Quickie

We've gotten back late and have to get up early tomorrow to catch the shinkansen to Kyoto, so I'm going to keep this update brief, and edit it when I have time tomorrow to add in pictures.

Woke up early again, showered, got ready and out the door by 8:30. We hopped on the train to Akihabara and went to a cute little bakery by the station there called Vie de France to get breakfast. I got a coffee anpan (a bread pastry filled with coffee paste and cream), and a tuna and tomato sandwich. After we finished eating we went and reserved our seats for the JR Shinkansen for the rest of our trip, since the bullet trains tend to get filled up fast, and then wandered some around Akiba (short for Akihabara in case you couldn't tell) again, ducking into a few shops since the day before we hadn't had much time because of the rain and us being there so late in the afternoon/evening.

In one of the department stores we went into I found an awesome replacement suitcase for around $80 bucks, and a whole lot of awesome souvenirs. I spent a crapton of money in that store. Once we finished in Akiba we came back to drop off our purchases and my new suitcase and have lunch. On the way out of the train station we stopped and bought mochi ice cream as a little snack to hold us over until we ate lunch. Will got white chocolate, Andrew got blueberry yogurt, and I got sakura flavored. Sakura flavor is hard to describe, but it's subtly sweet and very, very refreshing.

Once that was done, I brought the old POS suitcase back downstairs for Eiro, one of the guys who works at the hostel, to take care of (for 200 yen since it's such a big piece of trash), and then we went out to search for a sushi place to eat. We ended up at a place called Maguro Bito (Tuna People), which was awesome! Will doesn't like sushi, so he didn't order anything, but Andrew and I both got a lunch special where we got a tuna roll, piece of inari-zushi, tamago, some sort of other tuna nigiri, shrimp, and then four of our own choices of nigiri for 1000 yen (it also came with miso soup). The chef of the restaurant was so nice to us; he gave Will free miso soup, and apparently I look just like Leah Dizon, some model or something, so he gave me a free piece of sushi that he made up to look like a rabbit or some sort of cute animal, and all of us free mango sorbet for desert. He even asked Andrew to take his picture with me, which we gladly obliged, and he gave Andrew his address so we can mail him a copy of the picture. Needless to say I felt very, very flattered for the rest of the day. Lunch was even further bettered by the fact that, while we were inside eating, the rain of the day dumped over the city, leaving clear, sunny skies for us when we emerged.

After lunch we hopped on the train to go to Pokemon Center, where Andrew and Will embraced their inner PokeNerd. Once we'd finished there, we went to Shinjuku, which is the main part of Tokyo that you see in movies and television dramas and stuff. It's mostly businesses and official skyscrapers, but very pretty nonetheless. Andrew led us to the Shinjuku Government Building, where we rode the elevator up to the 44th or 45th story to an observatory, where you can see Tokyo sprawled out in every direction around you. There's also an open shop in the middle of the floor where I bought more souvenirs and had a group of Taiwanese school kids (high school age I think) on a trip ask to take their picture with me. Something about today just made me feel like a movie star, without the fame or riches.

After we descended from the observatory we walked around a little more and went into an electronics shop that had lots of anime figurines, DVDs, CDs, et cetera, and looked around at that for a bit. We were going to meet Mika, a former CSU student (I was mistaken about calling her a volunteer sensei in my last post; she was actually an exchange student who spent all four years of her undergrad at CSU), for a late dinner in Roppongi, so we headed over there. Our reservations weren't unti, 8:15, so she showed us around Roppongi for a little before we headed over to the restaurant, which is apparently the place where Quentin Tarantino got the inspiration for his set in Kill Bill where the Bride goes after O-ren Ishii. She ordered us an amazing several-course dinner with an all-you-care-to-drink attached, so needless to say we had an awesome time. I had some plum wine and a rum and coke (yay for the legal age in Japan being 20! Even though they didn't card us...), and got pretty tipsy since I'm a major lightweight. We spent about three hours in that place, which is amazing to me because it definitely didn't feel like very long.

But I almost fell asleep at the table, because a tipsy Kristin plus a travel-worn Kristin equals a heavy, tired Kristin, and so we got up and left to catch the trains back home. We got back a little less than an hour ago, and packed up what stuff we could so we can facilitate our trip to catch the trains to Kyoto in the morning. I absolutely love my  new suitcase; it fits everything and still has room for more, and has four wheels so it rolls in every which direction and won't get caught  or flip over on me. Also, it has a locking handle and attached strap on the top! Yay!

That's it for now. I need to brush my teeth and grab some shut-eye. I'll post a link to some pictures in my next installment.

Oh, also, some things I've been wanting to mention about Japan that always slip my mind:

• when you pay, you don't hand the money directly to the cashier. You put it in a little tray, and then they take it and put your change and receipt back on the tray for you to take.
• Pedestrians take absolute priority here. It's really weird, 'cause cars will turn right up to the line of people walking and slowly inch forward until there's a break big enough for them to squeeze through. Kind of freaked me out a little at first, but it works. It's interesting, too, because Will, Andrew and I are so used to stopping for cars to go that we get weird looks from drivers when we stop at a crosswalk and wave for them to go on.
• You don't tip. It's pretty much included with the price, and it's considered rude to tip extra.

That's it for now. I know there's more but I don't want to wait up for another half an hour trying to think of it.