rgbunny

rgbunny, 1 hour ago

@bluecaller I'm sorry, WW has what?! :btr_kita_wave:

rgbunny, 4 hours ago

@pixel It's a bit slow, but it works for me.

rgbunny, 1 day ago

@fujiwara It is :btr_bocchi_trash_lurk:

I try to avoid all this stuff as much as possible. But sometimes, it just comes knocking on the front door :frierendisappointed1:

rgbunny, 1 day ago

@o76923 Floof and woozy I'm not 100% on. The meanings are similar, but they may not fit in the same contexts in the same way.

The uwu kaomoji is a semi-joke; I'm not really sure if Japanese even has anything like uwu. A kaomoji might actually be the closest thing, but I have absolutely no idea.

Sign could be a different term depending on what meaning it is. The current one translates to symbolic signs (e.g. hand signs), as opposed to physical signs (e.g. sign post).

rgbunny, 1 day ago

@o76923 Hmm, after doing some research, I'm not too certain about uwu and owo. Most sources state they originate from the furry community in the 2000s, while there is one that mentioned uwu was used by the Japanese as a shorthand for a kaomoji in the 1990s.

Diving into the rabbit hole of the history of uwu was certainly not what I had planned to do today, but now I want to find out more :UmpXD:

In any case, uwu will probably remain as uwu, realistically speaking.

As for sign, that should be more like 看板.

rgbunny, 4 days ago

We originally wanted to visit Arashiyama next, but it felt really out of the way and it was already late afternoon. Having already visited three places, we were really tired out too. As such, we decided to visit the Kyoto Botanical Gardens instead, which was a few bus stops away.

Again, the end of spring is really not the best time for viewing flowers, but we still got to see some. In particular, there was one that only bloomed in May and it was the one that happened to be printed on my ticket, so I had to take a picture of them together :Hehe:

(I forgot what flowers these are, so the alt text for these images are bad.)

A few Echium wildpretii in front of the conservatory. I am holding up a ticket with an image of these plants, taken from the same viewpoint, albeit with a larger number of plants. As the camera was focused on the actual plants, the ticket is out of focus and blurry.
A reddish-pink flower with many thin petals. The petals are white at the tips, especially for the ones closer to the center. The parts of the flower in the center are yellow.
A few flowers with relatively large white and purple petals. The colours and arrangement of the petals makes the flowers look like butterflies.

rgbunny, 4 days ago

We returned to Kitaoji and had an early dinner at the food court there. We went for soba, and since the small, medium and large portions were the same price, I decided to go with large as it is the most bang-for-buck option.

That was a mistake, because I ended up with a big mountain of soba noodles :frierendisappointed1:

And yet, despite eating it all, I didn't feel bloated or like I had eaten too much. Thankfully, soba is pretty "lightweight".

We took the subway back to the hotel, and watched some TV. Despite the lack of English subtitles, I've learned a lot about the biology of hermit crabs :SataniaThumbsUp:

That concludes day 2!

rgbunny, 4 days ago

It'll probably take me a few days to recount the rest of the trip, but it's nice to relive the memories :zerotwoheartlove:

The Tokyo leg will probably be shorter, since it's more on shopping and arcades. We'll see.

rgbunny, 3 days ago

つづく :Cenzuoyeah:

Day 3 in Kyoto. Our first destination is Fushimi Inari-taisha (伏見稲荷大社). We went a little earlier to avoid the worst of the crowd, but we couldn't bear to wake up super early. We reached the shrine at 9am, and it was just in time for a ceremony!

I watched the priests bring offerings up to the deities, as well as a dance from the shrine maidens. I also saw a lot of the locals toss in a coin for donation and do the 2 claps, 2 bows, 1 clap motion (which kept making me think about Suwako's spell card).

The ceremony was pretty long though, so after the dance, we began our climb proper.

rgbunny, 3 days ago

Of course, it was pretty crowded in Senbon Torii (千本鳥居) section, so I didn't bother too much with photos there. The crowd is supposed to thin out as we climb higher, so I bided my time.

Partway up to the crossroads, we encountered a branching path, which led to a number of smaller shrines and a bamboo forest. There were a couple of crows there, and one of them went to chill in one of the shrines. It felt like the crow itself was a manifestation of a Shinto deity :btr_bocchi_pray:

When we reached the crossroads, I thought we were quite a ways up the mountain. But it turns out we're still at the beginning :GWnonSataniaSpoopy:

The view of Kyoto from the crossroads in Fushimi Inari-taisha. The top of the torii gates on the path leading up to the crossroads can also be seen peeking out from the trees.
The bamboo forest near the small shrines. Unfortunately, past tourists have vandalised the bamboo by carving into them. There is a dirt path leading deeper into the bamboo forest.

rgbunny, 3 days ago

After resting for a bit at the crossroads, we continued our way up the mountain, starting with the right path.

