Our first night in Asakusa was pretty disheartening. Filled with the pains of leaving ‘our home’ and then wandering around for hours lost in the rain looking for our place of stay – it’s safe to say Asakusa wasn’t winning us over much. Thoughts that tended to fill our minds consisted of “This is shit”, “It’s raining”, “I wanna go back to Osaka” and “This is it?!”. But our first day in Asakusa was a turn around a corner for us all. The sky was clear, it was a damn nice day and the niceness of the locals shone through every person we came across. Asakusa is a pretty old town. Much like the kind of place where you might want to retire to, or a place you’d like to vacate to when you’re in your 60’s. Lots of convenience stores, cheap 99 yen stores, markets, Onsen’s, cheap restaurants, temples and no chronic hustle and bustle.

It’s easy to see the attraction to Asakusa when you truly open your eyes and look beneath the lack of neon signs, girls in knee high socks, arcades and electronics stores. There’s something really nice and warm about Asakusa that feels inviting, non-threatening and homely. The only problem with Asakusa, is that at times it can feel so warm and sedate that you tend to get complacent and forget you’re on a holiday, and that you’re in Tokyo at all!

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My friends and I were due to go back to Kyoto to check out the thousand red gates and more of the area that we didn’t get to see on our first visit. But one of my friends and I made no effort to rush and get ready that morning, having clubbed it up the night before. So I said I’d hit the other fella’s up on the keitai when we reach Kyoto, and then rendezvous with them here. As we were getting ready to leave, my friend couldn’t find his Japan rail pass. So Kyoto was a no go. I could’ve left him, but I’m not that much of an bastard (despite what some of my friends say), so I said I’d stick around with him. We decided to make a day out of checking out the local area, mingling with the random people we come across and head back to Den Den town, seeing as we didn’t get to see the best of it the first time we went a couple of days ago.

Two purchases in an Adidas store and one wrong subway stop later we finally ended up at our destination of Den Den town. We doubted ourselves at first and started to curse and cuss we’d gotten off at the wrong train stop (again) because the area looked NOTHING like the Den Den town we’d visited before. But after asking a local in the nearest shop where Den Den town was and being told we were in it, the exclamation mark appeared above both of our heads like a Genome soldier: we hadn’t been to Den Den town before, and we were in it for the first time! Suddenly our second trip to Kyoto didn’t seem like something we’d badly missed out on.

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If I were a character archetype I’d be a collector. In an RPG I gather everything I can, rarely selling it or leaving it on the ground. I am a pack rat, a junkie. My addiction? Strategy guides and game manuals. Growing up I didn’t read books, comics, or magazines. The money I’d get whoring myself out in summer jobs would be spent on my beat-up car and the crisp glossy guide of the next gaming hit. Most times I wouldn’t even own the game. It was my “me time” to gaze at each map, carefully studying each location, knowing every bosses weakness. When that wasn’t enough and funds we low, I’d go to the local Blockbuster, sometimes driving to multiple locations and casually take out the game manuals for home reading.

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I’ve been absent from Dark Diamond for God knows how long. Not that it’s had any kind of effect on things here, but I thought I’d mention it none the less as a contributor to this wonderful, wonderful otaku haven that we call home.

My absence has been due to having gone on holiday. Where to I hear all 2 of you ask? To Japan!! There’s so much to say and share about my time over there, but as not to bore you with walls of text; I’ll post periodically on my experience and some of the stuff I saw whilst in the land of the rising sun. Some of our Dark diamond readers may live in Japan – to which it’ll be interesting to hear your views on the country and if they clash or are in unison with mine. But I thought it may be cool to have yet another ‘foreigners’ insight into what it was like to be in Japan for a couple of weeks.