{"id":1500,"date":"2007-11-06T07:49:13","date_gmt":"2007-11-06T14:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=1500"},"modified":"2010-06-10T14:19:41","modified_gmt":"2010-06-10T21:19:41","slug":"last-full-day-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=1500","title":{"rendered":"Last full day in Japan."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been offline at my aunt&#8217;s house in the sticks. Seriously, she lives at the end of the bus line, and there aren&#8217;t many houses further down than hers unless you get on a boat and cross over to an island. My uncle, before he passed away (the big brother of my not-really-my-aunt) built a big house out there near the ocean with a beautiful view.<\/p>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/aunts_view.jpg' title='Aunt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s view.'><img src='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/aunts_view.thumbnail.jpg' alt='Aunt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s view.' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>My uncle spent a lot on the house and even the garden. I heard he might have spent tens of thousands on the trees in front.<\/p>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/aunts_garden.jpg' title='Part of my aunt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s garden.'><img src='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/aunts_garden.thumbnail.jpg' alt='Part of my aunt\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s garden.' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The house is a little hard to use, but it made my uncle happy and I suppose that&#8217;s what matters. We spent a lot of time just hanging out with my aunt, but my mom, sister, and I took a brief shopping trip to Fukuoka where we got sort of lost and couldn&#8217;t find any stores or food that were worthwhile. Of course, after resorting to lunch at Mickey D&#8217;s, we ended up finding plenty of things we could have eaten. I had a meeting with the Colonel, but we ate dinner from a bento stand on the way home.<\/p>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/me_n_colonel.jpg' title='Me and the Japanese Colonel Sanders.'><img src='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/me_n_colonel.thumbnail.jpg' alt='Me and the Japanese Colonel Sanders.' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This morning, my sister and I loaded ourselves into a train for Tokyo. I&#8217;m not a big fan because I spent most of my time in Osaka and there&#8217;s a difference between the two. But undeterred I took the train to shop in Akihabara where they looked at me funny when I asked if they had RFID readers.<\/p>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/akihabara.jpg' title='Akihabara.'><img src='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/akihabara.thumbnail.jpg' alt='Akihabara.' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I was looking for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thanko.jp:80\/index.html\">Thanko<\/a> which is really called the &#8220;Rare Mono Shop.&#8221; I was lost and I even resorted to going to an &#8220;internet cafe&#8221; which isn&#8217;t a Starbucks with free WiFi like in the US, but dark closets with computers where homeless kids spend the night. I spent the minimum for 30 minutes trying to find the Thanko store but it didn&#8217;t help. It took me about an hour and a half to find the store, which was closed! Fortunately, they had a second shop that was open, and a Japanese guy with a cowboy hat was looking for it too. With his help I found the store.<\/p>\n<p>I barely got back in time to meet friends for dinner. <a href=\"http:\/\/chicohayasaki.com\/\">Chico Hayasaki<\/a> went to high school with my sister and she brought another artist friend, <a href=\"http:\/\/www002.upp.so-net.ne.jp\/cfh\/\">Hirofumi Nakano<\/a>, or HiRON. We had dinner, and then more matcha latte&#8217;s at Starbucks.<\/p>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/meet_the_artists.jpg' title='Meet the artists.'><img src='https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/11\/meet_the_artists.thumbnail.jpg' alt='Meet the artists.' \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I should shut the hell up and get some sleep because tomorrow we&#8217;re heading home. Fortunately, I crossed the last eating thing off my list: I made it to Mos Burger!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been offline at my aunt&#8217;s house in the sticks. Seriously, she lives at the end of the bus line, and there aren&#8217;t many houses further down than hers unless you get on a boat and cross over to an island. My uncle, before he passed away (the big brother of my not-really-my-aunt) built a big house out there near the ocean with a beautiful view. My uncle spent a lot on the house and even the garden. I heard he might have spent tens of thousands on the trees in front. The house is a little hard to use, but it made my uncle happy and I suppose that&#8217;s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=1500\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Last full day in Japan.<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1500"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3845,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500\/revisions\/3845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}