Category: Trip

Today we went to Yokohama, a trip of a little under an hour south by train. Specifically we went to the Minatomirai district, which is popular with tourists.

Our first stop was the 69th floor observatory (“sky garden”) of the Landmark Tower. Skies were clear and the views were extraordinary! In addition to clear 360 views of Yokohama, we could also see Tokyo (Sky Tree!) and even had a magnificent view of Fuji:

In case you’re keeping track, Landmarks viewing level is higher than Tokyo Tower and only surpassed in Japan by Sky Tree. In one week we’d done the three highest 🙂

Next we headed over to the Cosmoworld amusement park just adjacent to the mall at the base of Landmark.

We of course rode the gigantic wheel (‘Cosmo Clock’) and I rode the coaster you can see before it. We did an old fashioned pedal powered monorail and a weird ghost train in which we were locked in a cage. But the best exhibit was ‘Cave of Shooting: Echidna’:

This was a 3D shooting gallery on rails that was mega fun. Unsurprisingly – and due to my unique combination of marksmanship and monster killing skills – I got the daily high score and received a special card as a prize:

What an accomplishment!!

Of course we also did our daily share of UFO Catching and capsule machines, and later in the day I hopped over to Akiba to buy a few more souvenirs.

We’ll be returning there on our last full day tomorrow, for a bender of gaming, UFO catching and shopping. It promises to be a fun day 🙂

Today we visited otaku shopping mall Nakano Broadway. It’s jam-packed with dozens of little stores that sell anything a maniac like me may be after.

Tamagotchis, wrestling masks, model trains, telephone cards, jigsaw puzzles, boxed Vectrex games, 1980s Japanese RPG manuals, idol books and CDs, animation cels, Tokusatsu items, ancient stickers from vending machines, sports memorabilia, Michael Jackson merchandise, happy meal toys, RC cars, old signs, toy figurines, electronic music on vinyl, dolls, board games, lots and lots of manga and anime: all this and much more can be found here.

That shows a few of the curious things I saw today, including one of the JP only original gamebooks to complement the FF series (yes, I bought it), two of the rare panoramic game-and-watches and tiny (~2 cm) Ultraman figures from the 1980s.

Even more mind-boggling for me today were the $250 Wizardry PC game guide, the $1000 game-and-watch and the $2500 sticker (yes sticker) that was packaged in candy 32 years ago! Like me, fans of such esoterica are getting older and they’re collections more complete. Naturally prices for the scarce items have risen.

If I lived near Nakano it would be dangerous indeed. There’s so much there is love to collect 🙂

That’s a seafood restaurant a hop and skip from the hotel. As usual the lights at night are often very pretty, and every evening I’m enjoying the view as I write cards.

And then as I started writing this while lying on the bed I suddenly felt very nauseous. Almost immediately thereafter I felt the bed, and then the building shake. This continued for some time (over 20 seconds apparently) and was my first earthquake. It was disconcerting to say the least, if only because it was sustained so we had time to understand it was (still) happening. But the locals were unfazed, probably because it’s already the second this week!

Tomorrow we’re off to somewhere new! Another tower, another Ferris wheel, and what else will we find? Stay tuned…