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Day 9 highlights:

• Day 9 was for last-minute shopping. It was raining pretty hard so we started at nearby Tokyu Hands. It’s 8 floors of kickass department store, and we got there when it opened. We started by going to the top and working our way down, and we bought something on almost every floor. Check out the photo of the $3500 Darth Vader samurai that we didn’t buy, it was awesome. We were in there almost 3 and half hours before we realized what time it was. We did a quick check at the stores in the other half of the building and grabbed a sushi lunch upstairs.
• Our hotel was a block away and we had to go drop off all of our purchases so we could keep moving. Every time was passed the Krispy Kreme, there was a long line and even in the rain the line was long. Supposedly it’s normal to have a 1 or 2-hour line, and when they opened it was 3 hours. Check the video on Liam Maher’s blog to see how nuts it gets… Just click the post on the right that says "Krispy in Shinjuku."
• We worked our way over to Akihabara, and spent a lot of time at Yodobashi, 9 floors of every electronic device ever made. It’s mind-blowing, no matter what you’re looking for, there are a hundred options.
• The rain kinda sucked and after you’ve seen everything in electronics, there wasn’t much point in looking at the other stores so we headed back to Shinjuku. We went to check out the Isetan department store, which was more mind-blowing retail. There’s a men’s building and a women’s building, and both are like 7 or 8 floors. It’s like Saks on steroids – huge, high end, and there were almost as many staff people ready to help as there were customers. Any department you went into had an army ready to help, and if you like to drop obscene amounts of money on really cool clothes this is the place for you. Either way it’s definitely worth checking out.
• At this point we were too tired to change, so we went straight to dinner in dirtbag mode at the Century Hotel. We started with cocktails at the bar, and then into their restaurant. The views are the reason to be here, it’s all glass and you can see the whole city from here. We were so shot from the day of shopping it was the first day we didn’t go out for late night.

 

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Day 8 highlights:

• After coming back from the early run to the fish market, everyone took naps to gear up for the full day ahead. Jenna and Evert hooked us up with Miko who used to work at adidas in Tokyo. We’d never met her except for a few quick emails and she took an entire day to show us around other parts of the city we haven’t been to. She was so fun to hang out with, and it was really generous of her to spend a day with people she didn’t know.

• We started by going to Asakusa to check out an old temple. Inside there was a tube full of sticks with numbers, and you pull out a number and go to a drawer. In the drawer is your fortune. Our group spanned the whole range from bad to best, and Miko showed us how you’re supposed to tie your bad fortune to a stand in the temple and leave it behind. Since Asakusa is known for tempura, we went to a really good tempura restaurant before jumping back on the train for Ginza.
• Ginza is an upscale shopping area that we roamed around for a while and then worked our way to a monorail to get to Odaiba, which is a man-made island in Tokyo Bay and what Miko described as modern Japan (after we went to see Old Japan in Asakusa.) We jumped into a huge shopping mall and got some needed coffee, and we also checked out Tokyo Bay and the Rainbow bridge. There’s a mini Statue of Liberty there that was given to them by France.

• I discovered orange Fanta with mushy stuff in it, kinda like Jello. You shake it a bunch of times and open it, and then it’s fizzy with gooey mucous-like stuff – but really good.
• After walking for hours, we wrapped up by going to a really nice supermarket to look for coffee Jello and load up on Japanese candy.
• A quick change at the hotel and we were back in Shibuya to meet Yukari for dinner at a make your own pancake place. This was another restaurant where your table is a grill, and we got a mix of ingredients to cook up.
• After dinner we met up again with Dave and Tiff and roamed around in the rain to find a bar. We jumped into one that looked good and Tara started pounding Sake.
• When everyone was fried from the long day and the batch of drinks, we jumped in a cab back to the hotel since it was late and we weren’t sure if the trains were still running. The cab driver made like he knew what we were saying, but got totally lost. Once the meter hit $30, we handed him $5 and got out to find another cab. This time around, Ramon called the hotel and put them on with the driver for most of the ride and we made it back in with no problems. Cabs are great in Tokyo – the drivers wear suits and they have automatically opening doors for you when you get in. They all have GPS too, which is a mystery how the first driver got lost since we gave him the address of the hotel and then just started telling him to go to one of the biggest train stations in Tokyo.

 

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If you look through one set of images, this is the one to check out. This was one of our favorite parts of the trip, going to the Tsujiki Fish Market at 5:15am to see the tuna auction. The tuna was huge, and each fish was lined up in a warehouse-like room with the tails cut off and shoved in their mouths. It was pretty chaotic, with carts driving by in all directions and people bidding on fish. We watched while trying not to get run over. We walked through the rest of the fish market and saw a little bit of everything – things you would never eat to massive scallops and crabs. Watching the resellers cut up the tuna was really interesting, it would take about 3 guys to do, and they would use a 6′ sword with 2 people to cut them into sections.

Once we had checked everything out, we went to find a sushi restaurant for breakfast. We looked at a few, but saw one with a line and figured it must be good. We got in the line, and every few minutes and older Japanese woman would come out and yell at everyone in Japanese, and then grab people and place them exactly where she wanted them to stand and wait. We got lucky and got 4 seats together, because there were only about 12 seats total. The chefs didn’t speak any English, and somehow we ordered a pre-set sushi meal but weren’t really sure what we had done and what it was going to cost. We turned down a few things like raw shrimp, and aside from that the chefs would keep placing more and more sushi in front of us. Anything we questioned, their only English would come out, saying “Try it.” Everything we tried was without question the best sushi we’ve ever had, since it was probably swimming a few hours earlier. We had all sorts of tuna, sea bass, and eel. When it was all done they rung up $140 and we weren’t sure if it was per person, couple, or all 4 of us and luckily it was for all 4 so we paid and worked our way back to the hotel to go to sleep.

If you find yourself in Tokyo, this place should be at the top of your list to check out.

 

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The overall weather forecast wasn’t looking too good, but for our first full day in Tokyo we got really lucky with perfect weather. Here’s the highlights from today:

• We went to Harajuku to check out the freakshow that people dress up for on Sundays, but there wasn’t a lot going on so we got right into shopping. Things are generally really expensive, stuff like jeans are almost double the price and not offered in fat American sizes anyway. We hit all the standard stores and then some.
• While we struck out on seeing many of the people dressed up, we found the old guy above dressed as a woman with live goldfish in his earrings. He couldn’t get enough pictures taken of himself, he loved it.
• Kickass tempura lunch
• Evert and Jenna hooked us up with Dave and Tiffany (or Thommo and Tiffo from adidas, the Australian married to the girl from Wisconsin living in Japan.) We went to Gonpachi, the restaurant from Kill Bill. It was a great time hanging out with them, especially since we had never met them before this trip except for a few quick emails back and forth. Every time new customers walked in, all the chefs would yell to them.