Today was a very late start, though very much appreciated. Rising at 1pm, Laura and I grabbed lunch at the Lawson’s across from the post office and meandered across the street to withdraw money. I found that I really enjoy oni-giri (rice balls), especially for lunch or breakfast. Something about the flavor of rice and seaweed is very appealing to me. I’m going to miss it.
We met up with the group a little later, rumors flying about a mandatory meeting that had been called. After going out the night before, I was a little anxious. Noriko, Jose, and Shiro gathered us all together and informed us that we had a lot of freedom, since we are college students, but warned us against being reckless about it. They know that some of us have been going out and they can’t stop us, but they warned us against the dangers of the city at night. They asked us to be careful and not to do it if we could avoid it, for our own sakes, as well as theirs. If anything happened to us, they would be held liable. I and some of the other folks I had been out with felt really bad and apologized, though Shiro seemed to imply we were not the trouble case. It makes me wonder what actually happened to trigger the warnings.
From the meeting, a group of us visited Nakano Broadway with Shiro and Jose. Talk about an anime lover’s paradise! Anything from figures, to plushies, to manga, to cds, this place had it and then some. Laura and I wandered the three levels, ogling at all the pretty and exciting things and weaving in and out of the stores. We found a fantastic, retro/used figure store, where Laura found an original Final Fantasy VII figure and I found an old Thunderbirds figure for my Dad. There were so many cool things in that store! We found a used DVD/CD store too, and got some awesome music; though it was a bummer that the DVDs wouldn’t work back at home. The store that took the cake was in a back corner, but sold just about any boxed figure you could think of. They had taken the figures out of the grab boxes and were selling them individually, so you could get whichever figure you wanted. Laura and I spent a lot of time there, trying to pick and choose figures. It took us a while, but was so worth it. If only I wasn’t on such a budget, eh? From shopping, we went up to the gallery, where they were featuring some anime-style art. There were some beautiful pieces, and it was wonderful to see the anime style outside of the animations and in a more classical realm. Unfortunately we didn’t have much time, so we had to bolt, but I’m glad we got to see the gallery.
After spending way too much money, we rendezvoused with the rest of the group and headed back to Shinjuku, proceeding to drop off our things before Laura and I lead the way back to the Square Enix store. Time to spend more money! We all agreed that this would be our last trip to the store, so we each made all the purchases we wished to make. I’m glad I got to see the place so many times: it really is a beautiful store. I ended up purchasing the Odin shirt (summon from Final Fantasy XII) and a Cloud tumbler, and piched in with Laura to get our mutual friend a Chocobo. I’m sad that we won’t be going back, but my wallet is happy to be away. It’s unfortunately expensive there. We joined Megan and Giselle for a wonderful dinner of Tempura (so good!) near the hotel and called an early night, bunkering in to shower and do some laundry. Then sleep. Wonderful, wonderful sleep.
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