Today was a trial by fire for both our feet, though Sarah was going in with an already sore ankle. Sarah has a fitbit and the days total was at 6.96 miles. Pretty good, though now she's in pain and soaking her feet in the very deep tub here.
It took us a while to get organized in the morning. We woke up around 6am which isn't bad and think tonight we're pretty adjusted to the time difference. High today was 52F and sunny. Most of the time we didn't want our jackets on. One thing we noticed was that the Japanese overall like or are used to it warm. Outside everyone had coats on and many with scarves. In stores it was unpleasantly warm in many and made us wish we had on short sleeves.
We first stopped at the Tokyo Metropolitan Govmt Building which has tourist info where we got some stamps for our collections (pictures below) and has a free observatory. While a beautiful day Mt Fuji elusive had a cloud only covering him. Boooo hope we'll see him yet.
We then headed towards Kabukicho which has a red light district in it but really isn't much, not like Amsterdam. It's really just fairly touristy but neat to look at. For our first real meal in Japan we had... Kebab. It was pretty ok for being very cheap. 350 yen so about $2.25. We looked around the new building there finished in 2023, Kabukicho Tower. It's somewhat gimmicky, set to look like how folks think of Japan with neon signs everywhere inside and overpriced restaraunts, arcade on the second level and I think fancier places upstairs. We werent sure what was up further maybe a host club? There were lots and lots of girls going up to the upper levels or at least 0 guys that we saw.
Down the road we played just a couple claw grab games and lost. The big difference in the Japanese ones is they're more or less luck based in that the claw will or won't grab with full strength. So you might be able to nudge the item towards a pit where you get it or enough money needs to be sunk in for the claw to actually grip it.
We saw the big godzilla head which maybe I just didn't notice last time and then went a little further out to the official godzilla store, which was surprisingly small. Sarah got some godzilla minus one Bicycle playing cards as a souvenir and they're pretty cool.
We had pork bowls at this place I saw on the youtubes. Slightly off the main drag, nothing in english and usually Japanese salarymen go there at night. Their lunch hours are only 12pm-2pm. Very good, and I know I'm gonna put too much cost info in here but the meal was $7.50 and by comparison that's cheaper than a big mac meal in the US by several bucks. Just really good hunk of meat with wasabi mustard, eggs with gelatinous yolks, no tipping also ❤️. I love love love having tax included in prices and no tipping culture. Not like for saving but that it makes things so much easier.
After looking around more we stopped at a Starbucks and rested more with some Earl Grey Bouquet Latte that was a little too sweet and tasted a lot like fruit loops. But resting was nice.
Afterwards we took the trains to Nakano station and then a shopping area called Nakano Broadway. I was honestly expecting more here. It was pretty interesting it was a big mall strip with covered hallways. We went in a pet shop and an arcade, and a figure store. But... a lot of stores were closed on Wednesday, some were permanent closed from Covid like shuttered storefronts. I'd heard it was an alternative to the east side of Akihabara where there's lots of little video game and anime shops but apparently a lot of it got hid hard in Covid (according to the internet which isn't wrong). The lower level was eateries and groceries. We left back via train then did our first bus. Very easy to use as it turned out.
Our last stop was FamilyMart for dinner. Mmmm cheap convenience store food. Venture on a few things. I tried a tuna mayo onigiri (rice ball) which is oook. I was hoping it wasn't like canned tuna, but it was. Japanese mayo is superior to other mayo and helped even it out but still not my cup of tea. Got some sushi, Sarah got an egg salad sando, piece of fried chicken, and tried a chicken fried rice ball with pepper which should have been reversed in name to pepper fried rice with chicken. Lots of black pepper. Got a whiskey highball, tea, soda, and some lil pudding cups for dessert.
That's it! It's 7pm ish now and I'm about to add the pictures including the ones of Sarahs seat I said I'd add. I apologize per usual that I probably won't edit typos or autocorrects in the blog so please don't hold it against me.
I lied I only got a B rating. The last train stop I was short by 3 meters :(
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