Sure enough, I had a few opportunities to take a picture of the torii gates without anyone in it. At this point, the crowd has thinned out considerably, and it became a pretty pleasant hike.

Along the way, I spotted some funky looking caterpillars that are covered in spikes on the torii gates. It's also sad to see some of the torii gates up here with severe damage (though I think this damage is due to the elements).

There were also vending machines along the way, which made us wonder... how do they get the drinks up here?!

The shrine at Sannomine, the third highest peak on Mount Inari and the first encountered if you climb up the right path from the crossroads. There are stone lanterns and flags coloured red and white on both sides of the stairs that lead up to the shrine. A large torii gate is placed before the shrine. According to a sign there, this is dedicated to Inari, the main deity of Fushimi Inari-taisha. The flags have another name on them though, so I'm not too sure if I understood the sign right.

rgbunny, 3 days ago

After reaching the top, we began to make our way back down. We encountered another branching path that led to Shiragiku Waterfall (白菊の滝), so we decided to take another detour.

There was a shop along the way, but being off the main path, I wonder how much business it gets? Anyway, we followed a really small river, and eventually arrived at the waterfall.

Since the river wasn't big to begin with, the waterfall was honestly quite underwhelming. But there was also an entire moss-covered shrine there! That made the effort worthwhile.

We returned to the main path and continued our descent, but it started to drizzle, so we rushed through the end.

A black and white cat chilling amongst stone torii gates and stone sculptures of mythical animals. The cat is sitting on a cuboid object covered in a green plastic.
One of the small shrines that are commonly seen throughout Fushimi Inari-taisha. This one is special in that there is a bit of grass growing on it, which combined with the wooden fence and torii gate makes it look like a garden. There is a rock with kanji inscribed onto it in the middle, with a small red torii gate leaning on it.

rgbunny, 3 days ago

The drizzle stopped when we reached the bottom though, so it was all for naught :frierendisappointed1:

I bought a bookmark from one of the shops along the hike to the top, as well as a couple of Hatsune Miku folders from a shop at the bottom. (I'll show all of my loot at the end, so no pics for now.)

With Fushimi Inari-taisha done, we headed off to our next stop: Nishiki Market. To get there, we needed to take the Keihan line. At the train station, there was a sushi shop selling inari sushi, so we bought some and enjoyed it.

rgbunny, 3 days ago

The kiosk for the Keihan line isn't as friendly as the JR line's; you have to look up the fare yourself, and the fare table isn't in the most obvious place. It was situated overhead at one part of the train station, and we found it too late, after we had bought our tickets. Because we went with the cheapest option, we are one stop short from where we wanted to go.

In contrast, the JR line lets you choose your destination, and the kiosk automatically calculates your fare for you.

Anyway, since we had the bus and subway pass, we made some adjustments to the route and managed to get to Nishiki Market without too much trouble.

rgbunny, 3 days ago

Taking the bus to downtown, we came by a toy shop that had Ghibli merch among other things, so I bought a Jiji keychain (Kiki's cat, from Kiki's Delivery Service).

Nishiki Market, being another tourist-y spot, is also really crowded. We enjoyed some skewers along the way, instead of having a proper lunch. I had one with an octopus that had a quail egg stuffed inside it, some scallops, and an omelette tempura. That last one was WAY too salty. I also got a tri-colour dango, which was supposed to represent the different stages of sakura blooming.

More importantly, the a-cho arcade was right nearby! Of course, I had to visit it~

rgbunny, 3 days ago

The STGs were on the top floor, but it was mostly empty while we were there. There was someone playing the Exa port of Fantastic Danmaku Festival, on Lunatic.

Meanwhile, most of the STGs there were from CAVE and Raizing (and then there was Tatsujin Oh), and I honestly don't have much experience with them. The only CAVE STG I've cleared is Dodonpachi's first loop, but it's been quite a while, so I was rusty. I only played one credit, but I managed to get to stage 5.

At that time, I was more keen on trying out the games in a real arcade setting, playing Tetris the Grandmaster, Battle Garegga, Daifukkatsu Black Label and Saidaioujou.

