Otayaku funnies

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Update

So Christmas and New Years has been and gone. What has happened to the blog? Well Otaku has landed himself some nice work and myself…well I’ve had some family issues to deal with. Anyhow, we are more or less back on track again (sort of) so while the front end looks dead, there are works going on in the background!! (That and kicking Otaku up the backside for adding more to this site.)

Ja ne mina-san!

P.S. Also I blame Love Plus for consuming many of my spare hours!!!

Time…

Sleepy-san here.

The rate of posting has slowed lately and this has been down to time. Outside of this Japan/Tokyo bubble is another life Otaku and I lead. For Otaku, his life is pretty hectic and I do wonder how he finds the time to accomplish what he does. As for I…well my life isn’t as filled as Otaku’s but I do get my fair share of trials to overcome. Lately these trials have sapped motivation and concentration; I’ve delayed a few mini-projects I was working on and the blog ultimately suffers for it.

The weekend just gone, I’ve had to just zone out to clear my head – time wasted perhaps but time needed to sort out my head. It’s helped but a couple of ongoing issues keeps pulling me back down which is having a knock on effect on these blog entries. There are plenty of drafts drawn up for the “Tokyo Impressions” and I would love to complete them however as I have said at the start, Otaku and I are not having the best of times, especially with the run up to Christmas. Time is something we can’t afford lately.

For our patient readers who return to see any updates, I apologise for the slow pace and hope you will stick around for the conclusion to “Tokyo Impressions”.

The power of ¥

Sleepy-san here.

Lucky Star Nendoroid Petite Box Set

I’ve often wondered what other people go through when trying to exchange money from their native currency to the Japanese ¥. Everyone has their favourite ways and means but at the end of the day, people just need money to spend in Japan.  I, for one, looked around for the best deal but didn’t really get too far until a forum I occasionally frequent popped up with a super answer, Thomas Exchange Global. If you’re a UK resident they offer a simple, quick service and very good exchange rates! They don’t charge commission but they do charge a nominal fee for posting the money to you…which to be fair is really quite good value for money; Special Delivery service is an expensive service.

Right now, if you are a UK resident you will much saddened to hear that since the economic downturn the English pound Sterling has been quite utterly shocking; it’s basically collapsed and to put it in perspective, the English Pound (£) has dropped about 40% of it’s value against the Japanese Yen (¥).

As I type this, the exchange rate for us punters is sitting at 142.1 ¥ = £1. Compare that value with what it was like some two years ago which hovered around 227 ¥ = £1. Massive drop.

Doujinshi - 100 yen each

So once you’ve exchanged your cold hard native money to Japanese Yen you’ll be wanting to pay/buy stuff! One of the biggest pitfalls is to convert the price of what you want back to your native currency (in my case, British Pound). You may be curious as to why I say this; currency exchange rises and falls over time. It’s also pointless to use price paid for an item as a “bragging right”; what you buy is for you and if you love it then money isn’t a major factor. There is a caveat in this; if you are expecting to head to Japan to buy some cheap electrical goods you may be in for a surprise. Items you can get in your native country may work out similar or cheaper, an example is a controller for the PS3. In the UK you can buy them for around £35 (new) and with the weak Pound the conversion equates to £50 for the same controller. The point I am trying to put across is  to think before you buy but never soley rely on monetary conversion to determine your purchase.

DS Lite + Spice & Wolf items

Whilst I was in Tokyo I purchased several items ranging from magazines/books, to markers, to figurines. Quite a few of the items are either very hard to purchase in the UK or have a premium added to them when sold in the UK. All the items I purchased, I purchased on the basis of liking the item in question. I admit I did do the monetary conversion in my head  and it’s something I can’t switch off but it never determined the purchase of any product with one exception, the purchase of a Nintendo DS Lite. In the end I determined my purchase of the DS Lite on a flip of a 500 ¥ coin. Yes, that’s right, a coin flip determined my purchase and this was down to how similar the pricing is between a UK DS Lite and a JDM DS Lite.

The best way to use the money you have converted is to simply see it as you have ‘x’ amount of Yen and can you fit purchases within your budget. You’re in Japan so think in Japanese money; it certainly made my life in Japan very easy working to a Japanese Yen budget.

Tokyo Impressions: Ginza

Sleepy here.

Since starting these “Tokyo Impressions” entries I’ve come to the shocking realisation…there is no background to each location! I must apologise for this oversight, it must seem strange to read about our views on the different districts without actually giving any rough background information. So without further delay, I present to you “Ginza”.

