Tokyo Trip 2 : Day 14 & 15

 Tokyo trip 2

Sat 02.November - Sun.17.November.2019

DAY 14 Saturday, 16. November

Today we were going to pack up our bags and switch over to an airport hotel. The checkout time at our current hotel was at 11.00 am. As expected, all of my stuff didn't fit my luggage, so mom took some of my stuff in her bag, but there were still two plastic bags of stuff that didn't fit in anywhere. Not to worry, we had a plan!

We gave away our room in a timely manner and then walked over to Akihabara Station. We found some coin lockers and put our bags there to wait while we were going to run a little errand. Unfortunately, today out of all days, the convenient Yamanote line was not in use, which created a bit  of chaos at the stations. We only needed to get to Tokyo central station, which luckily was only one stop away, so we had it relatively easy. 

From a previous visit to Tokyo Station, we remembered there was a shop that sold travel bags and they happened to have some of their bags on sale for 50 % off. Finnair flights allow each passenger to have two baggage as long as the combined weight of them doesn't exceed 23 kilos. My luggage was bursting at its seams already, but my mom's luggage even when full, weighted only half as much as mine did. So the plan was to buy her another bag and put the rest of my stuff there. We bought the cheapest one that was on sale and then took a train back to Akihabara. We got our bags out of the lockers and I immediately put the new bag in use and shoved the two plastic bags inside. Now we were ready to go!

Saw this cat on our way to Asakusabashi

Then our day started to go a little downhill after that. The airport buses allow only one bag per passenger, so our most easiest and convenient option was not an option anymore. We had already sort of planned to ride the local trains to the airport, it is the slowest option, but we weren't in any rush.  From Akihabara we walked over to Asakusabashi station and boarded a train. After a couple of stops, we had to get off and switch trains. We were in a totally new place for us, so we were having a hard time navigating ourselves to the right platform. We had to exit our current station and then walk 200 meters or something and enter another station and of course there was lots of stairs involved. It wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't have to drag an odd 20 kilos with me, but I put myself in this situation. 

We found our right platform eventually and boarded the first train that said "Narita". Welp, that was a mistake! We should have waited for a train that said "Narita airport" because the train we boarded only went to the city of Narita and not the airport at all. It didn't help at all that as we were outside of Tokyo, the trains didn't have any announcements in English anymore. As the train arrived in Narita, it stopped for a really long time. We still believed we were on the right train, so we waited. When the train started moving again, we were going back the same way we came, and that's when we realized we messed up. In hindsight, I guess our best option would have been to get off the train in Narita and search for another train to take us from the city to the airport, but too little, too late. What made it even worse, the train we were on was some semi express train that didn't stop for every station.  After passing six stations, the train finally stopped at a place called Sakura and we could finally get off. Luckily, it was a small station and there was no risk getting further lost. 

We were both feeling a tad bit stressed so we grabbed something to drink from a nearby vending machine, while we waited for the right train to arrive. Once it did, we double checked that it actually said "Narita airport terminal 1"! We got on board and were finally heading in the right direction. The train arrived at terminal 1, but we had to get to terminal 2. Thankfully, it was just a matter of walking there. It was such a relief to finally see a familiar place! We would be late for our flight for sure, if we had to get to the airport and board a plane on the same day. Good thing we always take it into account that we will mess up and that's why we always spend the last night at an airport hotel. 

The day wasn't over yet, now we had to find the right bus to take us to the hotel. We found the stop easily, but as per usual, we just missed the bus by a couple of minutes, which meant we had to wait for the bus to come back for 20 minutes, which feels like forever when you are tired. 

It soon became very apparent that I  chose a very cheap hotel, once we got there. The reviews of the place were not all that positive, but we were only staying there for one night, it can't be that bad I thought. We checked in and went looking for our room. The key to the room was an actual key and not a key card, like they usually are. And it came attached to this damn huge keyring,  which was the size of a banana. 

We found our door and it was like an entrance to a bunker, the door was very wide, metal door that made an awful sound when you opened or closed it. Same for the bathroom door, a heavy, metal door. The room itself and the beds were fine, but there was no air conditioning, so it was uncomfortably hot in there. We dumped our bags in the room and went back down to the lobby to grab something to eat from the vending machines. It was very slim pickings. There were like six vending machines there, but only one had food in it, the rest were drinks and one had ice creams.

We settled for some sandwiches and a bowl of tofu-rice we split between us. The tofu-rice  was really spicy, so I had run back to the lobby again to get us some ice cream to get the burn out of my mouth.

