Watashi wa doko deshita??

Okay - so I just did some math. In the last 81 hours I have had 8 hours sleep. That's less than 10%. I'm totally wrecked so I'm having an early night (midnight!!!!) in preparation for tomorrow's Square Enix Party in Chiba and then whatever we get up to in the evening.

Current plan is Karaoke then a club called 'Womb'. We'll see what the day brings.

So let me try and catch up. I was talking about the other night - which was insane. I can't really say who I was out with at this time - but I'm sure in the near future things will become clear. I may well be spending more time here ;)

We (Tim, Thor and myself) were up until 3am last night talking over the evenings meeting and meal but agreed to meet up for some food at 8:15.

I was the only one who made it :)

Not the greatest breakfast in the world I have to say - but this trip is on something of a (blown) budget so I'll suffer that little things :P

Breakfast came and went and I decided to heda back down to reception at 9am where DC was waiting. Both Thor and Tim had over slept, and who can blame them.

I decided to skip out on the first meeting of the day with TI since it was mainly a tech meeting. I decided to go do a little shopping in Shibuya and walk up to Gaienmae Station through Harajuku.

Here's some random shots of Shibuya for your travelog pleasure.











I did the usual gaijin thing and went shopping at Tower Records and HMV. I picked up a double disk by 'muffrare', the new 'Boom Boom Satellites', and a 'Solid Steel - DJ Kentaro' disk that isn't out in the UK yet.

I didn't pick up this...



A lot of shops were shut in Shibuya. I guess I was too early for some of them. Maybe they were out as late as me the night before. I pressed on through Miyashita Park, up Cat Street, down Omotesando and up Aoyama-Dori to Gaienmai Station where I was meeting Tim, Thor and DC for lunch before walking over to XXXXXX.

I got to say - BOY IT WAS HOT TODAY. And with all that walking, and even though I was just wearing shorts and T, I was sweating so much that there are salt stains on my Shirt. I could even feel the sweat running down my leg. Nasty ;)

Post lunch we went over to see one of my heroes, XXXXXX - President of XXXXXX. It was great to get to sit down and talk about games with him. He's a genuine innovator, and even though their latest project goes to master today - they gave us time and treated us really well.

After XXXXXX we jumped on the underground and headed off to XXXXXX for another scheduled meeting. Again - not going to go into why we are seeing these people, just trying to track the day for you.

Post XXXXXX we had a run through Akihabara. We didn't have a lot of time and spent most of it checking out the outrageous amount of handsets available. Hell - it's a business trip... I still haven't found time to pick up a PSP.

Dinner tonight was with Ryo Shimizu from Ubiquitous (http://www.uei.co.jp/). Ryo-san is a bit of an industry legend and has been involved in so many things it would be impossible to list them all. He's a good friend of DC's and this was more just a chance to sit down, shoot the breeze, and compare notes. Reiko from Ubiq also joined us, as did DC's wife.



Dinner was traditional Japanese. Was great. We all sat on the floor and ate sushi, sashimi etc...

Heading back we considered some Pachinko...



...but decided to call it a night. We did get a good tour of Shibuya's 'Love Hotel' district. Hmmmm... I guess checking in alone is not the done thing. I'll have to find myself a willing (read 'very drunk') partner ;)

Nic.

posted by Nic @ 3:02 PM 1 comments