Day 12 - Adventure through Japan "Asakusa, Ueno and Nakano"

Part I - Asakusa: After much discussion the night before, we decided to begin the day in opposite directions.  Myself and Matt would start off by going to Asakusa (which we knew was under construction), while the rest of the group headed to the Imperial Palace/Gardens.

We arrived still in the early morning (for Japan), around 9am or so.  Most of the shops on the main street were just starting their morning routine.  Some of the sites were obscured by the fact the main hall was under construction, which was a little disappointing, but it was still beautiful with the cherry blossoms now in full bloom. Being so early in the morning, there wasn't a lot to do in Asakusa other then walk around and enjoy the sites, so that is exactly what we did. There were a lot of Chinese and Korean tourists there at the time, more then any other place we had visited so far and unfortunately (as most tourists seemed to be), they were very rude. Standing in middle of walkways, blocking the path and also going as far as smoking, literally, right beside the no smoking sign. After a short 30 minutes or so I was ready to walk away from the main area. 

Part II - Walking the basin/Meet-up:  We continue down a few side roads and end up at the basin. The view was nice, but unfortunately was also littered. The bayside walk didn't seem to be as well maintained as other areas of Japan we had been in. There was even the sad sight of homeless people living under the walkways there.  A little further down the bay, we were able to get away from the people however (and most of the litter), so it was more pleasant.  After taking a few pictures of Tokyo Sky Tree under construction, we finished our walk by heading back to (what we thought was) Asakusa Station.  Turned out however that Asakusa has two completely different lines, basically one that doesn't go anywhere of importance and another one that is the main line, which we came in on.  We walk in the station and walk back out without taking a train, which freaked our Pasmo cards out.  We straighten that out with the staff and finally make it back on a train headed in the right direction, which was to the Kabuki theater inside Ginza.  The next step for the day was to "pick-up" Jason (like he was a kid being baby-sat, haha) from Donnie and Brandon, while they go pick up a Kabuki play.  From what we had read, you simply get in line around 10am-11am and wait for the matinee tickets to go on sale...

Upon arrival, I began to look for cold medicine as I still felt like crap from the cold I caught four or five days back.  I think we arrived around 10:20, with the meet-up time of 10:30.  I score some cold medicine (it was basically Tylenol w. coudine for $22, and then head back to the front of the Kabuki theater to wait, they all arrive a few minutes later, just a little late.  We wait around outside the Kabuki place for a few, waiting to confirm they have tickets so we can move on with our day.  The original plan was that we would go to the Pokemon Center and then do some shopping before coming back to the Sony Building to meet up around 2pm.  We wait around for awhile, only to discover that tickets are a horribly complicated process and to make a long story short their only real chance of seeing a show was to come back on Friday or Saturday, with Friday already booked with Yokohama we were left with changing plans for Saturday instead, which dominoed to how the rest of this day would turn out.

Part III - Sony Building:  With everyone together and plans suddenly thrown up in the air, we begin the walk to the Sony Building.  The catch here?  I did not have a map that went from Kabuki to Sony because that was not how the route was supposed to go.  We end up wandering around Ginza for a much longer period of time then I had hoped only to arrive at the Sony Building at 10:55, five minutes before they opened.  I was in search of food in order to be able to take the medicine purchased earlier, but once again this was never an easy task to accomplish.

Once in the Sony building, we come to the quick realization that it is nothing but a bunch of demo's for products you can purchase inside their store.  Nothing innovative or "new to us" here compared to what we had seen elsewhere.  It was about ten times less interesting then the Panasonic building we had gone to in Odaiba on a whim.  I was horribly disappointed and was further irritated by the signs posted all over the store stating they would not sell to foreign customers due to region locks, blah blah blah... not that I was planning on buying anything there anyway, but it was annoying.  There were two food places located inside as well, but for some stupid reason they only opened at 11:30am and 12pm and I was in no mood to wait in a boring place like that for one to open (not to mention they were horribly overpriced).  Extremely disappointed in what the Sony Builidng had to offer, we decide to move on in hopes of salvaging the day.

Part IV - Pokemon Center:  Ah, these good 'ol maps.  We get out on the wrong side of the station, but I do manage to figure out what exit we're supposed to take, so we turn around as everyone starts to get aggitated, I believe at me.  See, it had been left up to me (and Matt, on occasion) to map out everywhere we were going and was normally the one stared at when it came time to make a decision of what to do next, especially when things went wrong as they were this day.  We begin the walk down the road with me disclaiming that I'm not sure if we should be taking a left or right out of the station, but everyone followed me on the assumtion that the right I took was the correct decision.

Luckily we run across a Starbucks half-way down the road and are finally able to stop for some food.  I was less irritated after being able to finally take my medicine, well over an hour from purchasing it.  After looking around at the landmarks (of all things, McDonalds were marked well on my map and proved helpful) I realize while sitting there eating that we, in fact, should've taken a left out of the station and so we had gone about four blocks in the wrong direction.  But I had warned them!

With medicine taken and food eaten we were on the road again, this time in the right direction!  We spot all the other landmarks that were supposed to be along the way and finally end up in the Pokemon Center.  Unfortunately none of the pictures taken in here actually came out, but let me tell you it was an interesting place.  Much smaller then I had hoped, but still interesting none-the-less.  I picked up some merchandise, such as a Pikachu pancake pan (which I have yet to get to work well), Togepi T-Shirt and a few figures.  With the rest of the group pretty disinterested, we moved on.

