Monday, January 23, 2024

• Relatively short one today – spent some time this morning hanging out in the hotel room, seeing what views we could make with a telephoto lens.

• We had a morning coffee, then ducked across the mall from the hotel to a cinema to catch the latest Studio Ghibli moving, The Boy and The Heron. Or as it was in Japan, Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka.

• Really interesting movie, especially watching it without being able to follow the Japanese dialogue. We have internal theories about what was even going on in that movie, we will have to watch it sometime in English to see if the official plot makes more or less sense than our head canon (spoilers, almost certainly more sense. That is one trippy movie to watch in complete ignorance).
• Went for another stroll around to check out some shops, highlight was the kitchen good ally again, where the promotional autonomous robot had made an inflatable alien buddy.

• We headed out to check out Denden town, and spent a few hours dodging snow, checking out video gaming stores, eating our annual Champon from Ringer Hut.

• We also did a quick run through the Athena Nipponbashi arcade.

• I did manage to find one of the items from my hitlist in Denden Town, an SNK Pocket console. I also went a bit nuts and grabbed the newer SNK Pocket Color and some games to test. They’re wonderful little novelties with some cool games, and having both means I could possibly play some local multiplayer games in the future (with some additional hardware and the right games).