My pics from Tokyo Part 2 It seems

Zoglog

CAGiversary!
Feedback
1 (100%)
some are meh! some are bleh! but they're all here D:
thx to that wonderful resizing batch program.

All can be found In gallery format here
Best with 1600x1200, might want to fullscreen it if you're at 1280x1024

tokyo2005-325.jpg


Currently added comments up to 100 something. Will do the rest later :)

Movies:

3D animated figures at Studio Ghibli Museum(managed to take a little bit of bootleg footage D:! cameras not allowed in the museum)

More movies

Hmmm I uploaded these a long time ago but I just pushed them through last week

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=zoglog
 
[quote name='Zoglog']Most excellent, I recommend anyone with the slightest interest in Japan to try visitng at least once :)[/QUOTE]

Was there any confusion, particularly the airport? Or was it just smooth sailing?
 
It wasn't too bad :) People there are pretty friendly in General (at least more friendly than typical USA people) But yeah, most stuff is in english in terms of signs and trains and everything. Not everyone speaks English even though they learn it in school. Just go well prepared and you'll have no problems
 
i never really understood your sig/avatar until i've seen Hajime no Ippo. now i see the greatness. i'm still sorta disappointed by the ending, i mean, Miyata! what about Miyata!
 
hehe yeah I used to edit one piece epidsodes for KF but after college not so much anymore. I still help modetate the forums tho to some extent. Unforutnetly in a week we didn't have enough time to visit more than tokyo and even then we didn't see all the areas we wanted too (missed out on harajuku and Ueno Park). Maybe next year :)

And I hope you have a nice trip heh
 
Oh yeah, since this is a cheapass forum I thought i'd share the price of going to Tokyo. Plane tickets for this season are usually the most cheap. We got roundtrip tickets through a promo for 311 after tax n stuff. I think the typical price at JTB at the end of march was 460 or so After tax so it wasn't too bad at all. With hotels you can find ones that'll cost 30 dollars a night per person. We Opted for somewhere towards the middle for around 45 dollars a person a night. As for Food it'll cost you around anywhere from 10-100 dollars a day depending on if you decide to just eat from convinence stores, sushi resturants, or those awesome neat ticket meal places :). And of course most of the import stuff you pay for is slashed at least 10 dollars or more from what u'd typically pay. Like the IIDX controller I got there was around 55,000 yen (around 52 dollars) as opposed to paying 89 at Lik Sang. Also there are many used Game stores (especially in Akihabara) which you can get good deals on stuff. Like I got a taiko controller for 17 dollars used at the softmap store. Transportation per day will run you around 10 dollars on avg depending how far you want to go. However it's possible to only spend 5 dollars on transportation if you goto shibuya from shinjuku and back. The Railways are pretty easy to navigate if you study them and if you go I recommend getting a travel map book that lists all the train stations in english if you don't understand Japanese. However on the platforms and on the trains they tell you what all the stations are in English.
 
I couldn't see the pictures - it seems some sort of plug-in is required for a reason I don't really understand. They're just pictures, right?
 
It's a skin called bannana something that works with jalbum. there should be a url when you first open my album telling you wehre to get it. It's works well for most things, but those with lower resolutions might have noticed the picture may go into the thumbnails along with the descriptions for the taller pictures =(. Gonna experiment some more with different skins when I get home.
 
[quote name='twanky']Man, i really want to go to japan now.[/QUOTE]

Hehe no kidding. I've only been there once, and I'd like to go back.
 
added a movie, might add more later if my bandwidth allows heh. This one was the smallest one though, other ones are around 15 mb
 
Good pictures, I think I will be taking a week trip to Aliharaba/Tokyo after finishing school.

edit: Wow I love the way you had the gallery setup. That scrolling thumbnail viewer isn't an open source script by any chance is it? Thanks
 
Japan looks really cool. I will be going in a couple of years because my girlfriend doesn't know it yet but that will be where we spend our honeymoon when we get married.

The reason why is because she is so fascinated with Japanese culture so I plan on taking her there as my gift to her for marrying me. We probably will go for a week and then for the grand finale we will fly back to Hawaii and spend a week there too. So the trip will be to two places she has always wanted to see.
 
[quote name='ne2eire']Good pictures, I think I will be taking a week trip to Aliharaba/Tokyo after finishing school.

edit: Wow I love the way you had the gallery setup. That scrolling thumbnail viewer isn't an open source script by any chance is it? Thanks[/QUOTE]

it's a skin for http://www.jalbum.net
The skin is Bananalbum.

