Solo Trip to Japan, 2024

    I just returned from a solo trip to Japan last week. It was by no means my first time. I've gone maybe five other times previously, making this my sixth trip. Originally, it was not my intention to go alone. I was looking at flights and prices to get both myself and my husband Josh to Japan together for the Tokyo Game Show. However, Josh was not so certain he could make it work together juggling getting time off work. For a little while I figured that was just the end of it and we'd save it for some other later date, but that was when Josh said to me, "You know, you always talk about how you've taken all these trips with other groups of people who've never been before which means you never get to do what you want to do. Why don't you take this trip for yourself and finally take control over your own trip and do what makes you happy?"

    And he was right. There has only been one other time I ever got to go to Japan basically alone, and that was 16 years ago when I was in school taking Japanese language classes. And does that really count as much of a trip, when there were high expectations placed on me to stay inside, be in school all day, keep to my dormitory and do nothing but study, with the dorm having a curfew and locking me out if I didn't get back home in time? I didn't exactly have time to do anything I wanted at that time, either. So, with Josh kindly having suggested that I do something for myself for once, I took the opportunity to make a few basic barebones plans for myself, and I was off.

    It was the end of September, and the goal was the Tokyo Game Show. I had been two other times. The last time I had been was ten years ago, and the time prior to that was all the way back in 2006--so long ago that it had been in a totally different venue. Nowadays, Tokyo Game Show isn't actually in Tokyo, but rather in the neighboring prefecture of Chiba. It's kind of like if New York Comic Con actually took place in New Jersey but still kept New York in its name.

    I found planning for this trip to actually be quite easy. I keep ending up with friends taking these Japan trips who have very different standards than I do. I know people think you have to be particularly ultra-rich to take a trip to Japan, but you really don't. You just have to be kind of crafty, and you have to accept not doing everything high-class. Shockingly, I found I was able to use PayPal's Pay-In-4 service to pay for the flight, making it wildly easier to get tickets I wanted at the time and price I wanted them. Similarly, doing payment plans for hotels ahead of time makes them a lot easier to handle. Neither of these accommodations needed to be especially great in order for me to accept them. I'm the kind of person who is completely fine with being stuffed away in a tiny space for a small amount of time if it'll make it more affordable.

    For being such a long flight in a window seat stuck next to two other strangers that I had to ask in Japanese if they wouldn't mind letting me out to use the restroom, it really wasn't such an uncomfortable experience. It was perhaps one of the only flights I've had where I wasn't absolutely freezing. The only problem I tend to have on long-haul flights is that my feet start to get a little bit puffy and itchy after several hours. I do my best to get up and walk around, but I can only do that for so long before becoming an inconvenience for other people in the aisles. In the past I have tried wearing compression socks, but ultimately those end up just hurting my legs around the tops of the socks where they hold themselves up. I haven't really found a solution yet that completely solves this problem other than having the ability to get up and walk whenever I want.

    This trip marked many firsts for me, starting with being my first time flying into Haneda. There are two major airports in the Tokyo area you can choose from, the other of which being Narita, which has been the airport I have flown in and out of every previous time I ever took a trip to and from the Tokyo area (which, incidentally, just like the Tokyo Game Show, is also not actually in Tokyo, but rather is in Chiba). Getting in through customs at Haneda was an interesting experience. I had just gone through Narita last year, and as of late Japan has been accepting customs papers digitally, allowing you to fill all of your information out online and then assigning you a QR code to scan once you land. That part is quick and easy now, and is very welcomed. However, I was not prepared for how absolutely wildly overcrowded the immigration room was. What made it worse was that there was seemingly no air conditioning running in the room. But after a long, stuffy wait, getting into the country was actually pretty easy, all things considered, made even easier by the fact that this was also my first time coming to Japan with nothing but a carry-on backpack. No waiting around for luggage at baggage claim for me, no air liner losing my bag. Just took everything with me and proceeded to find the trains.

    Haneda is such a neat airport. I honestly think it has a way cooler personality than Narita does. The variety of restaurants and shops are impressive, and they have tried their best to make the airport look and feel like a very traditionally Japanese village. It's kind of a cute place to just sit and hang out if you don't have anything else you really need to do for a while.

