Oh, wow. What a day.
We were up early, meeting in the lobby for 9:30 am. Laura and I grabbed breakfast at the convenience store, each partaking in two onigiri and a pastry (mine was sweet, with rasins and almonds). After everyone gathered, we headed out, going to the Hakuhikan Observatory (aka, those buildings with the weird things on the top in the third season of Digimon). We went up to the 45th floor and looked out over the city of Tokyo – holy crap is it huge! Driving through the city, we didn’t realize how large it is, but standing in the observatory, all we could see was the city around us. It’s truly impressive. While we were up there, we did some shopping before return ing to the ground floor and beginning our walk to the Meji Shrine and Harajuku.
The walk was lovely, and we got to see some fun architecture. It was amazing to see the transition from the city to the forested area around the shrine. It went from cityscape to forest very quickly and was impressive to see. The forest was so quiet and serene compared to the city, and smelled lovely. The shrine itself was beautiful, presenting a purification fountain outside and a prayer wall/prayer coin toss (coin throw, bow, clap area), inside. We even got to view at least two traditional weddings taking place at the shrine, which is apparently very rare (it’s a popular shrine). We spent only a short time there, wandering the space while taking pictures and a handful of us taking part in the coin toss bit. After meandering for a little while, we met up again and began walking, making our way towards Harajuku. Harajuku is one of Tokyo’s big shopping districts, featuring a variety of stores selling a variety of items. From posters, to autographed pictures and collectable cards, to clothes and Lolita-style dresses, it had a little bit of everything for everybody. We bee-lined for the Evangelion store, which was down one of the adjoining alleys from the main thoroughfare. I haven’t seen Eva yet, but good lordy could I appreciate the store. Clothing, bags, jewelry…you name it, they had something based off the show in terms of apparel. They even had swiss army knives with the coloration and patterns of the Evas. And that was just the main floor. The second floor was filled with the dvds, books, figures, postcards, more shirts and bags, glasses, mugs…all sorts of swag. It was a touch overwhelming, just the sheer volume of stuff, but was really cool to see. I really need to watch the series now.
I purchased a postcard to stick on my wall before I went out to meet up with part of the group. Laura was talking with Frank as he opened one of his figures. He didn’t get the one he wanted (he got kaoru, instead of one of the ladies), so Laura went back in and got a different one of the same sereies, and traded her Auska for his Kaoru. We joined up with some other folks and proceeded to browse the shops, stopping to pick up crepes along the way for lunch. We all got sweet crepes (mine was a vanilla custard with strawberries, bananas, and whipped cream!), though Heather got one with a piece of cheesecake in hers, which made the whole eating of it an adventure. After consuming our treats, we proceeded to browse again, moving with the flow of the foot traffic and trying not to get separated. The number of people on the on street was hard to get my head around and was so packed in comparison to similar shopping areas that I’ve been used to. Add in people shouting and trying to coerce shoppers to look at their wears in a language I can’t even begin to understand…. I had to let a lot of it just wash over me. Otherwise, I would’ve been even more overwhelmed.
Laura stopped at a couple of sock shops to look at gifts for her roommate, the rest of us trying to stay out of the way outside, or trailing behind her for the sake of continuing to move. We ended up finding this fun little store in an alley offshoot near the main entrance, which sported various bags, clothes, and fun knick-kancks. I perused the belts and suspenders, before wandering out and chuckling at some of the interesting shirts that a stand out front was sporting. There were no Engrish shirts, but they were quite amusing all the same.
Heading out and reuniting with the entirety of the group once again, we proceeded to walk a ways and found ourselves (after a bit of a pause waiting to grab folks we had been missing) at the Shibuya Crossing. You know the pictures and videos you see online of that intersection in Tokyo that is flooded with people when the crosswalk sign goes green? That one. I was initially terrified to cross, watching the numbers build on the various corners of the street. It would be so easy to get separated from the group and swept away in the tide of people. S o, when the light changed, I latched onto Laura and we surged across the street. The pictures show you just how many people were crossing. Good Lord. We survived the first and managed to survive the second too, heading into the train station and catching a train to Akihabara. By the way, the trains in Tokyo are fanta stic. Well-padded and heated seats, plenty of places for standing passengers to grab on, and they come every 2-5 minutes! CTA could learn a thing or two.
Akihabara… Oh good Lord. I couldn’t get my head around it. I still can’t. so many stores, so many people, so much all at once. The sensory overload shut me down for a minute and all I could do was stare with my mouth agape and swear quietly under my breath. After everything I had seen today, the culture shock finally hit me hard at Akihabara. I was tired and worn out to begin with, but it was still so fantastic to get to visit. Laura and I tagged along with Jose and his group to Super Potato: a massive, 4 or 5 level retro game store. Another wave of sensory overload stuck as soon as we walked in, the number of old games and systems and everything just striking me at once. I meandered the first of the floors in a bit of a daze, just trying to take things in. The second floor was more exciting for me, featuring playstation and gameboy games that I recognized and played myself. Laura and I found quite the deal on some original Final Fantasy VII guides (in Japanese, but super exciting anyway), as well as some other wonderful games and books. We perused the other floors before heading outside, checking out some of the other shops near by. We stopped in a couple shops, proceeding to spend lots of money in rapid succession. We went into one store (Supermart I believe?) and I was enthused by the merchandise. It was like a Walmart or Target, except for all electronics and games. Talk about a techy’s paradise. 
After doing a lot of shopping, we wandered up and down the strip, just taking in the sights. I found it interesting how many of them seemed to be very male oriented, depicting well endowed, scantily clad anime women in many displays or sporting large quantities of similar merchandise. We even passed a number of adult stores with said displays, and in the arcade we stopped in, most of the crane machines were filled with male-targeted items. I wasn’t quite sure how to take this, even though the females have their ‘equivalent’ with anime bishonen. I did not see as much evidence of the female-oriented culture, however, and was left only to ponder the other side. I’m not sure what to make of the objectification of both men and women seen in many anime these days. I don’t think it’s right in either case, but…it’s hard to put into words. Seeing it in such large quantities made me uncomfortable, to say the least. 
Taito Games was a fun stop on our way back up the street to our meeting place, ending in Laura and I playing a game of Tekken before heading back down to the street. We gathered outside of the train station after admiring the Gundam Café, chatting with some of our group mates about our spoils. We definitely need to come back again to see everything! Two hours wasn’t enough. We caught the train back to the hotel, playing a bit of shuffle with regular versus express lines before getting to our stop and walking back to the hotel. We dropped our things off at our rooms and Laura and I met up with Greg, Josh, and Michelle. We went to a revolving sushi bar, which was fantastic. It was really easy to rack up a bill, but it tasted phenomenal. From there, we went to the Sega arcade and proceeded to spend our money on Tito Drums and, in my case, and Eva figurine in one of the claw machines. It was a wonderful end to a wonderfully busy day!
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