Predictably, we couldn’t sleep much our first night, and took advantage of this to plan a trip to the famous Tsujiki fish markets. We left the ryokan around 5:30 am and headed over…
…only to find it closed to tourists until 9 am! So, at about 6:30 am we were loose in a city that wouldn’t wake for about 3 hours 🙂
That was taken at a fox shrine near Tsujiki, as we debated our next move. Eventually we decided to stroll over to the imperial gardens before heading to another attraction around 9. The walking had begun!
Bernard’s camera is stupid-impressive, but also stupid-heavy! Here he is self-portraiting during a break we took after finding the imperial gardens closed! Asakusa here we come!
That’s a look back along Nakamise-dori from within the famous Senso-ji temple. It was about 11 am by now; the day had barely started yet we’d been gallivanting for hours already. Senso-ji was great though, with lots of people and the tourist shops selling everything a man could want…
Our first lunch (Burger King!) over, it was time for Odaiba. While no Alihabara or Nagano, it was here that Bernard would be introduced to the wonder of the Japanese arcade 🙂
This photo was taken while I was still in the late stages of shock after just coming across a Monster Hunter shop in Decks mall. Since I believe in supporting the economy, I made some modest purchases and was awarded with a special bag, Airu (the cat mascot) hat and even a sticker!
That’s a real scale Gundam outside Diver City mall at Odaiba. Note KLS for scale. This was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen!
It was about 2 pm when we found the first of 3 major arcades in Odaiba. Oodles would be spent UFO catching and redemption machining, and a great time was had by all! Among other things Bernard won himself an AKB48 mouse and mousepad set:
I won, from a single Y500 (~$5) credit, three super cute Airu’s from the same machine:
But alas, the wonderful Rilakkuma hand puppets were cursed with a ‘weak claw’ machine and were unwinnable:
We eventually left Odaiba around 6 pm, all in a state of advanced ruination. We’d been going strong for about 13 hours, and my pedometer registered over 40,000 steps. We had bags of loot and dying feet when we got back. Delirious, I even ate a convenience store hot dog for dinner…
…before collapsing – corpselike – onto the bed! What a first day 🙂