Four arcade cabinets lined up along a wall, with flat screen LCD displays. The leftmost two are Nesica Live cabinets, which currently have Karous on the left and Crimzon Clover on the right. The next cabinet to the right is a Vewlix cabinet containing Azumanga Daioh Puzzle Bobble. The last cabinet is an Exa Arcadia cabinet, showing a girl dressed up as a white tiger. I have no idea what game that is from. There is another screen to the right of the Exa cabinet, showing the same thing as the Exa cabinet. This is used for livestreaming the games to a-cho's Youtube channel.
Three Blast City cabinets with CRT displays. Two of them are along the wall, while the last is in the corner. From left to right, the games shown are Battle Garegga, Tatsujin Oh and Dodonpachi Daioujou Black Label. The Daioujou cabinet has a smaller display next to it, as it is also used for livestreaming.
Four more Blast City cabinets lined up along a wall. From left to right, the games are Dodonpachi Saidaioujou, Dodonpachi, Armed Police Batrider, and Ketsui. The paper pasted on the top of each cabinet says which games are available for that cabinet.

rgbunny, 3 days ago

Playing on a real arcade cabinet for the first time was quite an experience. I've always played on a flat LCD display, so the curved CRT display takes some adapting to. And since the displays are properly rotated (I keep my monitor in landscape orientation even when playing vertical STGs), the screen space is so much larger than I'm used to.

Together, it feels like the space in the bottom half is much wider, while the space in the top half is much narrower.

This is also the only way so far to make me sit up straight and maintain my posture, since I have to do so to see the top half of the screen properly :btr_bocchi_trash_lurk:

rgbunny, 3 days ago

It's also worth noting that the first Inbachi-ALL in an arcade was actually achieved in a-cho, so I got to play on the same cabinet where this happened!

Anyway, after proving my incompetence in arcade games, we moved on to our final destination we had planned for the day: Kyoto Gyoen National Garden. It simply took a trip up the Karasuma subway line.

The National Garden is massive, housing two imperial palaces among other things. We spotted a heron at the pond in the southeast, near the government buildings. There was also a cute little stream called Demizu-no-Ogawa (出水の小川). The ground was all gravel though.

rgbunny, 3 days ago

It started raining again just as we walked past the Kyoto Imperial Palace, and with both of us tired, we decided to call it a day and took the subway back to Kyoto Station.

We had dinner at an izakaya (宮崎酒場 ゑびす, Miyazaki Bar Yebisu). My friend ordered some grilled eggplants, and while I'm normally not a fan of how slimy eggplants are, I gave these ones a try and they were SO delicious :btr_kita_wave:

We also had some spicy noodles and some other food. It was a really nice dinner.

Incidentally, since I was looking up the izakaya, the pasta place we ate at on day 1 is the Goemon Pasta Restaurant (洋麺屋五右衛門).

rgbunny, 3 days ago

This is pretty much the end of the Kyoto leg, since our main focus of this trip was actually Tokyo. We were planning to go for about 10 days though and we didn't have THAT much to do in Tokyo, so that's why we planned some activities in Kyoto as well.

Anyway, since it's our last night in Kyoto, we decided to finish looking around Kyoto Avanti, since we stopped at the second floor the last time, which was the Don Quixote floor.

It turns out that on one of the upper floors, there is an Animate shop! I got a couple of Reisen acrylic keychains, a Reisen folder, a folder with the Scarlet sisters in jirai-kei outfits, and a Porco Rosso folder.

rgbunny, 3 days ago

We also stopped by a 7-11, and I noticed there's a wafer that came with a Frieren card. Now, I didn't actually know it was a wafer, because it just looked like a booster pack from the outside. The wafer somehow made it back to Singapore intact, and I was surprised when I opened it up hehe. It was good though.

I also got some butter flavoured Jagabee and 7-11's in-house dark chocolates. They were both nice to snack on. I didn't finish the chocolates though, so I brought them back with me :Hehe: (I'm still not done with them lol)

Now that I'm mentioning food, I forgot we got some peach and strawberry yatsuhashi from Kiyomizu-dera!

rgbunny, 3 days ago

Anyway, that's day 3. Next time, we'll be heading to Tokyo :SataniaThumbsUp:

This was such a long day. I'm tired from typing it all out :mikudead:

rgbunny, 1 day ago

Didn't post yesterday because my parents came back from their own trip to Japan! So I was mainly sharing my experiences with them. (For a number of reasons, we ended up going on separate trips.)

Anyway, time for day 4! Since this is the day where we head off to Tokyo, most of the day is spent on changing hotels and travelling.

We took the shinkansen, because I wanted to try it out! Couldn't get our hands on reserved seats though, since we bought the tickets on the day itself and all the seats have already been booked. So we ended up sitting separately for a while.

rgbunny, 1 day ago

We also saw some students at the train station (as can be easily seen from their serafuku :btr_kita_wave: ), so I'm guessing they're having their school trip arc.

I was staring out the window until we reached the first stop. Since it was a cloudy day, I could see the clouds move by SO quickly, due to the speed of the shinkansen. It was so surreal.

Besides that, it was mostly farmland and mountains.

We also got ekiben from the station. Mine had two tiers, one with two different types of rice and the other containing a variety of side dishes, like chicken, rolled omelette and mushrooms.