Day 4: Kaiten Zushi, Akihabara and the Shibuya Crossing

Time for the next posting here. Today, our plan was to check out the Fuji TV station building, Tsukiji Fish Market, Ginza and Shibuya. However, we needed to get shoes that could actually withstand the amount of water we’ve been taking on from the rain. With that said, we needed another trip to Donki. This time we went to one a little closer to our hotel and this time we had luck with shoes. We ended up getting water shoes like the ones people where at the beach. However, Sara’s actually looked like regular flats so her’s were alright, mine definitely were water shoes. Here’s the sign to Donki:

When all was said and done for with what we had to do in the morning we decided to drop Fuji TV from our list of places to see as the train to it would eat up about 45 minutes and another 30 to get to our next location. After getting our shoes we headed down to Shinjuku station to catch the train over to Yurakucho station (said you-rock-cho). At Yurakucho station the plan was to eat in the area then head to Ginza then to the Tsukiji Fish Market. We looked up a Kaiten Zushi (conveyor belt sushi) restaurant nearby and headed to it. We walked through some really cool areas on the way and came across a good picture opportunity of some cars in Japan we see a lot. We call them micro-machines:

We then made it to a mall called Kitte. And it had really unique shops in it. By unique I mean shops that would appeal to a very specific demograph, such as seamstresses, or even just a store with one genre of item such as socks. There were shops too that had clothing as well and very stylish clothes. People in Tokyo and throughout Japan it seems dress really well for the most part. The girls are almost always in skirts or very trendy slacks, but very modest and pretty. The guys on the other hand are usually in dress pants and shirt, if not a full suit. That’s not to say people dress down as well, but on the whole people dress very well here and you can tell they put time into their appearance. That’s one thing about Japan me and Sara love, it’s that the people, no matter what they do or what their job is from big to small, they all have a lot of pride in it. They give everything their all and it really shows. Also, no matter what job they have they all have uniforms, it’s like in the old movies where every job had a uniform specific to the job from painters to the milkmen.

Anyways, we came to the mall for Kaiten Zushi so here’s a pic:

The way it works is the conveyor belt moves around with prepared sushi meals, drinks and desserts. Each item is on a colored plate representing it’s cost ranging from ¥100 to about ¥500 ($1-$5) You can also right down any specific requests and hand it to the chefs and they will prepare it for you. We had white fish, shrimp tempura, spicy tuna, eel and mochi for dessert. It was really really good.

Well when we finished up you call the waitress over and she counts the colored plates and hands you a paper with the total of each color. You then take that paper to the register and pay the bill, remember no tip. We left the restaurant and here was the view of the mall from there:

So, today we didn’t have rain, but I was carrying my water shoes in my backpack if need be, so I wore my normal work shoes. I was getting a slight blister feeling on my left foot so decided to get some thicker socks. Remember those unique one-type-of-item stores? I got a pair of socks from there. The sizes are in centimeters. I wore them over my other socks for extra padding and I was set. Sara’s ankles were getting blisters so we stopped to get bandaids for her. Due to the blister development and much of the trip ahead of us we decided not to make the walk to Ginza and the Fish Market as they were a fair walk for us and would eat up more time. We made a quick loop around the area to check it out and snap some pics then headed over to Akihabara the electronics district. This picture was just from walking around near Yurakucho station:

We had a few minute train ride to Akihabara and we set the GPS to Yodobashi Akiba. A GIANT electronics store.

This was the first street we turned down coming out of the train station at Akihabara:

On the way though we saw a Sega building and went in. It was a multi-level arcade. Tons of UFO games and other games I’ve never seen before. The japanese sure love their games here.

This game here was like Guitar Hero except it’s a keyboard instead. The kid in the striped shirt was a machine!

And this picture I thought really captures a few interesting things. One look at the claw. It’s two-pronged!!! How in the world will you pick something up with that?!?! Secondly, lean into your screen and take a look at the toy.

That should epitomize the type of guys coming to this arcade. We’ve read that Japan has cuddle cafes, where people men creeps? pay by the 15 minutes or so to cuddle with a girl since they are too busy to meet someone… or so they say.

We then left the arcade and continued on to Yodobashi Akiba, but not without seeing some more manga posters. We figured, well when in Akihabara and after seeing the arcade “chick” we figured it’d be a good time to get some poses with some, my picture first this time:

We then turned down a few more streets finally coming up to Yodobashi Akiba. We had to walk another block beyond it to fit it in the frame! This place is gargantuan:

We then walked each floor to see what was in it. Here are some pictures from within the megalith:

And a Ferrari bike… why not?

After Akihabara we were coming up on rush hour and decided to push down to Shibuya, one of Tokyo’s fashion centers. We got on the train and this time, due to rush hour, we had to pack on the trains like sardines. People just kept cramming themselves on and when you got to the bigger stations there was a lot of pushing for people to wriggle their way off. It wall worked out ok thought, I didn’t hear any sighs of exasperation so it seemed everyone got on and off on time. There wasn’t enough room to get my hand up to take a picture of the crowded trains.

Once we got to Shibuya we walked out of the station right into Hikarie, which was a shopping mall. We went downstairs and a few blocks over to the Shibuya crossing. Brace yourselves for the enormity of this place:

Well after that we crossed back over and decided to call it a night. We were pretty tired from all of the walking so we got back on the train to Shinjuku. We may stop back in Shibuya on our last day in Tokyo at the end of the trip.

Here was one more picture as we left Shibuya:

Tomorrow we will take the shinkansen (bullet trains) down to Miyajima Island and spend the night in a ryokan, or traditional japanese hotel. When you read this you will be one day behind real-time again.

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