October 18. 2004 22:55

In Tokyo

More than anything, the night view from the sky lounge at the top floor of our hotel makes me feel like I'm in Tokyo. There's a motorway right below us, we're surrounded by skyscrapers with red lights blinking on their roofs and the view is perfected by Tokyo Tower alight just before the fog blurs the horizon.

The loss of crowd continued yesterday when we walked the streets to Akihabara. There, though, when we got to the shopping area, it started to feel like a big city. The goal of our walk was to get an electric dictionary for me. We checked some models at the first stand and it seemed like only 3 Canon models had English menus and one of them didn't know kanji (characters of Chinese origin). I tried to get one that I could teach new words, but none of the models could do that. So, after contempleting on it for a while, I decided to just get the newest Canon model, WordTank G30, for as cheap as I could. We didn't look too thoroughly, but got it for 22000 yen at one of the bigger stores.

We also ran into Gamers. It had 7 floors of cool anime, manga and games stuff! I saw a very beautiful Advent Children poster of Tifa and wondered if I should get it, then decided no and regret it now. If it were that church scene of Cloud I'd have taken it without a blink, but I hesitated with Tifa, and now I really feel like I want it. But on the manga floor there were lots of artbooks and I found this great, big, hard cover artbook of Hikaru no go. It was damn expensive but I love Hikaru no go art, so I stood there for several minutes with it... Then I decided I wanted it and my dad said he'd pay for it, so it was even easier.

we had a Japanese breakfast at the hotel today. I hear it was pretty expensive, but it came with the package, I guess. It was really good and filling, too. It was served at the Japanese restaurant on the 5th floor, next to the hotel garden, and open air Japanese garden with a tea room and a carp pond. And on the 5th floor. They're really amazing, the Japanese. I like this love for the nature they have.

Today we went to Meiji Jingu, which was a nice shrine but not that much new to me. I found it in a leaflet that said it was the most famous shrine in Tokyo, so I though it might be interesting. Later I found out that there was also a temple that seemed even more interesting, but oh well, can't have it all. Then we went to the Imperial Park through some a little boring but very city-like government buildings. The park was a nice city park, simple but relaxingly quiet in the middle of the streets.

For the evening we continued to Ginza. It was pretty interesting and had lots of nice, fashinable clothes, but (of course) it was also very expensive. We just walked around a little, checking the feel of a big shopping area, and stopped in in a few interesting looking stores. We found a place where you can stuff your own bear and then dress it, and then we got to a toy store where I found a Cinnamoroll calendar for myself. You can see Halloween's a big thing for the Japanese because there were Halloween advertisements everywhere... They started it when the month changed and it's even more visible here than in Kyoto.

When the time closed in on 21 we returned to the hotel and experienced a slightly crowded subway ride. Now I've felt that, too ^_^ I've been idly looking for geta, wooden sandals, for weeks now, but surprisingly I now found the nicest pair I had ever seen at the hotel shop. I was afraid they'd be really expensive, but 4000 didn't seem too much, so I got them. They're very, very nice and I'm wearing them now ^_^ The other catches for today were a flute from Meiji Jingu (doesn't work too well, but it's pretty) and some Fizzing Whizzbees I ran into at a convenient store ^_^ (They're not as good as they sound like in the Harry Potter books, though, and unfortunately they don't make you float 10 cm above the ground...) We got some fruit and vinegar drinks from an ad stand in Ginza and they're actually a lot better than they sound like. The taste of vinega is almost unnoticeable.