Imperial Gardens/Business District

Ginza: A real mixture in this part of Tokyo; on one hand you have the Imperial Palance, across the road from that are the Government buildings and business parks and further in is Tokyo Tower. Within Ginza you will also find alot of shops that cater for the rich – Mercedes-Benz garage and clothing stores that don’t hang price labels – if you have to ask how much, you can’t afford it. This area then is a mix of old and new constructs and stark contrast of the Imperial monarchy, the ruling government buildings and high rise office blocks. It’s also an extremely expensive area of Tokyo in terms of price per square meter.

Tokyo Tower

Sleepy: Ahh Ginza, I enjoyed this area of Tokyo; plenty to see and do. It’s the perfect place to go if you want to do the tourist attraction stuff such as Tokyo Tower, Imperial Palace, Nissan show room and Sony building. But once you’ve been there, seen it, there isn’t a great deal to come back for. It was very glam, with a good mix of old and new buildings but the place lacked soul. You could argue the Tokyo Tower has soul and it does…but it’s just a tower that lights up at night. Tne Imperial garden was brilliant to look at but again, just seemed to lack that something that really draws you in. However if high rise buildings, gardens, expensive clothing shops are your thing, you’ll come back time and time again. For me, I don’t think I’ll go back to Japan just for Ginza.

Cheap & Tasty Food Stall

Otaku: Ginza is expensive. Cartier, Gucci, Chanel… that sort of expensive. Want to buy Real-Estate here? If you have to ask the price then you can’t afford to buy. However, Ginza is a window-shoppers delight! Its basically the same as any upmarket area of any city in any country so you can relax and enjoy the decadance of it all. Sundays are the best days to go, as large bits of Ginza get shut off to traffic and the little alleyways away from the glitz become more acessable. This is the beauty of Japan, no matter where you go and no matter how fat your wallet is, there is a place that the locals can call their own and for a few hundred yen you can get a delicious bowl of noodles! There really is something for everyone, the old Kabuki theatre is delightful, the (free!) Sony showcase building is amazing, and the food under the arches is very tasty.

Unless you are a ‘Player’ keep your wallet in your pocket because most every thing you can buy in a Ginza shop you could get cheaper somewhere else, however if you ARE a ‘Player’ you probably wont notice you are in Ginza at all.

Tokyo Impressions: Tama River

Tama River

Sleepy: A few kilometers walk out of Chidori leads to the Tama River; the banks of which are popular with people young and old on a weekend. It was nice to stand on the bridge watching a practice game of baseball, football, tennis and even Hawaii 5-0 style ‘boating’ down the river. It’s striking how the road can be so busy, the bank littered with people yet the atmosphere was tranquil; that is the main reason why we not only stood at the bridge but also returned there and sat on the bank. It’s surprising to see alot of different activities within a relatively small space and without any animosity from one group to another.

Tama River - Baseball Practice

The bridge/river also represents the dividing line between Tokyo Metropolis and the next city (which I think from memory was Kawasaki) and so it felt quite strange being able to walk out of Tokyo and into Kawasaki.

We may have spent 45 minutes walking but it was highly enjoyable as we walked past Canon HQ and the scenary, as always, was brilliant. If we took bus/train we may have missed these views as well as some interesting cars.

The ONLY word of warning I have to anyone wishing to walk places is this: cyclists are your worst nightmare! Forget getting run over by a car, these cyclists don’t stop or slow down if you are in the way. You either move out the way or get run over and if it’s the latter, the last thing you would hear is the bike bell “ding-a-ling”…(if you are lucky…)

Otaku: ‘The river’ as it became known to us was the first place I visited on my first visit to Japan in 2007 and it has become a firm favorite place of mine, and a ‘must return’ whenever I go back. Its so nice to grab something tasty from AM/PM and a cool drink from a machine and just sit and watch the world go by. I can’t really add much to what Sleepy has already said except this; Japan has hundreds if not thousands of perfectly ordinary places like this that are far from ordinary and become very dear to you. But you have to look for them, get off of the train and walk, walk and get lost. You will thank me for it.

Tama River Bank

Tama River - Bridge (& Friends)

Cost: The Common Question

One of the most commonly asked question or phrases I always get asked when I tell people about my trip to Japan is, “How much did that cost?” or “That must have been expensive!”; the latter statement just isn’t true. Like any and all holidays it is down to how YOU decide to spend your money. It is obvious that a 12 hour flight is going to cost a fair few pennies along with accomodation but the rest is all about being smart with your money and knowing what YOU want from YOUR holiday.

I cannot stress enough the emphasis that any holiday should always be tailored for YOURSELF. Everyone has different tastes and different ways of enjoying  a time or place and not everyone is purely into the tourist/commercial side of visiting Tokyo (or any other place for that matter).

Anyhow I am digressing from the main topic.

