Japan - Day 7 - Tokyo

It’s our final full day in Tokyo, and going over the tourist map that we have, it seems like we’ve already hit up all of the major tourist attraction spots, and then some! How is that possible? People said it would take an entire week to explore Tokyo.

We had what we were going to do in the morning all figured out; we were going to head to Odaiba. Odaiba is an artificial island built over a land fill many moons ago and resides in the Bay of Tokyo area.

In order to get to Palette Town and its surroundings we had to take the Yurikamome Line, which reminded me of a high speed roller coaster. Once we got there we began to wander around the island, it’s here, where we came across a familiar face. There are many well known attractions in Odaiba, such as the Island and Seaside Mall, Aqua City, Joypolis, Tokyo Beach and a life sized Gundam.

After saying hello to our giant friend in green, we wandered around the streets and Tokyo Beach for a bit, snapping pictures of whatever we felt was picture worthy. We wanted to head inside to the mall to look for food, however this was around 10:30 in the morning and the mall / food court wasn’t open till 11AM, but it was easy to kill time since there were so many new things to see.

We even came across a guy training his Pokémon.

Once the mall was open and we were inside, we slowly made our way to the food court to grab some fine authentic Japanese food, or as the locals call it, food. I didn’t have “lunch” here per se since before we left the hotel I stopped by the local convenience store and picked up a rice triangle, a bun and some juice, so I was quite full. Even though I was quite full, I could not pass up the offer to indulge in a green tea ice cream and red bean waffle, hey, it’s only my second one of the trip!

After that, we proceeded to explore the mall for a bit, and eventually taking turns going to the washroom, I know, I found that weird too. One person would go to the washroom, then come back, then all of a sudden the other person would realize that they had to go too, this kept going until we all went. If anybody has any theories they’d like to share on this subject, I’d like to hear it.

After the mall we made our way over to Joypolis, it was a decent sized Sega amusement park, inside they had a 24 and Prison Break game/ride. There was a small entrance fee and each attraction that you wanted to visit was to be paid separately. We didn’t go in since we figured most of the action of the story would be in Japanese and we would be left out.

After Joypolis there was still a giant Ferris wheel, FUJI TV headquarters and many other things to check out, but the remainder of these items were all the way across the island and at that point we didn’t feel like making the trek, since we had many other things to check out, or so we thought.

Since the train station was right by our hotel we headed back to the hotel to kind of “regroup” and gather our thoughts and decide on what we wanted to see for the rest of the day. In the lobby of the Five Star Hotel they had an entire display case with brochures for tourists like us, aside from that we also had our own personal concierge at our disposal for information.

I brought some of the brochures over for the guys to look at, while I chatted up the cute lady working at the concierge desk. I asked her where we could find the giant sized Gundam statue that was in the works, but she didn’t know, so we had to research it on the interent, turns out that Gundam statue that we wanted to see was in Odaiba, but on the other side of the island that we were too lazy to go across to, FML.

After that, I asked her what she recommended that we spend some time reviewing, she pointed out a few places, one of them being the Sensoji Temple. I went back and presented this information to the guys. Steve said that he was tired of visiting so many shrines and temples, he wanted to do some shopping. Ly, as usual, did not voice his opinion and said that he was fine with whatever we chose to do. I, was actually excited to visit the Sensoji Temple, since I did not visit enough back in Kyoto.

Since we couldn’t decide on what we wanted to do with our remaining time, we asked Ly what he wanted to do, and he finally said something. He said that he wanted to go to a place, but it would cost money and that we probably wouldn’t be willing to spend it on. At first we thought he wanted to go back to Akiharbara and drop some major coin on some of the electronics that we saw earlier, but he said that wasn’t it. We literally sat in the hotel lobby for about an hour and a half playing twenty questions with Ly, trying to figure out what he wanted to do and what we all wanted to do.

After asking him a bunch of questions, we found out that it couldn’t have been a gadget of some sort, since he said that it’s more of a service and you get nothing in return except for joy. So we immediately said that he wanted to head back to the Red Light District and get his freak on, but he assured us that wasn’t it.

Finally I got tired of just sitting around and wasting time trying to figure out something that he would not voluntarily reveal, so I made the suggestion that we each split up and go our separate ways then come back later on, meet up for dinner and exchange adventure stories, and they all agreed.

So Steve headed off back to Shibuya to do some “shopping”, and Ly headed off to his mystery destination, meanwhile, I headed off to my first shrine of the day, the Yushima Tenmangu Shrine, this shrine house the God of Learning. And yes, I did learn something new, I learned how to walk through a giant wreath in a religious manner.

After that I realized that I hadn’t eaten much solid food for the day and was feeling a bit hungry, so I stopped by a convenience store and grabbed some Dragon Ball Chicken.

From there, I made my way over to Asakusa to visit the Sensoji Temple, I was told that this was the oldest Temple in Tokyo, so I had to check it out. In front of the temple is a gate with a giant lantern and this was a well known landmark as well, however once you reach the giant lantern but before you get to the actual temple, you have to make your way through hundreds of methodically placed street vendors. Here they would offer you delectable sweets, over priced and non over priced souvenirs, as well as various other memorabilia’s.

