The first thing we did in the morning was, once again, move to another hostel. We'll stay at this hostel for the next two nights, and we'll then move to the "Park Hotel Tokyo" to spend our last night there :D.
The good thing about our hostel is that it's located in Asakusa, where we found a great, really large street full of souvenir shops last time. When we arrived there today, however, it was much more crowded than last time...
Lots of people had told us to bring them something from Japan, so we spent there a lot of time trying to find good yet unexpensive souvenirs for everyone. I ended up spending around 4000 yen... Fortunately, the financial problems we had at the beginning of the trip are no longer an issue. It's actually because we had them at the beginning of the trip that we don't have them now. It scared us so much that we kept our expenses completely to the minimum, and now we can afford a bit more. No, still we aren't rich, but we can afford a little more than the 4000 to 5000 yen a day we were spending.
At two we went back to the hostel to have lunch (spaguettis from the department store nearby) while watching an episode of "Detective Conan" :D. Afterwards, we set off for Akihabara to buy the electronics stuff I needed, but Pia started to feel a little sick, so we returned to the hotel, where she rested for two hours. When we got to Akihabara, the electronics stores were already closed, which meant that we have to go there once again.
While wandering around in Akihabara looking for a few more souvenirs (yes, I have a lot of geeky friends, and I want some souvenir for myself too!), we found an arcade. Pia insisted in taking some pictures in one of those pink photo booths with hearts all around them where you can afterwards edit the photos by adding some backgrounds, drawings (mostly hearts and that kind of stuff), etc, so we got in and did the photos...
The good thing about the photobooth was that there was a DDR nearby :P. Of course, I couldn't resist and tryed some more new songs out, again with very bad results. I ended up completely exhausted, so I had to sit down somewhere on the ground before leaving. And that's when I saw the mecha simulator again. My excel table said we still have money, and the looks of it were too tempting, so I bought myself a pilot card and entered one of the PODs (Panoramic Optical Display). Luckily they had a little sheet with english explanations of the controls. I read through it and tested it out before playing, by moving the joysticks, pressing the buttons, etc, and imagining what would happen. I just didn't want to have to look up the sheet in the middle of a fight... Here's a little explanation of the controls:
You have two horizontal joysticks, one for each hand. If you want to get an idea, it looks like the throttle of a combat flight simulator joystick, but it has two axes instead of one. Those joysticks control the movement of each side. For example, if you move one forward, and the other one back, you'll start turning. On each joystick you have two buttons, one for the thumb and one for the index finger (trigger). With the right thumb botton you can lock on a target that's in front of you, and with the left one you can switch targets. The triggers are of course for shooting. The right one shoots the primary weapon, with the left one you can make a melee attack, and if you press both, the auxiliary weapon is shot.
There are also two pedals. The right one activates the booster, which is really useful to approach someone to make a melee attack, and also to dash out of the danger when you're being shot. The left one is for jumping and using the jetpack.
To play, you first have to put in your pilot card and the 500 yen it costs. You then get a screen telling you to put on the heaphones and adjust the seat, or at least thats what I understood by watching the pictures. LAter on, several screens appear, but I didn't understand what they were saying. I hate not knowing Japanese... And finally the game started. The controls were made really good, as it felt completely natural to move around, and the locking and shooting methods were also really straightforward. The gameplay was really cool! There was a timer that signaled the end of the game. You basically had to stay alive until that timer ended while trying to do the most damage to the others in the opposing team. Oh, by the way, in case you're wondering what the mechas look like, the game is called "Mobile Suit Gundam: Senjou no Kizuna", so you can get an idea. After two rounds, the game ended, and a message on the screen told me to put my pilot card back in the pilot terminal (the machine where you can buy the cards and edit your account) to update my status. On the pilot terminal a message appeared about something new I could buy with the points I had obtained during the last play, but I didn't know how it worked. Next time I'll probably ask someone... Oh, yeah, there will definitely be a next time, probably tomorrow!
Later on, we headed back to the hostel. On our way, we saw a small "Döner Kebab" stand, and decided to have a Döner as dinner. It can't believe I had to come all the way to Japan to eat the best Döner. Seriously, it was delicious. I think it was the meat, which tasted really great.
Still on our way to the subway to get to the hostel, we found several cheap capsule stations, where we bought some more souvenirs :D.
After taking a shower, we went to the bar of our hostel to have some drinks and talk to the other guests. The barkeeper was the one we met on our first stay here, when he was doing barkeeping for the first time and didn't have much idea about how to make most of the drinks on the list.
The good thing about our hostel is that it's located in Asakusa, where we found a great, really large street full of souvenir shops last time. When we arrived there today, however, it was much more crowded than last time...
