At the beginning of August we went on a short business trip to Tokyo, Japan. We were supposed to do a live stream and a bunch of interviews, however, we also managed to see a number of tourist attractions. Here’s a short article about it.

The day that we landed was the hardest one. Adjusting to the weather wasn’t easy, especially when the humidity is over 50% and temperature’s over 35°C every single day. I’d like to thank Agnieszka Szostak for understanding and not bursting out due to my constant whining.

Fortunately, there was air conditioning in every room/restaurant/office so I managed to withstand the heat attack.

On our first day we visited famous Tsukiji Fish Market which was pretty close to our hotel. The variety of fish there is astonishing.

Then we went to Gyoen Park to see Imperial Palace, however, the Emperor wasn’t planning on having us at his place so we just waved in the direction of the palace. Never heard of The Witcher? That’s OK, we’re here to change this.
The gardens are out of this world and the diversity of the plants can make a visiting botanist extremely happy.

Ueno Park was also very nice, especially due to Hiroshima and Nagasaki flame still burning inside a small metal dove.

Akihabara – oh yeah…that place…
The noise, the crowds and the number of games available – all this combined into cacophony of sounds is almost unbearable for an average tourist. We were both really stunned by this. Every player can find a game for him/herself.

In the evening we passed sumo arena (Ryogoku Kokugikan), however, the major tournament wasn’t on schedule until September. We were devastated. In the end, I finally managed to take a close-up picture of the noisy cicada.
They make a distinctive noise, like a mini buzzsaw. During hot days, the combined noise from all the cicadas can almost drown out traffic.

During the second day we were preparing for the stream. This was also the first day that we travelled by Tokyo Subway, which in fact, turned out to be pretty easy to use. All this thanks to a very neatly described stations and routes as well as the omnipresent maps and helpful people around.

Nico Nico guys were very cooperative during the stream and the atmosphere in the studio was great, extremely helpful to ease any stress that I had before doing the live show. Fumi-san and Edo-san are a couple of crazy guys and the show was so awesome that we had to extend it for another hour.
Before entering on the air, I decided to learn a couple of Japanese words that would help me with commenting the action. To my surprise, people liked every bit of my “fluent” japanese: “IDESOZO!” or “SAIKO!”
Here are the notes that I took:

Next two days were filled with interviews that we conducted in Spike Chunsoft’s headquarters. We started with a major surprise – Daisuke Yamamoto (Associate Producer) announced that we received Platinum score from Famitsu. Suddenly, the day filled with hundreds of questions looked much better.

Last day was entertaining and exhausting at the same time. We tried to use every minute of it and I think we did a decent job. We went to Shibuya station which is regarded as the busiest intersection in the whole world. I reckon the photos will confirm it.

We managed to see Harajuku and Yoyogi Park. Harajuku is a fashion capital of the world, renowned for its unique street fashion, it is often called “cosplay town”. There is a bunch of shops with hundreds of gadgets from various TV shows.

In Yoyogi Park, we saw Meiji Shrine and a collection of sake and wine barrels.

Fortunately, I was able to keep Aga away from opening those.

And by the way, in McDonald’s they have special burger counterparts – I tried Teriyaki Mac Burger and Aga chose Shrimp Filet-O. Yes, they were good.

To sum up this short article, I would like to thank all those that made this trip possible as well as the people from Spike Chunsoft and Nico Nico Video for their help. Japan is a very interesting and unique country and I definitely need to mention the politeness of Japanese people and their constant optimistic attitude to life. It’s something indescribable and rarely meet. I hope to come here again!