Mike Nicholson

Going into the trip rain was predicted almost every day. Luckily the previous four days were completely rain free. It had to arrive some time, though. Today brought moderately heavy rain for most of the day with a mist filling in the gaps between showers.

What do you do when rain strikes down on you? Head to modern climate controlled enclosures: shopping malls. After purchasing our train tickets for our excursion to the south, we hit up another shopping district: Shibuya. We bounced around a couple of malls and sat for a few minutes at a Starbucks perched above the pavement watching the ballet of umbrella toting pedestrians in the large five way intersection below. After scrambling through that mess a few times I finally understand why transparent umbrellas are so popular here. Visibility is important in such crowds!

After our coffee we hit up one last shopping mall called Shibuya 109. This was apparently the popular mall with the youth. Here Winnie made her first real purchase. She bought a pair of shoes. I mostly people watched and tried not to laugh as the school girls dished out money at the cell phone beauty parlor.

Burnt out on fashion malls we took a quick breather to dry out at home base and headed off again to the nearby electronics district of Akiabara. Exploring another part of the district turned up store after store crammed with figurines and dolls of anime characters. We even found a half dozen maid cafes and three stores devoted to (expensive) manufactured cosplay costumes. During this exploration we also made a breakthrough: we successfully found not one, but two businesses based on their street addresses.

As the night cooled down we grabbed a couple of rice bun hamburgers at Mos Burger and headed again to the hotel. We had planned to spend a few minutes playing pachinko, but Winnie passed out again aborting such plans.

With this day over, our biggest chunk of time in Tokyo has passed. We will be heading out of town for the weekend to visit Winnie's cousin Amy and following that up with a couple day trips to nearby cities. A couple more days bumming around Tokyo and that'll be it!

Anyway, time for me to crash.

Posted by at 7:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today we woke up early again. This made it easy to get our money's worth from our 1000円 all-you-can-ride subway passes.

After a quick breakfast of breakfast burgers at a burger joint Lotteria in the subway station, we started the day with our second attempt at the East Shinjuku walking tour. It was fun to wander around during rush hour, but sadly nothing was open other than a couple hollow buildings. Nothing seems to open until about 10:00am. We may have to return to check out the high tech toilet showroom.

After we finished with Shinjuku, we headed on over to Harajuku for another walking tour. It wasn't Sunday so there were no eccentric teens to gape at, but we did get a taste of the culture. It's an odd dichotomy kind of like Sausalito except with more interesting architecture. There was a mix of upper class huge spenders shopping at pretentious stores (most of them US and EU brands) combined with the poorer youth that rebel through atypical fashion. It kind of makes sense too since most Tokyoites seem to spend just about their entire lives in a uniform of some kind: from the navy uniforms of elementary and high school to their dark business suits of adulthood.

With this tour completed, we grabbed some baked goods and headed off to the peaceful nearby park of the Meiji Jingu Shrine. We found a snack counter and supplemented our baked goods with some takoyaki. Once full, we explored the shrine for a few minutes before heading back to the train station for our dinner reservations at Ninja Akasaka.

Ninja Akasaka was quite campy, but very fun. I recommend it to anyone who visits. I'd explain more, but that'd ruin the fun!

Once again full of food we set off for one last sight: the Tokyo Tower. We didn't go to the observation deck, but just snapped some photos from the ground and people watched a bit in the mini-mall underneath. The highlight of this people watching was a school field trip. It was already almost 8:00pm and they were all there! Do they ever get to go home? Also, it appeared that they only visited the tower to purchase things from the gift shop as they all quickly left most of them with shopping bags in hand.

Winnie has passed out. I guess I'll pick it up again tomorrow with an early visit to the imperial gardens.

Posted by at 7:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today was a short day. We were only up for about 11 hours. I think we were recovering from the quick attempt at a jet lag adjustment. On the bright side we woke up at about 5am today which gives us lots of daylight to enjoy.

Yesterday, after a quick breakfast of pasta at Pronto we hit up east Shinjuku for a walking tour, but Winnie quickly developed allergies we we headed home for some drugs and decided to spend the rest of the day in the climate controlled shopping malls of Akiabara, the electronics district. I bought a $12 airsoft desert eagle toy gun, that as it turns out I may have to spend $20 posting home or abandon here (who knew you couldn't check toy guns?). I also picked up some $4 RC toy cars that will be racing around the office once I return. Winnie, on the other hand, spent $40 on capsule toys and $10 on Canned Bread (boil it for freshly baked taste!). We'll be featuring the bread on Fictional Foods upon our return. Yum!

