I’m pretty sure I have a bit of a cold. My throat is a bit sore on the left side and my nose is overly dry but plugged up on the left side. But it was a beautiful day and I don’t have that much time left in Tokyo.

But honestly, there’s only a few things I can think I want to see. I’m sure I’ll think of plenty after I leave, but for now I can’t think of anything I want to see in Tokyo. There are a few things I might do if I had more energy, like get tickets to see Shōten, or stand in line to get sushi at Sushi Saito. As it is I’m getting tired and I’ve always had a hard time deciding what to eat.

For some reason I thought going to see Tokyo Dome City would be a good idea. I’m not sure why I thought that, since I’m avoiding malls for the most part.

Passing through the first building I saw the Big Egg itself and a ferris wheel and a roller coaster.

I never saw the roller coaster running, but as I passed through. In fact, I don’t think I saw anyone riding the log flume, either but as I left I finally saw a guy riding it by himself. Since I thought riding the roller coaster by myself would look equally as pathetic and since I wasn’t feeling that well anyway, I just kept walking.

Right behind Tokyo Dome city was the Boy Scouts of Japan, and guess what else? That’s right, the Kodōkan International Jūdo Center, where John Rain (a fictional character well known in the US) trained. In fact, THMFIC at the gym asked me if I was going to the Kodōkan. I saw lots of round eyes going in.

But off I went in another direction. One of the things I use to decide where to go is to follow stairs. Why? I don’t know. But if they’re headed in the “right direction” I’ll go climb them.

Well I’m not sure if they went the right direction, because I’m not really sure where I was headed.

Where I ended up was Todai, or Tokyo University, the #1 school in Japan. I decided to be as smug as the people there and looked up the ranking of my alma mater to compare to the ranking of Todai. The list I found listed MIT #1, and Todai #50. Not that it did me all that much good.

This is the red gate which must be famous because everyone was having their picture taken in front of it.

I went looking for something to eat and must have looked at three or four dozen Japanese restaurants before I just went to Mos Burger again. This evening I saw a TV program that showed the top 20 Japanese hamburgers from a survey and Mos Burger had spots #1, #2, #4, #5, #6, #11, #12, #14 and #17. I had a chili dog (#14), a chicken burger (not ranked), and the onion ring/potato (#3 in the sides ranking).

Another way I find things to to go see is just to follow weird signs around. I’ve never heard of the “Tokyo Waterworks Historical Museum” and I couldn’t find it on Google Maps but that didn’t stop me. It’s close to how I found the Tokyo Firefighter’s museum.

I started to wonder when I didn’t see signs as I got closer.

Sure enough, there was a museum.

There were two floors of displays, including multimedia displays like this one. The cutouts moved back and forth and there was a cartoon in a screen behind it.

I also carried an electronic recording. You typed in the location and pressed play. The explanations and videos were quite long.

They also had some four hundred year old wooden pipes that were dug out of the ground when construction was done. The waterworks of Tokyo are from the 1600’s and there were also pictures of dams built in the 1940’s. Quite a cool museum for engineer geeks like me.

I went wandering around and I really like it when there are signboards with maps. Especially when they call a hokadaigakuin (a school for lawyers) a Low School.

After that I went to Akihabara to waste more of my hard earned money on computer crap and then headed back to the hotel. On the way to Ochanomizu station I ran into Yushima Seido, a Confucian temple. I believe this is the school started in 1630.

This is the gate to the temple.

The temple had something going on with a stage and seats inside.

After that it was back to the hotel. In front of the hotel was another ad truck advertising a band. In this neighborhood, the ad vans are always advertising K-pop bands.

I was too tired to go very far for dinner and got dinner at the Tesco again. I should probably try sleeping in tomorrow.