Day 2 - Akihabara
Day 2 started out without us really knowing where we were going to go. The rain that made it so difficult to get to our hotel the when we first arrived last night has continued kinda limiting what we can do today. Also, jetlag has a firm grasp of my head and I feel thoroughly hung-over with the earth having the feeling of moving under my feet. After some discussion we figure the best place suited for the weather would be Akihabara. This is the electronics district of Tokyo, which has many multi-story buildings loaded with various geeky stuff. Each floor is generally dedicated to one type of thing that someone might collect, be it manga to softcore porn. However, before leaving we decide to buy some breakfast from the AM/PM down the street from our hotel. We learned from our last trip that convenient stories are truly their name-sake in Japan and are convenient providing tasty baked goods and other real food to eat. We picked up some apple rolls and a milk-coffee drink and began walking to the train station. I found out last night that I remember how to use the machines to purchase tickets for the train pretty well. At Jinbocho we purchased our tickets, which were under $10 for both of us, to Akihabara and sat down at the platform at ate.
Once we arrived at Akihabara we exited out the first set of stairs we could find which lead us to part of Akihabara we were unfamiliar with. Last time in Japan it was pretty much any means possible to get to one station to the next, and by means I mean pure luck, so god only knows where that place was last time. Despite being some what uncomfortable we began walking around with the confidence that we had mastered the train system. Therefore, if we got last we could just go down into the subway and hop a train. Unfortunately, that confidence didn’t translate to well to the above surface as we first unknowingly walked out of the Akihabara district and into department building. It was still a very interesting department store, much like a sears in the US, but only each floor dedicated to something such as houseware on one, video games on another. We actually had a pretty good time in this store finding all kinds of things we are considering buying later on. On the top floor was probably the most exciting thing for Rose green-tea nana at an Indian restaurant. We had looked a variety of places, but couldn’t decide when we can to this Indian place and knew we couldn’t pass it up. You think we would go for Japanese food in Japan… But in reality this was what Japanese people eat now, so I consider it to be Japanese food despite the underpinning of “Indian…” Anyway, the food was great, we have photos of it which will be posted later… We did buy a few other things in this department store before we left, we purchased a ocha-ken (green tea dog) toy set for Rose, which has real-world use as it doubles a desk organizer. We purchased Utada Hikaru CD which was just released yesterday in Japan. We also buy a few 100 yen capsule toys
After leaving this department store we wandered around Akihabara for a sort period more, we accidentally walked into a sex shop and looked around. We played taiko drum and light gun games within the arcade… I didn’t think I liked arcade games, but now I love them…. We also looked into purchasing a Japanese Nintendo DS lite with a few games, we’ll do that later, don’t want to burn through our cash in the first day….
Anyway, it’s been really wonderful thus far. My Japanese is passable, and where it fails grunts and gestures have done us well…. Tomorrow we plan to hang around Tokyo some more and go to a baseball game at the Tokyo Dome!