June 24th

Mitsuda house

It's saturday, so there's no class today. After we got up and had breakfast, we all went down to a gianormous used goods store, with an unimaginably large selection of manga, anime, games, apparel, and god knows what else. I could spend days searching that place, finding something I want to buy every few seconds. It was almost like eBay in a warehouse. The best part was that everything was pretty cheap, some stuff irresistibly so. The worst part was forgetting my money, but Mayumi covered for me. I bought a bunch of manga, including all but two volumes of Spiral. I managed to leave behind an Azumanga Daioh GBA game, but only because it was like 2500 yen and it just looked like a kind of poker variation.

I'm no fan of Sony, but being in Japan without a PS2 is like being at the seminar without your duck. The game selection on the playstation isn't very impressive in the US, but... here, pick something, anything. There's a PS2 game of it. Naruto? Of course. Evangelion? More than one. Bleach? Yep. Stag beetles fighting each other in rock paper scissors? Sheesh, be more creative. There are games being released for the platform at a rate of like 30 a week, for five years.

They also had tons of stuff for consoles I thought I knew the libraries of cover to cover. Turns out there's a Lupin III game on GC, cheap too... And a HnG game for it, I might have to pick it up. They even had Eternal Arcadia Legends in stock, how am I not supposed to buy that? The otaku is me is fighting pretty hard with my wallet, and to my dismay I think the former is winning. And this is just the tip of the iceberg if Akihabara is half what it's cracked up to be.

After dragging me away from the Bandai Heaven, the Mitsudas took me out to a buffet restaurant. That was pretty fun, they had lots of different stuff from spaghetti to make-it-yourself ramen. The most interesting stuff was Dango, the stuff Anko always eats. It's like eating gelatinous flour. Not bad, but kinda blandish.

Then we went out to a Hina doll museum after that, because the town we happened to be in is famous for them. They had dolls hundreds of years old, and all of them looked oddly unique. They were all designed pretty much the same, so I think the uniqueness was because they all had different facial structures. I managed to get a few really good photos of them. Then Tokio pointed out that the sign in the photos said "no photos please" in japanese, so I'm not going to post them.

After we got home, we took Buru out for a walk down to the park. We brought a soccer ball, and we played with a team of Take's friends who had just finished soccer practice. Those kids aren't nearly as fast and skilled as I am, but all of them versus me was a little much... they knew how to pass well enough. After that, Take, Hide, and I played with the ball on a hill for a while, then went home.

At dinner, we had tempura. I'm told that it's very hard to make at home, especially the Shiso leaf ones that Mayumi made, so props to her. It was delicious, too! Also... did you know it's very bad manners to put soy sauce directly on rice? You're only supposed to use it as kind of a dipping sauce. Tokio nicely explained this to me, and that they have other things you can put on rice directly, such as sesame seeds or ground dry umeboshi. After promptly (and accidentally) dumping the umeboshi all over the floor, I ate the rest of dinner with the best manners possible.

This is the third food spilling mess I've made in a week, and if I don't want to go for the record, I think I could really use some of this sleep stuff. Goodnight.

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