Tokyo Return Day 1

We made it back to our hotel in Tokyo this morning and left our luggage while we went out exploring.

Our first stop was Akihabara, the electronics and otaku (Japanese geek) center of the city. There were TONS of duty-free electronics shopping stores, though the prices weren't all that much better than in the States. There were some awesome wholesale cable sellers around that would be great if I lived here and needed something. There also were some great arcades - way better than anything in the States. We went into a Club Sega, one of the bigger ones. There were whole floors dedicated to particular games, and I played a game of Taiko: Drum Master. There were also a lot of girls on the street handing out fliers for different character cafes, places where you could go to eat and be served by girls in costumes. They wouldn't let you take pictures, though. There was also a Gundam cafe... Crazy.

From there we headed to Shibuya, home of the famous pedestrian crossing that you see in movies, as well as the giant video screen-building.

There are a bunch of clothing stores around the area as well. We were trying to find some cute items to buy like in some of the other cities, but Shibuya didn't really have anything like that. We stopped into Shibuya 109, the taste-maker clothing mall of Japan, and we ended up finding a hanko (signature stamp) shop and decided to stop by. The lady there helped me find some kanji (Chinese characters) approximations for "Vidal" and we ordered a stamp that we'll pick up before we leave for the airport on Thursday.

Shibuya crossing is also home of the statue of Hachiko, the faithful dog. Japanese people use it as a meeting point because it's kind of in a big open area.

We stopped by the hotel to actually check in, discovered our bags had been brought up, and looked up some other shopping areas in Tokyo. We headed out to Ikebukuro on the suggestion of the internet.

There we found an awesome shop called Loft at the top of the department store that resides on top of Ikebukuro station. It had a ton of different items from home goods to toys to GIGA PUDDING.

From there we went to a shopping mall called Sunshine City, which had a ton of stores, plus Toys-R-Us (which didn't actually have that many different items than the US one), plus Namco Namjatown - an amusement theme park inside of the mall. We didn't actually go in, because evidently many of the attractions require "high Japanese reading and listening skills," but we were quite tempted.

Look at that cat. His monocle beckons you to Namjatown.

We went next to Tokyu Hands, a shop very much like Loft. It had a pet store on the top floor that had a free-roaming cat room that you could visit to pet cats. Most of them didn't seem much interested in being pet, but a couple were relatively friendly.

We ate dinner at the pizza restaurant at the hotel again, which was delicious.

More exploring tomorrow.