Day 12: Last Chance

Day 12: Last Chance for Culture

Well, our last day of really being able to do something in Tokyo. Daniel still hasn't found what he imagines as the ultimate anime heaven. But he has a couple of ideas of where to look. One is the Shoen Jump store. This happens to be next to the Tokyo Dome on the MITA line. So, we can do that. We are at the start of the Mita line and we can just ride the subway right out there. And, there is a very famous but well hidden old garden that used to belong to some big shot Samurai.

What is Shoen Jump? Well, that is the company that publishes One Piece and Naruto, don't you know:

Daniel hangs out with his friend Naruto

This may explain the anime appeal to teenage boys.

The Garden was pretty much like all of the gardens. Very peaceful. Lots of construction work going on. How do they achieve both at the same time? Main new cool thing about this was this interesting curve shapped hill, which I realized was all from manicured Bamboo. Looks like they have gut the Bamboo to different levels to make this effect. Or maybe the hill underneath is the same shape. But you can see from the water line that the bamboo is all around a foot tall.

Here we are inside the garden Dome on Mars Station #1

 

This hill is all the tops of short manicured bamboo. How do they do that?

 

Later we circled back around to Tokyo Dome looking for another Subway and a place to eat. We found an indian place (where they speak great english and have good vegetarian fare) at a complex called LaQua. What a cool place. Sort of a combination amusement park and hot springs.

Worlds first ferris wheel with no center hub. In fact, a roller coaster goes through the middle.

 

And that ferris wheel is part of a huge hot springs facility. You go in, pay your 2500 yen, they give you a robe, a towel, and a wrist band (that you use to buy stuff inside). And you can spend the next 20 hours or so inside. You can even spend the night sleeping by a hot spring in some easy chair (cheaper than a love motel). Lots of baths and springs and such. I wish we had one more day here, I would go spend a few hours there. Natural spring water with Sodium Chloride, pumped up from 1600 meters below the surface. Hardly radioactive at all !!

LaQua

Now, on our way to the Tokyo Anime Center. The subway had one more important lesson to teach us. Some subway lines are not part of the same payment system. So you ticket you bought on (for instance) the Oedo line can not be used on the Giza line. In fact, you have to pay up during the transfer between the two. Hey, that is another 5 bucks !! So walked the one stop difference.

The map showed the Anime Center at this one intersection. And I found it, and guess where it was? Right back in the middle of Electronic City. We found yet another block of the place. Dan found a pretty cool anime stuff store (but no Gundam. What kind of Anime Model store doesn't have Gundam?). I finally walked up to these 3 teenagers in talking in the street (one was in Cosplay outfit) and asked for directions. They were very nice. The one young man walked us a few blocks were he thought it was, but it wasn't. Then he looked it up on his handheld (ubiquitous here). He told us we needed the UDK building. The big huge one over there. Ah. I read the guide book. That is what it said too. So we walked over there and found THE TOKYO ANIME CENTER. Turns out it has been closed since the earthquake. It will re-open last March. Hmmm. I doubt it.

Went out for Sushi at a local sushi go round. It was very pleasant. Daniel really got into the spirit of the thing and was grabbing vegetarian plates left and right. The nice ladies sitting next to us helped us out and even wrote a request for special order for us to the chefs (you have to write it in Japanese). I have had very good luck with older ladies in Tokyo. Perhaps I should move here and become a professional.

These places work by charging you by the amount and kind of plate (¥320 for anything on a blue striped plate with red flowers, ¥430 for a black plate with gold letters, etc) When it was time to settle up, you put you little plates in a pile or two, the waitress has this wand that she waives in front of our pile of plates and it totals everything right up. WOW. It was like..... NASA. Intel Home Group should be spending all of their time walking around Tokyo and stealing ideas. And it turns out that EVERY cash register is completely automatic. You feed the bills in, the change (including bills) comes out. No human counting needed.