Day 3 - Tokyo

The temple gardens
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We woke up this morning and headed out to some Japanese breakfast place down the street. I had shredded pork on curry with soft boiled egg and rice. Amy had pork, rice, and raw egg. Strange. Filling.

Headed over to the huge temple just up the street from us. We toured around a bit and went through the souvenir markets. I started looking for a USB cable for the camera, or anything cool and not super touristy. Julian wants a small Asian family to clean his house, no luck yet J.

Ouch, my feet

Plastic sushi
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We met some local man in one of the temple gardens, he told us that we needed to go a few blocks over and check out them “Plastic food” shops. These are the places that sell the fake food to go in the display cabinets in front of restaurants. Pretty strange stuff.

We eventually made our way over to the plastic food. It was pretty incredible how well done most of it was. Expensive though, a piece of sushi was $15, grilled fish $75, ice-cream cone $12.

After our fill of plastic food we caught the train downtown. We headed to a place that Galaen recommended Akihabara. We found this giant store, like a 9 story Futureshop on steroids, probably about 2 acres per floor. They sold everything. There were 6 inch laptops, 80 inch plasma’s, thousands of camera’s, hundreds of mp3 players. There were literally millions of items in this place.

The toilet seat aisle. Aparently a toilet seat should cost $1200.
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I bought the USB cable that I needed, as well as one of those exercise stretch cords so that I don’t get fat.

While we were there, we happened on a few interesting sections. On 7^th floor we found the massage chair aisle. There was a selection of around 25 or 30 chairs to choose from. I sat in “Master Hands”. It does your feet, thighs, forearms, and basically everything else on the body. It was god sent for sore feet.

The second thing we found was “Rodeo Boy”. It seems that the latest trend for losing the fat in Japan is to ride a fake horse. It is like a saddle with a handle that flops around like a galloping horse. $1300 people spend on this thing. Of course I tried it out. There is video.

Peddle boating around the lake.
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We spent about 4 hours in the store and then left for hunger. Down the block we found a vending machine restaurant. I pressed the wrong button and got soup with noodles, and white mucus on top.

Above this vendo-straunt, there was a massive “Book Tower”, a 9-storey book store. We walked through the whole thing looking for English books, nothing. These people sure do like their porn though. Some disturbing things too. Girls 6-12 in bikinis?

Another train ride over to Ueno station, one of the busiest areas. There is a huge park here with a giant 5 storey pagoda. A lot of homeless men sleeping in this park. Wild cats too. Still felt safe.

Pagoda. 5 midget storey.
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In the middle of the lake there is a lake (Swamp) with boats that you can rent. We rented one for about $6 for 30 minutes. Had a good time chasing the gees and ducks and other foul.

Walked up to have a look at the pagoda. It is pretty big, but 5 storey for midgets. The doors look like they are about 3 feet high. We were unable to go in for whatever reason. Got some good shots though, I think.

Time to shop. We walked down into the Ueno shopping district. Crazy cool cheap goodstuff. I bought shoes, and a hoodie. I saw two more pairs of shoes that I am going to buy. Puma’s are $32, and the are real!

Ueno shopping district
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Ate McDonalds, as we do at least once in every country.

Train home and passed out in bed. End of day 3.

I fixed the photo album problem. You should be able to see one for each day here:http://picasaweb.google.com/babyblues6