The original plan for our last day in Tokyo was to venture further afield and take a train to a place called Kamakura, which is supposed to have some great temples and such. Instead, we picked the lazy route and did a little sleeping in, and a whole lot of wandering around some other must-see places in Tokyo.
We first went to a place called Electric Town, where we spent way too much time finding David a new pair of glasses, getting in an argument over which way to go to see to something interesting, and then wandering six floors of the Sega building, were I learned there was such a thing as video Majong. Electric Town is home to every electronic gadget known to man, and Maid Cafes. What's a Maid Cafe? Here's the description: "Wanna walk on the wild side of Tokyo's fetish for kawaii (cuteness)? Try being served by girls dressed as French maids! You'll be welcomed as go-shujinsama (master) the minute you barge into this cafe. This animae-esque staff, decked out in victorian pinafores is drowning in kawaii; titallating, but it's no sex joint. Maid cafes are where Tokyo's otaku get their kicks."
Yeah, the places was filled with mostly men. It wasn't dark and creepy or anything, it was bright and cheery, and felt like a diner. Alas, we were not allowed to take pictures inside. The food was terrible, but the people and waitress-watching was fantastic. The waitresses sing a little song over your dinner, something about adding love and magic to the food. You can also pay $5 and they'll pay little games with you, like Hungry Hungry Hippo or Pick Up Sticks. If you win, you get your $5 back. It's sort of like a PG-13 version strip club, without the stripping, and lots of giggling waitresses wearing stuffed animal backpacks.
After we had wasted way too much time in Electric Town, we headed to Ueno, which is a huge park area with a few museums. We failed to get to the National Museum before we would have to leave for the most important errand of the day (I'll get to that later). On the way back to the train station we passed this statue:
Every see The Last Samurai? This was the guy. No, not Tom Cruise, the other guy. Saigo Takamori, on whom the movie was loosely based.
Our last errand of the day was to find... the Patagonia store. (There's no Patigonia here in Singapore, and the summer clothes are perfect for the climate here. Anyway, David just loves the stuff.) I won't go into detail on how we finally found the store tucked away into a back alley, but it involved multiple negative comments about the navigational skills of yours truly. We finally made it to the place, stocked up on a ton of stuff, and upon returning to the hotel and checking on patagonia.com, realized we probably paid double what we could have paid online. Bugger.
Tomorrow, the bullet train to Kyoto! And hopefully a little more relaxing schedule...
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