Roadshow! 12月23日!

In such a consumer driven society, it seems natural that cinema advertisements are elaborate and conspicuous - so much so that they have contributed greatly to my distracted-by-colorful-and-shiny-things behavior that often puts a full stop to an otherwise purposeful outing. One of my favorite parts is the use of the term "roadshow", which is apparently an older term for the initial limited run of big films before they head to all theaters. So we decided it would be both appropriate and hilarious (to us at least) to label our trip to Tokyo in this fashion. I even went so far as to make a movie poster...

So with the tone set, sit back and enjoy the film synopsis:
We join the glamourous couple as they strike out on their train ride to Tokyo. They have their bags and snacks, their entertainment devices (kindle, ipods, etc.) are fully charged. But their most exciting, and most challenging, possession is... THRIFT!
They draw out their Seishun 18 ticket, which gives them unlimited riding all day long, freeing them from the quotidian concerns of fares and the like. Indeed, they are poised for a nearly aristocratic experience of luxury on their trip east that is flawed in only one respect: they must use all local trains. They meet this challenge with aplomb, but somewhere past the halfway mark of their 14 trains of the day, their mood suffers and the glamourous sheen of train travel seems to have tarnished. They thought they were seasoned travelers - What would a few local trains do that the ravages of August and of grad school in general hadn't? Cue scenes of boredom, endless shifting in a seat that's alternately too hot and too cold, trying to balance a cat nap with the responsibility of keeping hold of your rolling suitcase. Yes, the trials were great but our heroes persevered, draw on by the irresistible charms of thrift. 

.....
Well, that's about as long as I can keep that up. one advantage of the local trains was that we had plenty of time to gaze at Mt. Fuji as we passed it (as opposed to the better view that lasts 30 seconds on the Shinkansen). The pictures were not the best, but here's one for your amusement.

I actually quite like this picture because gives a nice sense of the distance between us and Fuji and the fact that it is relatively densely populated in the surrounding areas.
Happy Merry Christmas...

Christmas day ended up being mostly awesome, with a trip to Yokohama, which brought us to a funny little mall, a KFC lunch (in keeping with Japanese Christmas traditions) and a nice ferry ride through Yokohama bay. (Cue next "artsy" picture)

We then finished up with a dinner of Shabu-Shabu and Sukiyaki. This was my first time for either, and the sukiyaki especially blew my mind with the dipping of quickly cooked meat into a raw egg. 

...sort of
By this point things seemed like they were going well for this trip, we were in a funny little hostel that night and had a few more days of low-key activity planned before a small excursion to Hamamatsu before returning to Tokyo for New Year's. By Wednesday night, however, it became clear that this would not be the case. After going out to see the new James Bond film in the theatre, I started to feel slightly unwell, a feeling which soon revealed itself to be a stomach flu. As you might imagine, this made the prospect of more local trains rather unwelcome, so we just hung around Tokyo some more while I gradually returned to the world of the living. 

In a way, though, this ended up being something of a good thing. Because of the holidays there were more closures of places that Rachel need to go than we expected and so the extra time in Tokyo allowed her to more leisurely and thoroughly visit museums and the National Diet Library before we made our way to the suburbs for some low key New Year's festivities.
A Return to Shiny Things

We had some great food and just general good times hanging out, but the focus of the evening was the Kohaku Uta Gassen. This is a New Year's eve special shown every year on NHK. The nominal format is a competition between teams of men and women, colored in red and white, respectively. What it ends up being in reality, however, is four hours of hit after hit after hit performed with overdone productions, usually involving lots of costume changes (especially for the girl/boy groups, who are enamored of "medleys" of their songs). Despite my somewhat patronizing description, I was completely hooked. Especially to the following song.

This will be my karaoke jam for 2013.