sudafed, more sudafed, but no sushi

I am trying with all my strength to stay awake. Its dinner time. I hit an exhaustion wall around 4pm and have had my eyelids at half mast ever since. My goal is to stay up until 9pm. So this will probably be a longer blog.

Rupa and I woke up before dawn this morning (5am) hoping to go to the Tokyo Fish Market. Here is a photo of the view from our room in the Tokyo Youth Hostel. We're on the 19th floor.

We had a wrench thrown in our wheel when we discovered that the front door of the youth hostel is locked until 6:30am. So we hung out for an hour this morning, studying the guidebook, checking our email.

We then headed out for the Tokyo Fish Market. We hopped on the subway (well, hopped is an exageration. we stared at the map, gingerly bought tickets from the machine and bravely headed down a tunnel to what we guessed was the correct platform).

When we got to the fish market, it was a ghost town. We walked around but weren't able to find any fish or people so we assumed that we had just missed all the fun.

Oh well. Instead of morning sushi I had a latte and a scone at Starbucks.
Walking towards Ginza distict, we stopped in an interesting Buddist temple and admired the shrines. The temple was a large quiet room with beautiful gold carvings set up on a stage and insense burning at its base.


And, as Murphys Law predicted, it started sleeting as soon as we came out. It was cold and wet for most of the morning.

We walked up to the Ginza distict, stopping at the Kibuki theater on the way.

Unfortunately we're leaving on day of the next performance. So we can only admire the advertisements out front.

The phantom fish market threw off our schedule so when we arrived in Ginza (around 8am), we found that most of the stores were not yet open.

To kill time we caffeinated ourselves and wandered around. Around the corner from the giant Yamaha store, we found a Bonsai tree boutique and admired the plants.


The Yamaha store was three stories of beautiful instuments and a floor devoted purely to sheet music. I was tempted to bang on the xylophone and test out the bass claranet but, embarrassed by my overall lack of musical training, I restained myself.

Wet and cold from the morning of sleet, we caved in and bought umbrellas only to have it clear up a half hour later.


We stopped in a cafeteria for lunch only to be informed that most of the food contained fish stock. Thats dandy with me because I'll eat just about anything (except pickles and olives) but Rupa is a vegetarian. She was able to order a blueberry crepe so we sat down for lunch. When we were nearly finished, a kitchen employee came over and informed Rupa that he had found some dishes that were purely vegetarian. They chatted away and then got in line together. Rupa amazes me. She makes friends quickly and frequently. Look at them in line:

Here is a close up. They're friends after five minutes.

We've been here for 24 hours and Rupa has already made four friends. I bet that, by the time we leave, it'll be an even dozen.


After lunch we hit the eight story Sony store.

It was mind boggling. Lots and lots of gadgetry set up in interesting displays. We were constantly being recorded and projected onto giant flat screen plasma televisions. The tv's alone would've made my dad drool. (He's into the plasmas) Here's some tv porn for him:

And some camera porn for Jenn:

We batted our eyelashes at digital camera and laptops. We played with robotic dogs.

We even had a blast in the ladies room.

I was surprised to find my toilet seat toasty warm.

And then I was glad it was just seat heating and not a blast of water and warm air that surprised me.

On our way out of Ginza, we stopped in a Sanrio store. I find Hello Kitty a bit nauseating-- it brings back nastalgic memoried of childhood in Anaheim Hills but its also incredibly pink and cute and, well, kind of creepy.

For example, notice the appendage on this characters face. Perhaps it is my New England puritanical tendancies creeping in, but I thought it was strange and perhaps even inappropriate.


Rupa and I then headed for Akihabara. In search of stationary, we popped into an eight story bookstore. If I could read Japanese, I would've realized that there is no stationary to be found on the eighth floor, contrary to what I expected.

So we took the mirrored escalator up eight flights, checking every floor for stationary.

One thing I did find there was a new and special way to torture Rupa. Rupa is a book nut. She *loves* to read. Putting her in a bookstore where she can't even pronounce the words confuses and frustrates her.

Take this simple puppet book, for example.


What are the puppets saying to eachother?

Rupa would really like to know. (me too!)

We then set off in search of appliance alley. We may have found it. We're not sure. We got lost shortly thereafter and we're not really sure where we were today. We found a series of alleys with baskets of random things, such as capacitors,

some of which we are skeptical about the safety of using. (I would've want to be around when one of these blows up)

We then found an area full of giant stores loaded with new appliances.

Rupa was very happy to see some that were some appliances about her size.

It was about this time (4pm or so) that I hit the jet lag brick wall. We recaffeinated and I struggled to not pass out in the coffee shop. We then tried to find shrine in the area only to discover that we had been walking in the opposite direction for hours and were pretty far away from our destination. The coffee wasn't working for me so we hopped on a train and went back to the hostel.

Its 9pm so I'm signing off and crashing. I'll write more later. Also, check out Rupa's blog.