The program is easy to use and wonderful and of course free ;)

that's a wonderful gift cdeener, I went mostly because my girlfriend likes japan as well and we managed to snag some wonderfuly priced tickets. If you can I recommend you go during the hanami season, nothing will be more romantic to her than cherry blossoms :D. Plus from what i've seen these are the most reasonable times for ticket prices. Stuff starts ramping up during Summer
 
That was awesome! Thank you for sharing that with us. Those pictures were beautiful and the Ghibli museum was very cool. I can't wait to one day go. Some of those pics will serve as incentive indeed. Thanx again.
 
[quote name='Zoglog']Oh yeah, since this is a cheapass forum I thought i'd share the price of going to Tokyo. Plane tickets for this season are usually the most cheap. We got roundtrip tickets through a promo for 311 after tax n stuff. I think the typical price at JTB at the end of march was 460 or so After tax so it wasn't too bad at all. With hotels you can find ones that'll cost 30 dollars a night per person. We Opted for somewhere towards the middle for around 45 dollars a person a night. As for Food it'll cost you around anywhere from 10-100 dollars a day depending on if you decide to just eat from convinence stores, sushi resturants, or those awesome neat ticket meal places :). And of course most of the import stuff you pay for is slashed at least 10 dollars or more from what u'd typically pay. Like the IIDX controller I got there was around 55,000 yen (around 52 dollars) as opposed to paying 89 at Lik Sang. Also there are many used Game stores (especially in Akihabara) which you can get good deals on stuff. Like I got a taiko controller for 17 dollars used at the softmap store. Transportation per day will run you around 10 dollars on avg depending how far you want to go. However it's possible to only spend 5 dollars on transportation if you goto shibuya from shinjuku and back. The Railways are pretty easy to navigate if you study them and if you go I recommend getting a travel map book that lists all the train stations in english if you don't understand Japanese. However on the platforms and on the trains they tell you what all the stations are in English.[/QUOTE]

Is that a usual expense for plane tickets? I always heard of them being closer to a 1000 bucks. I have always been interested but that ticket was always killer. What airline did u fly and where did u get your ticket if you do not mind me asking?
 
[quote name='Ikohn4ever']Is that a usual expense for plane tickets? I always heard of them being closer to a 1000 bucks. I have always been interested but that ticket was always killer. What airline did u fly and where did u get your ticket if you do not mind me asking?[/QUOTE]

Heheh of course I don't mind sharing. Tickets that are 1000 dollars roundtrip are usually around summertime. Before I left I went to JTB at mitsuwa in Torrence to buy tickets for the Ghibli Museum (You need to Reserve the day ahead of time, which is actually better than japanese residents who need to reserve specific times of day o.o) And I took a peek at the fare rates for thetime I left. i think I saw prices of around 400 for the time I left (March 31) and then prices gradualy went up thereafter. I got my tickets for 311 through some travel agency promotion (http://www.iace-usa.com/) it was 35 thier anniversary or whatever and they gave away 35 tickets for 199 at all of thier california office locations. So me and my girlfriend decided to give it a crack and went in the morning about an hour before the opened. I don't know how 199-->311 after tax and stuff, it seemed like a bit much, but I guess they charged tax on the regular price of the ticket or something, still I wasn't gonna complain for a 311 rountrip ticket lol and there were tons of ppl in line who wouldve taken it from me anyway. They had a newyork promotion that gave away 5 tickets for 10 dollars or something hehe.

