samurai movies. On a few occasions, some Japanese kids would say "Hello" to us in English and then run off. It was kind of weird, but funny. A bunch of different areas could be found, like the jail, an old-time marketplace, and several other buildings. There was also this dragon thing that would pop out of a small pool every now and then and spray mist. We stopped in to this samurai filming comedy show, but we couldn't really understand what was going on. After that, we went to another Samurai show where Dan Loane was invited up on stage to do some different samurai moves. It was pretty funny and I got it on video.

Afterwards, we went to the arcade area in Kyoto and then found this Japanese restaurant nearby. I had this deep-fried pork dish with leeks and cheese. It was pretty delicious, and I was happy with the restaurant selection. We had to sit on the floor with our feet underneath the floor board. It seems like restaurants in Japan tend to be empty a lot, or we just eat at the wrong time. I'm not sure why this is. Similarly, Chinatown restaurants in Chicago seems to be empty a lot of the time. I don't know how they don't go out of business. Maybe they have a lot of delivery? Anyway, we headed back to our hotel to sleep.

When we got back, we went with a few others to Lawson to buy some of the Final Fantasy potion drinks that had just came out to promote Final Fantasy Dissidia. There were 16 different art styles on the can, and two different flavors - light and dark. One tasted a little like Mountain Dew Pitch Black, while the other one was like 7-up.

Afterwards, we went to go wear kimono's and do traditional Japanese dance. I did not participate, but took lots of pictures and video. It looked like an interesting experience. Kimonos seem kind of complicated to put on.

For dinner, we got to experience shabu-shabu. Basically, we threw in a bunch of different ingredients into a boiling pot of water and then would dip thin strips of meat in to cook and eat them. After eating all the meat and vegetables, we would then eat the soup that was left. It was surprisingly good and something I'd recommend others to try.

We were all kind of worried about going to Assemblent. It was an extremely small company of a few employees. However, their company ethic was pretty interesting. They don't believe in a heavy amount of hours per work week. They basically assist companies who need additional help but don't need to hire full time employees. We played a SNES game that the company's president, Abe Kouichi, had worked on, which involved the SNES and a super scope. The super scope works similar to how the Wii controller works now.

Afterwards, we hit up a bunch of the different shrines in Kyoto. Later that night, we returned to the same restaurant that I had went to a few nights prior. Noriko came with us. This time, they set out appetizers which we weren't aware we had to pay for, since we did not ask for them. However, it is often custom in certain restaurants to have these dishes as sort of a cover charge and the staff there expected Noriko to know this since she was Japanese. They did not do this to us the night before because we were all foreigners. It was an interesting experience, but we eventually got it taken care of.

December 11

This day wasn't all that exciting, we basically packed up and left, however I went on to my aunt and uncle, where they are stationed at the Yokota Air Force Base.