Japan Trip Part 9

We woke up around 8:00am and Minako's family was kind enough to make us breakfast. Our first stop on the way to Tokyo was Shibuya. We split into three group. The guys went to the games, manga, and music store, some of the girls went clothes shopping and I have no clue where the third group went. I looked around the manga section, but didn't want to buy anything, that's too much stuff to carry around and I don't want to just buy one volume of a series. I did buy one used Sakura Taisen game for DS, and four ued music cds; Bonnie Pink, two brilliant green, and Lucky Soul. I was happy to find Lucky Soul, since they're a British band, and the Japanese version of their album has two bonus tracks, but it doesn't have the secret track. We ate lunch at Yoshinoya and had some delicious beef bowls. Sadly there was no room for all of us to eat together, so I ate upstairs by myself.

After lunch, we met up and walked to the Meiji Shrine.
On the way we walked to through a massive bicycle and motorcycle parking area. We was a slightly interesting to me. There wasn't enough actual motorcycle, just a lot of big scooters. Along walk way there were some homeless people's houses too.

The Meiji Shrine was kind of interesting, I'm not really fan of shrines. I did buy some lucky charms though. The shrine is right next to Harajuku which was our next stop.

The main attraction was the "underground", which is basically a street with a ton of clothing stores of varying styles. Walking through, one of the owners stopped me and brought me into his urban clothing store. It's not my style but I had time to kill. The prices were ridiculous, and I was definitely wasn't going to buy urban clothing in Japan. I explained to him that I was hoping I could find a great Engrish shirt. He showed me a couple of shirts, but they all had proper English. In fact, Harajuku disappointed me, because I could find any Engrish shirts. I only found little store, that wasn't even in the underground, that had cool shirts. Being a Tuesday afternoon, we didn't see many of the Harajuku girls or street performers.

After Harajuku, we hopped on the train to end to the main destination of all the men, Akihabara. We went straight into the giant Yodobashi store across from the subway station. I went straight to the 6th floor which has all the games, music, and most importantly toys. There was so many things that I wanted to buy, but I knew I couldn't fit them into my luggage. Coincidently, they sold luggage on that floor. I ended up buying a 1/60 YF-19, which has been something I've wanted for the past 10 years. I also bought a Pinky:St figure of Sakura Shinguji. After spending about an hour in Yodobashi, I finally got out to explore some of the smaller shops. I found one shop with a smaller, YF-19 at the price and it was still transformable. The shop also had a ton of gatchapon figures. I wish I had more time to walk around, but I spent too much time in Yodobashi. Dr. John latched onto me in Yodobashi so I wasn't completely free to roam. After buying some gatchapon, John was getting hungry so we went to a Kaiten sushi place.

Earlier that week in Akihabara, a mad man killed several people. So there was onlookers, and media everywhere. I didn't really notice them at first, but walking back after dinner, I noticed. We all met up at the train station, and had a long and crowded trip back to Yokohama. Once back at Minako's I tore into my new toys, and everyone looked at me as if I was a child, which might been true. I was ecstatic to have have my own variable YF-19, which I played with for a while, because I had trouble transforming it. Before bed we had to neatly pack our things, because we were going to Nikko, and Minako was having other people stay at her house while we were gone.