Flew from Oakland to LAX via Southwest. Most interesting so far is we had a co-pilot with a sense of humor. He announced as we prepared to land, and I quote, “…Will collect all trash, garbage, phone numbers, dinner reservations, anything you don’t need…”.

After going through customs at the LAX International airport we were called back out to meet up with our tour group Pop Japan Travel (PJT). Met our tour guides, Yumiko, Trisha, & Isaac (Aka-san).

Went back through customs a second time and boarded the best airplane I’ve ever flown; Singapore Airlines. We were offered blankets, pillows, socks, tooth brushes, head phones, steamed towels, and free soda and meals.

We were entertained by personal TV screens where you could watch TV, Movies, or play video games. I watched Friends and CSI on the way. I listened to the international radio and listened to Winnie the Pooh & Aladdin story time. I passed on the mobile plane gift shop.

When we arrived 11.5 hours later the airport and roads were deserted. We took a private bus to our hotel, Shinagawa Prince. The rooms were about half the size of US hotel rooms, but somehow seemed nicer. Oh yea - all the bathrooms have heated toilets. I so miss those now…

Well that was one day gone. The time travel into the future killed the first day…

Woooooow! ._. Everything so small, yet HUGE! Narrow buildings that reach 17 stories high and 4 stories below. Amazing. We took the first day on a private tour bus going to the usual tourist hot-spots.

First stop; Tokyo Tower! SQUEE! First place I stepped off into was the exact spot where Hikaru, Fuu, and Umi (Magic Knight Rayearth) met and were thrown into Cephiro - Awesome! The next place I saw was were Subaru (Tokyo Babylon) expelled a spirit from Tokyo Tower. Then I paid the extra 400yen to go to the VERY tip-top and see where Fuuma (X) lost his head -- literally -- by Kamui‘s hand. Odd…all those shows were by CLAMP. Never noticed that before…

The Imperial Palace was our next stop. We took a group photo at a statue behind the chain where we weren’t suppose to go... Hmm... that was about the hi-light of that stop *sweatdrops* The Imperial Palace was cool, all secluded around a mote, but we couldn’t get very near it as security was pretty high. I’m sure it looks beautiful in the Sakura Season (Cherry Blossom Season) though, actually I know it is, I bought a post card of it, hehe.

Next our warm comfy tour bus dropped us off at Tokyo University / ToDai. It looks exactly like it does in the “Love Hina” anime. But besides that is was pretty quiet, like Standford. Oh yea...and it was FREEZING! I wanted the bus back. o.o Before we left I bought 3 ToDai pens from the Student Store. Couldn’t leave empty-handed!

For lunch our tour group treated us to Sushi. I’m not partial to sushi, so I all but starved. Haha, just kidding... they got me some rice so I ate that and some wasabi. I was happy. Then we rated the Discount store (which was fairly expensive might I add...) and I bought the Gackt “Crescent” CD. YAY!! And some conditioner since mine exploded on the trip over... O_o;

Hiro, our bus tour guide for the day filled us in on some interesting facts about our next stop Asakusa / Shrine. I purified myself with the shrine water and insence smoke before entering the shrine and getting my fortune told. I had a “Regular Fortune”; something about a good life and a love to soon enter my life. *taps foot* I’m still waiting on that one... Hm...only been about 2 weeks... am I impatient? Hah. Well most my time here was spent searching for a MacDonald’s... or more precisely... a bathroom. u.u;; At least I got to use my first words of Nihongo (Japanese) on a stranger. “Sumimasen. Makudonarudo wa doko desu ka?” Unfortunatly, she didn’t know... ^.^;; But she used some Eigo (English) as well. So that in itself was pretty fun. Oh, and rest assured...I did find MacDonald’s.

Odaiba!!!! The best part of the day...er...night! The bus dropped us off at Fuji TV Station and we ran lose their for a while. Got to see the great view of Tokyo Bay from the top viewing deck. As we worked our way to lower floors we stopped at make-shift sets for photo ops. I especially liked the Hey!Hey!Hey! Music Champ one. I watch that show every sunday at 11PM. ^.^v Also found a picture of Gackt there too. What our group seemed to find the most interesting in the station though, was the “Yaoi” (maleXmale), movie poster for “Lord of the Rings”. Heh.

Next we all split up! My dad and I went into Aqua City, passing up on Sega Joypolis. He made our way through the general mall (boring) and up to Little Hong Kong. That place was so cool! All lil shops and booths for games, food carts and cute souvenirs. Next we headed over to Palette Town. This was quite a walk (bridge across the freeways), but well worth it. You enter through a light-up rainbow and immediately notice the huge Ferris wheel. We entered the first floor and came across some unique stores (it’s basically a mall). I found my first manga there, wall-to-wall, wow. Then we made our way up to the 2nd floor to see an Italian motif. It was designed by the same guy who did the Caesar Palace in Las Vegas. The ceiling was painted like the sky and the lights would change for daylight, sunset, sunrise, etc. There were massive fountains with Greek statues in the various courts the mall had. It was a very classy place to shop (pricey as well, heh).

