大海原。

I got to see the ocean for the first time today.  I mean, it was pretty incredible, but I saw it while zooming by on a train so it's not like I really experienced it.  I didn't go for a walk on the beach and I didn't build a sand castle.  I definitely didn't get to go surfing, but I'm afraid of surfing anyway.  My initial impressions, though:  big and wet.  It was definitely big and most assuredly wet.  I really wanted to swim in it, but I'm reasonably sure that there aren't any swimming beaches near here.  In any event, I liked the ocean and would like to experience more of it.

The train also passed Tokyo Disneyland.  That seems like a fun place.  I didn't see any rides, but there were a lot of buildings in the way.  One of the buildings was a giant one that had "Cirque du Soleil" written on it.  If they have Cirque du Soleil performances on some sort of regular schedule at Tokyo Disneyland, then I definitely must make a trip.  I've never seen Cirque live, but I've seen quite a bit of it on tv and DVD and I would love to see it in real life.  Maybe if I wear my silly shorts, they'll let me get on stage.

So, as it turns out, the subway maps in the cars here can't be trusted.  Me and Billy spent a great deal of time on the subway trying to get out to Tokyo Game Show, which was in Chiba.  What should have been a roughly forty-five minute trip turned into something like a two-three hour trek.  There were no stars and we didn't have to battle Sauron at the end, but it was definitely a trek.  Of course, calling the trip a trek implies a lengthy voyage in a single direction and this probably means that spending an hour riding trains in circles disqualifies our trip from having "trek" status.  Suffice to say that we spent more time lost than we spent actually at the show, which was awesome by the way.

Being in a giant room surrounded by video games and booth babes, inundated with the sounds of jpop and the smells of nerds was an almost religious experience.  If Tokyo Game Show was my church, then the Square-Enix booth was my altar.  The first thing we did was elbow and claw our way to the giant T.V. set up like some sort of nerd catching bug zapper, but instead of zapping, it filled your head with awesome and filled your heart full of expectation, making you hungry with anticipation.  From there, we mostly just wandered around, trying not to look creepy while we oggled the booth babes.

This was my first experience with booth babes.  There was a time where I would have considered the argument that jobs like this only serve to objectify women and denigrate society and all of that.  But, after actually witnessing booth babes in action, I was more than a little impressed.  For one, these lovely young women are getting to come to work and dance and play video games.  If they hated dancing and video games, I could maybe see a drawback, but they were clearly having more fun than they had any right to have for how much they were getting payed.  I will say that their clothes could not be comfortable, but most of them were wearing flats, so not too bad.  The other thing is, these girls aren't really being objectified by most everyone around.  The people at TGS put them on such a high pedestal, that they had to feel like princesses or some sort of gentry.  I mean, it's not like an ego boost or something simple like that.  It was just something I noticed when I looked at them.  They didn't have the look of a prostitute out peddling herself for money or the defeated look of a stripper, so far beyond the self defeat and shock of turning to stripping that all pride is dead.  They had this mix of pride and joy that is rare in someone in a regular job, never mind someone peddling games in sexy clothes.

Also, I think that Gamestop would be more popular if they used the Xbox booth babe uniforms for everyone.