The price of any holiday cannot be compared to the pleasure you will derive from the trip and it also means you don’t have to spend alot to get the most out of any trip. Otaku and I are attempting to plan a trip back to Tokyo sometime in May/June of 2010 and so I can break down the costs to show you that you don’t need mega-bucks to get to Japan and enjoy life there.

Sleepy-san's Plane Ticket

Plane Tickets: £620 (via JAL) to £670 (ANA) per person

Ryokan Kangetsu: 143,000¥ (approximately £485 per person) (13 nights, shared accomodation with private bathroom for 2, WiFi internet access)

Narita Express: 3110 ¥ (appoximately £20) each way per person.

(This is the train to take you from Narita Airport to Shinagawa)

Daily Travel Expenses: 500 ¥ (approximately £3)  each for a PASMO card and then 1000 ¥ (approximately £7) per day per person.

Daily Food Allowance: 2500 ¥ (approximately £18) per person, per day.

Spending money: “Whatever you can scrape together” ¥

Lets total this up shall we with some basic maths. The total displayed will be what each person (in this case Otaku and I) will need to raise by May/June time.

Flight: £620 via JAL.

Accomodation: £485.

Narita Express: 3110 ¥ x 2 = 6220 ¥ (appoximately £40)

Travel: 1000 ¥ x 13 = 13,000 ¥ (approximately £90)*

Food: 2500 ¥ x 13 = 32,500 ¥ (approximately £220)

Total: £1455

Sleepy-san's PASMO Card

*Travel does NOT include purchase price for PASMO card as Otaku and I have already purchased these at our previous visit.

Let’s round up our figure to say that Otaku and I will each need to raise approximately £1500 for a successful trip to Tokyo. You may be asking several questions by now; “where is there no spending money included?”, “How did you derive food and travel expenditure?”.  Spending money was NOT included as this is really a personal thing and how much you decide to change to ¥ is upto you; after all some people travel for the experience, others to purchase as much goods as they can. For me, I initially took too much money however that is not such a bad thing in that I didn’t have to ration myself nor did I feel the need to needlessly spend the money.

300,000 Yen

So…how did I come up with the values for food and travel?

Pretty obvious really; Otaku and I have recently come back from Tokyo! On the busiest day travelling, we each spent 1000 ¥ on the trains and that was almost 2 hours of travelling on three different train lines! On most days we spent around 500 ¥ – 700¥ each and somedays even less.

Food budget…well that is dependent on what you like to eat and how careful (or not) you are with your money. Reflecting on the recent trip it was quite apparent that the most expensive meal was always dinner…and this ranged from 780 ¥ for a nice big bowl of ramen to 1500 ¥ for a nice meal at Mario’s with some beer and

Wonda Morning Shot Can of Coffee

dessert. Lunch is quite straight forward as you can either prepare by going to the supermarket before hand and making your own lunchs or hitting places like Mos Burger or a local eatery. Otaku, Lee and I found a brilliant place, I think it was in Ikebukuro, that served you curry, rice, soba and miso soup for 580 ¥. It was ALOT of food and really tasty. I’m not much of a morning person or eating anything more than a snack for breakfast; I get indigestion if I eat alot early in the morning so in the mornings, I thrived on a can of Wonda Morning Shot and a nice hot bun or two from the local AM-PM shop; grand total of 220 ¥.  Averaged out, my daily meal costs were in the region of 2500 ¥.

There we have it: a trip to Tokyo for two will cost in the region of £1500 per person at today’s exchange rate.

NOTE: Price conversions from ¥ to £ are based on the current exchange rate of 147.5 ¥ to £1.

Tokyo Impressions: Chidori-Cho

As previously mentioned by moi (sleepy-san), rather than talk about the trip to Tokyo on a day by day recount we’ll be talking about each district. These entries will be both written by myself and Otaku and hopefully you, the readers, will enjoy the style of which we will put it across. So first stop is Chidori-Cho!

Sleepy: Ahh Chidori, the place where our Inn is located, the Ryokan Kangetsu. This was my first trip to Tokyo and the stark contrast between the busy train stations and Chidori (15 minutes away) was astounding; from the hustle and bustle of Kamata and Shinagawa to a very lovely and peaceful town.

Otaku: Chidori is one of my very favorite places in the world. Thats a bold statement but its true, its a pretty nondescript place by Japanese standards. If asked the residents would probably say it was ‘ordinary.’ But the Japanese put importance on the place rather than the buildings, and to me this place is my very own tiny bit of heaven. It has the usual shops, post office, resturaunts and the like but they all seem special in some way. Even the local AM/PM held an almost sanctified feel as it dishes out an endless supply of life saving food, drink, pencils, pocky and of course… beer.

Walking around you feel a great calm and you can’t help but smile as people young and old pass by with a friendly ‘Ohayo!’ (おはよ!) or a thousand ‘Hello’s!’ from the local schoolchildren.