We met back at the bus with just 2 minutes to spare (we had made a reputation of being late each time) and found that only about 7 other tour members had made it back. The bus left and the rest had to fend for themselves on the trains as transportation of getting back. Back at the hotel I think I just made up some ramen and went to bed.... it’s all a blur... O_o;

Using the JR trains for the first time we took off for the Ghibli Museum. We took about a 20minute walk through a nice quiet park the rest of the way to the museum. The Ghibli company is known for it’s leader, Miyazaki, who has been called “The Walt Disney of Japan”. Speaking of which, it was Disney that brought over “Spirited Away” to the US and into US theatres. They are also known for famous films such as “Princess Mononoke”, “Castle in the Sky”, “Grave of the Fireflies”, and more. We roamed around the museum discovering storyboards, props, and even watching a Russian animation film of the 1930s that originally inspired Miyazaki. Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed to be taken inside the museum.

For lunch we ate at the “Straw Hat Cafe” along with about 8 other members of our tour group. The food was great and the blue cream soda ice cream drink thingy-ma-jig I had tasted very refreshing (what the heck did they call that??? O_o;). I even opted for the strawberry shortcake. SO GOOD! ...heh...I ate too much. XD

We made our way back to the trains along the streets (much faster). From there we were off to Gonzo Digimation Studio. We got off the trains and proceeded to get lost around a large district. Hmm...interesting...

About a half hour late we finally made it to Gonzo. YAY! We split off into 2 groups and got a cool tour of their animation office and saw how they create backgrounds, cels, 3D animation, and added scenes to music to keep the right tempo and timing. Cool stuff. ^.^ Then we were taken into a break room and got to interview the creators of “Last Exile”, an anime I really enjoy, about their job. After that the 3D director of “Last Exile” gave us a step by step lesson on digimation (digital animation) and showed us some awesome trailers of past projects and up coming releases.

Gonzo Studio were really great to us. They made sure we had translators, fed us snacks, and gave us free goodies to go! It was a great experience.

Lastly for the day, we went off to Roppongi, or how it’s nick-names, the “Gaijin Ghetto” for dinner at Alcatraz B.C.. We ate dinner with the entire tour group in a cell. The food was nothing to write home about -- so I won’t. The service was bad and the food overly priced. A’well... just back to the hotel from there.

We were dropped off early, before the rest of the group at Ikebukuro with our trusty tour guide, Trisha. I wanted to catch the new “Inu-Yasha Movie III” on it’s last day in theatres. We paid the overly priced tickets of about $18USD and then...were left there...alone. Odd. Great movie, even without subtitles I understood more than most of it. I then came out to buy souvenirs of the movie that were quite handily available at the concession stand. We were told by anther tour member to meet at eh station we came on at 2PM and until then just wander about shopping.

We stuck to one building the entire time. It was 17 stories up, 4 stories down, and 3 times the length of Sunvalley Mall. WOW. I bought a cute calendar there of “Hanazakari no Kimitachi E” (For You in Full Blossom) and 4 CDs (2 Utada Hikaru, 1 BoA, 1 Hitomi Shimatani - bad CD). CDs range about $25-30USD, so I was pretty much shopping for the day after that, heh.

Well 2PM hit and we were at the train station on time. Unfortunately, no one else was. Turns out half the group went ahead, while the other half was lost, and my dad and I were left behind. What no one realized was that there were MANY train exits at Ikebukuro. We came on one completely different from anyone else. So we lost about an hour trying to have our tour guide, Aka-san, find us. Once he found us the “Multimedia Art Gakuen” was pretty much shot. So kindly enough, Aka-san took us to Shibuya so I could pick up the “Moon Child” DVD special edition starring Gackt (and written by also!) & Hyde. Then, to Harajuku (teenage hang out, lots of fashion stores, and crepe shops) so my dad could pick up some authentic Japanese souvenirs at the Oriental Bazaar. We stopped by the store “Sex Pot” to say hi to one of Aka-san’s friends; very cool store. Then on our way back we all got crepes (YUM!) and headed back to the hotel.

We met up with about 10 of our tour members to head out with Yumiko, or other tour guide, and Trisha to a very nice Chinese restaurant. It was back at Odaiba and we got to head further into the Italian-esque floor of the Palette Town mall. We had plenty of good food this time and a unique “performance”. Basically, the restaurant had an employee stick on a head mask and do a lil jig up on a stage for about 30seconds and then run off. It was great. XD

Unknowingly to the majority of the group, it was Yumiko’s plan to get us all drunk and drag us off to kareoke. It worked. Only 2 managed to escape, haha. So about 8 of us got to experience authentic kareoke in a real kareoke booth. About two hours of “We are the Champions”, “Oops, I Did it Again”, and “Real Folk Blues”. We all gave homage to Yumiko though; she’s a real pro, put us all to shame. I tried singing a bit as well, but only really managed to sing BoA’s “Every Heart” in English OK... too bad I had meant it to be “Listen to my Heart”. Hah. My bad.

