BLOG -- My trip to Japan V.4 -- EXTRA -- My down time in the hotel + at game centers

This entry will cover my down-time in the hotels. I didn't watch as much TV during this trip since my boyfriend often liked to drag me outside, but there were some days we'd retire to the hotels early because the weather was too hot or we needed a quick breather before continuing with the day. 

I will also cover some of the games we played at the arcades / game centers. We visited so many that I thought it would be best to have a section just for it instead of mentioning it here and there throughout my "Adventure" portions.

For my last entry about my down-time at the hotel, the link is below:

2018 entry

The strangest anime we saw on TV. Why is a girl looking at a vending machine in the middle of a forest?

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IN THE HOTELS

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Sumo Wrestling

I forgot when we watched this, but we flipped through the channels and came upon one showing a sumo wrestling tournament. It was very interesting! Sometimes the outcome of the match might seem obvious if a super huge wrestler was against a tiny one, but sometimes we were surprised. I think it'd be more intense to watch it live.

A clip of the sumo wrestling. You'll have to turn up the volume really high if you want to hear sounds because I suck at recording videos on my phone.

Music Station and other music shows

I wish I remembered to tune into Music Station more often during this trip. I like seeing live musical performances. We caught at least one episode of Music Station, and then a couple other music-related shows. One was a recording of a music festival called FNS Music Festival Summer, and another was a quiz show called Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Don! I really enjoyed the quiz show 'cuz I got to hear so many different songs. I also enjoyed seeing if I recognized any of the tunes.

A clip of Man With a Mission and Milet performing "Kizuna no Kiseki" (one of the opening themes for Demon Slayer) at the FNS Music Festival Summer. Again you'll have to turn up the volume really high (do this for almost all the videos).

A clip of Super Beaver performing "Hakanakunai" (the opening theme to Tokyo Revengers 2 live-action) at the FNS Music Festival Summer.

A clip of Do-Re-Me-Fa-Don! I liked testing my music knowledge. :)

Various anime series

Just keeping this here from the previous blog:

Maybe I just didn't have the right channels, but anime does NOT play every hour of every day, despite all the new anime series that come out every year. From my experience, I would often catch anime starting from around 8-9 PM on weekdays and only on about few channels. On weekends I caught some anime playing in the morning, but series that were targeted more for kids. 

A few of the shows we caught during our channel surfing were Reborn as a Vending Machine, Now I Wander the Dungeon, Liar Liar, some card-fighting game, and a performance from one of the D4DJ series.

When we got back to Canada, I was surprised to see that some of those series we caught in Japan were already on Crunchyroll.

I'm not sure what show this was.

From the opening theme to Liar Liar.

This is from the D4DJ series.

Miscellaneous

Below are pics / videos I took from various shows and other things.

This was some improv competitive show. There were 3-4 teams and each team would have a couple minutes to come up with a skit for their prompt. I didn't understand a thing but I watched it.

This looked like a detective show. Again I didn't understand it, but it looked intriguing and at times comical.

This was a random show that looped clips of a cat being cute accompanied by piano music. For some reason it only aired in the middle of the night.

Here's a clip of the cat and piano music.

A commercial for Pikmin 4!

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AT THE ARCADES (GAME CENTERS)

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It was a relief to still see arcades / game centers still alive and kicking. From our experience, Akihabara still has the most amount of arcades / game centers, but some of them are focused on the latest games. We did come upon one game center in Akihabara that focused on retro games, but if you want to try playing a variety of older games, you may have to visit arcades / game centers in other places like Shibuya or Shinjuku.

Rhythm games

We tried a number of rhythm games including Maimai and Taiko: Drum Master. A couple new exposures for me were Ongeki Bright and Chunitha Sun.

Ongeki Bright is a game where you control three characters and you move them while hitting / holding the notes corresponding to their colour. There are also side buttons to hit at certain times and things to avoid throughout the stage. The interface was all in Japanese so it was confusing when it came to selecting the song I wanted to play.

Chunitha Sun had a keyboard layout but also made use of sensors to pick up the hand flicking upwards or staying in the air (that is a prompt in the game). I thought this was more difficult to play well.

I liked that some of the songs from the Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage game were part of the song selection for all of these rhythm games.

My boyfriend playing Ongeki Bright. If your volume was still turned up from watching the previous videos, you'll want to turn the volume down for this. It's loud in the arcades!

This is the tutorial screen for Chunitha Sun.

My boyfriend trying Gitadora. He had no idea what he was doing.

House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn

Out of the shooting games we tried (House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn, The Walking Dead, and Time Crisis 4), we concluded that House of the Dead: Scarlet Dawn was the "fairest" in terms of how long we lasted on one play. So... we decided to set aside one afternoon and beat it! It was my first time beating any arcade game, so I was excited.

We set spending limits in case the game got really cheap later on. There were some surprise mobs here and there, and many of the bosses seemed impossible to clear without continuing. In the end, each of us continued three times, meaning each of us spent 800 yen in total. For over 30 minutes of entertainment, it's not so bad!.

The title screen. I'm so excited!

I just wanted to take a pic of the game. There was English voice-acting.

We saw the credits!

Our ranking in the end.

Proof that we cleared all the chapters.

Miscellaneous

Here are some pics of other games we tried out.

My boyfriend trying out Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme vs Overboost 2. He enjoyed his experience.

My boyfriend trying out Mobile Suit Survival 2. Playing this involved purchasing a specific card from a vending machine. He used Google Lens to translate as much of the instructions as he could but didn't really know what he was doing. He still enjoyed the experience.

My boyfriend playing some Street Fighter.

We played Bubble Symphony, which is apparently Bubble Bobble II. We died pretty quickly but it was fun.

I saw this and we had to try it out! I wondered 'Are we gonna be trying to type out Japanese characters?' We were able to type out Romaji (English phonetics of the Japanese words).

Nothing beats Pong. It was interesting to play, but my side had lag when moving the paddle.

And that is it for my Japan blogs for this year! I am done! XD If you have any questions or comments, as usual feel free to comment.

If you have read from the beginning all the way to the end, thank you so much! Thanks for sticking through the long pauses between some of the entries. I really appreciate it *bows*

Will I go back to Japan in the future? Most definitely! I see need to see the cherry blossoms falling ^^

Take care, stay safe, and until next time!