The day started off poorly with me wasting a few hours searching in vain for another place to get wireless connectivity for my Mac—I finally gave up and checked emails and such from the ¥200 internet cafe. I also muddled my way through finally finding a ticket counter (at Shinjuku) that sold the full-day JR/Subway passes.

The morning being shot by then, I resolved to stay out as late as I could getting things done. On the list for today: Odaiba and Akihabara. I’d wanted to go out to Odaiba primarily to see the Tokyo Big Sight building because I’d seen it so often in anime like Comic Party. I also knew it was a popular place to hang out with lots of entertaining things to do. That turned out to be true, so I spent a few hours there, had lunch then went to Akihabara in search of anime stuff and electronics.

What a place! It’s almost an overpowering assault on the senses (it probably didn’t help that the first place I ventured into by mistake turned out to be a noisy, smoky pachinko parlor). There was so much going on, and every shop had their touts out front with microphones or bullhorns, shouting for you to come and see what they had. I found a really cool anime and model store—8 floors! There was one floor with nothing but Gundam models and figures—thousands of them. And it was like that with all the other figures and models and series—I was absolutely amazed at the variety. The one thing I did not find was any big manga shops, particularly used manga and doujinshi stores. I think I was in the wrong area, and will try again tomorrow.

Since I’d purchased a separate all-day ticket for the automated train out to Odaiba, I decided to go back there for dinner too and see the city and the Rainbow Bridge all lit up at night. It really was beautiful and also nice and cool out by the water; I can see why it’s a favorite date spot and place to kill time. I ate at a famous Hawaiian hamburger restaurant, of all places. I had the “Set Menu A” which had an avocado burger, fries, salad and drink. They were in “American Sized” portions, too—I think this was the first time I can remember since leaving home when I finally ate enough at one sitting to be full! Of course it cost me around $12.00…

I began wending my way home, stopping off at Shinjuku once again to buy my Narita Airport Express train ticket for Monday—my train leaves at 12:42 PM, and then I’ll be on my way home. I got back to the apartment at around 10:00 PM and took a relaxing bath. I’ve got another big day ahead of me tomorrow—my last full day here—so I need to get to bed!