This is my first day of rest since my last rant, and so, while my laundry runs in the other room and the Major anime marathons on TV, I'll relate a few of the events. I'm a week behind, so I'll do as much as I can before I help my friend clean his place.
Dec. 29th was a day of wandering. Mikelurker and I were supposed to meet up with Rice Suki earlier, but he had to see a friend off at Narita airport first. Mikelurker is a giant Disney fan, so we changed our plans so that we could meet up with Rice Suki at Tokyo Disney Sea after 6. Rice Suki and I are pretty apathetic about Disney in general, so we mostly went with mikelurker because he asked - and in Rice's case, it's because Mike's "Chineseness" was stronger than his. Mike bought tickets for all of us before we even got there, so there was no way to refuse his offer to go to Disney Sea.
But first, I had to go and visit my past in Ikebukuro.
You see, a little over ten years ago, this cheesy little adventure game called Sakura Taisen was recommended to me by a couple of my second cousins. It had steam-powered robots, a lot of cheesy super moves, and cute girls. Given that I was a 15-year-old boy at the time, it hit every possible hormone. Best of all, it had Japanese text at the same time as it had voices, so I spent an entire summer playing it and teaching myself how to read Japanese.
Some time around the release of Sakura Taisen 3 in 2001, I stopped being such a fan of the series (Sakura Taisen 4 was horrid, so I was apparently ahead of my time in jumping ship). But as you may remember, my 2003-4 trip still included a trip to the Taishou Romandou.
This trip was less involved on my part, though Mikelurker did spend about a thousand dollars or so on Sakura Taisen DVD box sets (never ever get into Japanese DVDs, they're ludicrously expensive). I spent a ludicrously long time playing Sakura Taisen Columns on their arcade cabinet.
Then came one of my biggest mistakes of the trip: since the menu at the Taishou Romandou was largely unchanged since my last trip there, I bought a different drink from what I had gotten last time - and I forgot that the one I ordered had vodka in it. Not only was I drinking a really bad cocktail that tasted like mouthwash, but it was 11 AM and I was having alcohol. Note that I'm a giant lightweight when it comes to alcohol, so even with just a few sips of the drink, I felt a little light-headed.
The original plan had been to head over to Fakkin (First Kitchen) just to say that I'd had lunch at a place named Fakkin, but given the fact that there was alcohol in my belly and it was 11 AM, we stopped off at a place I don't even remember and grabbed lunch before I poisoned myself.
After that was Akihabara to make sure I didn't miss anything, then Disney Sea - I have to head off to lunch now, but I'll give more details later.