We looked through various stands, sampling street food, buying gifts and souvenirs and made our way to the district of wholesale Buddhist and Shinto paraphernalia as well as the district of wholesale kitchen goods. Finally, I've found the source of all the plastic food displays in Japan! Unfortunately, they were prohibitively expensive for the pocket of a novelty-minded tourist, so they will rest within the glass displays outside of restaurants and not take up space on my dining room table.
We then headed to Akihabara, the electronics and anime center of Tokyo. A space fighting desperately for attention, but outside my grasp of understanding. Ben and I slid through, and oriented ourselves toward Tokyo Dome.
Once there we took a ferris wheel ride to see the city from above, walked around the mall shops, and got our tickets for the baseball game. In Japan, it's fine to bring food and drinks into the stadium, so brought some Sappor beer, ramen and seaweed crackers and enjoyed some takoyaki and yakitori once inside. We watched the man in front of us arrive, take off his business jacket in Mr.Rogers-like fashion and replace it with a green Hawks jersey, right over his white workman's shirt. The crowd performed beautifully, the game was close and exciting. The Nippon Ham Fighters won.
In our attempt to walk the twisting streets back to our hotel we got disoriented and stepped into a 7-11 for help. The workers were more confused than we, but a friendly patron came over to us and took it upon himself to invite us to walk with him to a certain street from which we could find our way. We talked a bit about baseball in broken English and Japanese. And he made sure to get us pointed in the right direction.
We got ice cream to celebrate. From start to end, delicious.
No comments:
Post a Comment