I've got Friday on my mind

It's gonna happen in the city.......

Well if any city, it would be the metropolis of Tokyo.

Well after the tiresome day that was Thursday (What am I talking about, they are all tiring!), I slept in til 8am on Friday. I got up to have a shower, but upon coming out, Dean and Conrad had nicked off to get coffee... Didn't even let me know..... Well, I got dolled up and I went to mum and Whitney's room to watch TV with them while we waited. We ended up going downstairs and just as Mum was about to message them, they showed up, informing us not to go to Cafe Veloce.... (bad drip blend coffee)

Well, this day had been planned as going and seeing some stuff in the outer suburbs. I say outer, but they're no worse than going to Chermside from the city centre. We got some more coffee at Tully's (as well as a bacon sandwich thing) before heading to Nihombashi. We decided to get a Tokyo day tripper pass, which costs a little bit more than the Metro pass we had bought the previous day, but allows you to go on the JR train lines and Toei lines as well. We got onto a squishy peak hour train and made our way towards Ebisu via Ginza. I say squishy, but I've been on far more packed trains. I'm sure their are some peak hour trains where they have to push people into the train to get the doors to close, but in my 3 trips to Japan, I haven't seen it personally.

The destination in Ebisu was Monster Japan, a toy shop selling proper licensed toys and such. It was more for Dean (being a massive Star Wars fan), but when we got there, I jumped on an unsecured wifi to check our directions and found that it didn't open til 12pm! Dean wasn't that fussed though, so we got on the Yamanote line and headed for Shinjuku.

Our next destination was Nakano. I do love a good mass transit system, because we didn't have to wait more than 3 mins for the connecting train. I suppose it would be the same anywhere in the world, but I don't think you see the best parts of the city from a train window. As we headed for Nakano, I noticed that some of the buildings along the train line look a bit dilapidated. It was too be expected I suppose, as we weren't heading for a ritzy suburb, just a regular working class neighbourhood. Our destination this time was Broadway mall which joins an arcade that lies opposite the North Exit of Nakano station. We walked a bit through the arcade, but as it was 11am, some of the shops were only just opening. There were a few chemist type shops, a few ramen/soba holes in the wall, and the mandatory phone shops. They didn't really interest us that much, but I was hoping that Broadway Mall wouldn't be of the same ilk.

When we got there, we headed through along the ground level (1F in Japan), before the Con needed to take one of his patented 20min bathroom breaks. We noticed that a lot of the shops were closed, and some of the shops had 3pm - 8pm open times! We were hoping some of the shops we had come to see weren't them, so it was fortunate that while we were waiting for Con, we heard the rattle of rollerdoors being opened.

I should point out that Broadway Mall must be the most ill-conceive naming of this place that I can think of. Compared to the arcade that we took to get to it, it was small, and compared to some of the malls in Brisbane, it was positively claustrophobic.

But we headed for a store that was open called Pony. As I have mentioned in previous years, I would have hated growing up in Japan, simply for the fact that there is much too much stuff to collect. Even collecting stuff from the series I know of would be able to fill rooms, let alone all the smaller stuff that never makes it out of Japan in a hacked, horribly dubbed version by 4kids or whoever. In a small space in a small mall, this shop had done well to pack in a lot of merchandise from floor to ceiling. While milling through this shop, K's Wave opened across the way. It seemed to have a lot less covered, with some cartoon characters in mature looking poses. We didn't spend a lot of time there before we went around the aisle. Mandrake, a huge manga and collectibles store that we had come there to see, was now opening, and after perusing their wares and obtaining a couple little things we kept going. It was now close to 1pm, so we were starting to feel a bit peckish (or peko peko in Japanese) so we headed to the first place we could find. It was on the second floor and it was an Auto racing themed cafe (right down my alley). We walked in, and decided just to grab a drink and not eat. One thing I don't like about Japan is the smoking. You can still smoke in cafes, restaurants etc, and everyone does it socially. So after a beer, Mum wanted to go down to a material shop that she had read about (gotta love the interwebs for research) while Conrad wanted to head upstairs to a shop called Robot Robot. It hadn't opened when we were there earlier, but after heading upstairs, we were greeted with a major geek-fest. I think if you could have a microphone in Dean's head, he would have been going "OMG, OMG, OMG" over and over. They had stacks of Star Wars memorabilia. I had already got Dean a R2-D2 speaker in Mandrake, and Dean had bought himself a lightsabre USB key, but this was a whole other level.

