May 3rd - First Outing

I woke up early after obviously not getting enough sleep and got to the hostel at about 10 in the morning. I know this seems late for a vacation, but you have to realize that it takes an hour to get ready at home and then another hour to commute. Anyways, as soon as I stepped on the train I received an email to bring another umbrella. Apparently one of the ones I carried all day yesterday had a hole in it. Well nothing I could do after I got on the train. When I got to the hostel I immediately got yelled at to take my shoes off. It is normally not a problem, but then again, this particular hostel does not have a Genkan (place to take off your shoes.) It just has a couple shoe racks. I got my parents and we left.

The first stop was Takadanobaba to exchange money. Sadly, I forgot that banks are closed Saturdays, Sundays, and national holidays. That means Monday and Tuesday are out too... Among the three of us we had about 35,000 yen to last us 4 days.

Today it was supposed to rain all day, therefore I decided it would be best to go to some museums. I took them to the Edo-Tokyo Museum located in Ryogoku. They loved it. The museum displays mostly exhibits from the Edo period of Japan; that is, the period when Japan was isolated from the rest of the world. It was a 300 year long peace in which the Japanese culture was allowed to develop. The museum has a bunch of different models of what the town used to look like, an intensive history of the great Kanto Fire, various samurai armor, book publishing stuff, and life size model houses of the Edo era. We must have spent a good 2 hours checking out all the stuff they had. I got to be the resident translator for the Japanese-only exhibits. It was painfully difficult trying to decipher what the description said when only knowing half the kanji. History uses lots of difficult ones!

After the museum we wandered around the Ryogoku area in search of food. Since my mother did not want to eat any noodles, we had a slightly more difficult time finding something cheap and quick. Once crossing the train tracks we ran into the Ryogoku festival. Talk about being by chance. There was a performance of Taiko drummers playing. The food being served there was all the soup that sumo wrestlers eat. I have heard it is pretty bad but have not tried any myself. I would much rather go to an authentic restaurant than eat some from a street vendor though... There is just something about street vendors that strike me as non-authentic. Anyway, we passed on the festival food and kept walking, eventually ending up at a box lunch place. I got a real box lunch while my parents both got snacks. They really don’t eat much anymore...

While eating I thought about what to do next and decided that Akihabara was close and convenient. We hopped on a train and arrived in no time. My dad was instantly blown away by everything. It was his first real experience to the “bigger” areas of Tokyo. The tall buildings, lights, and signs, along with the millions of people made it quite an experience. We walked down the main street window shopping. Upon reaching the end, I took them down the back alleys to see the more black-market related shops. The shops with various computer parts, wires, and electronics all thrown into a cardboard box marked 100 yen is a sight to see. There are always people digging through them. I wanted to buy some gifts for people back home, but as we were short on cash, I refrained. I did tell my parents that I wanted to come back again before they left. I think the last day they spend in Tokyo will be a shopping day.

Next we went to Nihon-bashi. I had no idea what was in that area, but the Nihon bridge that my parents saw at the museum earlier today and the terminus is there. We grabbed ice cream at a local convenience store and walked around the area. It was pretty boring for me, but they enjoyed it. We saw the bridge, the terminus where the 5 main roads in Japan start from, and some really expensive shops.

Finally it was getting dark so we decided it would be best to head back home. After finding a train station I took them back to Shinjuku and out for Gyoza at my favorite restaurant. Mom could not eat all of hers so I ended up eating a grand total of 18 gyoza. Dad got a half yakisoba and ramen set instead of gyoza which he said was good. I personally have never eaten anything else at that place before. I mean, come on! There is a giant gyoza statue out front! Why would I think of eating anything else? Instead of walking home, we went to kabuki-cho for a little bit. Then we hopped a train back.