Community is at TGS 2011 this year and while we prepare for the upcoming show, I thought everyone would enjoy a preview into our trip out. This is my first trip out to Japan, so I’m learning a lot of what the area is like, the food, the culture, and the heat – it’s so hot!

This is our second time over in Japan covering the TGS show, so I’m going to try and take a bit different approach from what Aaron did in 2009, which honestly might be more food pictures, but that’s ok! Check out Aaron’s coverage for day 1, day 2, and day 3 from the way back machine in 2009.

Shinjuku

Our hotel is centrally located in Shinjuku, which if you’ve played the Yakuza series, it will look very familiar. The area is very busy, and as my first introduction to Tokyo, very exciting. Lots to see and do, with every street opening to a new pedestrian alley way with shops, restaurants, stores, and clubs. And the people too – Shinjuku is very crowded at night with no shortage of people flooding the streets and heading to the very large Shinjuku station.

Pictures of Food Edition

Priorities for the first few days is preparing for the big Tokyo Game Show and eating local food. We’ve long discussed starting a food blog, so this will be our first preview entry with more to come from our trip out. Everything we’ve had so far has been delicious and while I knew the food would be good, I wasn’t prepared for how good it would be!

After walking around Shinjuku we wandered into a shop for sushi – tasty! Featured here is the Aji, which had onion and garlic as well.

Lunch out with our Overseas business team, we picked out chirashi and tonkatsu curry. Having curry is just one item to check off my to-do list and it was very very good too!

Onward to dinner! I’m not entirely sure what this was, but it was good and an interesting photo…

Look familiar? This is the same spot that Aaron went to in his night out with our overseas team. I can confirm, it was just as good as he said it was. Good friends, new friends, and great food.

Sega of Japan Main Office

Day’s big outing is to check in with our SEGA of Japan main office and do some work preparing for the big show tomorrow. The fun part for us was traveling out to visit the SEGA offices and navigating the subway stations and a transfer or two to find our way. Discovering your way around a transit system in a new city is always a bit of a challenge, so imagine trying to do so with a language barrier! We had fun and the adventure was well worth it to arrive at the main SEGA building.

SEGA actually has five buildings in the area, all with different departments and functions. When turning a corner from the train station, we stumbled upon the first, just down the road.

A short walk away is the main SEGA offices, which have a very stylish SEGA parking area.

The SEGA lobby is pretty slick with a familiar face greeting all new visitors as well as a wall of memorabilia with Sonic and SEGA related items.

But wait, there’s more!

So this wraps up Day 1, but there’s still more to see and do and the Tokyo Game Show starts proper tomorrow AM. Definitely check out the Flickr page for TGS 2011 with a few more photos from the days events, perhaps a preview into things to come across the blogs – seriously, I could post more and more photos, but I need sleep – tomorrow is a big day!