Kumakura and Sephiroth

Kumakura was too long and too stunning to write about coherently. I almost didn’t go after getting sick the night before, and I’m so glad I did.

It was the sort of thing I can only think visually about. There's little to say but with pictures. They're worth a thousand words anyway.

The Giant Buddha:

I found it interesting that I saw a lot of school-uniformed kids at these temples. It was like a place to hang around, or maybe a meeting point to walk to/from school?

I didn’t catch the names of the temples we went to

So Temple #1:

Temple #2: (At the top of a mountain!)

We watched the sun set over Tokyo at the top of that mountain. What a great way to end the trip.

OR was it?!

We raced over to… Lord knows where. I lost track of where it was- and managed to catch the Square Enix store before it closed! I’d already been getting my geek on through the rest of the trip, so it was great to finally be able to walk on Sephiroth’s face, for REALZ.

More Historical Touristy Stuff

Schedule was changed up today because the weather was so nice, so we headed off to the Imperial Palace which was a little hike from the hotel. I took the most pictures here out of anywhere, even the Natural Museum, and I’m not sure why.

It was beautiful, but we weren’t allowed inside. Apparently the actual palace is only open a few days a year.

Nevertheless, it was a gorgeous place, I just expected to have more images of dinosaur skeletons than a park area.

I took a lot of sequence photos that I’m hoping to turn into cool panoramas soon. Especially of the waterfall with the koi lake. Got a few good drawings in, but the only ones I really liked were gestures of the woman in a bridal gown taking her wedding photos there. What a cool place to do it!

Otherwise there isn’t much else interesting to say. When we left, we took a detour and saw THE coolest statue ever.

Three words. Samurai Equestrian Statue.

Totally freakin’ awesome.

Took some time to do a bad drawing of it even after everyone left, and when trying to make my way back… Got absolutely lost in Ginza. Fortunately I was with Charles, so we were at the very least lost together. We looked so distressed that one man on his bike that knew a little English actually came up to us to help.

But in the end we went to the subway, took the one stop to get us close to the hotel, and that’s how we got ourselves unlost. Doesn’t it feel great to be a tourist? Urgh.

Then the two of us shipped ourselves over to Akihabara. He went to get another Gundam, and I just wanted to see it.

I was brought back to middle school again to the time when all I could think, sleep, and breathe was anime. It was awesome.

Not that anyone cares BUT I GOT A ZOID. And not one of the lame little wind up ones that have no poseability (which is a word now) that you find at Toys R Us. No, this thing was as good as a Gundam but in Zoid form. I’d rant more about it but nobody cares. I seem to be the only one who liked them. I’ll probably have a whole blog post devoted to the Command Wolf I got in the near future.

I wanted to find Big O, and I’m still trying. It’s hard to ask for it. Language barrier and all that.
Anyway, Akihabara was awesome. The main reason most people seemed to go there for was the arcade version of the new Street Fighter game.

Fungus, Dinosaurs, Mark Shultz, and Tentacles

This far too much of a fun day, I drove myself crazy with how much time I wasted taking pictures rather than having fun drawing. It was the

ANyway, Tokyo National Museum of Natural History. The traveling exhibit was about mushrooms and fungus, which was actually pretty cool, but in retrospect, I was bitter with how much time I wasted in there. At least I got some good reference pictures. I’m set for life if I ever need to refs for fungus. I'm not going to post any of it here now. Not worth wasting my time.

Also, a note on mascots. Everything has a mascot here. Absolutely everything. So even the fungus did. Actaully the fungus had multiple mascots. They're kinda cute, but I'm kinda seeing them everywhere. Even in vending machines on the street as cell phone keychains. It seems random cutesy things become very popular for no particular reason (other than cuteness, I suppose). I also heard that although Ponyo on a Cliff was pretty succesful, some of the hype was dulled due to the fact the theme song was made so popular.

Digression.

Something to be noted in retrospect- not being able to read anything actually helps a lot ot get through the museum with out wasting any time. I was really interested in everything but all I could read was the Latin describing scientific names. The history of man exhibit looked painfully informative, but I couldn’t catch a word. All I could see was that the wax Neanderthals were creepily lifelike, to the point I kept looking over my shoulder to see if its eyes were following me.

The event of the day is drawing dinos with Mark Shultz. I didn’t know his work too well before the trip. I knew a little because of Sara’s love of his work (I’m still trying to muster up the courage to ask for an autograph for her), but there’s little that can prepare you for drawing with an receiving tips from someone so mightily talented. He helped me flesh out the stegosaurus skeleton as I looked over his shoulder at his own example. (I'll show drawings later, when i'm home with a scanner.)

Something must also be said about his lack of ego. I’ve never met such an amazingly nice and inspirational person.

On that note, we got on the topic of dinosaur artists, and I mentioned my favorite, James Gurney. To which he replied “Oh yeah, he invited me over to lunch not too long ago.” (or something along the lines.) Yeah. Wow.

Anyway, before this, I spent waaay too much time photographing the taxidermy animals, which were incredible, and for once didn’t creep me out (except the birds. Taxidermy birds just don’t work due to the lack of preening). I keep kicking myself about not taking more time drawing. I only got a few lame sketches.

Akihabara was pretty interesting, I didn’t really get to experience it this night, but later really got into it and it’s officially my favorite part of urban Tokyo. (More on it later, obviously.)

First off, the stores close early, at around 7 or 8, which is odd since it’s the ‘electrical district’. I personally see it as the anime/giant robot/Gundam district, but the amount of lights make electric appropriate as well.

Tagged along with one of the professors, three of the artists and some other kids into a restaurant since we were falling over starving. What drew us in was the chef, placed at the window making some food on kebabs, which in the restaurant (alongside the extra ‘Engrish’ menu) were simply called ‘sticks’.

Mysteriously, before ordering we were given earthenware mugs filled halfway with...something, and in the center of it was a tentacle.
I was the first one to realize it was a tentacle, as it was raw, and otherwise looked like grey jelly. Mine had the ‘advantage’ of having a suction cup sticking out the side.

It took come bravery, but I had it, and it wasn’t too bad. There was some spice in it that distracted from the ‘wet’ texture. It took a lot of chewing.

The rest of the food took way too long to come, I think because we were obnoxious stupid Americans, but that’s not to say we were treated rudely. Rudeness is a rarity here. I kind of wish Americans could follow suit. It’s going to be hard coming back home.

Anyway the food took so long that by the time we got out, there was only half an hour to enjoy Akihabara, which was no time at all, really. I saw some tempting Ghibli stuff in one place, and messed with those keychain vending machines for myself and Christmas presents.