    Yet another first for me on this trip was deciding to stay inside a capsule hotel for the full duration I was there. I've never stayed in a capsule hotel prior to this. The closest I'd ever come were a couple of times I'd accidentally gotten myself locked out of my dormitory back in college and then had to visit a nearby manga cafe which had certain enclosures with a computer and a padded floor that made it easy to sleep there if you really had to. I guess that's kind of like staying in a capsule hotel. Sort of.

    I often watch a lot of Japanese travel YouTube videos, specifically from people who actually live in Japan and are just interested in seeing and doing unique things that even they haven't done before. They're the kind of guys that actually film everything they do in complete silence, never saying anything, never showing up on camera, and all of the commentary on their videos is done through YouTube's closed caption features. I stumbled upon one guy who shared video of this particular capsule chain called eeGee Stay, and focused specifically on its Kamata location. The location seemed good enough for me because it was a relatively short trip from the Haneda airport to the hotel. It put it on the opposite end of Tokyo from where I needed to go to reach the Tokyo Game Show (Kamata is pushing pretty close to the edge of the prefecture on the other side, nearly all the way to Kanagawa), but I was happy with the idea of not having to take a heavy backpack terribly far before being able to drop it off, and I knew I would be bringing another bag back with me to the airport on the return trip, so staying closer to the airport was a plus for me.

    eeGee Stay Kamata has two floors dedicated to just men, and one floor dedicated to only women. It's also a lot like that manga cafe I'd stayed at during college, because along the walls near the capsule rooms they also store a pretty hefty selection of manga that you can pick up and carry with you back to your room to read. The women's floor seemed to feature primarily shojo manga and other manga that women were more likely to read, so there wasn't a lot of mixed variety that I would have liked to have seen, but I can see why they did it and did find some things that I liked.

    Conveniently, I was placed in the very first capsule on the women's floor. There are bottom rooms and top rooms sitting above them. The room had a mattress, a thin pillow, a tiny trash can, and a little cupboard with a lock (I hesitate to call it a "safe"). There was also a TV mounted to the wall, but they instructed you to keep it below a certain volume. It does make it a little hard to watch anything, but I had brought a pair of headphones with me with a traditional aux cable that plugged straight into the TV, so on Sunday morning I was able to watch an episode of Kamen Rider Gavv with absolutely no issues or worries about disturbing other guests.

    Looking at the room itself isn't particularly special. It's just plain wood all around you, which to me looks cheap, but they're totally selling it to you like, "We hope you can feel like this is an adventure inside of a secret treehouse," even though there's nothing else about the hotel that makes it feel like it's treehouse-themed, so I think that's just their way of explaining it away. Regardless, that's not why I chose the hotel, and I was still pretty happy with my decision.

    The hotel has a community place to eat and drink. On the first day, they give you a choice in the lobby to pick either instant ramen or curry and rice to take with you into the eating space. I chose the curry and rice. You take your food to the eating space where you can microwave it. They give you plates, cups, and some plastic utensils. There's also a coffee machine with several varieties of coffee, tea, and hot cocoa, as well as a separate drink machine with soda and water. There's even a vanilla soft-serve machine with several flavors of syrup waiting on a nearby table. For some reason, the chocolate syrup was available for only two of the six days I was there, and mysteriously disappeared on various days, non-consecutively.

    The eating space connects to a large area with multiple vanity mirrors and stools for doing your hair and make-up. They also provide guests with free amenities like disposable hair brushes and Q-tips. That space then connects to the shower room which has multiple showers--plenty enough for everyone, and I never felt like I had to compete with anyone else in the hotel to use one. The shower room then further connects to the room just for the toilets. Again, more than enough toilets. There may also have only been one single time where I was ever in that room with another person the entire time I was there.

    It was largely a quiet, pleasant experience at eeGee Stay Kamata, though I have to admit that one part I was not thrilled about was that they insisted that you MUST leave the hotel for some amount of time between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. There was one day during the week where I had acquired a few things that I could no longer feasibly carry and wanted to drop them back off at my hotel before continuing my adventures, but I almost couldn't do so because they genuinely lock the doors and won't let you back in until after 3:00 p.m. I was lucky I was able to explain to the person at the door that I just wanted to drop my stuff off and then I would leave, so they unlocked the door, let me in, and then guided me to my room to drop off my things, and then guided me back down (they wouldn't do it without being there to keep an eye on me). The hotel was otherwise a nice enough place, but if only for the fact that I may just want to have a place where I know I can go back and sit down or take a nap before doing more things later, I may not return here again in the future.

