It turns out a church in Mitaka is arranging a Christmas concert and this was a group from that church singing all to familiar carols, albeit in Japanese. I still stopped for a minute and hummed along in English. Even if these people were not professionals, it still beat listening to mp3s :)
There are decorations all over the city – in train stations, certain restaurants, etc… I definitely appreciate the festive mood.
Not many people realize that the smash hit that is Guitar Hero was once an arcade machine in Japan (in fact it still is). The Japanese arcade scene is extremely creative. While in some other countries “arcades” mean your traditional small cabinet with a joystick and a couple of buttons, in Japan one can find touch screen machines, machines with musical instruments, machines that you need to use collectible cards to play among others.
Every time I step into an arcade here in Tokyo, I find something cool, something new… In this case it was this – a shooting game where you travel between floors in a building, going all the way from the basement to the roof. The twist? Well, there are two – There are “quick time events (QTEs)” where you need to drop the gun and use the three buttons to get your character out of tight spots and as you move from floor to floor you take the elevator. This elevator taking would not be so significant if it was not for the fact that the machine actually has elevator doors closing and opening between the floors. It’s such a small thing that it might seem like a gimmick but it is more than that. Since it is something physical it definitely helps with the immersion and when it gets stuck with enemies rushing from left and right it is definitely a rush.
I am supposed to write on more involved subjects – after all I did spend almost a month away from this blog but the workload and the crappy cold weather is getting to me I think. I feel like I have zero initiative to write here, at least about something substantial. So what am I going to do? Well, I am going to write about something small, and hopefully something that will put a smile on my, and your, face…
Oh, wow… It took a long while to update this I know but I do have a good excuse – I was in Cyprus, Maldives, Malasia and then finally back to Tokyo on Wednesday last week. As you might imagine, I was quite a bit tired. I will get to talking about each of those countries hopefully but for tonight, it will just be me typing about what I did today – a very sunny and uncharacteristically warm day given the time of year. I was in Omotesando (表参道) walking around. I heard about a good Portuguese restaurant called Perola Atlantica (Madeira cuisine) from a friend who was here last summer and decided to check it out. Unfortunately for me however, the restaurant was hosting a private party today and it was closed for anyone else. I ended up lunching at the French restaurant next door (which I must add was a VERY French place, almost surrealistic in fact: French music, all but one of the waiters were French, etc…). I took the above picture at Omotesando Hills - a very nice, if expensive, mall close to the restaurant. The place is already in the Christmas mood…
