Monday, August 20, 2001

I am home and unpacked. I managed to fit most of the manga and random flat stuff into an HP fax box (which is about 2x1.5x2) which is sitting in the family room ready to be moved to my room in SF where it will sit there until I go to Ikea and buy a new bookcase. ^^;;

I have about 90+ manga (I sort of lost count around 85 ^^;;) and handful of DJ and about 20 cds. After my shower I had this strange desire to go to the nearest Fairy Mart and get Onigiri. ^^;;; I think out of all the things I am going to miss it will be Fairy Mart and Liberty Used CD stores. I think the next time I go I will go for 1 week and pretty much wander around all the used CD stores in Akihabara. ^^

Hahaha I am already planning the next trip, this time its for more CDs. ^^;; To be honest I don't know if I am going to step into a Kinokuniya for a few weeks (okay except to pick up Asuka Issue 9 which I know will arrive soon =P) aside from that I am manga-ed out (for now ^_~) I did find the Monthly Shoujo Teikoku. This magazine I will take to Kino to see if they can get me a subscription. This phone book has Supersonic Angel Engine, Fushicaden Kadenza, and Lawful Drug. Not to mention that the cover designs are stellar! Normally phonebooks have fullpage ads on the back, but the Teikoku is full color art front and back (with writting on top of course). Its beautiful especially when issue 8 was Chiho Saito art and issue 9 was Clamp Lawful Drug art. XD

One series I am hooked on and I will need to get the rest of the manga for is a series called Azumanga Daioh which is a collection of 4 frame vertical strips about a teacher who teaches high school. The manga is centered around 5-6 girls in the school including Chyo-chan who is a 10 year old in HS (or middle school I'm not sure what grade it is) and its about two teachers a Gym teacher and a general teacher. Its absolutely adorable and hilarious! I have 4 of the 6 keychains for them too. ^^

I also had takoyaki! Wheee! An old man was selling them from cart on a corner in Akihabara. They were delicious! (I also had them in Nakano *_*) Its great I found a Takoyaki phone strap in Kyoto at the train station and I have a kerochan strap. ^_~ You get the picture.

Anyways check with the normal blog from time to time to see what I dig out from the box. ^^

Posted by Steph @ 03:24 PM PST [Link] [Karma: -18 (+/-)] [No Comments]

Friday, August 17, 2001

Lets see, the pickings are slim for the stuff people have requested we find for them, but we are trying.

Thea- I got the Erio Hori doujinshi being sold at her table at Comiket (3 doujinshi, all Initial D, all very sparkly and pretty) I can't find any Vagrant Story ANYTHING- not doujinshi, merchandise, or even the GAME. It's like the game never existed. ;_; Gomen~~~ Lets see... I found some Yami no Matsuei Doujinshi, but nothing with the pairing you like. I even remembered their names. I'll look for the M to M tankoubon when we go back to Akihabara tomorrow. I bought #1 used, and it's funny :) I think there may be only 2 volumes out now though... I haven't seen any other merchandise related to it, but I am looking. I DID get you something I thought you might find interesting- a W Juliet drama CD. It's really cool, it comes in this little box, and has one booklet that is the script of the drama, and another booklet with some color images of the characters and their stats. I haven't listened to the drama yet, but I noticed that Minami Takayama (Dilandau, Kiki, etc) plays one of the characters- the guy I think ^^; The Seiyuu for Maria Tachibana from Sakura Taisen plays the girl I think. Hayashi Nobutoshi is in there too, but I am not sure as who. Anyway, it was used and cheap, so I grabbed it ^^ We'll keep looking for the stuff you mentioned, but we only have one day left. Wish us luck!

