Japan, Day 9, Tokyo
Posted By Mike Gfeller on January 3, 2015
There is so much I’ve forgotten since I started posting. I waited too long to finish and the details are what makes these blogs somewhat interesting, or so I’ve been told. I’ll give it a try anyway.
Today was going to be our last full day in Tokyo. I didn’t sleep any better. I watched some crazy game shows on television in the hotel room while Wolfgang was sleeping. The plan was again to meet John in Ikebukuro station. From there we were going to the Skytree, which is the tallest tower in the world. See link here. Now this was a complicated undertaking. This was a Saturday and our JR pass had expired the day before. This wasn’t a big problem since we weren’t leaving Tokyo, but it did mean added expense because we couldn’t get everywhere we wanted to get from the subway. There are different train lines and they are owned by different companies. To get to the Skytree we had to transfer 3 or 4 times. Since some of the trains are express and don’t stop at each stop, we actually had to go past our exit to the next stop, then take another train coming back the other direction which wasn’t an express train. By the time we got to the Skytree, an hour or so had passed and it was now about 10AM or so. The wait to just get tickets was 90 minutes, and then another period of time before we could go up. We were running out of time. Instead we took pictures and did some shopping in an indoor mall area. Then we left to go to Shinjuku station, which is one of the busiest stations in Tokyo. I still had pens on reserve at the Shinjuku Tokyu Hands store from the day before which I needed to pick up.
We got to Shinjuku, crossed the street and walked through various plazas until arriving at the large Tokyu Hands store. As previously mentioned, this store has everything you could want and then some. I picked up the pens and then purchased a number of other items, including an ipad charger and some little puzzles that I thought would be fun to put on my desk at work. We went to a restaurant to eat but the details of that escape me now. We wanted ramen but the ramen place was packed, so we settled for something else that I can’t recall. It was located in a food court across from the top floor of Tokyu Hands.
We next wanted to go to Akihabara, which is the electronics district in Tokyo. I wanted to find a cool USB gadget and I’d heard Akihabara was the place in the world for electronics. There were thousands of people and hundreds of little and big shops. I couldn’t find any cool USB gadgets. I was also looking for robots, because I’d heard they had cool robots there. I did find a few but nothing that really piqued my interest. I knew Wolfgang wasn’t enthused at the number of people and it became too much for me as well. We left Akihabara and headed down to the Tokyo dome area where we met up with Swee-Chi. We were all pretty hungry by this time so we found a sushi restaurant in the Tokyo Dome City area. I think it was called Best Sushi or something like that. John can correct me. John had gotten us tickets to go see a baseball game so he left Wolfgang, myself and Swee-Chi to stand in line at the restaurant. John doesn’t like seafood anyway so it wasn’t likely he would eat anything there.
We waited about 30 minutes and were seated. This place was fun. You sat at tables next to a track on which travelled a mini Shinkansen bullet train carrying sushi. Below the track was a carousel carrying sushi. Here’s how it worked: you could grab sushi from the carousel and the cost was based on the color of the plate. Likewise, you ordered drinks and the cost was based on the color of the glass. So, when we sat down Wolfgang just started grabbing plates off the carousel. Before we knew it he’d already polished off four plates of food. I ordered a beer. Swee-Chi said to order off the menu because the food was made fresh and sent to you on the train. We made several orders and within minutes the bullet train was delivering fresh sushi to our table. John eventually came back and ordered some fried chicken (as in strips, not with the bone), which was also delivered via the train. At the end of it we had a whole lot of plates and the total was somewhere around 20000 yen.
We left the restaurant and entered the Tokyo Dome, which as the name implies, was an enclosed stadium. The seats are smaller because the people are generally smaller, so we were pretty squished in. I ordered another beer and I think we ordered nachos. I took some pictures which didn’t come out well at all. The fans in the stadium were really loud. They love baseball in Japan, probably above all other sports. If we’d had more time John would have introduced us to some of the athletes before the game as he has worked in sports for many years and has those connections. We stayed for about 2 innings, but the noise and crowd bothered Wolfgang so we all got up and left. I meant to get a baseball cap at the game and in our haste to get out of there I simply forgot. We gave Swee-Chi and John big hugs, and thanked them for everything, and then we hailed a cab and disappeared in the night to our hotel.
You might recall that I still had a Cuban cigar to polish off and I wasn’t about to let it go to waste. Wolfgang indicated he would be fine in the room so I went down to the cigar bar and ordered a Bass and smoked my Cohiba. 3 business people came and sat down at the bar to the left of me. The alpha female of the group started talking with me and even bought me a beer. She was Asian but I’m not sure whether Japanese or not. It seemed like they were traveling from somewhere else as best I could tell. The bartender’s name was Torisawa. He was in black tux and black bowtie with a white shirt. Very polished and very professional if not a bit mechanical. He kept me in trail mix. I thoroughly enjoyed my cigar and Bass and then headed up to the room where Wolfgang was engaged on his iPod. Day 9 was over. Tomorrow we come home.
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