We met up with Rob (he was afraid of getting lost on the trains) and headed back to Ikebukuro for AnimeExpo Tokyo 2004. After walking the streets a while we found it, registered, and split up. I got Crispin Freeman the English voice actor, Fred Gallagher the MegaTokyo artist, and the Powerpuff Girls artists’ autographs and then left. It was SO friggin’ boring there (and notice the only guests at the time where from the US?)! Extremely sad compared to the US AnimeExpo where you can’t even decide what to do first.

My dad and I ate at El Torito. Hah, I know... very Japanese authentic. After that we headed across the street to some awesome anime shops. One name, one store: Animate. It was 7 stories tall and crammed packed full of anime goodness! *drools* That whole side of the street emptied my pockets quite a bit...but I came back a richer otaku (US derivation of anime fan, not the true meaning... I hope... >.>;). I had a quite time shopping there. After, we just headed on back to our hotel in Shinagawa. By then I had the trains down pat...well... at least for the Green Line (nevermind that it’s a circle!).

The rest of the evening is a blur.... what did I have for dinner?! o_o;;

Ah hah! I remember now!! My dad and I tried to catch “The Last Samurai” in the hotel’s cinema, but 1) it was sold out 2) it was $25USD a ticket! So we opted to shopping in the mini-mall stores below our hotel. We gathered a good amount of authentic Japanese candy and various souvenirs. For dinner we ate at an authentic Japanese steak house. My dad ordered Yaki-niku, while I had rice and soup. My dad was served a raw piece of steak. He had to cook it in the grill embedded in the table before him. It was fun watching, haha. We shared our meal’s and it was all good. Our desserts were great too. I ordered mango pudding and my dad had Iced Almond something... it was good, but we still have no idea what it was we were eating. ^.^;;

Luckily we had ‘til 2PM to run around Tokyo some more before we left for the airport. My dad and I took to wandering around the hotel and lookin’ at the shops across the street under the JR Train station. Some cool jewelry shops and food shops were there. We headed across the train station and accidentally found a Japanese Flee Market. Though I should have known from the pink waving flags saying “Furi Maketo”. ^.^;; I got some cheap anime goods there and pretty jewelry as well. Then we stopped by a book store and I found “Gothic Lolita Bible” which I had been looking for to bring back for my friend. Yay! We stopped at a cafe and I had the best caramel cappuccino ever! Sooo goood!

We headed back through the JR Train station and I opted to buy a ticket into the station just to shop at “CD Garden” and “Book Garden”. I got 3 Ayumi Hamasaki CDs (they’re OK) and Gackt’s “Moon” CD. I also found volume 2 of “Zombie Loan”! I was so surprised to find just volume 1! it had come out that Wed. so that was very cool.

We ate lunch at a lil cafe in the train station then headed back to make our way to the airport via bus. At the airport customs was a snap (so much nicer than in the states). As I was checkin’ out BoAs new music videos Aka-san came up and pain-stakingly bought the CD+DVD set. I guess it was my fault? O_o; I donno...hopefully he likes it, hah. A few moments later Kim, my dad, and I met Aka-san at a restaurant to try out an authentic Japanese melon cream soda -- VERY good. I also tried the Yakisoba, but was too full to finish it even though it was really good as well.

Then it was off to board the plane for the 9.5 hour flight. This time our group sat generally altogether, which was nice. I got to talk with Pinguino for just about the first time the entire trip, so that was cool. I worked a but on a drawing for PJT on the way back, but had to turn it in without finishing it... then I learned we could have kept it to finish later, hah. ^.^; All well...

I watched 2 movies on the way. One was a Korean (?) film about a money collector and his diabetic, semi-retarded brother. It was really good, really funny, and really sad. I wish I knew the name of it!! I missed the first 20 minutes or so of it, but I want to see it again. Then I watched and Chinese (?) film about a young boy trying to win new shoes for his little sister. It was a Hallmark-like movie, but still good.

The rest of the flight I tried to sleep away.

Touch down into LAX. Bah...officially out of Japan. Wow, hey...it’s 10PM Sunday morning. Time travel. I was so thrown off. Still am if you ask me.

My dad and I said a vague goodbye to everyone and raced to our next flight into Oakland airport. We ended up on the same flight as Kevin from our group. Didn’t talk to him though... I just crashed (sleep-wise, not plane-wise).

One last jaunt of a car ride home and... I was back home. So....sad..... ;_;

In conclusion, I want to go back!!