Thanks for taking care of my nekotachi! I have been a worried mama thinking about them! How evil of my landlady to lock the door from the inside! Brilliant idea about the GOLDFISH! THANK YOU!!! I should have given you my mailbox key so you could empty that out too. Have they done any yard work to the back of my yard? I was checking my voicemail, and my landlady called, first about some package that arrived in the mail (it's a smutty yaoi book from amazon, I hope she doesn't open the package XD) and then she called about the yard, saying my neighbors were cleaning it or something. O_o Ah well. I am glad my cats are still alive and my apartment is still standing !! I wonder where I'll put all this stuff I have bought O_o Did I leave enough catfood/litter for the nekotachi? I am so worried ^_^;;;

I have something for Tanzy that I bought on the first day. I think she'll like it XD
I am still looking for another NOTHING artbook. No luck yet, but we'll try again tomorrow :)

We found something for Becca too. :)

Today we went to Roppongi, where Steph bought a hard rock cafe T-shirt. Then we ate at McDonalds. I think we have mastered the process of ordering a 'bigu-makku setto, L-saizu' XD It's funny :) We keep forgetting to go to Starbucks o.o I want to try it :)

Softdrinks I am enjoying- CC Lemon, Milk Tea, CC Grape, Water Salad O_O, Pocari Sweat,

I have bought some really scary smutty manga, of both the regular, yaoi, and even more scary yaoi shota kind XD I might give the shota stuff to Tommy, it scares even ME too much XD

I have seen a lot of cute bishounen guys who would be good members for the 'DANGLY' J-rock band Me, Becca, and Steph were thinking of... I still think the cutest guy I have seen so far is the guy who worked at the bank we exchanged money at this morning. He was cute and his English was good XD XD XD

Hmm what else...

Thank you Becca for updating OO for me! I see it is going fairly smoothly :) I am glad! My poor readership has dropped off so much though! I had better get back into drawing the comics right away when I get back! I must lure my readers back ^_^

Tomorrow we are going to see the Saiyuki movie - REQUIEM. I haven't seen any Saiyuki, but I am sure it will be interesting anyway.

Ok, I better go now, it's 15 yen per minute to use this computer! :)

--Emi

Posted by Emi @ 03:07 AM PST [Link] [Karma: -5 (+/-)] [2 comments]

Thursday, August 16, 2001

Ooh ahh, we survived Kyoto and are now at this chibi, somewhat ghetto hotel in Tokyo. It's
pretty cool here. I miss the Comfort Inn in Kyoto though, that room rocked, even though their breakfast 'buffet' was kinda amusing. Anyway, the plan for tomorrow is to go to Roppongi to get Steph's Hard Rock T-Shirt and then we will probably go back to Shibuya or Nakano to the Mandarake to pick up some last stuff we HAVE to get XD I'll look for a 'Nothing' artbook there for you, Tama-chan :P I got mine at the K-Books in Ikebukuro, so maybe there will be another one in Nakano. Hmm what else to say... we don't have much planned for Saturday, which I think is a good thing :) We might meet up with Wayne again or something, I dunno. It's been a long trip and we have a lot to pack, so I can actually imagine spending a whole day trying to repack our luggage XD We have bought a LOT XD XD XD

We have managed to catch some Anime on TV. We saw a lot of Yu-gi-oh, Fruits Basket, Digimon 3, Saiyuki, (the GHIBLI movie I mentioned before, Sen to Chihiro), uhm... I watched some funky set of anime short stories that were kind of spooky. Um oh and we wsaw Shaman King and um other stuff :P

OH! We watched PORUNO! Pr0n! yes, the hotel in Kyoto was boring enough (they only get like 7 channels on TV) so we bought a TV card and watched some hilarious pixelated Japanese porn. It's not like watching real pr0n, they pixelate out everything, so you have to sort of guess what is going on. We MST3Ked it. Har har har. Is anyone other than Tama reading this? hohohoho

OK, once again, time is running out, so we must go. I think I'll surf the whopping *9* channels in the hotel here to find something to watch. It will probably be all baseball again....

ja ne, and pardon all the typos XD (It's my typo oni at work as ususal :)

--Emi

Posted by Emi @ 05:49 AM PST [Link] [Karma: -3 (+/-)] [4 comments]

