TRAVELOG

we got of the train at osaka station and immediately stumbled upon a soccer game happening right outside. having not eaten, we grabbed some snacks and sat to watch the game for a bit. then, we dropped our stuff off at the hotel and went to denden town. our main goal was to see the lifesized recreation of yusei's d-wheel from yugioh 5ds that's on display at a random card shop there. the things i do for ygo...

we managed to find the store eventually and honestly it was worth it. the whole card shop was ygo themed, with cutouts, wall decals, and obviously tons of cards. they even let me actually sit on the d-wheel, maybe i should have put a pic of that here instead, but it feels kind of embarassing ///_///

we walked around other shops in denden town and headed back to the hotel eventually. anthony had heard about a cool izakaya area that he wanted to check out at night, but i wasn't too interested so i stayed at the hotel. i decided to walk to a nearby mandarake before it closed and took an interesting route through streets of host clubs, bars, and uh, other stuff. osaka certainly has some interesting areas. then the mandarake store was underground in a cave (?) and there was a full sized t rex fossil on display between all the doujinshi (?). the vibe was frankly indescribable.

we bought shinkansen tickets in advance and set out to a mall near the train station to hit a steins gate x monogatari pop up shop that anthony was interested in. little did we know, we were walking into absolute insanity. the pop-up shop was within a "household goods specialty store" called LOFT that took up a whole floor of the mall. i'd heard of LOFT before, and knew it was popular, but it was busier than i ever could have imagined. there was a film crew filming a television segment in the store, focusing on the huge crowds and interviewing shoppers. sadly we didn't end up seeing the broadcast, i wanted to see if we were in the background at all... but anyway, the shoppers in the store were going insane. people were filling their baskets with literal hundreds of rolls of washi tape, exclusive hanshin tigers goods, and more. it was like what i imagine black friday circa the early 2000s was but worse. to be fair they were selling some really good stuff so i grabbed a bunch of goods and got in line with anthony. when i tell you we almost missed our train because of that line...

anyway, i found out later that it was the store's OPENING DAY. and that's why it was insanely busy. well, i got an exclusive LOFT tote bag for free with my purchase for being one of the first 3000 customers, so totally worth it, right?

when we got back to tokyo, we had just enough time to stop by the bandai headquarters before it closed and take pics with the life-sized char statue. i'm a little obsessed with him. after that, we spent the night in akiba. the radio kaikan store alone makes stopping by worth it in my opinion. there are actually pretty good deals there especially at the amiami store.

we took an early train to nikko, which is a good 2.5 hour ride into the mountains. we stayed there one night so we didn't have to do the trip twice in one day thankfully. nikko is so beautiful and huge, my pics dont do it justice. there are a ton of shrines all concentrated in one area, including the burial site of tokugawa ieyasu. there are so many flights of stairs to get to the inner burial chamber and it was mostly us + a bunch of old ladies. we were all cheering each other on to get to the top lol. it was a really amazing sight.

we did the whole circuit of temples and shrines and anthony filled up so many pages of his goshuincho (temple/shrine calligraphy book). it was quite busy at nikko, but it wasn't as crazy as kawaguchiko at least. the nature and mountain air were very refreshing and our hotel was great.

today, we hung around shibuya and shinjuku after taking an early train back from nikko. we shopped around and went to my favorite mall, marui annex in shinjuku. i picked up a surugaya package i'd had shipped there earlier. i will definitely do this again next trip, it was an easy process and i was able to get a bunch of stuff i didn't see for sale in their physical stores.

we enjoyed walking around, eating and shopping until nighttime where we hopped in and out of a few izakayas in shibuya. it is so crazy there at nighttime. a group of japanese highschool boys tried to give anthony cigarettes and invited him out with them TOT

our goal today was to finish anthony's goshuincho that he started filling out on our 1st trip to japan in 2023. we went to a small shrine near our hotel in iidabashi that was run by a very nice old man. he gave us rice crackers and recommended a good goshuin for anthony to get. it ended up being one of the most unique and beautiful ones in his whole book!

after that, we walked by the yomiuri giants baseball stadium and through a beautiful park on our way to the train station. We took the train to odaiba for my concert that night. In the meantime, we went to diver city and saw the life-sized gundam and visited the gundam store there (though sadly it was reservation only at the time... it was so busy... that's what happens when you go on the weekend i guess T_T)

after that, anthony and i split ways as i went to the BUCK-TICK concert and he went to shibuya. it was very cool to meet other BUCK-TICK fans and the concert was amazing. my favorite song was SUBROSA. i feel very lucky to be able to say i have seen them live! (you cant film/take pics during the concert so i only have a pic of the empty stage as you see...)

getting back to the hotel by myself turned into a silly adventure. i had totally ran out of money on my suica card (train pass) and since i have an android i couldnt load money onto it with my phone. i also had left my debit card at the hotel by accident so i couldnt withdraw money lol. i ended up having just barely enough to buy the train tickets to iidabashi by combining the tiny amount left on my suica with my pocket change. thank goodness the ticket machine lets you combine payment methods. it certainly was a funny way to end the night.

time to leave! :( we stopped by akiba again to grab a few figures i had my eye on but didn't want to haul around in my luggage during the trip. in an arcade, i found the ygo monster plushes that i hadnt seen the whole time and was able to win yubel, who i wanted the most :) it was a nice way to end the trip.

we headed to haneda airport with one more bag than we arrived with (a 100 yen tote bag from daiso that i taped closed) and had an uneventful day of travel home.

overall, it was a very fun and memorable trip and i am happy i have so many pictures to look back on and remember it by.