    The area immediately around eeGee Stay Kamata is actually quite convenient. There is a Don Quijote in the same square, as well as JR Kamata Station. If you're not familiar with Don Quijote, perhaps the closest thing I could possibly compare it to in the United States would be Walmart, though I think Walmart is a more miserable experience. Due to space in Japan being at a premium, stores are largely vertical rather than horizontal, so it's like if a bright, inviting Walmart were several floors tall with a cute blue penguin mascot in a Santa hat plastered all over the place. At current, Don Quijote has been playing a relatively new commercial on TV and online featuring Bruno Mars in a catchy club tune that says nothing more than, "Donki iku yo" (Let's go to Donki), with Mars and four backup dancers grooving through the aisles of a Donki store. I found that each of the Donki locations I came across were playing this music video on a loop outside of their stores. And that's before you walk inside and hear their theme song--yes, an entire theme song for a variety shopping store--playing on a loop over the speakers as you walk inside. The bouncy, cheery theme song has been associated with Don Quijote stores for decades now, and it still plays every time you walk inside one.

    I got an early night's sleep and took an early train the next morning bound for Makuhari-Messe, where the Tokyo Game Show is held. What's great about going to Japan on my own is that in a lot of cases, if I make a mistake taking the train, like getting off at the wrong stop or accidentally taking the train in the opposite direction, I put anybody else I'm with in a bad place and throw off their game, with many people not being particularly forgiving of these little, easily-fixable mistakes. But that's the thing--they ARE easily fixable, and I am often able to correct my mistakes rather quickly. And by deliberately choosing not to give myself any tight deadlines, I find no stress in going, "Oh, I need to get back on the train and keep going," and just not worry about anything else. I'm not putting anybody out, and nobody's gonna yell at me for getting them lost or off-schedule. The no-stress and loose schedule on a trip like this is something I would highly recommend to anybody else thinking of trying it.

    I had ordered my entrance ticket to Tokyo Game Show online a couple of months in advance (a pretty cheap ticket, all things considered, at only about $15). Buying the ticket overseas allowed me to walk straight up to a practically empty booth where they confirmed my ticket and let me through into the main line to get in the door, followed by bag check and a person handing out wristbands.

    At this point, I heard somebody saying, "Excuse me!" from behind my back, in English, and I realized that I was the only person that they were probably trying to talk to. A tall man, probably from somewhere in Europe, approached me, I assume because he just wanted to talk to another white person in English. He started by asking me, "Is this your first time at Tokyo Game Show?", which felt a little like he was hoping it was so that he could make himself out to be a bit more of the expert on the place. But admittedly, that's just an assumption on my part. As it turns out, although my three shows had been spread out over the course of 18 years from each other, I'd attended more shows than he has, and he'd never been to one so long ago that it was still at Tokyo Big Sight in Odaiba. He asked me if there was anything specific I was there to see. I mentioned that while I was a big fan of Final Fantasy, I really wanted to see what was going on with Fantasian, Hironobu Sakaguchi's RPG that harkens back to his days as a Final Fantasy producer. Dude really had no idea what I was talking about, and shifted to, "I hope they show a new Resident Evil!" Nice enough guy, but I felt like despite the fact that we were both foreigners there for video games, we probably didn't have much else in common, and eventually we just sort of found ourselves separated.

    I'd never been to TGS so early that I was there before the doors opened before. I found myself standing in a massive line for at least an hour and a half, and by then my feet were already killing me, and I hadn't even done anything yet. Japanese societal rules say that you should never squat down and sit anywhere that isn't specifically designed to be sat on, so I tried my hardest to stay on my feet as long as possible. But everybody in that line is just human, no matter how Japanese they may be, and even a good chunk of those other people in line started at least squatting down, with a couple of people sitting against the wall of the outside of the building. One or two guys even brought along mini folding stools for outside events that they used while waiting in this line. So, clearly, at a certain point, everybody breaks. Thankfully, it was about at the point where we were all at our limits that the doors finally opened and everybody started moving forward. I remember walking past some food trucks serving various types of food, and one of them fashioned itself to be some kind of American food, with a big American flag plastered on the sign, with some kind of food product labeled as a "Potato Churro Dog". Those of course are all words involving foods that Americans like, but I've never in my life seen those words arranged in that order before, and I don't know exactly what it was supposed to be.

