#pokemon centre nagoya

[alexin-wonderlust]

Day 8 - Japan Blog - 14 February 2024 Yoyogi Park and Shinkansen to Nagoya (Valentines Day!)

Leaving Tokyo today and heading West to Kyoto but stopping in at Nagoya first (just for something a bit different!!).

We have a bit of time this morning to do some last minute advenure in Tokyo before we leave (and IM NEVER DONE WITH THIS CITY, there are so many things I didnt do!!) *tears!*

I wanted to take Ben to Yoyogi Park near Harajuku. But first, lets store the luggage at the station. Which was a pain, because most large sized lockers were already taken!! After managing to find somewhere to stash our suitcases, we headed to Beck for a coffee... (because I want to find my favourite coffee shop!!) and I didn’t rate it. The BLT was pretty good though! Coffee was sub-par. Ah well.

We were on a train that was actually themed with Pokemon and it was really cute!! We walked from Harajuku Station to the Meiji Shrine and back again. Lots of cute doggies, the weather was lovely and it's always nice to walk through a massive garden in the middle of a bustling city.

Then we made our way to the Shinkansen to travel to Nagoya. We didn’t have time to find EkiBen (train lunch boxes) even though it was on my bucket list — but we had some snacks and even found a Baskin Robbins vending machine which was really yum and not sweet, but tasted more like yoghurt.

I even got to see Mt Fuji on the train as we sped past. So majestic! When we got to Nagoya, we found our accommodation and it was a bit basic -- small, but thats expected. There was a craft beer pop up of one of my favourite animes; Evangelion. So I had to get them!! I wanted to go to the Pokemon Centre in Nagoya (just so I can tick another Pokemon centre off my list hehe) and we found ourself in another "underground food market" things.

I let Ben choose dinner and while we had a niku bbq place in mind… this Tonkatsu restaurant won the choice and I had a “setto” which came with the pork, a prawn and some pork coated asparagus.

After dinner it was cocktail time and then home to enjoy the fancy Valentine’s Day cakes we bought at the station. 🙃😍🍰

It’s Valentines Day so we went to three different bars (one was TGI Fridays so it doesn’t count but I wanted a cheap drink haha!); one called Scum, which was a metal bar and the other, I’m not sure of the name but it was the complete opposite (in the same building!!). Super fancy, and quiet with like, Jazz? I dunno. Ben was in some kind of mood -- I was not. LOL! The toilets were extravagant and had every type of convienence needed. Toothpicks, floss, ear picks, breath mints, tampons, you name it -- it was there. I had a Nikka Malt highball to finish the night off and thebartender gave us a jar of the olives he had for the martinis! So random!!

[andercar1516]

Day 11 is our transit day between Nagoya and Tokyo. We start our day going to Nagoya station and boarding the Shinkansen bullet train all the way to Tokyo. It was a very fast travel to Tokyo and it took less than 2 hours to get to Tokyo Station. My family even got a glimpse of Mount Fuji but I didn’t because I was asleep. When we got there it was raining heavily so we couldn’t walk around the station and we also got there so early that we couldn’t even check into our apartment yet. Dad and Carter sat down in a corner of a mall and me and mom went to explore Tokyo Station! We walked around the malls and stumbled across a former bib gourmand restaurant that served Hiroshima style okonomiyaki. We decided to try 1 for ourselves and it was okay. We felt like it wasn’t bib gourmand level because there was too much plain noodles and not enough sauce or protein. Then we walked the Tokyo character street that had stores of all of Japan’s adored characters. It was fascinating seeing all of the specialized stores. I ended up buying some more packs of Pokémon cards at the Tokyo Station Pokémon centre there. After when the rain cleared up we headed to the other Pokémon centre in the area, Pokemon Center Tokyo DX. We ended up not buying anything there because things were sold out but it was stuff fun to see all the statues of Pokémon again! Then, we headed to check in to our apartment out close to Skytree to we took the subway to the Oshiage (Skytree) subway stop. The apartment was very PINK. Like very very pink. Everything was pink… Anyways, after that we went closer to the Skytree to get something to eat and ended up going to Kura Merry-Go-Round Sushi. It was a little pricey but very yummy because we got to try lots of fresh and freshly grilled sushi pieces! It was a pleasant experience with a nice surprise at the end. We found out that every 5 plates you get a raffle to play some gachapon. We ended up winning a chance to get gachapon by shorting fish and Carter got the “gold” tier for points and ended up getting 3 balls of gachapon. We got little cute charms of sushi and their mascots. Then went to the Skytree mall to cross off our third and final Pokémon center for the day. This was the Pokémon Center Skytree location with Rayquaza as its mascot. It was nice seeing the statues but the Pokémon cards were all sold out! Right outside of Skytree there was a cool performance we saw people performing. It was like a traditional Japanese dance that all of the older people knew. It was called the Bon Odori dance festival. There was an elevated stand in the middle where people were drumming and playing instruments and people surrounding it dancing in a circle. It was a really fun and exciting first day in Tokyo!