After our less than fantastic meal, I did some arranging in our bags. I removed some more plastic packaging that was taking too much space, even if I risked some of the items getting broken. One Dart Maul figure in particular turned out to be a problem. I removed it from its box, to make more room in my bag, but I was in for a nasty surprise. The figure was all sticky and gross. I have heard that this can happen to a figure that stays inside their box for too long, this should be fixable if you give the figure a good soapy wash. I wasn't going to be able fix this thing now, so I just put it in a small plastic bag and hoped it wouldn't ooze all over.

When it came the time to go to sleep, it was easier said than done. There was a floor fan in the room we had on full power, but it didn't help much. The room was like a furnace. One of the worst night I've had in a hotel. 

DAY 15 &the Flight Home, Sunday, 17. November

We woke up 6 AM and by seven, we were already checked out from the hotel and waiting for the airport bus. The bus driver burst out laughing when he wasn't able to lift my bag with just one hand like he was able to do with the others he loaded onto the bus.

The check-in for Finnair didn't open until 9 AM, so we had some time to waste. I returned our rented pocket Wifis to a mailbox. We weighted our bags again at one of those airport scales. I bought us some Onigiris and sandwiches from a kiosk, it was going to be a while before we would be getting any food  on the plane.

After getting rid of our bags, we went straight through the security check. Last time, we were in a bit of a hurry to find our gate, so we didn't see much of the area that lies beyond the security gate. Now we were there early, so we had time to look around. Mom still had a little room in her carry on luggage, so I spent our last coins on buying some Japanese sweets. This time we actually had time to sit down and relax while we waited for the gate to open. I counted my leftover money, which totaled at 64 yen. Definitely no need to exchange them back to euros.

The time was 11.50 AM when the plane was finally ready to take off. I had the window seat next to the wing like last time. It's nice to watch the views while the plane is climbing, but once it's well above the clouds the sunlight gets a bit too strong for my eyes so I have to close the window shade. We were not planning on sleeping on this flight since it will be so much easier to adjust back to Finland's time when you're tired. So I had a movie marathon ahead of me. I watched Toy Story 4, Red Sparrow, Battle Angel Alita, Detective Conan: The Fist of Blue Sapphire and the Lion King "live action" remake. I can sincerely say that Battle Angel is the only movie out of these, I would gladly watch again. The others were kind of "meh", or maybe I was just too tired. The Lion King especially was a movie that I kept fast forwarding a lot to get to the end. Partly, because I was bored by it and because the plane was about to land! Oh joy, back in Finland!

Next up, the haul from Tokyo Trip 2 , and once that's done, I'm about ready to start writing about something else. I'm done reminiscing.

Oh f*ck me again. Why did it take me over a year to get all this written down?

Tokyo Trip 2 : Day 12 & 13

 Tokyo trip 2

Sat 02.November - Sun.17.November.2019

DAY 12 Thursday, 14. November

We went back to Nakano Broadway, because the place is so huge that one day isn't enough. We got there quite early, so I had to wait for some of the stores to open up. All of those figures I had taken a mental note of "buy later" were gone. I wasn't surprised, it had already been a week since the last time we were here, no wonder somebody else picked them up. To be positive, I did find a lot of other figures I didn't even notice on my first visit. So there's that.

We spent so many hours here, by the time I was done, I had bought 30 items from 6 different stores! Most of them were small, Gachapon sized toys and only a few bigger ones. 

Before we left Nakano Broadway, we went down to the basement level, where there is this tiny ice cream bar. Their specialty is a cone of soft ice cream with 10 layers, all in different flavors. Ten scoops of ice cream sound a bit too much, but I still wanted to try some. So I bought a cone with four ice cream layers and picked the weirdest flavors from their menu I could think of ; latte, sweet potato, lemonade soda and matcha. Mom wanted only two scoops and played it safe with a combo of strawberry and chocolate. All the flavors I picked were okay, but I especially liked the sweet potato and soda layers! Good thing I didn't choose more four layers, even that was borderline too much. I can't imagine anyone would be capable eating the full ten layer ice cream alone or at least fast enough before it starts to melt and make a mess. That one is probably meant to be shared with more than one person.

After spending a good chunk of the day in Nakano Broadway, we returned straight to the hotel. But there were still a few hours left before the stores would be closing in Akihabara so headed out again. First, I went to Mandarake to check if the Sonic the Hedgehog and Kazuma Kiryuu figures were still there, that I saw there three days earlier. Nope, they were gone! I thought as much. Of course I was disappointed that they were gone, but relieved also. They would have costed me so much, I probably wouldn't have had the money to buy the other stuff I found later on if I had bought them (not that I knew this at the time).