    Walking into TGS right as the doors open on a public day is incredible. You will never have another chance to go straight for the one most important thing to you if you don't get there that early. I zipped straight on over to the Square Enix booth, where Fantasian stuff would be waiting. I had already played the game when it was trapped over on Apple Arcade, and now the game is finally being published by Square Enix and released both digitally and physically in December. It's a crazy development for Hironobu Sakaguchi, who had left Square Enix under much more stressful circumstances over 20 years ago, but now has suddenly found himself in a healthy relationship with Final Fantasy XIV producer Naoki Yoshida, who somehow made this development work out to bring Sakaguchi's latest game back to Square Enix. It's an incredible development that I never thought I would see happen.

Running straight for Fantasian's side of the Square Enix booth, a model of the Uzra ship featured in the game--built as a physical model and then photographed to be used not too unlike a pre-rendered background in a PlayStation-era Final Fantasy title--was sitting on display to be photographed by attendees. Behind the model was the line to play the demo for Fantasian. Honestly, having already played the game on Apple Arcade, I didn't desperately need to play the demo, but it was worth it for a few different reasons. For one, now that the game is coming to consoles, it includes voice acting, which I got to hear a taste of while playing the demo. Furthermore, standing in line and playing the demo got me a TGS-exclusive Fantasian-themed clear file folder. But even more of a bonus than any of that, while I was standing in line waiting to play the demo, Hironobu Sakaguchi himself walked right past our line! I was mere inches from him, probably the closest I will ever be in my entire life! Another staff member was ushering him through the booth and past the crowds. Nobody bothered him, but there were two or three other people waiting in line that you could definitely tell recognized exactly who Sakaguchi was, and they watched him intently as he walked past. Very polite of everyone to just leave him alone, though.

    But I would have my chance to see Sakaguchi one more time a couple of hours later. A talk segment was scheduled for Sakaguchi to sit down with Naoki Yoshida and famous video game composer Nobuo Uematsu to talk about bringing Fantasian to life and bringing it back to Square Enix. I had briefly seen Naoki Yoshida on the Square Enix stage at TGS ten years prior, and I've seen Uematsu a number of times at live events for his various bands and orchestral performances--heck, I even met him and briefly spoke to him one year in Texas at Oni-Con in Galveston. So the real treat of the day was seeing the both of them together talking to Hironobu Sakaguchi. Yoshida reminded the audience that Sakaguchi's first grandchild had literally just been born, I believe earlier that week, and he comically told the audience to call Sakaguchi "grandpa" when they invited him out onto the stage. Seeing these three greats of video games sitting together on the same stage right before my eyes was something I feel very privileged to have been able to see in my lifetime. Standing there for over an hour to see it was incredibly painful, but fighting through the pain was more than worth it. Once the talk segment was over, the three of them took a picture on stage along with the audience, and deep in the background you can see my stupid grin as a threw up a shaka fist, emulating Sakaguchi who loves throwing out the shaka hand symbol in all of his photos because he now lives in Hawaii. To even remotely be visible in a photo in the same room as Hironobu Sakaguchi is a dream come true. Despite the great pain in my feet, it may have been one of the happiest moments of my life.

    There honestly wasn't much else I desperately needed to do at Tokyo Game Show. Attending the Yoshida/Sakaguchi/Uematsu talk earned me a Fantasian-themed paper fan, I walked around the whole gaming hall to at least catch a glimpse of every developer and pick up the occasional freebie and a bunch of flyers, I saw Pirate Majima over at Sega's Ryu Ga Gotoku/Like A Dragon display, and that was everything I desperately needed to do. I did exactly what I wanted for several hours, and I feel like I got my money's worth. After taking a short break on a bench to rest my feet, I walked back to the train station and set myself back in the direction of my hotel to rest up for the excitement of the next day.

