A good day...

Maia and I are on Golden Week (Which, this year falls mostly on the weekend, so we've taken to calling it "Golden Weekend". It's 3 national holidays in a row, which, added to a weekend, makes for 5 consecutive days off...

That is, unless the holiday falls on a weekend. In Japan Saturday is a workday, well... for everyone but us school folks. So, we get Saturday off! Well, isn't that nice...

Anyway, Sunday is also on the holiday, so they are giving us Tuesday as a "Switch day", it's not really a holiday, but since "Green Day" (Midori no Hi) falls on Sunday, we get Tuesday as the switch day.

Anyway, enough about the why... Maia is staying at my place this weekend. Friday night we go to the mall and, completely on impulse, we buy a Wii (Actually, it was impulsive to buy it on Friday, we have been pondering buying one for a while, it seems like it might actually have games designed to exercize the body more... I'm into that). We had both gotten our year-end bonuses, and I was going to buy a new computer with mine... but my company is sneaky, and they pro-rated my final paycheck of the year (See, I technically ended work on March 24th...), so they took away $700 from my paycheck and then gave me a $1000 bonus... Needless to say I really only got a whopping $300 bonus. So we bought a Wii instead. The computer will have to wait.

Anyway, Saturday morning we wake up and eat breakfast and then, completely on impulse, we get on a train to Tokyo (This too, wasn't really an impulse. We bought Mario Kart, and the Wii version has a cute steering wheel thingie which you put the remote into so you can drive. We only had one, and we wanted another... and everywhere was sold out, so we thought; if we can't find a wheel in Akihabara, there isn't one in all of Japan). We have no idea where we are going after our short mission to Akihabara. We are thinking of all kinds of places to visit. But we have no plan... By the time we arrive in Akihabara, we are thinking of going to Ningacho, via Nihombashi.

Nihombashi was the first stop on the very famous Tokaido road (The road that linked Tokyo (Then called Edo) with Kyoto, the capital of old-time Japan). It was a bridge that crossed the river that defined the very edge of Edo. It's now a very central ward of Tokyo (How times have changed :D).

During my Kyoto trip, I visited the last station of the Tokaido Road in Kyoto. And now I have been to the first station (Nihombashi)

The most interesting thing is that Highway 4 goes over Nihombashi... Think about that for a second: the freeway goes over... the river goes under... Highway 4 is built over the river... it just travels along, suspended about 100 or so feet above the river, going the whole way down. They had no more room along here to build the freeway on land, so they just built it on the river.

We then walked to Ningacho, which is interesting, but is really just a series of little teeny shops which didn't really interest us that much.

Upon returning to Akihabara, though. We ate at a Burger King! A real, live, Burger King (Which was surrounded by McDonald's...) I enjoyed the first Whopper I have had since I landed here... :D

Then we went to the book store.

See, I have a little goal; I discovered (Before I came to Japan) that one of my favorite Authors, David Weber, has had his series of Honor Harrington books translated into Japanese, and with some cool artwork, to boot. So I made it a goal to be able to read these books. In light of this, I've been collecting the books over here in order to read them when my Japanese level is high enough (This is still a little ways off). Well, I was pleasantly surprised to find "Echoes of Honor" at the bookstore, so, of course, I picked it up:

Poor Nimitz!

(These books are in Japanese order, book 1 is on the right, book 2 is on the left)

but then, while I was there, I spotted something wonderful!

These are the original Dirty Pair novels! Yes sir, the girls of 3WA are all here in the original novels that started it all (Well, okay, started one of my favorite Animes of the 1980's... which is probably why most of you, except Jer and James are saying "Whu?"). I saw a whole mess of the books, but I only picked up these two novels.

I've read Honor in English and so I want to read the novels in Japanese for the practice and the curiosity (How do they translate "Impeller Drive"?). The Dirty Pair novels don't exist in any language but Japanese. Which means I can't cheat. I have to learn Japanese in order to read these books. I have a whole new goal! (And I'll probably pick up all the other DP novels. I really just love Yuri and Kei! (Gads, look at Mugi... he looks downright terrifying... not fluffy and sleepy like he does in the series) :D) The girls of Collateral Damage are back! Or... Never left... or something...

I love the collars! I keep forgetting these books were written in 1982...

So that was our impulsive trip to Tokyo. I walked across five Wards (Akihabara, Kanda, Nihombashi, Chuo and Ningachoo), which racked up to 8,500 steps on the pedometer (Whomever said "10,000 steps a day" is on drugs). We only took a train back to Akihabara because we were totally beat.

-3Wme