Here is where I once again pigged out, I first started off with some weird pasty circular marbles stuck to a stick, which didn’t taste that good, then I had to buy a cup of green liquid to wash that down with, after that was done, a homemade fried bean jam bun caught my eye and I just had to try that, that was awesome! A few more steps and a few more shops down, I come across a store offering 33 different flavours of ice cream, but at that moment, I was kind of full from all the previous junk so I didn’t opt for it. After navigating my way through all those vendors and spending a good chunk of money on junk food, I finally make it to the steps of the temple.

Right out side of the temple there was a giant pot, if I may, with a lot of incense burning from it, I stood there for a moment and watched, a lot of the people would just stand there and kind of absorb in all the incense smoke, I suppose that’s what you were suppose to do with it. I was about to do the same, then I came across an Indian guy who basically wafted all the smoke towards him and kind of fanned himself with it. I said to myself, “He looks like a very religious Indian guy; he must know what he’s doing”. So I followed in his footsteps and did the same.

After that “test” came another one, I came upon a great big donation box, determined not to mess it up, I stood there again and watched the locals do it. Throw a coin in, bow, clap twice and bow again? Got it! So, I did just that. I head over to the souvenir stand and purchased some charms for the folks back home, and as I’m leaving I come across a self-fortune telling box. It was an octagon shaped box with a small hole in the middle of it. The idea is to donate a 100 Yen into a separate box and shake the octagon box until a stick with a number comes out of the small hole; you then proceed to a shelf and pull out a fortune according to the number that you shook out.

Does bad English negate the bad fortune?

As I’m leaving I come across another food stall, this time selling something that I haven’t seen yet, a red bean filled fish shaped cake, and of course, I submit to my temptations and purchase it. It was pretty good.

It was time to head to over to another city, Shimbashi. I was planning on visiting the Suitengu Shrine, it was said to house the Seven Deities of Good Luck, I thought that after my bad fortune, this would help. So I make my way there, and when I get there, something strikes me as very odd about this place, at first I thought it was a cult temple, ‘cause there were no stairs to get in, all they had was an elevator with a handicap sticker on it. Well, since that seemed like the only way to get in was through the elevator, I hoped on. Once I got in, the place seemed very quiet, only a few people were around and they were praying, it didn’t seem like a HOT tourist spot like the previous one. I noticed that there were many old couples walking around and there were many younger couples walking around. This is very odd, so I open up my tour guide book and read the description on this Shrine, turns out that this shrine is noted for it’s divine grace such as safe delivery of children, pregnancy and avoidance from flood damage. *smack forehead* Oh! I get it now.

So I quickly skid-addle out of that place, as I’m running out of there, I came across a corner store that was selling fruit, but what caught my eye about this store was that it had a line up that extended from the inside to out and it wrapped around a corner. Wow, this place must sell some good shit!

After all that running and eating all those sweets, I was hungry, so I stopped by an Excelsior Caffe and grabbed an ice cold coffee. I guess this was imitation Starbucks? The price was certainly imitated very well; the drink however, was not. It tasted horrible, and I paid like 6 bucks for that too, should have stuck with a $1.20 Boss coffee instead. Yeuch!

That was it, time to head back to the hotel to shower and rendezvous with the guys. I got back to the hotel first, then Ly a few minutes after and we waited about half an hour for Steve, we suspect that he got lost. While we waited for Steve’s return, we exchanged stories, I told Ly that I think I figured out where he went based on the clues he gave us, to recap he said that it would be something very expensive and that we wouldn’t be willing to spend the money on (which was probably true), there was nothing in return except for a sense of joy and a smile, and that it could be considered as a service, based on all of those clues I came to the conclusion that he went to go find a real Geisha Girl.

A genuine Geisha girl spends years and years practicing the traditional dances, rituals and tea pouring methods. Where as a non-genuine Geisha girl, but still wears the make-up and costume is just a prostitute.

Both are very expensive and I’m sure that once you leave you will be greatly satisfied. He of course denied these allegations, but who knows.

Once everyone checked in, we made our way over to Roppongi. We heard that Roppongi Hills was worth the trip, they were quite right; it was nothing like we’ve ever seen before.

After a quick stop and a few quick photos there, it was time for dinner, we made reservations at a Teppanyaki place the previous night, but didn’t specify that we wanted to sit at the counter to witness all the action so they gave us a room. We didn’t want that, so we told them that we would make reservations for another night (tonight) for the counter and come back then. We didn’t end up eating at that place, ‘cause on our way back the next night we stopped by another place to ask if they had a table and they said yes, so we just ate there.

We decided that since this was our last dinner in Japan we would splurge, so we each opted for the most expensive meal they had on the menu, a set course which consisted of a salad, vinegar roasted mackerel, steak, pancake, seafood (shrimp, scallop) and desert, this cost us a whopping 5,500 Yen.

Although everything looked great and some of the stuff tasted wonderful, it wasn’t really all that worth it, we probably could have gotten a better meal some where else for that price.

Another fail on our part was that we thought Teppanyaki was the one where the chefs perform tricks with your food for you, sadly it is not. It’s just a form of Japanese cuisine that uses an iron griddle to cook your food.

I guess us Westerners have been fooled by the Teppanyaki places that we have here, leading us to believe that Teppanyaki includes tricks with your food, much like serving chicken balls at a Chinese buffet and leading non-chinese people to think that chicken balls is Chinese food.

If you’re in Japan and you want the kind where they cook on the iron griddle and do tricks with your food, then search for Hibachi or Japanese Steakhouse.