Twelfth Post!

[hoisinsauce]

POST NAMER TBC-- work harder, meme!

Welcome back, anyway! Chat fandom, media, creative things, weirdness from around the net, funny stuff, anything! Meme awaits!

(start a comment thread by replying to this post)

 

Comments

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

Post: 🙂
Post, Japan: 🤩🤩🤩

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

>be in japan
>visit denny's
>there's a promotion for a new 'ethnic food' menu
>it's chinese food

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

They also had a special menu featuring a 800 yen Mexican mango, which has really changed my view on how expensive I think $2 mangos are.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

Now that I'm thinking about this, the English menu said 'ethnic,' the Japanese menu said 'Oriental,' and the Chinese menu said 'Foreign.' No one wants to claim the questionable soymilk noodles.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

Climbed Mount Tsukuba, the shortest of the 100 Famous Japanese Mountains. There's two peaks, the male (男体) and the female (女体). The female peak is taller, of course. 💪✨

It rained the day before, so the climb was fucking shit. Took us six hours (stopping for food and medical emergencies) to climb four miles, but we ascended about 2400 feet in the process. Most of the trail is just hopping from one rock to another, which would be fairly doable if the entire trail weren't also slick with mud. Saw a lot of the non-tourist hikers brought hiking gloves so they wouldn't get their hands dirty, which was smart.

Great view at the top, though. On clear days you can allegedly see Mt. Fuji, but we were not so lucky.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

Huh, have never considered hiking gloves as a specific item, but thinking about it, I do often keep my gloves on even after the weather's warmed up a bit, when hiking, to protect my hands. Maybe I should always bring them.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

There's a stone monument in Arashiyama inscribed with a poem by former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai. When we dropped by, we ran into an old Japanese guy who was explaining the poem, in very broken Chinese, to a small group of Chinese tourists. He even had laminated hand-outs!

Apparently there are Zhou Enlai otaku in Japan. I hope he finds joy with his blorbo.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

quick someone contact yourfaveisproblematic.tumblr.com

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

Rained so hard in Kyoto that it fully saturated my raincoat. Bought a 600 yen umbrella at a souvenir shop and got daijoubu'd by the lady there.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

Took a sightseeing cruise in Ine that turned out to be more of bird-feeding cruise. Mostly seagulls, but also a whole lot of black kites.

Millions of years of evolution honed these birds of prey to take out small fish and rodents, and yet here they are, subsisting entirely on a diet of Calbee chips and soft serve ice cream. Incredible.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

Amanohashidate was really cool, though. I've now checked off two of the three great Japanese landscapes, which means I need to make another trip to Miyajima some day.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

Calbee! I haven't seen those in so long...

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

There's seven bridges in Uji and four of them are connected to two large islands. We are going to cross all of them.

Have we accidentally reenacted the Konigsberg problem?

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

https://local.pokemon.jp/en/manhole/

I also got really into collecting photos of these Pokemon-themed manhole covers. There's three in Uji - two by the main tourist part of town, and one a station away by the Nintendo Museum.

Made a special trip out just to catch that one, and it turned out to be paywalled! Couldn't get in without a ticket, and tickets were booked out three months ago so we couldn't even have paid for it if we wanted to. Tragic.

We settled for taking a photo of the Pokemon Go PokeStop corresponding to the manhole cover instead. Thanks, GPS drift.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

On a side note, the mymizu app has been a lifesaver. It's a crowdsourced map of all the water fountains in Japan.

Not super necessary since there's also vending machines everywhere, but those bottles are small and they can get pretty pricy. Was funny hiking to the top of Fushimi Inari and watching the vending machines get more and more expensive at every stop.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

Muji is also a lifesaver. Apparently they have free water refill stations in every store.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

'Izufornia' was false advertising. My travel buddies have decided Atami is the Atlantic City of Japan.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

Overheard at Akihabara Radio Kaikan -

> Tourist 1: 'Holy shit, there's so many people here.'
> Tourist 2: 'Yeah, I didn't realize there were so many gooners in Japan.'

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

They paywalled the top of the Magnet tower in Shibuya! It's 1800 yen (drink included) now.

Instead we went to the abandoned bar on 9F and craned our heads around to get a glimpse of the legendary Shibuya Scramble. Wasn't actually all that scramble-y since it was mid-morning on a Monday, but close enough.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

Ikebukuro, my favorite place in Tokyo! Spent the day trawling for interesting secondhand merch doujins.

Spotted a book from one of my favorite artists listed for 22000 yen, which is absolutely insane since I remember she originally sold them for 1200 yen (and it's a 108-page book, so it barely covered printing costs). Other artist I recognize has a bunch of compendiums going for 8500 yen each. I should just become a doujin scalper at this rate.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

Watched the newest Detective Conan movie in a theatre in Hibiya! Certainly one of the movies of all time.

I liked the absolutely ridiculous ways they incorporated the Nobeyama Radio Observatory into the movie. There's a scene at the end where the culprit flees the scene by driving a moving radio telescope dish and is defeated when the titular tiny detective uses a skateboard to reflect the observatory's laser pointer into his eyes that was 100% predictable but still hilarious to watch. The movie actually includes a few scenes in Hibiya Park, so right after the movie, we crossed the street to try to reenact some of the chase scenes ourselves.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

Visited the Enoshima Iwaya Caves. It's pretty funny - the first cave contains ancient Buddhist sculptures and a shrine that was first dedicated in 552. You're given a candle to hold as you enter, and the whole experience feels sacred and a little spooky.

The second cave has a very modern statue of a dragon in it. You can clap in front of it to make it roar.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

Opened up a 'free note' guestbook in a cafe in Shimokitazawa. First page had this:

> IG: [handle redacted]
> Salary: 17000K
> Height: 183cm
> Likes: Tall, sadist
> Hobbies: Playing with girls, Tinder

Men are such fascinating creatures.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

Friend lost her Gintama keychain at Shoin-jinja. Canonically accurate.

Re: How's Life? - Dan (in Japan)

[(Anonymous)]

Last day in Japan. Too hot outside to do anything, so my friend locked me (and two other friends) into a karaoke booth for ten hours. At least it had AC.