Return to the Rising Sun, Day 4: Going Home Again. . .Well, Sort of

When it rains, it pours.

And I mean pours.  I awoke at about 4:15am and rain was just coming down in buckets over Shinagawa.  Still, there was something peaceful about listening to the rain pelt the ground as I went to the kitchen to post pictures and write yesterday’s article.

We ended up being pinned inside the apartment until nearly noon when the rain finally let up and cleared.  We decided to make our way to Ikebukuro which had been our base of operations for the Tokyo Maximum tour four years ago.  The place had changed a bit in the intervening four years.  A few new businesses had sprouted and the McDonald’s where we had eaten a few meals had been remodeled.

The first thing we tried was to relocate the Mountain Dew machine for Dave.  Alas, our efforts were for naught as the machine was no longer there.  Instead we walked to the ramen joint that always has a line out the door to find that there was a line out the door.

We debated waiting, but as it was already 1pm, we opted to have okonomiyaki instead.  I settled for a regular okonomiyaki and water while most of the other chose sets which included rice and cabbage salad.  We had a leisurely lunch and then left to start walking around the district.

The sky had clouded up during lunch and a few sprinkles began to fall.  With the sunshine, I had left my umbrella at the apartment.  Dave asked me if I were going to buy a new one, but I declined as a few sprinkles were not going to bother me.  Mother Nature proceeded to call my bluff as the rain began to intensify.  I ran into a nearby 7-11 to purchase yet another umbrella, but Andrew bought one big enough for us to share and we shuffled around the district to Tokyu Hands.

Tokyu Hands is a department store and I took a brief glance around the store before heading outside to wait and did some people watching.  Saturday was a good day to get an idea of the massive population size of the city as the streets were jam packed with people.

Eventually our group came together and began making our way to Sunshine City, though we had a brief stopover at Super Potato, a vintage video game store.  This time Mat’s GPS did not fail as we reached Sunshine City in record time.

Most of the group opted to go to a Pokemon store, but as I had no interest, I watched a rather interesting Hawaiian dance demonstration going on at the bottom of the mall.

When the rest of the group came out of Pokemon, we decided to grab some dinner at Café Miami Garden known for pasta and pizza.  I split a pepperoni pizza with Andrew who kindly picked up the tab.

After dinner, we spent the rest of the evening at the arcade.  I found a machine that had Elevator Action and played a few rounds on it before teaming up with Mat to do some major league damage on Luigi’s Mansion.

It had been a long day and we returned to the apartment for another night of rest.

Return to the Rising Sun, Days 2-3: Sweltering Shinjuku and Under the Tokyo DisneySea

Day 2

I slept the sleep of the dead. . . or at least the sleep of the extremely exhausted.

When I awoke the next morning, I had a light breakfast of pancakewich and orange juice and then went downstairs for a bath.

Baths in Japan are an interesting thing.  You actually shower outside of the tub, then get into the tub to soak and relax, if you so choose.  The floor design is arranged so the water falls down a drain in the floor.  As such, the floor gets sopping wet as I learned the hard way.  I had merely tried to take a bath, unaware of this cultural set-up so I left my clothes on the floor while I bathed.  I fetched a fresh set of clothes while I set my first set out to dry.

Our apartment in Shinjuku was small, but comfortable.  On the lower floor were the bathroom, laundry room, a small living room, and a bedroom.  On the upper floor contained a kitchen and 2 more bedrooms.  There was also a toilet with a sink built into the top.  When you flushed the toilet, it turned on the sink, recycling its own water.

With only 1 washroom for 7 people, it took a bit to get everyone bathed and ready for the day.  Once we were we headed over to Sunkus, a local convenience store to pick up some stuff for the others.  While there, I noticed they had my beloved Van Houten Cocoa, so I bought some.

The plan for the day was to wander around Shinjuku, famed for its shopping and restaurants.  Our journey had a bit of a delay as Dave’s niece, Amy, forgot her passport and rail pass, so back we hiked to the apartment to get it.  Then it was back to the train station to get to Shinjuku.