Monday, August 13, 2001

Yes, we did actually make it to Japan ;) Forgive the massive (even more than usual ;) typos in this entry, this Japanese Keyboard is funky @-@)This is the first chance in a week that we have had to use a computer, and we have a 1 hour time limit. Anyway, so far, the trip has been a lot of fun! I am really sick of walking though ;) and all the stairs.... anyway, we have bought much LOOT. So much that it is really hard to move our suitcases. One of mine is totally messed up, I hope it doesnt collapse ^-^

Lets see, we arrived at Tokyo on Monday the 6th and lugged our suitcases to the shinkansen station where we wisely purchased advance reservation seats for all the shinkansen trains we were going to take. Then we boarded the Narita Express for Tokyo. That is a really nice train *-* We has to switch to the Yamanote ine train at the Shinjuku station. That train finaly got us to Ikebukuro. But it was dark and raining, and we had just spent 11 hours on a plane and another 90 minutes on trains. GENKINAI. We got fairly lost wandering around Ikebukuro, bt finally a helpfl policeman in a police box directed us to the street we needed, and we actually made it to the hotel. Yatta!
It was kind of funny to notice that the first thing that was on TV when we turned on the TV in ou hotel room was Hey Hey Hey Music Champ. Hahah ;)

On Tuesday the 7th, we had a lot of plans, but ended up only wandering around Ikebukuro some more. We went to the 8-floor Animate store and the manga store part of the K-books. We were not able to find the Book-off store that I know was around there somewhere....

For food we have been raiding the Fairy Mart-er the Family Mart convenience stores that were near our hotel. We had 3 of them to choose from ;) Steph has been a riceball/onigiri fiend, while I have made an effort to try every interesting softdrink I come across. I love the vending machines here- they are all over the place.

On Wednesday we did a day trip to Osaka. Wow, I cant believe we made it to Osaka and back in one day. We took the Hikari Shinkansen that went through Nagoya and Kyoto, and finally to Osaka. We somehow managed to make it to the Animate store there, which was in the basement-like area of this large building. That animate was having an exhibition of original CLAMPX artwork. So we were able to wander through a little gallery and look at all the original artwork (not prints or copies) for all the X color manga art. It was all so gorgeous!

Thursday we went to Tokyo Tower! We went to the highest observation deck. Alas, no FOOM (darn- must have been the lack of sailor fuku!) but it was really cool to be there. In the elevator, I kept imagining Eeichi and Hoshiko from that 2nd or 3rd OO comic when they were FOOMED from the elevator XD
Later on we met up with my friend from the UT Anime Club, Wayne, who wandered around Akihabara with us. I bought a very cute little pre-paid keitai (cellphone) and a cowboy bebop cellphone strap to go with it. OH! We havent been able to see the Cowboy Bebop movie because it hasnt been released here :( but we DID go see Sen to Chihiro, that new Studio GHIBLI film. WOW. It was so cool! Sort of like an Alice in Wonderland story or something. I loved the characters in it, and I plan to do a layout with Haku in it when I get back XD) Akihabara was nifty. We managed to go to K-books and Gamers (the extension store, we haven:t been to the main store yet) and had dinner at McDonalds. (we were getting sick of riceballs ;)

Friday was SUPPOSED to be a Comiket day, but we were so worn out and hot and tired that we actually SKIPPED that day and went to the Mandarake in Nakano instead. I bought some doujinshi there and lots of used manga. Woo hoo! Smut! I am forgetting what ese we did on Friday. Hmmmmm. OH! I was almost scouted to be on a CD jacket ;) Agt the train station, a female talent scout approached me and asked me if I was interested in being photographed for the cover of a Southern All-stars
(a j-pop group) CD jacket! I was like SURE! But the photo shoot is on the 20th and we leave the 19th. bAH!

