Intermixi TGS Tour - Days 1 and 2

(continuing on from my post a while ago regarding my vacation last)

As much fun as it had been visiting Ammy and spending time in Los Angeles, it was time for the real part of my vacation. Once again, I was going off to the Land of the Rising Sun courtesy of the fine folks, and a very good friend and person, who run Intermixi Tours. On this trip, I was scheduled to stay in Tokyo and Osaka, Japan, for a total of 10 days. The tour was going to visit many various locales, but the real treat for me was that we would get a day to spend at the Tokyo Game Show. I've been a big gamer, from my early youth through adulthood, and this was something I absolutely had to do.

So, Ammy dropped me off at LA International Airport and I met some of the others from the group. There was our venerable leader, Aka-san. My friend and coworker, Travis (whose pictures can be found here). Then two others, Kristian and Henry. We all piled on to a Singapore Airlines flight bound from LA to Narita and after about 11 hours of flying we landed safely in Japan. At the airport we met the rest of the people on the tour: Greg, Matt, Randy, and one of my best friends and roommate, X. At this point, a lot of us were tired from the travel (we had left in the afternoon from LA; it was already evening the next day in Japan) so we all boarded a bus that took us to our hotel in Tokyo, the Shinagawa Prince Hotel. Day 1 pretty much encompassed all of our traveling, so I wanted a good night's rest for all that we would do on Day 2 and through the rest of the trip.

The agenda for Day 2 (our first real day in Japan) consisted of a kind-of cultural tour, as we traveled to the Tokyo Imperial Palace, Sensō-ji (金龍山浅草寺), the observation deck of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, then we wandered through Kabukichō and encountered a takoyaki restaurant, and finally we finished our day in Harajuku.

Below are some more pictures from all of these places, and you can find the entire set here. I didn't take any pictures in Harajuku this time, mainly because it's how I remember it from last time.

No love for Intermixi.

I would also like to point out a little adventure some of us had after-hours (i.e., not exactly scheduled by the tour). See, a small group of us (myself, Travis, X, Greg and Matt) went with our leader, Aka-san, out on the town looking for a club that Aka-san wanted to show us. Along the way, our leader received a call from some friends of his; people he used to live with when he lived in Yokohama, I think. Anyway, we meet up with one of them, Jack, and we get lead to a building that houses a bunch of private, little recording studios. It seems that Aka-san used to live with some members of a band, named MAry Ann, and we had just been invited to a private jam/practice session they were having. It was an amazing experience to listen to these very talented musicians play some songs for us, and my only regret was that I stupidly left all of my recording devices (both cameras and my iPhone) in the hotel room so I couldn't take pictures or anything! Luckily, I found some pictures that are up on Intermixi's official Flickr page for the tour.