Sleepy: Oh my..I forgot about those school children…that was a very funny morning. We were just standing at the base of the steps that lead up to the Inn early one morning preparing to head out and lots of school children started to walk by and they slowed down and all started to say “Hello”. It was a brilliant moment, especially the look on the faces of the teachers who suddenly realised the train of children they chaperone is coming to a crawl! Otaku, your great thinking worked a treat….changing from saying “Hello!” to “Bye-Bye!”

October 15th…The Flight To Japan

Sleepy-san here.

Well rather than recount a day by day, blow by blow recount of the utterly mind blowing and fantastic trip to Tokyo, I have decided to blog about the places we went to and throw some pictures up.

First off, if you not guessed by the title is the plane trip. Short sweet post to start things off.

Otaku is not a very good flyer so one of the first things we did was call some beer…and then another round and Otaku went for a third! Otaku had the most pleasant way to start a flight by being quite merry within the hour of flying. Now the only way I could take pictures was with my camera-phone. Not 100% sure I am supposed to use it in the plane however my phone does have a “Flight Only” mode which disables alot of the phone functionalities apart from the camera.

So we are on the plane and I decide to take out Konata and well…what would a trip be without Yotsuba too. Here are some pictures inflight from my aisle seat.

Oh and here is breakfast. It looks weird because of the colour…I took the picture without flash and due to the weird lighting/sunlight through the windows the colours are all so wrong and I do not have any skills in photoshopping…so here it is in it’s weird coloured mangle!!

Ahh I almost forgot the most important part…the air carrier! We flew with JAL on a 777-200 (outbound, inbound was on a 777-300) and the trip was very smooth. One downer I have to say is the air conditioning is quite loud however the ever fabulous stewardess’ made up for that. The lovely lady on the outbound trip was just brilliant; friendly, helpful and always open to having a joke with us. Even more of a coincidence was when we landed we bumped into her again; we were looking for the Narita Express and there she was. Fantastic.

Anyhow, that sort of concludes this initial entry…and hope you readers enjoy what I have to ramble about.

P.S. Otaku’s posts are more coherent and logical whereas mine are PURE ramblings.

Pasmo, the last piece in Japan’s travel jigsaw.

Japan has the very best public transport system I have ever used. Its clean, safe and more important on time and punctual. That said, there was one small thing that kept tripping me up, embarrassingly at first! The railways are operated by different companies and if you want to travel from say Tokyo station to Chidori-cho, you have to take a train from Tokyo, change at Gotanda then another to Chidori, simple and easy.

Well not exactly. When you change in the UK you tend to run to the next platform and that’s that, your ticket is valid from where you start to your destination. When changing lines in Japan, you have to pass through another barrier, then buy another ticket for the next leg of your journey. This confused the hell out of me and my traveling companion, we set off alarms and had men in uniforms rush around more times than I could mention due to our stupidity, it took us about 3 days to figure it all out and approach the barriers with some confidence.

Being the innovative bunch that the Japanese are, they have come up with Pasmo a prepaid electronic card that does away with all the fare calculation and barrier worry! Simply put, you buy the card (for 500yen, but its returned if you return the card) from a station vending machine (of course) load it with some money and away you go. Swipe it at the start of you journey as you enter the barrier, then swipe it as you leave at your destination. The fare is calculated and the amount debited from the card.

The UK has something similar in the Oyster card, but Pasmo takes things a step further. You can use your Pasmo card to buy goods from vending machines and some department stores. Additionally it can be used in places like museums to gain admission

There are other cards available, Suica for example is interchangable with Pasmo, this means you can use your Pasmo or Suica card at any one of the outlets or stations that you see the signs. *Suica has a special offer running for visitors using the Narita Express (N’EX) from Narita airport, you buy a card for 3,500 yen and your train fare is an amazing 1,500 yen leaving you 1,500 yen to spend when you hit Tokyo (500 yen is taken as deposit for the card, returnable if you return it) The only real difference is the area that you can use the card, I got the following information for where you can use the cards from japan-guide.com “Suica can also be used in place of Icoca on JR trains in the Osaka, Okayama and Hiroshima regions, in place of Toica on JR trains in the Nagoya and Shizuoka regions, and in place of Kitaca on JR trains in the Sapporo region. PASMO, however, is limited to the Greater Tokyo area”

The final hard bit of traveling in Tokyo has been solved by some clever electronics and some lateral thinking, being able to use the card for other things is a stroke of brilliance, but this is Japan so we expect nothing less.

Otaku.

*This entry was taken from my other Blog, 8k From Tokyo, I am going to write here instead, yeah I’m lazy…

*This offer was valid at the time I wrote this, check with JR first!