{"id":8671,"date":"2017-11-03T05:47:23","date_gmt":"2017-11-03T12:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=8671"},"modified":"2017-11-03T06:15:17","modified_gmt":"2017-11-03T13:15:17","slug":"japan-2017-day-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=8671","title":{"rendered":"Japan 2017 Day 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was another beautiful day in Tokyo and I figured I’d just wander around a bit and make sure I visited the geek Mecca of Akihabara. I went for the electronics, not for the anime stuff and the maid caf\u00e9s, even if you don’t believe me.<\/p>\n

I started out the day at Hoshino Coffee again. They have a good breakfast set menu, and the coffee is quite good and strong, just the way I like it. None of this hipster “bright” coffee nonsense. I ordered the omelette set, which arrived with a huge (for Japan) omelette!<\/p>\n

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As soon as I took a bite I realized why, it was all airy and fluffy!<\/p>\n

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I didn’t want to go straight to Akihabara because nothing seems to open before about 10AM here. I noticed that the Ginza Apple store hours said 8AM, so I thought I’d pass by and see what the new iPhone X looked like first. Not a great idea.<\/p>\n

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I used Google maps to estimate the line was about 400m long (four football fields). Every time I thought I found the end of the line I realized it was just the standard Japanese trick of breaking up the line so people weren’t blocking driveways or streets. There were a LOT of people in line. Later in the day I just walked up to one at Bic Camera, I think, and played with one for a minute.<\/p>\n

I decided just to take a long walk to Akihabara, about 40 minutes away, and that wasn’t the best idea either. I’ve walked through a lot of neighborhoods in Tokyo and this was the blandest walk I’ve ever taken. Here’s a shot from a good part closer to Ginza.<\/p>\n

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After Tokyo Station (which turned out to be much larger underground than I remember)<\/p>\n

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it was just a wasteland of gigantic construction projects or bleak buildings. I didn’t take any pictures of that. At some point I just popped out into Akihabara. I wandered around a bit and found the old parts stores that had tubes and ancient chips that are still in business and spent way too much money on a Nixie tube display kit.<\/p>\n

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Then I spent a couple of hours trying to find a store that I used as a landmark, only to realize that the reason I used the store as a landmark was really to find the store where I bought the Nixie tube kit. I sheepishly headed to Mos Burger for a late lunch.<\/p>\n

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I wondered what to do next, and I finally decided to do the easy thing: visit a shrine. And I was near Kanda Myoujin. I even took the stairs that almost did my mom in on her last trip to Japan.<\/p>\n

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It was busy! I had to line up to do the usual shrine thing, and saw traditional musicians, shichi-go-san kids, and even a wedding!<\/p>\n

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Musicians over towards the middle right of the picture.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The musicians walking up the red carpet, followed by the wedding party I didn’t take a picture of.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I even had a soft ice cream cone.<\/p>\n

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After that I headed towards a train station, which happened to be near Kanda’s row of music stores, so I did stop in to a violin shop and peek in the windows to see all the pretty guitars and brass instruments for sale. Funny, I don’t remember seeing any woodwinds or percussion instruments, but I’m sure I’m just forgetting them.<\/p>\n

The only other thing of note was going to dinner. I thought I’d try somewhere different and ended up on the Odakyu dining floor at the same restaurant I’ve been to several times before. There was a line of Japanese people and you know how we Asians like to line up. I was afraid to try the places that only had lines of Chinese tourists or, even worse, no line at all.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was another beautiful day in Tokyo and I figured I’d just wander around a bit and make sure I visited the geek Mecca of Akihabara. I went for the electronics, not for the anime stuff and the maid caf\u00e9s, even if you don’t believe me. I started out the day at Hoshino Coffee again. They have a good breakfast set menu, and the coffee is quite good and strong, just the way I like it. None of this hipster “bright” coffee nonsense. I ordered the omelette set, which arrived with a huge (for Japan) omelette! As soon as I took a bite I realized why, it was all airy … Continue reading Japan 2017 Day 3<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8671"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8688,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8671\/revisions\/8688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}