Day 5 (16/12) - Shopping, Flight to Narita, Narita (Part 2)
Then we were brought to a factory outlet cluster (where almost all the brands were non-Japanese) for 3 hours, which was 2 hours too many for me (and I didn't buy anything, because everything was for Spring or Winter, and I am a simple man with simple needs).
I saw yet another Ang Moh at the factory outlet, then later an Ang Moh couple and their kid.
"Welcome!! This shop is a popula shop in SHIBUYA-109 of Tokyo. It is the Hokkaido's first ianding. It is only here that I can buy a trendy item at an OUTLET PRICE!
What can I do for you? The sticker price of this shop becomes the price that I cut. I do not free it from taxation. I still less accept size exchange, the return of goods. Please purchase it on a tortoise."
spiderpig: it probably means what it says right?!?!?! you're supposed to be jack sparrow and ride in on a tortise
The shops in the outlet cluster also had open signs that said the same thing ("Open") on both sides. Maybe they were tired of pranksters flipping them.
Pamphlet with barcode you can scan in. I just noticed my phone has one inside it too.
This was on the menu of "New York Kitchen". They also had waffles and crepes in the window. And no New York Cheesecake. Go figure.
VUMPS - Very Upwardly Mobile Papas
Uhh
The food court had a 'Steak Mountain', but more than half the dishes were Japanese, including curry on steak, curry on katsu and curry on ebi.
300Y cheesecake sliver I had. Impossibly light, it could give the French a run for their money.
It's hard enough walking in snow and ice with new trainers. I don't know how Jap girls do it in boots.
"Hunting World" sold mostly leather bags, and also ties and coats.
T-shirt seen in "Big John": 'Busty Babe!! Over 100,000 original pics. Enter here. Join now!! 18 years old'
There was a shop, "Mitsumine. Fine clothing for gentlemen established 1949". I looked inside and 1/3 the clothes were for women.
I walked by Wacoal and Triumph - they had western amounts of padding. Maybe this was because they were western brands, though. More direct modes of observation were confounded by the temperature, though.
Correction: Wacoal is a Jap brand.
One shop sold 60g Made in Austria cream wafers for 105Y. I don't know how they got them so cheap.
A lot of the Jap girls in the outlet in shorts/skirts weren't wearing stockings. Those in the city had had more sense.
Boy mannikin about to give a two-fingered salute, and girl mannikin flashing the V-sign. Luckily there were no Malaysian or even pseudo-Malaysian mannikins.
Ganguro girls are disgusting. Poshh! magazine had 5 of them on its cover. Argh.
Apparently the male toilet has a compartment for pregnant women (the same sticker was on the sign pointing to the female toilet).
Apparently they have a problem with (Chinese) people not flushing toilets. They should've put the sign in Simplified Chinese.
There was a cool touchup battery-powered depilator which refused to say how it worked (it had a patent pending, no less). Maybe I should've bought one. Maybe it did IPL hair-by-hair.
The most number of recycling bins (types too) I've ever seen
The door handles in the outlet were made of wood. Maybe too many people had gotten zapped.
We had Chinese food for dinner, in a restaurant staffed (if not run) by PRC Chinese, whose accents marked them out as part of the Second Generation of Chinese Diaspora. It wasn't very good. Surprisngly it had egg drop soup - I thought that was a Western staple.
At Chitose airport I found the Holy Grail:
The only toilet ("Shower toilet") I saw with the feature to blow air at your buttocks. Maybe it was because it was a disabled toilet.
Automatic soap and hand dryer. It must be terribly inefficient.
Urinal - "for boy only". Maybe too many gaijin were splashing the place.
I saw 2 more Ang Mohs at the airport.
Just before boarding the plane, my Shiroi Koibito box broke. Guess it wasn't quality guaranteed, like the confectionery.
Broken box
"Welcome to Japan" - this was at the entrance to an aerobridge. Which means passengers arriving at Chitose would be very unlikely to see this. Uhh.
Decorated aerobridge
TAKE OFF ! !
Plane thinking
More funny lines from the JAL pre-flight video: "The marshaller works in harmony with the pilot to make sure nothing strikes the aircraft". Gah. Then the JAL safety video has sound effects (eg blowing into the life jacket, it auto-inflating and it being buckled), unlike other airlines'.
Earphones which looked like a stethoscope
After JAL flights, they announce that "your cabin attendants are looking forward to seeing you onboard again", whereas other airlines use "we". Hah. I can't remember what SIA says.
They sell Skytime in bottles.
Narita was a lot more racially diverse. In the hotel I saw one North Africa guy, who was exchanging suggestive displays of body language to a Japanese girl. I also saw two Indian guys.
In the Narita Hotel there was a broadband cable in the room (though access was not free). Someone who just returned from Hokkaido told me, though, that there was access at most of his places, so maybe it was just the places I was brought to.
It was also the first night since coming to Japan we'd gotten normal pillows (in Hokkaido all the hotels had pillows with beanbag stuffing inside).
Later in the night, I got a nosebleed. I swear it was because of the running nose I'd been having for days, and not the Jap girls.
Aside: The explanation I've heard for the nosebleed thing seems silly. Wouldn't the blood rush to the other head instead?
Twenty Sided » Blog Archive » Panties, but at what price?: As an aside: I really, really hate the nosebleed “joke”. In Anime, often there will be a character who’s wound a bit too tight who ends up seeing something exciting (like a teenage alien robot cat girl from the future in her leather & titanium underwear, or whatever) and his pulse rises so much that he gets a nosebleed. It was never funny, and 4,000 iterations and variations of the joke made it even less so. Wow! A cartoon girl with a huge bosom! Now an image of a man with blood and mucus jetting from his face! Now more boobies again!
After the blood and fainting the audience is pretty much done looking at girls in their underwear for a while.
Animator A: “I’ve got it! When he sees the pretty girl he gets so excited that a chestbuster alien launches from his chest, covering his friends in entrails!”
Animator B: “So sexy!”