Everything I planned to do today didn’t open until 10am, so I slept in and got my coffee and eventually got out the door towards Ginza station. I stopped right outside to see a Godzilla statue, which was actually tiny and he totally skipped arm day. Then I hopped on the train to Akihabara. The first stop was the Gundam Café, where I got a super delicious strawberry chocolate latte, it tasted like strawberry yoo-hoo heated up and with caffeine. The inside was pretty neat too, with larger Gundam figures and a menu dedicated to all the various characters from the different series. On my way out I got a lemon raspberry concoction in a Duo cup because Duo is my favorite.
From there I headed into Electric Town, and I was only supposed to be looking but I ended up shopping and spending more money than I intended buying stuff that I probably don’t need but man it’s so cool! I was planning on catching the sunset again, but decided to shop more and lose money on those cheating (but fun!) claw machines instead, and then gradually made my way over to Shinjuku. I wandered around the Shinjuku night time chaos for a while then tracked down their Christmas light walking path which was kinda substandard in my opinion. After a couple quick pics I got back on the train to Shibuya and walked to their blue light walking path which was AWESOME. They had those neon electric bright blue lights leading from the train station all the way to the Yoyogi Park entrance which lit up the entire area in an eerie blue color. Then they put a shiny path on the ground to reflect the light up more. It was all really cool looking. At the end of the path were a set of 100 year old bells, and there were four ropes which you were allowed to choose and pull one of them. The ropes would at random, from what I could tell, ring one or more of the three bells. Whichever one(s) ended up ringing meant you had good fortune in those areas. So if you rang all of them you were the luckiest person, in theory. I pulled a rope and one of the smaller bells rang so I asked the guy what exactly that meant, and he said the bell that rang was one for good fortune in school and studying, so I should be looking forward to education and learning in the future. I was satisfied with that, guess I should actually claim and start on that TEFL class I bought on Groupon back in September!
After walking through the lights I headed back to the hotel to drop off my bags. There were only a couple things left on my to-do list while I’m here, both food related: eat shabu-shabu and actually try some matcha ice cream for once. I hunted around for an ice cream store, but even though it felt like there was one on every corner before, I couldn’t for the life of me find one now. So I gave up on that and went to a shabu-shabu restaurant and ordered a meal combo…and oh hey matcha ice cream was an option for dessert! So I crossed both of those items off, the shabu-shabu was delicious but I don’t think I’m a fan of the ice cream. I mean, I still ate it all but I don’t think I’d order it again. After all the walking around my feet were hurting so I went to my room and soaked in the tub for a while.
Today was my last full day in Japan, tomorrow I’ll have the morning to take care of some errands and do a final pack of my bags then it’s back to the U.S.A. I don’t wanna…