    The next day is something that perhaps not a lot of people will understand, so I sort of have to explain with some backstory. Back in 2006, I attempted to visit a club called the Velfarre. There's a Eurobeat song dedicated to this club, featured in the video game Para Para Paradise. I tried to go on one of their Eurobeat nights. When I got there, the man at the door said, "Japanese only," and I wasn't really sure if he meant that they only spoke Japanese inside, or if they weren't letting foreigners in, and my Japanese wasn't good enough to ask, so I left with very little confidence and very disappointed. A few years later, the Velfarre shut down, and I never got to go. However, several years later, a music festival called Agefarre would start up, which was a project created through the combined efforts of both the former Velfarre and another club called AgeHa, featuring two days of DJs playing a broad variety of club music on multiple different stages. This included a day with a stage dedicated to Super Eurobeat of days long past and promised to have tons of people showing up to dance along using Para Para. I was thrilled. It was everything I had wanted 18 years ago that I had missed out on the first time, and as it turns out, I was gonna finally be there for it this time, totally on accident because I hadn't realized it was happening around the same time as the Tokyo Game Show.

    The festival takes place on the manmade island of Odaiba, not far from Diver City where the permanent Gundam sits. When I went into the festival, which took place on a relatively new go-kart race track, I walked past and listened to multiple DJs playing various kinds of music, including some great techno and trance. But the Eurobeat started off quite early on its own separate stage, and a huge crowd of people who had likely been dancing Para Para since the 1980s had crowded around to do these routines as a huge group. It's incredible--they all know so many more dances than I do, and I know quite a few of them. But these guys knew almost every single routine for about an hour and a half straight. In moments where I could jump in and participate, it felt like a real community event. It was just an incredible feeling to be part of this group, doing something I had been wanting to do for almost 20 years, and I finally got it.

    The festival also had lots of food and drink trucks. You couldn't even get in if you were under the age of 20 years old because they were selling alcohol. People were dressed so, so cool, too. There were people who looked like that famous video of those raver kids dancing underneath a bridge, there were ganguro gyarus, there were dudes in nice club suits--everything you could think of, and everybody was just happy. Even though I was only there for a few hours, I'm so glad that I did it and that I got to experience the one thing I had been missing for almost half my life. Once again, my feet hurt pretty badly by the end of it, but it didn't even matter because I was doing exactly what I had been wanting to do for years.

    While I was at the festival, one of my few Japanese friends had actually noticed from my posts on Twitter that I was in Japan and started DMing me to see if I was available. He actually first invited me to come see a talk session with a former actor from Kamen Rider Faiz, but I had unfortunately already put my time and money into attending this music festival at this time, so I agreed to meet up with him and a few of his friends later at an izakaya near Nakano Broadway.

    Several hours later, I was shaking hands with an old friend, Kazushi Hinoki, who among other things had worked as an assistant manga artist on manga such as Hikaru no Go and Death Note, as well as being the lead artist (but not the author) of the manga Gun x Sword. I had first met him maybe 12 years ago at a 24-hour anime sing-along event at All Con in Dallas, Texas, and for whatever reason, we ended up keeping in touch on and off. I was very honored that he remembered me and immediately asked me to come join him and his friends when he saw I was in town.

    At the restaurant, he introduced me to several other people who worked in various parts of the anime, tokusatsu, and gaming industries. Animators, designers, promotion, etc. One man had recently worked on Beyblade X, which was exciting because I was able to tell him that I had done some walla (crowd voice-over) on the English release of that series. Another man apparently has done several designs for Kamen Rider since approximately Den-O. I showed him that I had actually just come from Toys-R-Us on Odaiba and picked up a three-pack of Gochizo toys from the currently-airing Kamen Rider Gavv, to which he replied that he had actually designed both the Maru Mallow and the Guru Can toys that I was holding in my hand, which was exciting! Later came Nozomi Yamada from Sega (whom I specifically remember because he handed me his business card). He had literally just arrived from being busy working at the Tokyo Game Show. I told him how much I had enjoyed the Like a Dragon franchise, and it just so happened that he had a Majima keychain from Yakuza 0 on him that he kindly handed over to me. Such a nice thing to do!