Part V - Hibiya Under the Tracks:  Another place out of my tour book was Hibiya Under the Tracks, a row of restaurants underneath train tracks.  Unfortunately once we finally arrived there we were at the time between lunch and dinner, around 2pm.  Most places in Japan close during the early afternoon time, so it was horrible timing on our part.  After pacing around hungry for a good 30 minutes, we find no place suitable to eat at under the tracks and end up in a large corporate building across the street that had a Chinese place in the corner.  For some reason, the Chinese places always seemed to have an English/Picture menu and we were just simply ready to eat by this time.  Everyone was stressed out by this point, so we just sit down and try our best to enjoy the meal.  It turned out to taste pretty good, the only down side is that the drinks were literally ¥500 each, which was horribly expensive.

Part VI - Ueno Park:  With our stomachs now full, we were ready to tackle another site for the day, Ueno Park.  We didn't arrive until around 3:30pm, which must have been bad timing because it was BUSY.  I knew Hanami was in full swing and the cherry blossoms were gorgeous, but still!  Quickly being reminded of walking D.C. during the Cherry Blossom festival we were ready to not be there anymore.  Splitting from the group and deciding to meet back up in an hour in front of the Takoyaki stand in the beginning, we begin the trek down the main walkway (above).

After already being exhausted by the walking earlier in the day and short train rides thus far (which normally gave us some sitting down time), we reached the end of the road and were treated to a street performer that was giving a show in the clearing.  We sat down on the pavement and just watched him for a good 10 or 15 minutes in order to give our legs a rest.  He did a bunch of cool things with bouncy balls, music and then the balls that are on strings (what are those called?).  It was an entertaining show.

We turn around and start heading back the way we came, however this time taking the side-roads and dodging in and out of the foot traffic that was mainly headed in the opposite direction.  We ended back up at the meeting spot way early, around 4pm, so we decide to walk over to the opposite corner where there were some interesting looking shops.  I was finally treated to some anime stores and shopping, there was a lot of SquareEnix merchandise in one large Duty-Free shop and we hit up and arcade or two (winning our first ToraDora figure, I got it!) and head back to meet up at the designated time.  We were going to head back to the apartment for a few (and to drop off the things I had bought) before heading out to meet Jackie, a friend from the States, to go shopping in Nakano.  Luckily Nakano was only two stops East of the apartment, so it was very easy to get to.  Remember the "wrong" place I waited at for the apartment manager the day before?  Yeah, there.  We decided that the KFC, since I knew where that was, would be the perfect place to meet.

Part VII - Nakano and shopping:  Ah, I was looking forward to this.  A few months before leaving for this trip we were informed from a friend that there was a discount mall full of anime figures and merchandise.  Figures that would normally cost $20-$50 online were in this mall for the likes of ¥500 and less.  There was sure to be a wide range of assorted goods here, and at better prices then we would ever find in Akihabara. 

Completely hyped back up to finally get some shopping in, I was ready to go.  We arrived in Nakano shortly before nightfall, it was around 6:15pm or so, a little early, but there none-the-less.  They had a lot of flowers in bloom and were actually doing a lantern festival kind of thing, which was cool to see.  The roads intersecting in front of the station were full of flowers and greenery, so it was a pretty site to see in middle of a well built city.  The KFC is just barely off to the side of the picture here, which was our destination.  We end up waiting here for about 30 minutes for Jacky to appear, it turned out she actually forgot where the KFC was as it wasn't a famous stop or anything.  And here I picked it so we wouldn't get lost!  Luckily, it was pretty close to the station exit, so she did finally find us.  After chatting for just a few minutes, we were on our way to the mall.  It was just across the street and to the right down this long hallway like path.

Once inside we were greeted with this huge shopping arcade.  The place filled with anime goods was located inside this maze.  We run through this hallway here in order to end up at a set of stairs located near the back.  Once up the stairs and on the 3rd floor, we begin to see the anime merchanside.  Beginning from the back and working our way forward, inside just the first store I was greeted with gashapon figures by the hundreds.  We unfortunately only got to be in here until about 9pm before most of the shops were closed or in the process of closing.  We scored some great merchandise for the first time in though, including a ToraDora beach towel (which yes, I will be using at the pool this Summer) and even an Isamu figure from Macross Plus for Matt, which he didn't even know existed.  Coming out paying about 1/4th of what would be a fair price for the merchandise in the States, I finally had a satisfying shopping experience.

Jacky wasn't really feeling too well and we had yet to have dinner, so we parted ways and headed back to the apartment.  Luckily we had that Wal-mart type grocery store to walk through on the way back, so we just picked up something while walking through there and stayed at the apartment to rest the remainder of the night.

Prices:

• ¥2,300 - Cold medicine.
• ¥1,300 - Starbucks food (for two). 
• ¥4,600 - Pokemon merchandise.
• ¥2,300 - Lunch at Chinese restaurant (for two).
• ¥1,500 - UFO catcher tries to get ToraDora figure.
• ¥3,300 - Approx. how much was spent on anime merchandise in Nakano.
• ¥1,500 - Various food items for dinner, enough to feed two (like Yakitori).

Lesson's learned:

• Asakusa attracts a lot of Asian foreigners.
• Tokyo Sky Tree is going to be HUGE.
• Getting Kabuki tickets is really difficult.
• Sony Building sucks, don't bother going there.
• Pokemon Center is actually pretty small, very interesting merchandise though.
• Hibiya Under the Tracks would be a lot better for dinner and drinking.
• Ueno during Hanami is busier then D.C.'s Cherry Blossom Festival, even on a weekday afternoon.
• Nakano shopping is awesome, but hours are limited. (some shops were closed by 7pm)