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.
Chris' Corner 