Sunday, January 31, 2010

Japan Day 3 - Rain!

Day three of our trip to Japan meant rain, rain, rain....it wasn't pouring down but at the same time it was enough to make the day truly miserable. To make matters worse all the art galleries and museum's were closed as Monday had been a public holiday which in Japan means public spaces are generally closed on the following day. But we tried to make the best of the situation by jumping on the subway and heading over to Ueno Park.
However, after a while the rain became a little bit too much we decided to retreat to the markets near Ueno - where I even managed to buy a pair of gumboots. Perfect for such dreary weather.
After further wandering we decided to head to Akihabara, an area which is known in Japan for it's Maid Cafe's and Anime.

We started out with a maid cafe which has to be one of the weirdest experiences of my life, Japanese girls dress up in costumes right out of an anime and serve you food and drinks. It was a little weird as the girls acted just like anime characters and kept on coming over and saying things to us in Japanese and then giggling like crazy (it wasn't just us - it was everyone in the cafe). You had to pay to take photo's of the girls but I did manage to nab a photo of the sandwhich board for the cafe and we were allowed to take photos of our cake.



After some very expensive tea and cake in the maid cafe with the giggling Japanese "maids" we decided to check out some of the sights of Akihabara - including a visit to a store that specialised in selling robots.
We also visited the Tokyo Anime Centre, there were a lot of people waiting there for something exciting to happen. But we got sick of waiting with them to find out what the very exciting thing was - instead we took some photo's of the characters in the centre and decided to leave.
We decided to finish up our day with some Japanese Karaoke which was pretty fun but I have to say the song choosing device was pretty difficult to work out (compared to the song choosing device we usually have in Norebang) so we didn't actually get to sing that many songs.

Tokyo Day Two - Bright Lights of Tokyo

After a day of Hello Kitty craziness we decided to head to Shinjuku to see the bright lights, people watch and eat ramen.
Later on in the eavening we headed up Tokyo Metropolitan Towers for a better view of the city at night.




Saturday, January 30, 2010

Film 10 - Silent Venom

Film number 10 in my year of 110 films was another snake related B grade movie (my second in the same month) called "Silent Venom" but it could also be called "Snakes on a Sub".

The premise is Luke Perry is a washed up submarine commander who needs to deliver an old sub from Okinawa to Taipei - it's his last mission and it should be a simple one.

But on the way he recieves a call to tell him he needs to pick up some military scientists who are working on a "top secret" project from an island near China. Turns out the top secret project is breeding "super" snakes for biological warfare - including some of the worst CGI snakes I have ever seen. I'm pretty confindent a tech savvy 15 year old could create better CGI snakes on his home computer than these supposed "super" snakes.

So long story short the snakes get loose (both the regular type and the two super snakes) and Luke Perry does his best to try and contain them whilst getting in the way of some Chinese Navy operations. Yes rather than making the Chinese navy aware that there is a US sub there they act like it's a heated military situation - making the Chinese out to be an evil superpower that could attack the sub at anytime.

The movie is truely horrible by anyone's standard's, unfortunatly I seem to find even the worst horror films compelling as it's a little bit like watching a car accident. The special effects are horrible, the dialogue is terrible and the story is lame yet I watched the whole thing and enjoyed it - or at least enjoyed making fun of it and some parts were so bad they were laugh out loud funny.

So by no account make any effort to watch this film, but if you're flipping through TV channel's late at night and it's on TV and you can't sleep it's worth watching.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Japan day two - Hello Kitty!

On our second day in Japan it was time to meet one of my favourite feline's Hello Kitty at Sanrio Puroland. Sanrio Puroland is a strange and bizarre indoor theme park full of Hello Kitty and all of her friends, my favourite is Kuromi who is creepy cute.
Our first ride of the day was a riverboat ride which was jam packed with all of Hello Kitty and her friends, it was cute but a little bit crazy as well.
We also got to see quite a few of the stage shows that were taking place with all the Sanrio Characters as well as dancers and even acrobats!

For lunch we visted the "Food Machine" to pick up some Hello Kitty lunch.

We finished off the day with a visit to Hello Kitty's house, which included meeting Hello Kitty.

In case you were wondering, there were many other random Hello Kitty moments throughout the day - he's the photographic proof.