One could spend hours exploring the area, but our explorations were limited to a tiny area due to a thunderstorm that broke out in the area.  Being an island nation, it rains a lot in Japan and a typhoon off the southern edge of the country was triggering more rain than usual as well as sending the humidity right through the roof.

We first visited the Hotel Gracery building which also holds the Godzilla Head and Toho Cinemas.  A new Godzilla movie just opened in Japan (we’re considering going to watch it on a free night) and Toho Cinemas is going all out to celebrate it.  Outside of the movie theater was a picture montage featuring every Godzilla film ever made as well as character designs and fan art.  On the 15^th floor of the building was the Godzilla head, built to scale, and it was a pretty cool sight.

While in the building, the rain exploded with a mighty crash, so we ducked into a 7-11 on the bottom floor and bought some umbrellas.  We made a quick stop in Don Quixote’s (similar to a dollar store) and poked around the store.  When the rain didn’t let up, we made a mad dash across the street to Taito Game Station to wait it out.

Japan loves their arcades.  Sadly, even arcades over here are not what they once were as the only new cabinet games they seem to make are fighting and dance games.  But the arcade also had claw machines and a few games outside of the fighting/dance genres.  I played a couple of rounds on Luigi’s Mansion which was quite fun.

By the time the rain let up, we stopped at a restaurant for an extremely late lunch.  But a meal of green tea, pork cutler, rice, miso soup, and cabbage served to restore the inner man.  With our meals tucked away, we headed to Shinjuku Station to pick up Mat’s friend, Andrew, who would be the final member of our little troupe.

Mauricio suggested we visit the Tokyo Metropolitan Building as it has an observatory on the 45^th floor.  I considered this event the highlight of the day as we looked at views of the city just to get an idea of the massiveness of the most populated city on Earth.

The jet lag and humidity began to take a toll on us and we returned to the apartment to relax and crash.  We were all sound asleep shortly after 9pm.

Day 3

Now this is one of the days I had been looking forward to as we were going to spend the day at Tokyo DisneySea.

For years I was an amusement park junkie and though my tastes have changed a bit over time, I still maintain a soft spot in my heart for Disney parks.  From a financial standpoint, Tokyo DisneySea & Tokyo Disneyland are good deals as the entry fee to each park is less than $100.

Two things worked against us that day.  One, I believe Mat made a minor error by wanting to visit the park on Friday.  He thought the kids would have been in school, leaving the park a bit more open to the grown-ups.  Being Friday, I can’t say I was surprised to see the park pretty full as I imagine parents took the day off to bring their kiddies to the resort.  Also, it was a beautiful day.

The park was a little slow going at first due to the long lines and we only managed to ride 20,000 Leagues  Under the Sea before noon.  We decided to get some lunch to refresh ourselves and ate at a little cantina to try Mexican food done Japanese style.  I had spicy meat tacos which weren’t too bad, though they were not spicy by my standards.  I learned that Japanese people are actually very timid when it comes to spices, so to their tastebuds, this was the equivalent of a four alarm fire.

After lunch, we were able to get on a number of more rides, thanks to Fastpass.  Fastpass is a service that allows you to skip long lines at the more popular attractions.  You get a special ticket to return later in the day and you bypass the main line and get on the ride in about 10 minutes.  You are able to get a new one every two hours.  With this we were able to ride Tower of Terror, Raging Spirits, visit the Magic Lamp Theatre, and voyage with Sindbad.

We finished the Magic Lamp Theatre at slightly after 6pm.  At that point lines for the popular attractions were 90 minutes at a minimum and some were at a mind-blowing 2.5 hours.  I noticed that some people were tired (the humidity was brutal) and I suggested we should head back to Shinjuku. We ended up  hitting every gift shop on the way out.   I would have preferred spending that time waiting for one more ride, but oh, well.

We stopped for dinner at a place called Becker’s which serves burgers and sandwiches.  I had a double bacon BBQ cheeseburger and some fries as I was desperately in need of salt after sweating buckets.

With full stomachs, we returned to the apartment to rest for another night.