東京 | Tokyo (5) - Imperial Palace, & Tokyo Tower

So, if you've been wonderful and reading all the previous Japan posts, you might have noticed my constant mentions of how glorious the weather had been. Warm, sunny, inviting and generally really pleasant to be out and about in.

Enter day 5.

Rain. And lots of it.

I'm not even sure where it came from (the sky, hurr) considering the absolute clarity of the sky the day before, but oh well. At first it was only drizzling so we thought we'd take a chance and head to the Imperial Palace for a look around, but by the time we got there it had worsened to the point where we were worried about the contents of our bags (expensive cameras ahoy!) and our shoes were starting to get...sloshy. I wouldn't have minded, but half of us had come without umbrellas and they weren't exactly big.

Sparrow friends, hiding from the rain.

Happy New Year!

I finally bought AC:NL on NYE and partied like an animal. In my pyjamas.

UPDATE: Again, this is another post that was just languishing in my drafts. Bad Bloggers of the Internet Unite!

New Year's Day was a holiday! Woo! But...it was also cold and we were tired (what with it being just another random holiday in the middle of our working week) so we just stayed indoors and played with our new Korean Pokemon cards!

It's pretty fun because the rules are very simple (more simple than Yu-Gi-Oh! which I love, but it drains me a lot more mentally) and we try to do as much of it as possible in Korean (emphasis on try).

I was really worried at first, because with this game there are various effects and things that you use to your advantage, and obviously we don't know enough Korean for that.

What we quickly learned, however, is that it's like 60% Konglish (English written in Korean style) which makes it a bit easier to guess at what's going on. The rest is easy, because in the bottom corner of all the cards is a serial number. Thanks to the magic of the internet, we can search up this code and just find all of the information in English. Imagine doing that 15 years ago. Wow.

Post-Christmas Rush

UPDATE: I've just found this tucked away in my drafts more than a month after I'd written it. I don't know why I never posted it!

It feels like I haven't posted anything in ages, but I've realised that actually it's only been about 2 weeks so now I a) don't feel bad but also b) am quite horrified at how quickly time feels like it's going by. It's been a busy 2-3 weeks though, so I hope you'll let me off.

So, the weekend after Christmas we finally had a chance to meet up with our Orientation friends. What cruelty is this, giving us friends then making them live in all different corners of the country?

We met up with Cherie, who had to come via Seoul anyway, and got on the train to Hongseong. What we didn't realise, is that Hongseong is actually REALLY FAR AWAY. Also, the fact that we'd be buying proper train tickets, not paying with our subway cards. (Maybe everyone else knew this, but I didn't, haha)

The result was us buying tickets for a train that was ages away, and not getting reserved seats because a) it's the super busy winter period on a weekend and b) we didn't think it'd be that long of a journey. Oops. (I seem to be really enjoying lettered lists today, sorry)

2 or 3 hours later, and several hours late, we finally reached Justin's place (after an exciting, frosty walk in possibly the most remote place I've been to in Korea so far, although that's not saying much)

We ate food and tried to make gummy bear soju (red was great, green...not so much), and mug cakes (which we ended up being too full to eat) and generally made the most of the toasty ondol. We ended up staying the night and heading back very early the next morning before the sun was even up.

東京 | Tokyo (4) - Mt Fuji and Squeenix

The early night beforehand had been because of our planned activity for day 4: Visiting Mt Fuji. We got up bright and early (ish) to head down to Shinjuku Bus Terminal, where the internet had assured me we could hop onto a bus to the Fujisan area, no reservations needed.

Thankfully, while the bus terminal itself was a little hard to find, the internet delivered, and we managed to secure tickets and comfortably doze our way through the couple of hours it took to get there. Ann-Marie and I were given designated seats in the "Woman Only" section of the coach. Interesting.

We were so lucky with the weather, the sky was as clear and sunny as anything.

 After a few attempts at trying to focus on the time-wasters we'd brought with us (alas, for some reason no book or games console could hold my attention or consciousness for more than maybe 10 mins) I nodded awake, looked out the window and saw:

Monstrous

It was so big. Far bigger than I'd imagined it would be. It almost looked like the backdrop to a stage production. The curtains that a group of tourists had gone around closing earlier because of the sun were now being anxiously flung open lest they lose a chance to snap a few pics. Ta, loves.

It's almost comically large.

東京 | Tokyo (3) - Sumo and Akihabara!!

Intriguing post-breakfast drink. Bought it solely because it looked carbonated but it told me I should shake it?

On day 3 we decided that our punishing schedule had been enough to keep jet lag at bay a little longer, and took a slightly more relaxed day out. We went to check out the sumo as there's only a handful of official tournaments in Japan each year, and even fewer are in Tokyo. So the fact that one happened to coincide with the dates of our trip was quite serendipitous indeed.

We headed off to Ryogoku, home of the Ryogoku Kokugikan (try saying that 5 times fast) bright and early to get ourselves some day tickets, the cheapest but also the most likely to sell out.

The whole station seems to have been dedicated to sumo.

Once we were through the ticket barrier, we could see all kinds of old paintings of sumo tournaments, as well as what we later found out were probably photos of the current yokozuna or 'Grand Champions'. To become Grand Champion you have to win 2 tournaments in a row. There are a lot of stages to each tournament and a lot of participants, so to win once, let alone twice, is an intense feat in itself. Testament to this is the fact that there are currently only 2 or 3 Grand Champions still competing and only 71 have been named in the last 300 years!

Yokozuna handprints. They are HUGE. Interesting to see how they get bigger over time.

There's also a cute homemade height chart, so you can see how you measure up to previous yokozuna. Annoyingly, I'm taller than all but one of them. Sigh. Again, it was interesting to see how obviously genetics, diet and environment have made increasingly bigger contenders.

67th yokozuna Musashimaru Koyo and Ann-Marie. 6'3", 518lb vs a kitten. Beast.