    The conversation was incredible, and it was the Japanese conversation practice I had been longing for for a very, very long time. They worked with me in areas where my Japanese was weak and were willing to rephrase things for me, or rephrase things to each other so that we could all talk without issues. We talked about how Japanese shows got localized in the US, how Kamen Rider hasn't always done so well but was getting better, and even how Harmony Gold has made things so tremendously difficult for various licenses, to which some of them were very much aware of just how bad things have been. I was amazed at how open, honest, and friendly they all were with me, all speaking very casually and frankly, which sounded nothing like any of the Japanese that anybody else talks to me using. In any other situation, people will be polite with me and tell me, "Nihongo jouzu!" (Your Japanese is so good!) but if you've been around for even a little while, you realize that if you use even the bare minimum Japanese, everybody in Japan will tell you this because it's the polite thing to say, even if it isn't true. In my case, the very first thing I did when I approached the table was tell them, "I'm sorry, my Japanese is really bad!", to which they all replied, "Oh, no, don't worry, it's fine!" At no point did they ever try to butter me up with any of that "Nihongo jouzu" nonsense. It felt like they were really willing to level with me on a lot of things. And I know that's true, because they were willing to complain about how American's decide to switch Japanese people's family names and their given names around to match western order, when we don't do that with Korean names. They were clearly bothered by that! And all I could say was, "...Yeah. I'm sorry." But of course I didn't take it TOO personally, because it's a thing we all do, and I think they understood it wasn't me specifically, and they were plenty friendly enough and happy to talk with me that it didn't stop them from wanting to learn more about how Japanese media ends up getting seen by Americans.

    At the end of the night, the group was nice enough to walk me down to the train station, and while I know if I had been Japanese they would have bowed to me to see me off, instead every single one of them shook my hand, knowing that's what they're supposed to do if they're interacting with an American. In a normal situation in the US, if I had just been having a friendly time with a bunch of people, I might not have shaken all of their hands at the end of the night, but it was clear they wanted to do their part to be as friendly and accommodating to me as possible, and their gesture was very kind of them to try to make me feel happy and welcomed. I wish I had more chances to do things like that with people. I had such a great time meeting people, gushing about media, and exchanging thoughts and ideas like this. I hope it's not the last time I get to do it.

    The rest of my trip was really just going at my own pace, picking various places, and saying, "Yeah, I'm gonna take it slow and just go somewhere neat. It doesn't matter where." I took a day trip to Akihabara just to see how things were going down there. It's a place I've been to several times before, and I probably don't terribly need to explore too much around there anymore, though I did promise Josh that I would go looking for various things for him and send him pictures of things he might be interested in. Now, I understand that Japan believes they are experiencing over-tourism. For the most part, I did not feel this too tremendously badly in most parts of Tokyo I explored. However, I ABSOLUTELY experienced this in Akihabara. I am not exaggerating when I say that Akiba was quite possibly 50% foreigners--by far the biggest concentration of non-Japanese people I have ever seen in that part of the city in the last 18 years. Now, foreigners simply being there I don't think is in any way a problem. Heck, I'm not even somebody who hates on people who are just looking for a place to sit down or eat when Japan tends to frown on people sitting down in random spots and eating in public. Those are honestly things that I think Japan should ease up on, because even Japanese people are trying to find places to sit down or eat a snack all the time, because once again, they're only human, and they get tired and hungry and thirsty, too, just like anybody else. No, the biggest problem was more so that the tourists were so touristy that they would kinda just stop in the middle of the sidewalk mid-walk, look up and around at buildings all confused and mystified, and then nobody could get around them or go anywhere. And that's a problem literally anywhere you go, right? It's not a problem that's unique to Japan. People in general can just kinda be unobservant. But, I have to admit, there were just so many tourists that I could finally kinda feel the mild inconvenience of it. It wasn't so bad that it was, you know, bringing society to its knees or anything. But it was like, "Hey, if you're gonna stop, just kinda move out of the way of other people who wanna walk here or something," that's all.

    To that extent, there's no "secret" to Akihabara anymore. It didn't stop being cool, of course, but it's very popular, and now some stores that used to be quite good for rare retro deals are now no longer so cheap, because they know that they've gotten popular and they can charge people more. Take the famous store Super Potato, for example, very popular for their retro games and anime/VG soundtracks. At one point in time they were not only a huge library full of every retro game you could think of (they still do that just fine), but they were also selling things for an absolute steal. That's not the case anymore, and it's something I even noticed the last time Josh and I had been there last year. We walked into Super Potato thinking we might walk away with some deals, and instead we came out with nothing, thinking we could probably do better with some resellers online now. Mandarake is still a fun place with great resale toys, though. It's just very popular, is all. And the arcades are still just as fun as ever. But it's definitely a little different than it once was.

