Thursday, March 18, 2010 Arnond was in charge of the plan for today, and he graciously allowed us to go to Matsumoto Castle before heading to Tsumago, since we were unable to do it the previous day. We showed up at the castle not long after it opened, and it was a pretty chilly morning. It was a much less complicated castle complex than Himeji, with a very simple layout for the outer walls. There was a collection of donated period firearms on display in the castle, and the way displays were set up inside it was very similar to Himeji Castle. Some of the guns on display There were some interesting later additions to the complex, like one section that used lotus flower-shaped windows due to later influence of Chinese Buddhist architecture. This castle was also one of the few castles to have a moon viewing room, an addition used to entertain guests during the peaceful later years of the castle. The room was quite a bit more open than any other rooms of the castle, and the outside te...

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 I ended up waking up very early, like around 4:30AM, but then went back to sleep for a short while. Then I got up again and decided to write up the trip so far. After finishing that up, I got packed up so we could have breakfast and then leave. I went down at 8:30 for breakfast, and found a gorgeous meal waiting for all of us. The nice Japanese breakfast that came with our room Arnond came down shortly after, but Chris had gotten out of bed around 8:25, since he slept through his alarm, and the rest of us just assumed he knew what he was doing, so didn't wake him. He didn’t come down until later, after he got dressed, and managed to make it to breakfast before Arnond stole any of his food. Our first stop after checking out was to leave our luggage at coin lockers at the station. We actually managed to fit all our bags into one of the large coin lockers there. We then traveled to Shimosuwa Station to see the remaining half of Suwa Taisha,...

Tuesday, March 16, 2010 Today was our first day out of Tokyo. I had suggested going to Suwa both for the fact that it was a site related to Touhou, and because it seemed like it would be interesting. The main shrine there (Suwa Taisha) is extremely old, being mentioned in the earliest Japanese texts. Arnond had not yet exchanged his Japan Rail Pass, as he had wasted all opportunities to do so the previous day, so we had to wait for him to get that done when the pass exchange at Ueno opened up at 9AM. I picked up breakfast at First Kitchen in the meantime, and then we headed out to Suwa. We caught the Super Azusa train from Shinjuku at 10AM, and got off at Kamisuwa station. The station itself had a small hot spring for feet, which is something the area is known for, but we didn’t use it. The foot hot spring in the station We then checked into our ryokan, and boy, was it nice. Certainly a big improvement from the small rooms we were staying at in Tokyo. Anyway, we left our bags the...

Monday, March 15, 2010 Today was a day I had Chris put into the schedule to let me freely shop in Akihabara. I first got some laundry out of the way in the morning since we’d be heading out the next day for our excursions into Nagano Prefecture, then I headed to Akiba. Arriving at Akiba for the first time on the trip I believe Arnond basically spend all day sleeping, and then did his own laundry later in the day. Chris went and explored Tokyo after doing his laundry as well. Anyways, in Akiba, I started off the day by going to Star Kebab for the first time. I had heard about it on the internet, so I figured I'd give it a try. It was, in fact, quite good, and it threw me off a bit for me to order from a guy who clearly looked European, yet spoke perfectly natural Japanese. The Star Kebab stand I bought from Then I went around and picked up a lot of things from the list of items I wanted, as well any good deals on things I wanted but neglected to list. This mainly consiste...

Sunday, March 14, 2010 Arnond and I woke up early today, and moved the remainder of the stuff into my room. We then found that the hotel had been smart enough to figure out that the two reservations were connected and that we didn’t have to check out. Oh well. We then headed towards Reitaisai at Big Sight, leaving Ueno around 8:40AM. We used the Yurikamome Line to get to Kokusai-tenjijo-seimon station. Once we arrived, there wasn't a super line from the station to get in, so Arnond accompanied me to pick up some shikishi from a 100 yen store on Daiba. That turned out to be an error in judgment, as the line turned out to be in a very different place than my experience with Comic Market, so there was in fact quite a large line to get in by the time we got to it around 10:30. The crowd of people that was the line We finally got in at probably 11:15 or so. Arnond headed straight for the East 3 Hall to try to pick up doujin music, and I went to the line for obtaining permission to...

Saturday, March 13, 2010 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...

So continuing off of the " Long day before Japan ", I'm planning to put up a post for each day of my trip in Japan, with pictures even! Of course I can't reasonably fit all the pictures into a good narrative, so to see them all you're going to have to head to Picasa Web Albums to see all the pictures I wanted to post. Well, with that out of the way, let's begin! Friday, March 12, 2010 So it turns out I was able to sleep for a maybe an hour the night before the flight, so I got a little in. Anyway, safely made it to the airport by taxi, and made it onto my flight without a problem. The flight to Dallas/Forth Worth International (DFW) was uneventful; I'm pretty sure I slept for most of the way. I picked up a banana and a hot dog from a convenience store (hereafter called "conbini") there, and then boarded my flight to Japan. The plane I took from DFW to Japan, a Boeing 777. For once I decided to have some Dramamine to help me with staying n...