Tokyo Return Day 2

Before I get started about today, I forgot to mention yesterday that we had conveyor sushi for lunch. It was really delicious and inexpensive.

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We got up a little later than normal today, and headed back over to Choco Cro for some breakfast before heading out on today's adventure.

Our first stop was Tokyo Tower, one of the major landmarks of Tokyo. You have to pay a separate price to go beyond the first observatory at 150 meters up to the second observatory at 250 meters, and we decided to go ahead and do that. The view from both were quite amazing. It really makes Tokyo feel a lot bigger than when you're jumping around town on the train, with buildings off into the horizon. On the way over to the tower, we could see where the very tip of the tower was just slightly bent from the earthquake. This also got us thinking about how freaky it probably was to be at the top of the tower during it, which sped our visit a little bit.

A stone fence with names along a temple grounds,
on the way to Tokyo Tower

There were quite a number of these masses of shrines to
children on the temple grounds.

A crazy gargoyle on the temple roof

There were dog statues at the base of one of the tower legs...
I'm not sure why.

Hello, Dr. Dinosaur/Hamlet... I'm not sure what you were doing
at the observation deck of Tokyo Tower.

The temple we had passed on the way over

There were look-down windows on the first observation deck.

The bent tip of Tokyo Tower

From Tokyo Tower, we headed to the Pokemon Center Tokyo, since I was having a bit of regret of not buying a polo that I really wanted. We got lost on the way there because the map on the website had a big dot on it where I thought it said the location was, but in reality it was a different point on the map and we had to backtrack.

We ate lunch at another Italian place because it still sounded good and it was right next to the Pokemon Center. Meghan had pizza again and I had some pasta. The pasta was really good, but the pizza was not quite up to par with what we had at the hotel.

We walked our way down to the pier to catch the Sumida river cruise water bus that would take us up the river for about half an hour. We unfortunately got one of the older boats that didn't have an open top section, so the ride was a little less enjoyable, but it was still neat to see the city from the river and get some pictures of all the different kinds of bridges they've built.

There was this big mast sticking out of the ground. We walked by it
to the pier, and this is the view from the boat.

Tokyo Tower from the river

This is the spaceship boat that we REALLY wanted to be on,
but I'm pretty sure it only ran between two different places
that we didn't really want to go.

We weren't quite sure what these were... Flood gates maybe?
Wave dampers?

The Asahi building

We ended up deciding to go to try and find a Japanese DS game that was produced by Studio Ghibli called Ni no Kuni. It came out in December, and almost every store in Akihabara had long stopped selling it, it seemed. We finally ended up at Yodobashi Camera, a giant electronics store that was basically nine floors with each floor being an entire Best Buy, just a different department. It was insanely large. They had quite a few copies, at an extremely reasonable price, considering it comes with a big spell book. They told us it wouldn't work on non-Japanese DS's, but I was pretty sure that it all DS games are region free (I was right, it turns out).

LOOK AT ALL THE CAPSULE MACHINES.
THERE WAS ANOTHER AISLE OF THEM BEHIND THIS ONE.

From there, it was early yet, so we decided to go shopping around. We ended up all over the place, from Ginza, to Tokyo Station Center, to Shinjuku just wandering mostly.

We also found these Dr. Hello Kitty dolls.

Some of them had anatomical cut outs.

Eventually, when we were shopped out, we tried to take the train back to the hotel. We sat in the train wondering when it was going to leave, and finally a nice Japanese lady next to me translated the station message for us - there was an accident that was stopping the Chuo line (the one we needed) from going, and we would probably need to take the subway instead. We figured out that JR was handing out Tokyo Metro passes to let us divert for free and we finally found the correct line that would take us back to the hotel.

Now we'll finish packing and get some sleep. Tomorrow morning, I'll stop by Shibuya to pick up my hanko that I ordered and then we'll head to the airport... The end of our trip.

We'll probably do a wrap up post when we get back. Thanks for sticking with us! We had a great time, and I hope we were able to convey a good sense of our experience.

Link to today's pictures.