Lots of people had told us to bring them something from Japan, so we spent there a lot of time trying to find good yet unexpensive souvenirs for everyone. I ended up spending around 4000 yen... Fortunately, the financial problems we had at the beginning of the trip are no longer an issue. It's actually because we had them at the beginning of the trip that we don't have them now. It scared us so much that we kept our expenses completely to the minimum, and now we can afford a bit more. No, still we aren't rich, but we can afford a little more than the 4000 to 5000 yen a day we were spending.
At two we went back to the hostel to have lunch (spaguettis from the department store nearby) while watching an episode of "Detective Conan" :D. Afterwards, we set off for Akihabara to buy the electronics stuff I needed, but Pia started to feel a little sick, so we returned to the hotel, where she rested for two hours. When we got to Akihabara, the electronics stores were already closed, which meant that we have to go there once again.
While wandering around in Akihabara looking for a few more souvenirs (yes, I have a lot of geeky friends, and I want some souvenir for myself too!), we found an arcade. Pia insisted in taking some pictures in one of those pink photo booths with hearts all around them where you can afterwards edit the photos by adding some backgrounds, drawings (mostly hearts and that kind of stuff), etc, so we got in and did the photos...
The good thing about the photobooth was that there was a DDR nearby :P. Of course, I couldn't resist and tryed some more new songs out, again with very bad results. I ended up completely exhausted, so I had to sit down somewhere on the ground before leaving. And that's when I saw the mecha simulator again. My excel table said we still have money, and the looks of it were too tempting, so I bought myself a pilot card and entered one of the PODs (Panoramic Optical Display). Luckily they had a little sheet with english explanations of the controls. I read through it and tested it out before playing, by moving the joysticks, pressing the buttons, etc, and imagining what would happen. I just didn't want to have to look up the sheet in the middle of a fight... Here's a little explanation of the controls:
You have two horizontal joysticks, one for each hand. If you want to get an idea, it looks like the throttle of a combat flight simulator joystick, but it has two axes instead of one. Those joysticks control the movement of each side. For example, if you move one forward, and the other one back, you'll start turning. On each joystick you have two buttons, one for the thumb and one for the index finger (trigger). With the right thumb botton you can lock on a target that's in front of you, and with the left one you can switch targets. The triggers are of course for shooting. The right one shoots the primary weapon, with the left one you can make a melee attack, and if you press both, the auxiliary weapon is shot.
There are also two pedals. The right one activates the booster, which is really useful to approach someone to make a melee attack, and also to dash out of the danger when you're being shot. The left one is for jumping and using the jetpack.
To play, you first have to put in your pilot card and the 500 yen it costs. You then get a screen telling you to put on the heaphones and adjust the seat, or at least thats what I understood by watching the pictures. LAter on, several screens appear, but I didn't understand what they were saying. I hate not knowing Japanese... And finally the game started. The controls were made really good, as it felt completely natural to move around, and the locking and shooting methods were also really straightforward. The gameplay was really cool! There was a timer that signaled the end of the game. You basically had to stay alive until that timer ended while trying to do the most damage to the others in the opposing team. Oh, by the way, in case you're wondering what the mechas look like, the game is called "Mobile Suit Gundam: Senjou no Kizuna", so you can get an idea. After two rounds, the game ended, and a message on the screen told me to put my pilot card back in the pilot terminal (the machine where you can buy the cards and edit your account) to update my status. On the pilot terminal a message appeared about something new I could buy with the points I had obtained during the last play, but I didn't know how it worked. Next time I'll probably ask someone... Oh, yeah, there will definitely be a next time, probably tomorrow!
Later on, we headed back to the hostel. On our way, we saw a small "Döner Kebab" stand, and decided to have a Döner as dinner. It can't believe I had to come all the way to Japan to eat the best Döner. Seriously, it was delicious. I think it was the meat, which tasted really great.
Still on our way to the subway to get to the hostel, we found several cheap capsule stations, where we bought some more souvenirs :D.
After taking a shower, we went to the bar of our hostel to have some drinks and talk to the other guests. The barkeeper was the one we met on our first stay here, when he was doing barkeeping for the first time and didn't have much idea about how to make most of the drinks on the list.
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Buying souvenirs at Asakusa
Still in Asakusa, at the end of the street with the shops
In Akihabara. Sorry about the quality...
Eating Döner Kebap. If you zoom right above the garbage bin (not the best place to put it, anyway), you can see a poster saying that two of the members of the group "Exile" ate there once
Posts
Hi,
ReplyDeleteunseren besten Doener haben wir in Bilbao gegessen! Und wurden staendig gefragt, warum wir keine leckeren Pinchos gegessen haben!
Pia wieder genesen??
Bis dann
Christiane