They had one quarter of the store packed with Star Wars stuff, as well as knick-knacks on the front counter. We ended spending ages in there with Mum finishing material shopping (she said it was an awesome material shop and she could have spent a lot more time in there btw) but had come upstairs and found us. Dean walked out of there a few imperial credits lighter, but a few bags heavier. It was more that he had to remove himself from the shop before he bought a lot more.

With the shops that we had come to see done, it was time to head back towards Tokyo central. But which way? Well, although we have been a few times and don't find it anything special, we had to do the touristy thing and show Conrad Akihabara, which is nicknamed Electric Town for all the electronics shops there. In particular we wanted to show him Yodobashi Camera, which is 7 or 8 levels of electronics. Before that though we had to catch a 20min train ride from Nakano. Actually, compared to the trip over there, the trip to Akiba via Shinjuku was a lot more scenic. There were a few parks and things, but towards the end, the JR Chuo line parallels the Kanda River and with some nice little tree-lined areas which would have made for a good picture if we hadn't been speeding along at 90km/h.

We got to Akihabara and by now our stomachs were growling, so we settled into a cafe/restaurant called Chelsea Market, which although it had smoking, had a bit more room than the smoky auto cafe we'd been in earlier. They made a nice hamburger. It wasn't overly gourmet, but was on par with Grill'd or Burger Urge. And with a side of chips and a beer, hit the spot nicely. Once we were fed though, it was time to get a move on, with the more businessmen coming in and smoking while having some afternoon tea or beer.

I'll cut a long story short and say that we spent a bit of time in Yodobashi Camera. Conrad seemed to like it, because they had a whole floor dedicated to cameras and photography. He and Dean found a few cameras they wouldn't have minded buying, but by this stage Mum, Whitney and I were getting tired, so we sat down while Dean and Conrad walked around.

We eventually left there and got back on the Yamanote line to Tokyo station and while we had a very brief look in the shops underneath it, we were getting tired and just wanted to head back to the hotel via Daimaru and Takashimaya.

Once back at the hotel, it was pushing 7.30, and with all of us not feeling like Pizza or Chinese, we went through the usual routine of trying to decide what to have. I would have been happy with a trip to the gyoza place, but mum wasn't up for that and felt like bbq meat. I googled korean bbq's near where we were staying and found one near Takashimaya. Well, thought I found one anyway, because upon going down the street looking for it, we couldn't find it. We could have found a stack of little japanese style pubs, but with all of us over smoky little holes in the wall, we kept on going towards Yaesu Mall. It was now about 8.30, and as you can imagine in a big financial/business district on a Friday night, it was hard to find anywhere that wasn't full. There was another couple of Korean places I had found by looking at the mall directory pamphlets, but one was on the other side of Tokyo station and no one felt like walking over there. We went and checked out the one towards the southern end of Yaesu mall, but it was packed and after going from one restaurant to the other trying to find one that would accommodate 5 people, we found one called Midori or Minori or something like that. We should have kept walking though, because for a japanese restaurant, this place was woefully run. First and foremost, the food wasn't good, and the service was poor. They messed up our order, and left bits off, though I'm sure mum wasn't complaining. Mum, Whitney and I had ordered Karaage (fried chicked), and they brought Whitney's out first. Then mine about 10 mins later. What they should have called is Kartalage, because it tasted like they had fried up some chicken knuckles or something. So after "eating" there, we were done. We walked back to the hotel (damn it, our favourite bottle shop closed at 8 on a Friday night!) and while Mum and me sat around finishing off the rest of the Cognac, Dean and Conrad went to shoot some long exposure photos from the top of the expressway overpass. Dean ended up coming back early, as his camera battery was on the fritz. The night ended with Dean and Whitney mucking around dubbing a korean show on channel 11, while Conrad went back out to shoot some more photos by himself. I passed out around 11 so I don't remember what happened after that.

These holiday things really wear you out. I think I need a holiday from the holiday....