-Andercar

[kitto-toberu-sa]

Sailor Moon Musical - Le Mouvement Final

So on the 23rd of October I went to Aichi to see the Sailor Moon musical~ Our bus arrived at 6am, so we spent the day chilling and checking out the Pokemon Centre and the poor selection of Digimon items at Kiddyland…

From Nagoya, it took an hour and a half by train to get to the venue, Ai Plaza Toyohoshi. We were cutting it really close (missed a train), but managed to power walk there in time. Thankfully goods were being sold in the break and after the show.

Unfortunately, the venue was dead.

The first floor is S tickets (8000 yen), the top floor is A tickets (6000 yen?). A third of the first floor was occupied, with a smattering of seats in the top part.

I feel so bad for all the cast and crew. It must have been really awkward to be singing to a bunch of empty seats. I’m not sure how much this was promoted, but having the venue so far out of the city really didn’t help things.

Personally, I had wanted to go to see the show in Osaka, but thanks to Aichi not being sold out, we ended up having really amazing seats ;; We were ninth row from the stage and I was on an aisle seat. It was seat 29, and I was going fight my friend for seat 30 (lucky number lol) but I’m glad I didn’t.

The show itself is explanatory. It’s the finale of the manga.

The start with Mamoru half proposing was wonderful. You could feel the audience’s hearts getting excited for Usa. It was obviously much more condensed than the manga, which I was thankful for. It gave us time to jump straight into things; however, the cute dance between Mamo and Usa at the start was really nice!

Chibi-usa was gone from the start, instead of leaving part way through. Ami is the one to notice something is wrong with Usagi, rather than Minako. Iron Mouse isn’t killed straight up either. She’s able to go back to Galaxia, say she’ll do better next time and gets a reprieve after having her butt handed to her. We get a rift in the four Galaxy Sailors here.

(Honestly, Seiren and Crow can step on me any day of the god damn week)

Chibi Chibi is insanely adorable. I am honestly not a fan of small children, don’t want kids and always ??? at people when they try to coo and tell me how cute their munchkin is. But damn. This kid was cute. It didn’t feel fake sweet or like she was out of place.

I also really enjoyed the scene where the girls are trying to figure out whats up with the Lights. Minako mentions they might be chicks. Setsuna has chibi faces of them on a white board. “….then they’d wear mini skirts if they were scouts…” A fight ensures as she tries to fuku them up, while Minako and Makoto are mortified haha

Usagi being forced to remember what happened to Mamo happened straight after Mercury and Jupiter dying, so it was very raw. I don’t think Venus’ loss really had as much of an impact. Rei’s did. For me, at least. Rei’s always been my number one girl, but her last thing she said was ‘sorry we couldn’t protect you’. I think it says a lot about her character, especially when most other people just said ‘Usagi’.

Usagi has a dream where everyone is alive and Mamo’s a chef and it’s all just very pure and sweet and then she wakes up and everyone’s still dead  The scene in front of the door was sufficiently eerie. I think Usagi’s wavering and ChibiChibi’s innocence helped this scene a lot as well.

At one point after the interval, Galaxia is singing. She walks down the aisle, right next to me. HO DAMN! Even with those stupid coloured lips she’s amazing! Her performance was one of the best, even when she was speaking, her expressions and pose said it all.

Kakyuu’s death was touching. As was the Lights. The problem with this arc is that everyone dies. Done in a weekly anime or manga, it’s probably more emotional, but losing 10+ characters in under three hours makes it a little less so. In saying that, I cried a couple of times lmao It was nice that there weren’t as many Senshi tho. This isn’t Oprah folks.

The scene where everyone is resurrected was great. The song was powerful, the girls looked bad ass. Wonderful. 100/10. Chibi Chibi talking to Chibi Moon was also really good. And of course, when she transformed as well. Everything about her is just stunning. Her outfit was perfect, she was perfect, 100% would cry over again.

I also really like how it discusses all the past enemies. They put up images of all the old enemies, up to Galaxia, on a sheet that came down in front of the stage. It gave it a warped feeling, and kinda made it more space like. Unlike the manga, the musical goes more into detail about who Cosmos is. Same about the whole siblings thing.

The wedding scene was really cute. I’m not sure if it happened in all versions, but Minako said she’d definitely get married next. Of course, Rei is the one that catches the bouquet ;;

Once everything is finished, The End comes up on the screen. They also do a montage of the previous musicals from this run. A lot of the audience was emotional. I only saw last year’s and this year’s live, but it’s super nostalgic. Afterwards, they did the usual performance stuff, mixed with songs from previous musicals as well. Yuuga was both Tuxedo Mask and King Endymion. She teases the audience so well I can't deal with her.

