June 7, 2008
1:01 AM
Day 7
Day 7 (Friday)
Headed to Toshimaen station for the Niwa-no-yu onsen. I couldn't find it on the map at the station even for the sake of elune. So, I just headed toward the general direction and hoped to find it along the way. Needless to say, I got hopelessly lost. Hoping to regain some sense of direction, I tried finding my way back to the station. While doing that, I found some street signs saying I was in the 3rd district of Nerima. The address I was trying to go to was 3-25-1, Mukoyama, Nerima-ku. So I thought I was pretty close by. I finally arrived at 3-25-1, only to find out that it was a residential building. After being stunned around there for like 5 minutes, not knowing where to go, I just wandered around further.
I wandered.. and wandered.. and saw a sign saying Mukoyama, and below was an address. I finally realised the problem, that the address before was 3-25-1 Nerima, not 3-25-1 Mukoyama, which I was headed to. So eventually, I found my way there. Not without an hour or two of walking (I didn't count, only knew that I arrived at the station around 11.30 to 12, and found the onsen at 1.30-2).
The last onsen I'll be going to for quite some time, Toshimaen Niwanoyu, the entrance fee was 2250 yen. They had separate male and female baths, and also had a mixed bath (which required swimsuits). For the separate baths, they had a clear water bath, a brownish bath with a water ma, and an opaque yellowish bath, an outdoors bath, and 3 outdoor vase-tubs. I suppose the brownish bath was copper, and the yellowish one was sulphur. I went into all of them. Surprisingly, the water seemed less hot than the first ever one at Asakusa, even though the temperatures were more or less the same. Maybe I'm developing onsen heat resistance? =S I noticed the guys in the onsen were staring at me somewhat more than they would at other people. Happened at the Ooedo onsen too. Is my body fun to look at? I don't really want to know.
The mixed area was more or less a swimming pool, except you weren't allowed to swim in it. It had water jets at certain areas for body massage, neck massage, whatever you can think of. One of the jets, if you faced towards it, it'd be shooting water at your balls. Not very massaggy at all. They also had a dead sea pool, which we all know contains lots of salt and makes you float. I entered it and various parts of my body were stinging. A soak in the pool would definitely notify you of any cuts or brises on your body. When I returned to the hotel, I noticed a scab-mark on my right cheek. I'm guessing it was a combination of the sulphur bath and dead sea pool that caused it.
Finally getting out, I went to the second floor, hoping there was something of interest there. Basically, there were relaxing areas, massage chairs (300yen for a few minutes), massage services, dining areas, and a souvenir shop. Nothing of particular interest. I was intending to go to the relaxing area, but considering the time lost when I myself got lost as well, I didn't really have the luxury of time to hang around. I got a pack of souvenir biscuits from the souvenir shop and headed out.
Compared to the journey before, the journey back to the station was COMPARATIVELY SHORT. There, I realised that when I was heading towards the onsen, I could have just have had a 5 minutes walk the opposite direction, straight to the onsen.
The next stop was Nakano, which I heard that there would be some nice anime shops there. But I think I alighted at the wrong station. There were like 5 stations for Nakano. North, south, east, west, and center. I alighted at the center station, thinking it would be the right one. Guess not. I wandered around. Nothing but neighbourhood areas. This time, my legs were really dying. I already walked like crazy at noon, and I was walking even more now. Practically nothing of interest in sight. I was just hoping for a train station. I didn't even walk a straight path. It was turning here and there, towards the general direction which seemed more like a town area. This lasted for hours. I finally came across a street sign which pointed the way to Shinjuku. After walking a distance in that direction, another street sign said I was just 4 km away from Shinjuku. Yea, going around Nakano in circles until I reached 4 km from Shinjuku. My poor legs. Luckily(if I could even say that), I found a Keio line train station, which brought me straight to Shinjuku.
I was still missing one of the UFO catcher Haruhi figurines, and since Shinjuku had a number of arcades, I went arcade hunting on my already dead legs. I searched from around 5.30 or 6 until 9, stopping only for dinner, and got 2 nice shirts along the way. None of the arcades had that figurine. All worn-out and depressed, I just decided to go back to Akihabara, which had an arcade with the figurine, just that I couldn't win it the last time I went. (This was on Friday. That crazy-man stabbing incident happened 2 days later at that area. Lucky me.)
I found the arcade. Even the surrounding arcades in that area didn't have it. Only this one had it. This was the arcade I won 3 of those Haruhi figurines consecutively from. Seemed like they decided to make them harder to catch, so much so that it literally is Impossible to catch all at. First of all, the UFO catcher arms were so weak you can't even lift the item up at all. The way I won the figurines was to slowly drag them into the chute. Now, the decided to move the platform lower, which the figurines were sitting on, so that there was a small barrier between the platforms and the chute. This meant that the dragging method was obsolete.
I spent hours walking looking for that last figurine. Since I finally found it, I just decided to go for it anyway, hoping that there'd be a SLIGHT chance of one of the other methods working. On around the 2000 yen mark, I tried turning the figurine around and tipping it into the chute. I turned it 45 degrees, then the arcade guy said something in Japanese which was too fast for me to understand (I assumed he wanted to move the figurine so it was 'easier to catch'). He opened the case, and MOVED THE FIGURINE BACK TO ITS ORIGINAL POSITION. That just goes to show the guys manning the arcade know nuts about catching stuff from UFO machines. Used around 5000 yen, still couldn't get it. I tried getting talking to the guy to move the figurine to a better position. All he did was move it closer by less than a centimeter towards the barrier which separated the platform from the chute. Sureeeee, like moving it closer to the barrier would help anyway. I tried asking again to make it easier, but he again said stuff in speedy Japanese, through my psychic abilities I translate as 'These are Haruhi figurines we're talking about. They shouldn't be so easy to catch'. Just because I managed to catch 3, doesn't mean that other people would even be able to catch one. Catching 3 didn't mean it had been easy for me to catch either. Gave up after that. Not worth pouring any more cash into that black hole. I'd be better off ordering it off the internet. In this whole trip, this was the only thing I couldn't catch. You can't catch things that are meant to be impossible to catch anyway.
The final catch. 1 angelring, 1 kapibara (which looks a lot like a hamster), and a duplicate Mikuru figurine (caught it by accident at Shinjuku. thought that was the one I was missing). Can't get pictures of the shirts and biscuits I bought since they're already packed.
