After going to bed last night around 8:30pm today started early.. 5:30am early. We spent some time sitting around the hostel for awhile and getting cleaned up, but then with nothing really to do we decided to head to Asakusa. Since we weren't really thinking it never dawned on us that everything would be closed at 7:30am. So after walking around the SensÅ-ji shrine for awhile and being careful not to feed the birds (note the warning sign to the left) we began to wonder off a bit. For those interested in whats around the shrine there is plenty to do including a porn theater (with free previews on the signs outside), tiny amusement park, strip clubs, and some random sports complex all on one street. After awhile hunger began to set in and being the world travelers we are we ended up in another McDonalds, our second trip in 24hrs.... What can I say, Chris and I have a nose for fast food. We hung out a little longer waiting for things to gradually open up and then headed off to Akihabara.For those who don't know Akihabara is also known as "Akihabara Electric Town" and pretty much has any electronic you can think of from bare wire for the do it yourselfer to general electronics. By the way, if anyone needs a Wii let me know they are all over the duty free stores that sell the 120v versions. Somehow it is easier for me to find a Wii that works in the U.S here in Japan than in the U.S. Anyway we spent some time walking in and out of all the electronic stores, arcades, and toy stores. It is a pretty impressive thing, guys from 15 - 50 all sitting around playing arcade games and shopping for toys. The place is pretty much made for guys like us.. other than the whole everything is in Japanese. For the most part the toy stores were pretty cool packed full of transformers (some originals for 250 bucks), dragon ball, old american toys and child porn. Yeah that last one was actually pretty disturbing. I am not really sure what the deal is, but for some reason there is porn in the back of some of the stores including young girls in bikinis.. like 4 years old young!
From there we took in our first non fast food meal and actually tried some geniune Japanese cuisine. The meal included rice, miso soup, and what pretty much equates to chicken fingers. It was really good and for the first time since In-N-Out Burger in Phoenix I felt full. Feeling full we decided to take a little break so we headed for the hostel and our soft mats....
After about an hour and a half we headed back down the Hibiya line to the Imperial Palace. A few tourist photo ops there and we were done with the place in about 10 minutes. I am sure it is really cool to see, the down side for tourists is that since it is still in use you can't see much more than a gate. Not really sure what to do at that point we began to follow our ears down the road about 3 blocks. In the nearby Hibiya Park we stumbled on to a rock concert full of teens and adults waiting to get in. Close by there was a group of teenagers rocking out to their friends like they were playing rock band in their living room, which was pretty entertaining. Although we wanted to stick around and check out the concert the price was a little steep, 60 bucks, we had no clue when it started and we were the only white guys around. Its a funny most tourists seem to stick pretty close to the tourist areas so if you walk just a few blocks off you are pretty much the only non Japanese people around.
From there we headed to Roppongi, which is where I currently sit. Off to dinner and to see what the night life has in store. Wish us luck... it is going to take a miracle for us to stay awake past 10pm.