Off to go observe the subway car pushers at Shinjuku station during rush hour. Bye!

Posted by at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey all,

We finished up the night with a trip to the Tokyo Metro Government building for some free good views since it was a clear night. We took lots of photos. You can see them on Flickr here. After some photos we were getting hungry and tired.

We tried to find some recommended awesome ramen place, but it was nowhere to be found. We finally gave in and stopped at a Jonathan's. This is very similar to a Denny's in the US, but the menu is obviously different. They had crazy food! Winnie ordered an oriental sundae and Indian beef with Mexican rice. I ordered some baked dish with cream sauce and sea food.

The only funny part was that even though they had a picture menu, the waitress had to stick to a policy and ask us scripted questions. Unfortunately, we had no words in common since she spoke no English and we speak not a single word of Japanese. After a few tries she finally gave up in frustration. We ended up getting the sundae as an appetizer. I wonder if that had something to do with the confusion?

We're also finally cured of Jet Lag. Time for another day of fun.

Posted by at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Keeping with the rapid fire blog posts, here's another bulleted list of what we've been up to in no particular order:

• We headed north to Asakusa to buy some rubber food. I found some sushi! I also bought a takoyaki iron and the accompanying implements. I'll be using it for many future potlucks.
• We dropped by the Higashi-Honganji Temple on the way. It was full of tourists but still interesting. The lighting was bad for photos.
• We had a quick lunch at a 'Swiss' bakery / cafe. We had a bacon bread stick, a tonkatsu sandwich, and a crazy mushroom pizza / taco.
• We strolled Ueno park. There was a skilled one man band street performer. I recorded him, but he left before I managed to throw him some change. Oh well.
• I found my first beer vending machine, but it was still early so I didn't buy any.
• We found some capsule toy machines and shopped around the 6 story toy / model / trinket store behind them. We bought much useless crap.
• We finally found the most efficient route to the subway station from our home base.

Now it's almost dusk so we're looking for a tall building to take some photos from. Tokyo tower is tall, but we're hoping to find something with a better view.

Posted by at 2:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey all!

So we've been here for about 20 hours now. We've accomplished the following:

Last Night:

• Rented a cell phone at the airport
• Dragged our bags through two train lines and a taxi ride. This was proof that we found a unique hotel: the cab driver had no idea it existed or where it was! Good thing Winnie printed out a map.
• Made it into Tokyo a bit too late to go gawk at the Harajuku girls. Oh well there's always the Saturday before we leave!
• Wandered around our neighborhood and found a half dozen 24 hour noodle places (great for those late night meals)
• Wandered our way to the nearby subway stations and successfully navigated back home from both of them.
• Took pictures of about 20 cool vending machines

This Morning:

• Woke up at 4:30 after ~5 hours of sleep
• Went to the Tsukiji fish market and had the best sushi I've ever had in my life for breakfast at Daiwa Sushi.
• Watched the organized morning rush hour of black business suits jogging down the street, buying drinks from vending machines, and cramming into subway trains.
• Checked out the Akihabara electronics district at 7:30am. Not surprisingly everything as closed!
• Purchased several drinks including 'Pocket Juicer Stand'

Off to go buy some plastic food.

Posted by at 5:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Winnie and I are now on a Boeing 777-200 en route to Tokyo.

The layover in Seattle went well. It’s amazing how relaxing it is to be on vacation after three years of pretty much non-stop work.

During out 4.5-hour layover in Seattle I learned much about airport art while exploring terminals A through S. They had all forms of art from hundreds of hanging fish that formed the shape of an eagle to a noisy ‘talking’ drinking fountain that played a soundtrack of a different fountain while you drank from it. Or rather it played a soundtrack while you attempted to drink from it since it had low water pressure and drained poorly. There just seemed to be art everywhere. Even the emergency exits were composed of art.

Anyway, we’re a couple hours into a 9 hour flight from Seattle to Tokyo. I’ve had a couple free drinks and I’m feeling yet more relaxed. Winnie, on the other hand, is hording her booze for later in the trip (I assume). Lets hope it makes it through customs.

It looks like we may arrive in time to head over to Hirajuku and see the tail end of the weekly Sunday cosplay escapades. That is, if we’re able to tackle the most complex subway system I’ve ever seen. I hope it works out. This may be our only chance to see this during our whole trip!

Time to watch a bad movie. Bye!

Posted by at 3:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)