Anyway the Airline was NorthWest which leads to another story or why I hate LAX. Me and my girlfriend arrived at LAX around 2 or 3 hours early, checked into our flight normaly and went to the gate. I think we got to the gate around 9 AM and our flight was due to leave at 11:15 am. at around 10:00 or so they announced the flight was canceled so we went all the way back to the front counter (luckily my girlfriend had the intution to rush back right away beacuse it was a HUGE line behind us when we got to the counter). After around 30-40 minutes they finally got people to handle the situation (we were 3rd in line) and we got "rebooked" on Singapore Airlines for 1:30. So then we went to the baggage claim to reclaim our baggage so we could check them in at the Singapore Airlines terminal which was at another Terminal. So after around 30 mins my girlfriend's bag comes down but mine is nowhere to been seen. At this point a whole bunch of people had thier flights rebooked for United at 12:30 and thier baggage hadn't come down either. It was around 11:20 now or so so u can imagine how those people were getting very worried aboutnot being able to catch thier flight. In the end I think some people just left without getting thier baggage and still after an hour and 20 mins mine hadn't come down. By this point i'd seen about 15 bags from our flight come down and it was already almost 12:00. Needless to say I got a bit worried. Also I noticed everyone who checked in had gotten thier baggage together, so I asked one of the workers and he said "oh blah blah balh they just try to find them in a pile so it's random". I didn't buy that crap so I went in the office next door and asked the guy there. He said he'd check so he called the baggage people upstairs and lo and behold they somehow FORGOT TO SEND MY FRICKING BAG DOWN................ Anyway by this point it was 12:10, so I just told my girlfriend to rush to the other Terminal to check in ahead of me, and by 12:25 or so they finally sent down my bag. But ah yes the fun doesn't end there. After getting my bag from the baggage claim (which only took around 2 hours or more!) I made my way to the Tom Bradley Terminal only to meet my girlfriend halfway outside. It turns out there was this really asshole guy at the terminal who would'nt take our transfer ticket even though Northwest had called in earlier and he printed something out for us to give it to them. He said something about how the price wasn't written on it. So I said we should go back and go "omgwtfbbq" on them. Of course getting to the counter we have to get our baggage scanned first before checking it in, but of course I havent taken an international flight in like 10 years so these things don't ringwith me. But before that we actually manage to talk to the Manager Lady (not the jackass guy woot) and she says it'll be ok so they send somone to put us in line to scan ourluggage (of course we're panicing not thinking we'll make it cuz it's already like 1:00 and we still have to go through security and everything). But the manager lady is all checking us in saying about how cool thier airline is compared to northwest andcalls them lowly. And Boy was she right. luckily security didn't take too long and we made it right to the gate as they were boarding. But yeah Singapore airlines was definetly a class above. All seats had thier own LCD screens with multiple channels of Video on Demand. and the meals and snacks were awesome. they had like frickin EZboys in thier business class heh. But on the way back it was Northwest and considerbly more ghetto. I mean it gets you where you're going but it's definetly a step down. anyway there's my little rant/story
 
wow!! That's one helluva story, I am glad it worked out, and thanx again for sharing the pics. I spent the afternoon showing them to my wife and even called my mother over to the house to check em out. My daughter (4 years old) however LOVED the Atlus statues (especially Cornette from Rhapsody) and the Studio Ghilbi Museum pics.
 
[quote name='KingNES']wow!! That's one helluva story, I am glad it worked out, and thanx again for sharing the pics. I spent the afternoon showing them to my wife and even called my mother over to the house to check em out. My daughter (4 years old) however LOVED the Atlus statues (especially Cornette from Rhapsody) and the Studio Ghilbi Museum pics.[/QUOTE]

Glad they enjoyed it. Make sure you take your family to the ghibli museum sometime. Kids would love that place :D Especially with the huge plush neko(cat) bus from totoro. It's filled with the dust plushies too, I mean litterally filled. So kids have a blast in there =)

Having such a great time has kind of encouraged me to encourage others to visit. With the right timing and research it's possible for a price that is less than most people would expect D:.
 
wow whadya know, got tickets again for the same price so I guess i'm going again this year o_O/.........

Oh yeah and i'll prob bring along some crazy people so we should have tons of nice crazy stuff goin on....
 
Thats awesome! And thanks for all the pricing info. I'm planning on saving up all my cash from this upcoming summer, learning a little japanese, and then heading out next year in the early months. Those ticket prices are insane, well done. :applause:
 
this year for some reason even though I got the same 199 dollar round trip tickets with tax and fees it turned out to be 390 instead of 319 like last year. No Complaints still, it's hard to find a better price than that.
 
Glad you guys like it, expect more really weird and quirky stuff this year since I'm goin with 2 whacky friends. So I guess stuff like Maid bars and kabuki cho D:
 
well Drumania/GF V is coming out in Japan soon. However it's really hard to replicate the DM Arcade experience decently without spending 600 on a yamaha DTX drumset which is compatible. the original PS2 plastic controller sucks ass. There are plenty of arcades in California that have Drumania though.

http://us.gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/2nd-hand-electronics-sale-to-be-restricted-in-japan-156311.php

Looks like i'm gonna have to visit akihabara before then o_O. I'm hoping I can find a DS Lite when I get there for my girlfriend. We're probably gonna raid some Maid cafe's ghaha
 
bread's done
Back
Top