Saturday was a bit of a disappointment. We met up with Wayne again and did go to Comiket, but we got there rather late. We only had ;ike 3 minutes before the circles started packing their stuff up. I DID manage to get Thea some nice Erio Hori (I know I am mispelling that) Initial-D doujinshi (that was all her table was offering) and I got some wonderfully sparkly Hisaya Nakajo doujinshi (Hikaru no go!) Other doujinshi I picked up included lots of Fruits Basket stuff and some Cafe and card Captor Sakura. We realy didnt have much time to do stuff. Ah well. There were a LOT of people there though! But it was nothing compared to-

Sunday we got an earlier start and got to Comiket when it was in full-swing. Sunday is smut-day at Comiket (even more smutty than normal ;) but most of the yaoi smut I wanted to get turned out to be novels/fanfic instead of doujinshi. bah! I did get a cute yaoi videogame of some sort and some digicharat wallpapers and stuff. I didn:t buy that much doujinshi, amazingly enough. Wen faced with all this choice, we both became stingy ^^;; Sunday was SO PACKED though! I have ever seen so mank people in one place. There were a lot of cosplayers there, and a LOT of guys in drag XD XD Lots of male dejikos... kowai! I feel better about US cons after seeing some of them. At Comiket on both days I went, I saw only one other white person there besides me, and I think it was the same guy each day o.o After Comiket we went to Waseda and Saw Eileen`s apartment. WOW, its nifty. It was fun to see her here, hehehe.

Monday (yesterday) was laundry day! Well, sort of, we washed some stuff, but it didn]t all dry in time. Ah well. We made another run to the Ikebukuro K-books, and I bought a TON of doujinshi O.O LOTS. I have like 40 or 50. And I got the Tachibana Kaimu NOTHING artbook I have been looking for.

Today we go to Kyoto! We had a HELL of a time lugging our heavy suitcases from Ikebukuro, on the yamanote train to Tokyo station, and then finding a place to store the main bags while we take smaller bags to Kyoto. OOF. Wayne showed us this place where I get 1 hour online for free XD Steph is sitting next to me, typing away, so I am sure her entry in this blog will be right next to mine;)

General impressions so far- CROWDS, WATCH OUT FOR BICYCLES, they will RUN YOU DOWN. Fairy Mart riceballs are oishii. We have mastered the train system here, yay! We love the Yamanote... I am tired of people staring at me though o.o

OK, my time is almost up, so I better go. Are my nekotachi OK? I am worried about them!!!!!

--Emi

Posted by Emi @ 07:53 PM PST [Link] [Karma: -1 (+/-)] [1 Comment]

Okay now we are getting somewhere, as soon as I figure out how to use this keyboard things will be okay. I can`t believe that I`ve been in Japan for a week. We are 133t since we figured out the Yamanote line. ^^; The yamanote line is a train that runs a big circle around Tokyo which is good sinced we stayed close to downtown Tokyo. Our biggest enemy here is the heat and humidity in Japan. Its like swimming in water! Because of that we had to cut back on some things and there are a lot of stairs and walking (which I don`t mind.)

We got to know Family Mart really well. We nicked named them Fairy Mart after the Fairy Mart in funfun factory. I should post a small review section on the different onigiri I got to try while staying in Ikeukuro. Ikebukuro is really busy there are like 6 banks surrounding the hotel. Its crazy. Now we`re off to Kyoto. We stowed our luggage away and now we`re waiting for 2 pm so we can go down to Kyoto!

Osaka was really grey and hotter than Tokyo. But it was amazing and worth it to see Clamp art work. It was gorgeous, all the detail it took to draw each sakura petal and the lace, there are some things that you`ll never notice in the reprints. For example Mokona seems to really really like textures, nearly half of her art is textured, which sort of translates poorly in the reprints. Also she is a big fan of gold paint. Its on a lot of her art. =)

Right now we`re at the Tokyo Cultural Center which is a nice place that lets people use computers for free. =) Its really hard to find a place that will let us use computers for this long for free. To be honest I wish we could do more things but heat and time seemed to have gotten to us. I zonk out at about 10 pm and wake up at 6 am which is good and bad since nothing opens till 9 ^^;;

