After waking up on the plane, I watched a Japanese movie called 笑う警官 (The Laughing Policeman); it was not too bad. After that, I think I may have fallen asleep again for a short while, but at the right time to miss both the second meal and the passing out of the embarkation/debarkation and customs forms. This left me with little choice but to obtain and fill out the forms in the airport. After arriving, since it took a while to get through the immigration line, my luggage was already at the luggage counter instead of the bag claim, so I ended up losing some time waiting at the bag claim even though my bags were no longer there. I then went through customs with no problems. I spent a bit of time finding the second post office in Terminal 2 (the first one I found was closed) to pick up a rental cell phone that I ordered, and then I activated my JR rail pass and took the express into Tokyo.
Upon reaching Tokyo, I switched over to the Yamanote line to get to Ueno to meet up with Arnond. He had apparently not taken JR since his arrival there, so he told me he was waiting at something like exit 8 and 9 of the station, even though the JR station had no numbered exits. It turns out that he was at the Tokyo Metro station, and for some reason he didn't come to my station, but had me go to him hauling all my bags. So much for him helping me with my bags. Anyway, I quickly checked into the hotel, and then we rushed off to see the Higurashi Opera in Nerima. |
| Arnond as we headed to the Higurashi Opera |
We arrived late due to my various delays in leaving the airport, but it seems we still came in at the same time as a group of other people. The opera itself was actually pretty neat. The opera's story basically followed the first Higurashi arc, being Onikakushi-hen. It was tough sometimes to catch what they were saying since they were not only singing in opera style, but in Japanese as well, and sometimes they would also be drowned out by the music. Satoko's voice was surprisingly similar to her anime incarnation, and just about every scene with Ooishi was hilarious. It seemed there were also two different people playing Rika, one for the Watanagashi kagura scene, and then one for all the other scenes. At least that's what I guessed after coming in late. After the opera, we stopped to get some food (I got some Kara-age-don) and stopped at a Book Off to browse before heading back to the hotel. We stayed up late prepping for Reitaisai the next day and getting Chris's and Arnond's stuff together to put into my room since they were going to have to check-out of their room the next morning, only to check-in to a different room later in the same day (it was a limitation with the length of a single registration you could make at the hotel). I slept in Chris's and Arnond’s room since Chris was not around due to heading out to a STANCE PUNKS concert before I arrived, and because my room was now relatively full of people’s stuff.
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