Akihabara, Asakusa and Odaiba in Tokyo, Japan

We planned to do so much today, is it just me that estimates how long things will take and massively underestimates. Now it’s the end of the day i realise we did
do a lot so I’m happy. You know you’ve had a good day when your feet
ache.

After a full night’s sleep we headed straight out to Akihabara to the district known as Electric town. Imagine a Maplins warehouse that has exploded, spewing forth all manner of gadgets, gizmos, power
supplies, cables, switches, LEDs and enough weird and wonderful
electrical goodies to keep any Otaku (that’s Japanese for geek) busy for
months.

There’s also the odd Manga store. Selling fantastic manga figurines (rather raunchy Japanese cartoons) which i’d love to bring home but don’t have enough room in our
luggage. We stumbled into an adult section (honest), they’re quite open
about their adult entertainment preferences and it’s all very artistic
(honest!). That would have fitted in my bag had i been allowed to buy
some.

From there we headed to Asakusa where there’s a fantastic trinkets market and one of the most famous temples in Tokyo, Senso Ji. We wafted our faces with incense (supposed to help recovery from any ailments) and
had our fortune told by randomly selecting a stick from a metal tin and
finding the draw containing your fortune. Apparently my finances and
marriage will be “good”. Marvelous!

At 13:55 we caught the most futuristic boat i have ever seen down to Odaiba, a man made island full of massive skyscrapers, to visit the Science and emerging
technologies museum. An amazing place featuring sections on
Nanotechnology, space, particle acceleration and my favorite bit.
Robots! We met Asimo who liked looking at Debs, where ever she stood.
We both became a bug like robot, sitting in a 3D video simulation room
and controlling a small robot that fed the video in the room from it’s
camera eyes. A weird and amazing experience.

After the mandatory snooze we headed out to Yurakucho to find a small Japanese pub mentioned in our guide book. One thing you get used to in Tokyo is making mistakes, after walking in completely the wrong
direction for half an hour, asking people for directions (sending us
even more in the wrong direction) we found where it should have been and
still couldn’t find it. We chose the place as the guide said it had
English speaking owners. Ironic then that we should end up in a
restaurant nearby called the “Rose and Crown”, a spitting image of a
Victorian English pub, where nobody spoke to word of English.

Bags packed and ready for our Shinkansen ride to Sapporo tomorrow, a mammoth 11 hours of scenic fun. I can’t wait!