The Dr. has her plate full and The Mrs. is going bananas!
It’s painful to publish this photo.
It reminds me that my trip there had a closure.
I want to go back to Japan as soon as possibile. Again and again!
This is why I’ve written いってきます (ittekimasu) in the title. This is a sentence said by those who are leaving the house: I’ll go and come back.
I want to believe this was just the first of many trips to my beloved Japan!
Our plane was very late at night, so we decided to go back to Akihabara for the morning and early afternoon before going home and finish packing.
The highlight of this second trip to Akihabara was the Shosen bookshop. Can you imagine? 10 floors of books, manga, magazines and such! I didn’t want to leave!
I bought there several grammar and kanji books and then my partner stopped me otherwise our luggages wouldn’t be enough!
While browsing the pictures to write this blog post, I realized that this will be the second last about my trip to Japan.
After that this blog will be back to normal business in all its weirdness!
I have to admit I feel very sad, though. In sharing these memories with you, I lived again those beautiful days and now it’s almost over.
I decided I’ll do some throw-back posts, maybe even every week and I’ll keep gathering info for the next travels.
Because, no matter what, I want to go back!
And the beautiful day ended with an even nicer event.
I met T. more than 20 years ago in Italy. We were both studying in different cities. I was in university studying Japanese and she was studying Italian.
My Japanese professor organized a penpal program and I got matched with T. We exchanged some letters.
Then one day she came over to visit me and had lunch with my family. It was very nice although I were very nervous because my level of Japanese was very low! In some way we managed to communicate and it was a fantastic day!
Then T. moved back to Japan, I finished my studies and then moved to Ireland.
This didn’t stop to keep in touch! Although we were chatting or writing emails from time to time we kept up our friendship!
When I went to Japan in April, T. invited us to have dinner with her and her family. I was very excited as I hadn’t seen her in years. At the same time, I was a bit afraid as eventually life got in the way and my Japanese level was much lower than university time.
But I shouldn’t have worried. We used dictionaries and we laughed a lot. Dinner was super fantastic. I miss so much Japanese food it hurts.
It was like staying with family. Even Maya, who is usually very shy, felt comfortable and watched TV with T’s son like they’d always played together.
Such a nice feeling! Someone bring me back to Japan please!!!!
I’ll see you next week, my dear readers.
The account of my travel is almost over unfortunately, but I have an idea brewing for my next posts!
To be someone who’s scared by high places, I went beyond myself more than once during my travel in Japan.
I took this picture still in the Tokyo Tower. On the upper floors you have two view decks.
After we finished with One Piece expo, we went up to see the view from the first, I was too scared for the second!
Once again I made tons of pictures, but this is probably the one that might explain one of the reasons why I love Japan.
I love this country for many reasons, and in particular the gracious ability in mingling totally opposite elements: modern and classic, western-style and Japanese-style, old and new. I think this picture gathers it perfectly.
I’m totally in love with Japan, I wish I’ll go back soon. It’s a kind of need at the moment.
If there is something I like of theme parks and such is the full immersion you do in the atmosphere.
Maybe this isn’t the nicest picture I have in my folder but shows my coherence. The quality of the food wasn’t great, to be honest, but it was a fun meal.
Also I have a very good memory of the time we spent in the cafe. At some stage a group came in for an interview and they sat in the reserved area.
On the spur of the moment, since my poor Japanese was understood so far in my travel, I went to pay the check and I asked the waiter whether the person interviewed was one of One Piece voice actors (I recognize the voice but I rarely see them on TV).
He told me no and asked me which one is my favorite and I told him.
As mentioned before I didn’t think I remembered that much, and being able to have even a short casual conversation like that one was a great step forward.
You know already that One Piece is my favorite anime/manga ever.
To tell you the truth I didn’t even want to start with it because the pictures weren’t made following my favorite style.
On the other hand, it was about pirates…so I forced myself to check at least the story.
It didn’t take even three episodes to fall in love.
When I went to Tokyo, I decided we had to see the permanent expo dedicated to it inside the Tokyo Tower. I loved that too and I took so many pictures I spent the past few days to decide how to show them to you.
However, I thought it wasn’t necessary, as the result might be too boring for someone else who’s not me!
Of course I’ll post more in the future, when the nostalgia will be too strong. For the moment I picked only a few.
The first one is this, representing the beginning.
It was the beginning for Luffy’s adventure and also for me as big fan of Oda sensei.
If Shanks wouldn’t have sacrificed his arm, nobody would have been here now!
Do you know this anime? What do you think about it?
It wasn’t that difficult, eh?
Yes I was there primarily to see the permanent expo dedicated to my favorite manga/anime: One Piece.
I was really looking forward to the visit.
And I’ll take my time from Monday to share it with you!
Have a good weekend!
The day after we went to the Tokyo Tower.
I love it! I really do and I’ll stop this post here!
Do you know why?
Because I have a quiz for you. Let’s see how good you know me thus far!
Why did I go to the Tokyo Tower? For the panoramic view or something else?
You don’t tell me you didn’t see this coming!
Honestly this post is kinda self explanatory.
After eating lunch we decided to visit as many anime/manga shops as we could.
At the end of the day, when we dragged ourselves into a restaurant to eat dinner, we realized with shock and disappointment we had visited a restricted area around the main station.
Shops are spread in huge buildings on so many floors that is very easy to get lost.
And everything is so cool, so shiny, so new that you spend ages on each floor.
We decided then to go back to Akihabara a second morning before going back home, as we felt we wanted more.
Of course we didn’t see even a quarter of it, but we’re happy!
If you go into the geekiest and noisiest area in Tokyo, you cannot skip something you’ve always seen in manga and anime!
I’m talking, of course, of the Maid Cafe!
We used our 7 years old, who was mesmerized by this girl dressed as a maid and talking in a funny and cute tone, as excuse.
To be brutally honest with you, it was indeed just an excuse, we were curious too!
We went in, and we had so much fun. The food level, although delicious, wasn’t that high, but you go there for the service and the fun anyway!
I’ll put you here also a video showing our maid drawing a picture on my omurice!
Dr.Franny and Mrs.Myself 