I found a copy of Detroit: Become Human in their gaming section, and kind of deciding on the spot that it would be fun to hear the Japanese dub of the game. So I bought it along with a big pack of Dragonball Z cards.

Next, I went to the Radio Kaikan complex. I ended up not buying anything there, I just scoped the place out, more or less. From there I went to Akiba Culture Zone, where I roamed pretty much until closing time. Or half an hour before closing time, they did start signaling with the lights around 08.30 PM. So that was my cue to get out of there. I didn't find much, but something at least.

Walking back to the hotel I remembered, I had nothing ready to eat for breakfast for tomorrow. So I made a quick stop by a Seven/Eleven before returning to the hotel. 

DAY 13 Friday, 15. November

So this was our last full day in Tokyo. We hadn't planned anything special, so we took the train to Shibuya. Since we saw the real Hachiko in the museum, we thought we should come see the famous statue once again. This time, we didn't get lost and found the Hachiko exit right away. The statue didn't have a red ribbon around it, like the first time we saw it. There seemed to be even more people around this time, there was people waiting in an actual line to get to the statue.

As we watched the people come and go around Hachiko we were approached by a guy holding a note that explained he supposedly was collecting donations for an animal shelter. I gave him some yen to get rid of him faster, I hope I actually went to an animal shelter and wasn't just a hoax, like the ones I always run into whenever I go to Helsinki.

There was noticeaby a lot more foreigner around  in Shibuya compared to other places we'd been so far. We were walking to the Don Quijote store,  when I actually recognized someone passing down the street. It was PaolofromTokyo, the YouTuber who's videos I had been watching prior to our first trip to Tokyo. He makes very helpful  travel guide videos and I watched so many of them. 

Once we finally found the Don Quijote store, we saw him again. That was one of those moments when I wish I had the courage to talk to a stranger. "Hey, I've watched your videos, they are really helpful" something simple like that. But nah, then that feeling gets overturned by thoughts like "I don't want to disturb their day..."

Anyway, inside Don Quijote they had a pretty close replica of the Hachiko statue, only surrounded by KitKats right there on the ground floor. We didn't go through the whole store, because we had other stores to visit, but what little we saw was interesting enough. In the candy aisle they had bags of insects for sale. That bag of Tarantulas sure would be a perfect gift for any arachnophobic friend.

From Don Quijote I went to find the Shibuya Mandarake shop while mom looked for the nearest Daiso. Inside Mandarake, I found a personal jackpot of mine and I didn't even have to look for it. There they were, in the glass cabinet right next to the entrance and the cash register; some Ginga doujinshi! Finally! I've been wanting to find one for long, but I have no idea in which category I should search them for. G for Ginga?, T for Takahashi?, by the publisher?, comic or TV section? I don't know! Lucky that they were in the display cabinet, otherwise I would never have found them. Of course, there was a reason why they were locked up and that's because they were expensive. I think there was 4-5 of them in the cabinet and the most expensive one was about 5000 yen and the "cheaper" ones were about 1600 yen each. Compare that to the other doujinshi's I've bought that, on average range somewhere between 200-900 yen each.  So, I had to think about it for a minute, do I really want to spend that much on a book I don't know the contents of? Well, yes. I bought it and one of the cheaper ones I thought had the best cover. My reason being; when or where am I ever going to find something like this again? I also found a couple of Okami (the video game) comics I hadn't managed to find anywhere else. I made some great finds today, so this trip to Shibuya was well worth it!

After I left Mandarake, I met up with mom in the Can★Do 100-yen shop and from there we headed back to the train station. I saw this Hachiko themed vending machine that I didn't notice before. I chose a Coca Cola and out popped this metal bottle with a picture of the Hachiko statue, very nice.

We returned to the hotel. After a meal, I headed back out and went to Akihabara once again. I went by the Mandarake store to pick up a final batch of doujinshis I had looked at before, but regretted not buying the first time. Then I went to Radio Kaikan, to also buy something I scoped out the day earlier. Lastly, I went to the Yodobashi Camera to see their video game section I had yet to check out. I picked the wrong day to do that! It was chaos, one giant serpentine line of people through the whole floor, all queuing to get to the cash registers. I forgot that today was the launch day to both Jedi: Fallen order and Pokemon Sword and Shield games. I picked out the two items I wanted and got in line. There must have been hundreds and hundreds of people there, but it went surprisingly fast. They had like ten or more cash registers open, so it was very efficient. I waited in line for 40-50 minutes before it was my turn to pay. I must have been the only one there that bought an older game from the previous year and a walkthrough book for a four year old game. 

After I survived that, I got back to the hotel and chilled for the rest of the evening, after packing away my stuff, and watch the Japanese dub of Disney's Frozen.

to be continued....