Trip Report-Day 3
First thing this morning we went to 7-11 to buy breakfast. We bought a banana, a bag of cut apples, an egg sandwich, chicken egg sandwich, beef short rib onigiri, and pancakes. Syth said the egg sandwich was his favorite. Mine was the pancakes because they came with butter and syrup already in between the pancakes so it was like a sandwich.
We then walked to Meiji-Jingu. It was okay. We didn’t feel like there was much to see. It opened at 9 which is when we got there and it got busy by 10 am. The garden path costs extra but our Airbnb host let us use her pass. I liked the garden area better than the shrine.
Next we went to Asakusa. The train ride was kind of long with lots of stops but we definitely have a handle on the trains now. The tourist center was a good area to see the skyline up high. This main street was SO busy and we didn’t like that at all. Way too many people and everyone is trying to get you to buy things. We did end up engraving our own chopsticks which look pretty cool. The Senso-ji temple had more guidance on what to do compared to Meiji-Jingu. We ate at McDonald’s in Asakusa and had no trouble communicating with staff. I was told before the trip you couldn’t order things a specific way but I got my burger with only cheese and had no issues. We ate upstairs in mcdonalds which was cool.
We then walked about half an hour to the Edo Tokyo Museum which was awesome! So detailed and the exhibits are fantastic. They had actual houses and miniature scale landscapes. It’s hard to describe but it was way cooler than I thought it would be. We were there for like 3 hours. This was my favorite part of the day.
The last thing we did was visit Akihabara. This was okay but I’m not a fan of anime so nothing stood out as amazing. We played a bunch of ufo claw games in the sega store which was fun. The best claw machines are the ones with snacks in them. They’re a lot easier to win. If you want to feel super incompetent as a human being, go watch some kids play video games in the sega building. They’re intense! We ate dinner at Denny’s and it’s not at all like Denny’s in the US. We ordered spaghetti with a heavy meat sauce, German potatoes and ham, deli style spicy chicken curry, and fried shrimp. Syth said the curry tasted inexpensive and it had chicken skins that he didn’t like. My potatoes were really good. The spaghetti was pretty normal but the meat sauce was interesting. This was the first place we went to where language was a slight barrier. The server didn’t speak English and we had no problems but this was the first time we had someone who didn’t speak English. The last thing we did was went to Akihabara Gachapon Hall and they had floor to ceiling gachapon machines. That was pretty fun. It’s easy to burn through money in there. I think we spent 2,000 yen which is like $20 on little toys lol.
One thing I hated about Akihabara were all of the maid cafes. There are so many “maids” standing on sidewalks trying to get you to come to their cafe. It honestly just ruined the whole experience of walking through Akihabara. I think it’s extremely weird to want to be served by girls who look 12. Sorry for my mini rant but it really did put a big damper on the whole area for me.
Sorry this was super long but I wanted to get all of my thoughts out there.