For some reason, I couldn't sleep past 6am so I got up and established the morning routine I would go through for the next several days: wake up, shower in one of the three shower rooms, brush my teeth at one of the 2 rooms with sinks, change my clothes while lying down in my bunk, walk up the hill to the Family Mart to buy onigiri and coffee, play PokemonGo (2 gyms and at least one stop just on that short hill), and eat my konbini breakfast at the bar counter while reading or just staring at the business folk smoking in the smoking area outside. Oh, I forgot to mention, I gave in and rented a portable wifi thing from the hostel for 500yen a day so I got my Pokemon back! and I guess I was able to communicate with the group again. But Pokemon! Definitely the more important of the two.
That morning, Jacob and I walked around Akihabara which didn't look like it changed much since the last time I visited (less kebab stands, I think). Visited the Don Quijote to pick up last minute stuff and wander the aisles. I got nose strips for the snoring. Jacob would later show me and Ben a recording of my snoring from the night before which was surprisingly loud. So those were important. We went to a couple arcades to play video games. If you've been to Akihabara, you know there are way more than "a couple" of arcades. I still suck at fighting games and I'm terrible at rhythm games. That being said, those are the games I ended up playing. The rhythm games were surprisingly fun (usually I just get frustrated and give up). Plus I got to watch some Japanese kids play who were much, much better than me.
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| picture from Jacob |
Here's a picture of one of them, it kind of played like a sit-down version of Guitar Hero with buttons and levers. From what I understood of the video cut-scenes, the storyline involved three high school-aged girls in a band who are trying to fight a witch, I think (my Japanese is non-existent). There was also another one with a circular screen that Jacob played involving touching circles and tracing lines across the screen to a particular song (this would make more sense if I had a video). We saw some kids bringing out their own mittens so their fingers ran smoothly across the screen.
We wandered so far out of the tourist area that we ended up in a business-looking district with business-looking people and not a tourist around. We grabbed lunch at a food truck with other business suits lined up. It was one of the few times I was forced to use what little Japanese I could remember, mostly because Jacob told/forced me to do so. I may have just pointed at a picture. Literally, we were the only people I saw not in business attire and definitely the only people who did not belong there. I'm not even sure what I ate, and sadly I didn't take a picture of it.
After lunch, we followed my PokemonGo map to a HUGE Giratina raid. And by HUGE, I mean it was the largest raid I've ever been a part of. We turned a corner and saw people packed together and setting up to play on all 4 corners of the intersection waiting for the raid to start. We filled the sidewalk, leaving barely any room for anyone to walk by. For those of you who still play, I'm not sure how you do raids, but one of my rules is NOT to interact with people. Yeah, I get it, it's a group thing and we need to work together, but I'd rather jump into the battle, then scamper off back to my car once it's over. Jacob, however is not me, and upon seeing that this was a group endeavor decided to make this feel like a team moment by encouraging the group. "Mina-san! Ganbare!" And as much as I wanted him to stop drawing attention to us, at the same time it was still entertaining to watch him do it. With that many people at the raid though, the Giratina went down quick. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to catch it.
We wandered around more before heading back to the hostel to rest up for the night. On the way back, we came across a few people standing around in a loose circle. I checked my phone and found another Giratina raid that was about to start. This one was smaller, our group I mean, with less than 10 of us standing around in a loose sort-of circle. The Giratina took longer to take down but it was the one I managed to catch. Jacob and I hung out at the hostel for a while more afterward. Eventually Ben also showed up in the bunk below mine.
Finally it was time for the main event:
NOMIHOUDAI! PLUME REUNION! The three of us walked down the street to the hotpot restaurant (if you're wondering, no I don't remember the name).
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| The first of many group pics I will steal from Facebook |
It's funny. As I'm basically just rewriting these stories from the journal I tried to keep of the trip, I came across this specific part and apparently I tried to write out the names of everyone who was there that night. Past-Alan instead gave me a short-list (less than half the people in this picture) then literally just wrote, "I'm too hungover right now to remember their names, there's probably more but my head is still killing me from Saturday night. I'll just look at a picture to figure it out." And the biggest issue I have when I look at this picture is I'm sitting somewhere I don't belong: in the middle of the table. I shouldn't be in the middle of anything. I belong relegated to the sidelines to bother the least amount of people. Anyways, the food was good, I guess. I mostly just remember drinking whiskey highballs all night and moving around the table to joke and catch up with as many people as would tolerate my presence. It was fun and really cool to see all of these people again, especially altogether in the same place, something I had doubts would actually happen though I really hoped it would. Obviously it sucks that not everyone could make it, but just to have this many people is pretty amazing. After dinner, some of us headed to a nearby karaoke place to drink more and sing. I mostly remember that I must not have gotten too drunk this night as I distinctly remember participating in a bunch of Taylor Swift songs and "Enter Sandman." I'm assuming we also did some Disney songs and a lot of emo songs from my high school days, but I could be wrong about that. After karaoke, we hung out at Shibuya station for a bit until it started raining then Ben, Jacob and I headed back to the hostel while everyone else got onto the train back to their ... wherever they were staying. It was definitely one of the positives about staying at that particular hostel, I felt that we were right in the middle of everything.
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