There was a point Yuuga came down the aisle. Yes, right next to me. We made eye contact. I squealed and leaned into my friend after she passed. The crowd was losing it. At one point a dude behind me asked his SO ‘…that’s a dude right?’ and the SO just scoffed ‘no’.

I’ve always understood Yuuga’s appeal, but it never clicked with me personally. But nine rows from her? I get it. Even my friend, who is a as straight as an arrow, went wow a few times. God bless Yuuga.

My heart’s still racing <3

It would have been nice to see the Crows in their true form. And get to see more of the girls going back to their own castles and stuff, but what can you do? Considering the time frame, they got through a heck of a lot of this arc, and there’s only so much they can do with budget constraints. Aichi certainly did not help in that. I’m honestly not sure why they didn’t make tickets cheaper and just give those that had pre booked an extra bonus or something (as it is we got cute post cards)

This musical had a really nice balance of comedy and seriousness. It felt quite real. The directorship was really good. Some of the songs were repeated from earlier musicals. Considering they were some of my faves, I’m not complaining.

The cast was excellent, as always. Thanks to the seats, I was able to see in so much more detail and was able to make lots of eye contact with the cast haha! Uranus completely stole my heart with her gaze <3

At one point I was signing up to buy the dvd. Unfortunately I didn’t ask if I could pay later (has happened other times I preorder these dvds). She didn’t confirm that with me either. So I filled out the form only to tell her I didn’t have the cash (how much money do they expect people to have on them?? Most people were spending at least 3000 on goods (many were spending more) so they expected you to have at least 20,000 ($200) on you for one musical? That’s ridiculous). She was honestly really fucking rude and basically snatched the form out of my hands and tossed it in the trash. The staff at Osaka were so much nicer.

The guys at the door were cool, and a lady was sitting in our seat. I didn’t want to cause a scene so we went to a staff member and asked to be guided to our seat (obviously he then mentioned the other chick was in the wrong seat). There was a surprising amount of foreigners, considering how few people were actually there ;; Someone I knew actually saw me but I didn’t see them haha ;;; The fans were really nice.

Except for that old fucker who felt asleep and started snoring before the interval. Fuck him. (There was a lot of old people there? Like I’m talking 55+?? Why)

Anyway, as we left, walking back to the station, a lady cut in front of us. It was one of the actresses! She had track pants with an off the shoulder white shirt, which I thought was a little odd, but then I saw she still had the shoes on. I’m still trying to figure out who she is. We didn’t approach her – she had headphones in, and kept glancing around to make sure people weren’t following her. That’s one reason why crowds are kicked out so quickly here – this is the third time I’ve seen cast leave. Depending on the area/fame, they’ll walk or taxi out of the venue, so the chance of them being spotted and harassed is pretty high. The faster the crowds are gone, the safer it is for them. In any case, I hope she enjoyed whatever she bought lol

I enjoyed it! If I lived closer I’d go see it again. I heard other people say the same. My friend was surprised by how professional it was. She really enjoyed it! I recommend seeing it if you can! If not, please support it officially where possible. Also, if you have any questions feel free to ask! This isn’t as in depth as normal, sorry ;;

[andercar1516]

This was day 6 in Osaka and our last full day. After a long day at Universal, Mom and Carter were lazy and ended up staying home for most of the day while me and my dad took a train to Osaka-Umeda station. We went to a few malls around the station but most importantly saw the Osaka Pokemon centre! I got an exclusive pin with the mascot of that Pokémon Centre, Koraidon and Pikachu. Also on the same floor there was a Nintendo store. Both stores had lots of cool statues like a pixelated Mario and Koraidon. We got free stickers there and looked at all of the Nintendo merchandise. Then we went to a store called Yoshiba Camera. This store was huge and had like 9 floors that were humongous. Then we walked around Osaka-Umeda station to try to get to the Umeda Sky Building but since there was construction it was hard to get there. Eventually, after 45 minutes, we got to the building where we booked the bus tickets to get to Nagoya for tomorrow. Then it was about 4 and we heading back to Den Den Town for one last round of shopping for Osaka. In Den Den, I ended up visiting some new stores but also went back to some other stores to buy some figures and other anime apparel. Then we ended off the day getting some udon and takoyaki in Dontonburi which we didn’t get the chance to eat in Osaka. We got a curry udon and a tempura egg udon. The udon was surprisingly good for the price. The takoyaki was very good but a little undercooked for my liking. Back to Carter and mom, they chilled all day and went out to eat ramen for lunch. It was a pretty fun day to wrap up our time in Osaka, Japan!

-Andercar