More of our travelogue.
Last Tuesday after our visit at the LDS temple in Tokyo we went wandering around and I posted a few pics of that. We then went with my sister in law to dinner for Unagi (salt water eel). It was not far from the Tokyo Sky Tree Tv tower. It’s the tallest tower and third tallest structure in the world according to Wikipedia. We did not go up this trip. It had two observation decks. One at 350m and one at 450m. We did go up on our last trip.
en.m.wikipedia.org
Unagi is good when done right. It has a slightly sweet sauce and is usually served atop rice or as sushi. The first thing that came out were grilled pieces of eel. The livers, some meat, other insides, heads, and fin parts. They were singed on the sides so weren’t bad as they that grilled charcoal taste. Then the main meal came and it was wet good. Luckily it was my sister in laws treat as it was expensive as well.
After that we took the Ginza line subway and the Yurikamome private line back to the hotel. The Yurikamome is a rubber tired train that how’s from Shimbashi and does a few stops and then goes across the Rainbow Bridge to Odaiba. It’s totally unmanned and I sat in the rear seat (where a driver would be) and took a night shot after we went over the bridge.
Next morning, Wednesday, was another breakfast of champions at the Hilton breakfast buffet. Not as much as the day before. Since we paid good money for it I ate big every morning and just ate light most of the days. However Wednesday I had a lunch appointment with a friend from Taiwan who lives and works in Tokyo. I met the guy at the Apple developer conference in San Francisco in 2015. In 2017 I went to Taiwan and visited him and an other guy I had met at the conference. Now we met up again in Tokyo. That will be next post.
Before I went to meet this friend I went to Akihabara Electric Town on the Yamanote Line train (it’s a big loop around Tokyo and runs trains every 5-8 minutes in busy times in each direction). Stores don’t open it seems until 11am and I got to my destination about 15-20 minutes early and had to wait. It was a small store that only sells capsule toys (gachapon / gashapon) plus they also sell a small amount of anime type figures in the back of the store. They often have older gachapon toys unlike most of the gachapon stations in big malls and department stores. (Capsule toys are big in Japan — I’ll make a post about it separately at some point). They also have the latest ones but I like to get the more off beat and weird ones or specialty ones and not the current fad Disney or anime based ones. I bought 6 and then there happened to be the Poppondetta used train store on the second floor (the red sign in the pic). Poppondetta is a major model train retailer and they also sell some of their own stuff they’ve commissioned. This was full of used. I don’t speak Japanese so I couldn’t read the various signs that described the various items. A lot of them seemed rather expensive (complete sets etc). They also had individualized cars and power cars and locomotives in cellophane bags all organized by period etc and they were priced ok it seems so if you needed a certain car to replace something you could probably find it.
Japan is mostly N scale though there is a good amount of H0 available. Most of this store was Japanese B but had some Japanese H0 and some foreign H0 like some Märklin and Bachman. Also had some TOMY PLARAIL. Interesting store. I didn’t spend money.
Here is a random shot from a street in Akihabara so you can get a feel for what it’s like. Game and anime and hobby and electronics stores everywhere.
Then off to Ebisu for my lunch appointment on the Yamanote line again (it’s green). This particular train is a series E235. Often referred to (at least by foreigners) as the microwave oven train due to the way the front is designed.
