SIGGRAPH Asia 2009 dovetailed nicely with SantaCon 2009! You can read about it at the CG Society web page!
Here’s Santa Magari’s Tokyo Santacon web page!
Santa Magari did an excellent job dis-organizing the event in spite of the difficulties involved. We gathered at the traditional spot in front of Hatchiko at Shibuya station and headed over to the LABI electronic store to the wide eyed stares of kids and their parents. Santa loaded up on cheap booze at the next sleigh stop, the DONKI store. After getting his drink on Santa marched through Shibuya to Yoyogi Park where there was some kind of Eco/Peace/DJ Techno festival thing going on. Things looked pretty grim until Santa took the stage and danced for about an hour. Santa passed through Omotesando on the way to the sleigh to Odaiba. Arriving at Odaiba a hungry santa stopped to grab a bite at the FamilyMart and proceeded to walk down the beach. There was a group of amateur astronomers who encouraged Santa to check out Jupiter and her moons on the way to the mall. Santa promply made an ass out of himself at the mall then headed over to the 1/5th scale Statue of Liberty anchored in Tokyo Harbour before calling it a night. The Santas went their separate ways. I ended up at Andy’s Izzakaya in Shimbashi with Santa Sneery, Santa Mike, Santa Sasha, Santa Naoko, Santa I-chan, Dr. Santa and several Santas to be Named Later.
More pictures after the jump!
(more…)
posted by Xray at 4:34 am
Dec. 15th
Woke up early and checked out of the hotel. Met Sneery and his friend Ming in the lobby. Headed out to Shinjuku to grab some food. The plan was to scout out the basement food shop at the Isaten department store and eat at the park on their roof. I also wanted to check out their whisky selection. We got there a bit early so went for some coffee to wait until they were open. I got several croquettes (Okonomi, Imo, Ebi, Kani) and one big Ebi Fry. We picked up a bottle of sake and went up to the roof to enjoy the fruits of our hunt.
We wandered around Shinjuku for a while. We saw some guy taking what looked like a small dog out for a walk but I did a double take when I realized it was a spider monkey.
We ran across the local franchise of my favorite Mongolian Hot Pot restaurant, Little Sheep.
We found a really great liquor store with an amazing selection of rare whisky called Shinanoya.
I got back to the hotel, grabbed my bags and hit the train for Yokohama. I put on my Santa suit and registered for SIGGRAPH.
Hooked up with Oyabun Santa, Santa Maki and Baby Santa Juno. Got back to the hotel, linked up with Santa Michael and wandered around Yokohama’s china town looking for some dinner and damn if we didn’t find it.
We ended up at this place called “To Ki” or “Toki” and had some of the best noodles ever. It’s a style from the Shanxi province of China called dao-Xiao-mein. At Toki, Chef Wang uses a large chunk of freshly kneaded wheat flour dough and hand shaves flat strips of raw noodle dough into a big wok of boiling water. The cooked noodles have a rough and chewy texture with a very unique fresh wheat taste. We also tried their delicious Mabo Tofu and a spicy Salt & Pepper shrimp dish, similar to what I’ve had before but this was probably the best version I’ve every had. Simply outstanding.
Stopped off at the combini to get some desert. Picked up some Sweet Potato flavor haagen-daaz ice cream and hit the sack pretty hard.
posted by Xray at 2:14 pm