    At another point in my trip, I traveled out again to Nakano Broadway, since I had only been able to meet with my Japanese friends for dinner and wasn't able to make it for shopping with them any earlier. Once again, there are multiple outcroppings of various divisions of Mandarake, with different stores on different floors dedicated to various subcultures. I helped Josh find some Kamen Rider-related things he was looking for, and through text messages alone he was able to convey that some of these deals he was seeing from my pictures I was sending him were very exciting. Nakano Broadway also has just an absolute ton of Gachapon machine outcroppings all across the mall. You're almost certain to find some random thing you might like.

    On a different day, I decided to see a limited theatrical screening of the Netflix live-action City Hunter movie. Now, of course I had already seen the film twice, because it's on Netflix. However, this event was unique in that not only was it in a real movie theater, but they were handing out rare post cards with limited artwork drawn by City Hunter's manga artist Tsukasa Hojo, and I was very fortunate to be able to get one. Not only that, but the theater was displaying actual costume pieces for various characters in the film behind a blue rope, along with some weapons placed in a clear protective glass case. There were also some limited edition City Hunter items being sold, so I bought an acrylic figure of the characters Ryo and Umibozu, which meant that I also unexpectedly received two mini posters from the Netflix City Hunter movie. I walked away with a huge win! I was incredibly lucky, because this screening was only happening in two theaters in all of Japan (one in Tokyo and the other Osaka), and it looked like the tickets were selling out fast, with audience members only being able to buy their seats up to two days in advance.

    If you've never experienced a Japanese movie theater, it's so interesting because so much of it is such a similar experience to American movie theaters, but also they just have such a culture of being absolutely dead silent and not disturbing anybody. I've now seen three films in Japanese theaters, and you often think, "Wow, this was such an intense scene, I can't keep myself from gasping in shock," but nobody in a Japanese theater does that very often. Despite this, sometimes audience members really can't help themselves. There was a grand total of one moment in the film where the main character, who is so cool and such a badass but is also occasionally an unserious goofball, walks up into a yakuza den, and while everybody in the scene is staring at the character slack-jawed, we hear the patriarch of the yakuza family tell the main character to put on pants, to which the camera finally reveals that the lead character has only been wearing a shirt and underwear the entire time he's been in the room. And this theater audience finally laughed out loud at the absolutely absurd revelation. It's the only thing they reacted to audibly, and it made me feel relieved. The movie also ends by playing the most famous ending theme from the popular anime TV show called Get Wild by the band TM Network, which is well known by many people and very famous. If I'm not mistaken, the woman to my left was inaudibly mouthing along the lyrics to the song (and to be fair, so was I), so it's clear that people want to be able to react to things. It's something that I think is a really delicate balancing act about the culture. You have to restrict so much of yourself and your emotions just to make sure you're not a disturbance to anybody around you, but at the end of the day you're still a normal human being with normal needs and feelings and emotions. It's little wonder I saw people on Twitter asking if there could maybe be a dedicated "reaction" screening of this movie, where it is acceptable to react more audibly to things in the movie. I understand that this is a normal thing to offer during things such as Disney musical films, where people are invited to sing along to the songs in the movie and nobody gets judged. It's very interesting that those are two totally different things that can both exist.

    At one point I visited Shinjuku Central Park, which is a place that is often visited within the City Hunter manga and anime, and a lot of mysterious cases at least partly take place in that park. It's actually quite a nice, quiet spot of green in the middle of a sprawling city. Lots of benches and chairs, plenty of places to walk nice paths and then sit down and rest. There's nice waterfalls and gazebos, with people taking photos, practicing skating, skateboarding, and throwing frisbees. There's a large patch of grass where lots of people were sitting on blankets, eating lunch, and even just falling asleep. It was actually super nice and peaceful, and it's almost surprising to find such a quaint place when there are so many tall buildings and skyscrapers just barely past the treeline.

    I visited yet another friend I had met many years ago at the same event I'd met Hinoki-san at--Keisaku Kimura, who owns and operates a bar in Asagaya called Otaku Bar 44Sonic (he and Hinoki are also friends). He also DMed me to see if I would be coming down to visit him at his bar, and of course I absolutely wouldn't miss it. In the last several years, Keisaku has also been working as a CG animator on both the Kamen Rider and Super Sentai franchises. That includes working on this year's Kamen Rider Gavv, and while I was at his bar he showed off several clips on YouTube showing big transformation and action sequences he had to work on. It was clear that he was quite tired that day, actually, because he very obviously works incredibly hard on this job, but it's also clear he's tremendously proud of the work that he does. Meeting other people at the bar was also fun, getting to exchange more ideas with people I've never met before over a few drinks. I'm so glad I stopped in.