Emi will probably blog her experience but so I`ll skip that. Japan as Eileen said is pretty random. On the way to the K-Books in ikebukurou a Japanese guy confessed to me ^^;; I chalk it up to him not knowing much Japanese since he figured out that I couldn`t understand much Japanese and that I was american. He spoke Japanese a bit then said `I love you.` ^^;;;; Oh and I nearly won a Sanyo cell phone. We were returning from Animate and we were snookered into pulling little papers from a box in front of a pachinko place and I won a phone. The pachinko guy got really excited and hopped up and down but I wasn`t a resident so I got Japanese tea instead ^^;;;.

TamaTama: I have Pretear soundtrack and vol 1 & 3 luckily for you they were used and in very very good condition. I will probably pick up the other two vols since 4 recently came out and 2 seems to be very popular.

Alana: there are rows and rows of ST dj but not Sumire and Sakura (Ironically there was pairings for everything else ^^;;;) to be honest there was a lot of stuff that didn`t really interest me at Comiket. There were some really good cosplayers and many cross-players ^.~

We missed friday`s comiket since there wasn`t much we wanted to see, and we caught the tail end of saturday, piece of advice go between 12 and 3 anytime before or after that time you either get crushed or you missed out on a lot since a lot of circles close up early. =(

Btw I now own ALL of Chie Waseda`s published works. XD (Steph does the happy dance.)

Posted by Steph @ 07:31 PM PST [Link] [Karma: 3 (+/-)] [3 comments]

Friday, August 3, 2001

For the love of god all we want is directions (or a map) of how to get to the Animate in Osaka so we can go stare at the insanely beautiful X art there. Can someone help? ^^;; Animate's page is www.animate.co.jp and its having server issues. =P On another note I managed to get through the Comiket catalouge in about half a day, there are 30 post its sticking out of the top and the sides of the catalouge marking stuff that interested me and stuff that I wanted. I found Kagerou Nostalgia DJ! XD And Haruka naru toki no nana de DJ. Yesssssss.

By the way if there are any specific DJ circles please shout them out. Stick them in the comments section, put Greymatter to work.

Posted by Steph @ 03:05 AM PST [Link] [Karma: 6 (+/-)] [3 comments]

Monday, July 30, 2001

I have the comiket catalog! yay! yay! it's so huge O_O I really hope we'll be able to find all the doujinshi circles we want to see! I have only found two of the ones I am interested in so far, and that took me a long time @_@ But I guess that gives me something to do on the airplane XD

Days till we leave for Japan: 7 (woo hoo!)

Posted by Emi @ 02:23 AM PST [Link] [Karma: -4 (+/-)] [1 Comment]

Saturday, July 21, 2001

Steph found her railpass. Yay! I was really worried! I discovered that if she had lost it, it was not replacable. >_< Now to keep from losing mine! I uploaded a map of some of the places in Ikebukuro we plan to visit. That's a lot of places! @_@ It's a bit overwhelming! But I think we can do it! The places are a lot closer together than they look. Last time I was there, I walked from The sunshine 60 building (near K-Books and animate) over to the Seibu department store, and it didn't take very long. It looks like a long way though!

Everyone~ if you have lists for stuff you want us to get for you while in Japan, hurry up and submit them to us please :) Space in our suitcases is limited! (unless you give us money to mail the stuff back to you ^_^)

Posted by Emi @ 07:14 PM PST [Link] [Karma: -15 (+/-)] [No Comments]

Thursday, July 19, 2001

Here is the first entry for the super amazing FOOM 2001 Japan trip! It's 18 days till the trip, and I am gathering as much information as possible about Japan that I can! Steph thinks she may have lost her Japan Rail Pass! Oh no! I am sure she just left it in SF :)

Posted by Emi @ 07:54 AM PST [Link] [Karma: -1 (+/-)] [No Comments]