Thursday October 5, 2017
After sleeping in a bit, the three of us set off to explore some of our favorite spots with Leslie to get her acclimated to a new city that was very foreign to her. Our first stop was Shibuya and the famous statue of Hachiko and of course the Shibuya crossing. We needed to get our Tokyo Disneyland Tickets so we headed for the Disney Store. Unfortunately, this store was sold out of tickets and we were told it was going to be a busy weekend as there was a holiday on Monday. We decided to carry on sightseeing and worry about the tickets later. We did stop in at Tower Records to do my usual perusal of Jean Michel Jarre albums, but also managed to get the new soundtrack for Twin Peaks: The Return.
From Shibuya we walked towards Harajuku to see one of the things on Leslie’s list: Alice on Wednesday, an Alice in Wonderland themed store. I am glad we had data on our phones because this place was located on an obscure side street. Thankfully, we managed to find it. At first the shop seemed tiny, but we realized there were actually several floors to visit. Lots of interesting knickknacks but nothing that I needed (or wanted) to get.
From there, we headed over to one of Daniel’s top things to see: the Sailor Moon store. This one was a bit more challenging because we had an address, but the address took us to a random shopping mall. We missed the fact that the shop was actually inside the mall. After some confusion and walking up and down the street with puzzled looks on our faces, we finally went into the mall and found the shop. Shop is overselling it, it was more of a boutique – think a specially themed section at your local Macy’s. We took a bunch of photos of the area before heading back out.
Next up was the Hedgehog Cafe. We discovered it on accident as it was just around the corner from the Sailor Moon store. Leslie and I poked our heads in the shop but they were adamant about no photos unless you ate there – so no Hedgehogs for us! We decided to eat at an Italian place next to it called Italian Tomato Cafe Jr which became Daniel’s favorite restaurant in Tokyo. Mine is still St. Marcs Cafe..
After food, we headed over to Harajuku proper and the famous Takeshita street. We did some shopping and the usual photos before heading towards Shinjuku. When we reached Shinjuku we wanted to take Leslie to one of our usual tourist spots – the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building observation deck. Of course we always forget about Leslie’s fear of heights so it turned into another mark on my arm as we led her around for some quick photos before getting out of there.
It was starting to get dark so we headed to our last spot of the day – Aqua City Odaiba. Ever since our first trip to Japan, Daniel and I love coming to this mall – they have lots of fun things like the Toys R Us in the basement and some food courts. They also have a Disney Store. Luckily, this Disney store had tickets to the park for the weekend so we could cross that worry off the list.
We always like to stroll around the Daiba area and go into the different malls as well as places like Toyota’s Megaweb Showcase and Venus Fort, the Euro-themed mall that is like a poorman’s version of the shops at the Venetian. As we wandered back into the fresh air, we stumbled across the Unicorn Gundam Statue. We took some photos and Daniel and I looked at each other and didn’t remember seeing this statue before. We continued to stroll around and stumbled across the Odaiba Octoberfest (celebrating its 15th year!) – complete with food booths and live music. There wasn’t much of a crowd as it was near the end of the day, but we sampled a few things and enjoyed the crowd singing ABBA tunes and the classic “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor in English.
It was a long day walking around Tokyo and we were pooped. We then headed back to our apartment. Unfortunately there is no easy way to get there without heading back to Tokyo station, but thankfully our station of Kinshichō was only a couple of stops away from Tokyo station. We stopped at the 7-11 to stock up on water and snacks and called it a night.