    By the time most of my trip was done, it was clear I would not be able to return home on the same backpack I came to Japan with, and I would need to buy some luggage to carry everything I'd acquired. And of course, that's fine, because I didn't even own any good luggage of my own at home anyway. And sure, I could have bought some luggage at any old Don Quijote, but luggage inside of a Don Quijote is always a little more expensive than I would like. After doing some research online, I found many people recommending taking a short trip to Ueno and finding the shopping street colloquially known as Ameyoko. There's all kinds of bags, clothes, shoes, and pretty much anything else you can think of inside tiny little shops down this long street, with lots of them carrying discounted luggage. I found a great, sturdy suitcase with good handles and rolling wheels in a shiny blue color that looked incredibly similar to Kamen Rider Gotchard. Rolling it back to the hotel was a little goofy and I didn't much like feeling more like a lost tourist than I really was with this large rolly bag. Thankfully, the trains have a space in the front car that is perfect for people like me with rolling luggage or strollers. I would just need to give up my space for any mothers with babies in strollers that came by, which luckily never happened.

    On my very last day, the trip back to the airport was actually quite swift and simple. There is a convenient monorail that goes straight to Haneda with lots of space for people's luggage. And with so much stuff to do in Haneda, I didn't find myself wanting for very much. Even the restaurants were excellent. I even got the chance to do something I've always wanted to do with this luggage, by buying a sticker representing Haneda airport and slapping it on the back of the suitcase, starting my new tradition of decorating the bag with proof of my visits to various places around the world. Haneda also has an excellent observation deck even before you check in through security, so anybody can come inside and watch the planes taxi, take off, and land. It's actually quite a bit like City Hunter, where our main characters often come to the airport to do just that, watching as their client for the episode takes off to return to some mystical fake foreign country before the episode ends.

    While sitting at my gate waiting for my plane to arrive at the terminal, I had one final surprise. As it turns out, a Twitter mutual of mine--Nick Limon, executive producer at IGN--was also boarding the same flight as me to return home to California. He recognized me first, and we had a great conversation for a while at the gate. As expected, he too had gone to Tokyo Game Show, which of course makes sense for someone working in video game journalism. That would be the last time I would see him, as he was in a much earlier boarding group than I was, and I was boarding basically dead last.

    What I didn't expect was that actually this flight was maybe only half full. As such, I was moved into a seat with a row entirely to myself. In fact, not only was my row by the window completely to myself, but the center row to my left was completely empty, too. I had all the freedom in the world for ten hours to look out the window, get up, walk around, go to the bathroom, and do anything I wanted. I could even lie down across the whole row if I wanted! Though, uh, I have to admit, actually doing that wasn't very comfortable at all, so I just ended up falling asleep sitting up anyway.

    In most circumstances when returning to the US, immigration has been a huge pain in the ass. It's usually a wild cattle call with people screaming at you. But this time, the immigration room was nearly empty, and the officer at the immigration gate only wanted to take my photograph, and that was it. He just let me straight back into the country without even looking at my passport. I mean, uh, I guess that's fine, 'cause they checked my passport at Haneda's security and then yet again at my gate in Haneda, so we're all good there, but, uh, wow. Not even five minutes in the immigration room. In the last 18 years, that has NEVER happened to me before. Incredible.

    So, that was my Japan trip for 2024. In all my years of intermittent visiting, this has to have been the most satisfying and personally fulfilling Japan trip I've ever taken in my life. I got to go at my own pace, slowly enough that I wasn't too tired or in too much pain to keep going, I wasn't slowing anyone down, inconveniencing anyone, or making anyone else unhappy, and I wasn't dedicating any of my time to anything somebody else wanted to do or something I had already done a million times before that. I found myself welcomed by people who have bothered to remember me and like me even several years after having last seen them. I feel so incredibly fortunate and blessed to be welcomed by such cool people who have openly told me they are my friends. It's experiences like these that make me eager to do it all over again sometime soon. It's why I can't stop going back. When you meet people who have lived in a place so different from where you're from but you still somehow manage to connect with them in such a way that they're more than happy to have you come back, that's a feeling that's worth more than money and more than words can possibly describe. I'll be looking forward to my next chance to do it all over again.

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Extra special thanks to the following Kasei Gumi members: Gomer