Today I woke at the more usual time of 9-ish and convinced my phone that it should receive messages from the U.S. for the first time in a couple days. I got to have a short video call with my girlfriend, and then I was on my way by 10:15. I stopped for breakfast at Honey Bagels, and got the almond chocolate bagel again with another bagel that I picked at random. That also turned out be a chocolate filled bagel. The server tried to make sure that I was okay having two kinds of chocolate bagel, but I didn't understand her and told her it was okay.
Based on Audrey's advice, I took a couple trains out to the Yurikamome Line monorail out to O-Daiba, a man made island in Edo Bay with some cool museums and big shopping malls. I spotted a cool looking maritime science museum built to look like a cruise ship from the monorail and tried to get in, but it was closed. So I feel back on my original plan and went to the Museum of Emerging Technology to see some robots. But then I found out that place was also closed, because it was a Tuesday. There were two older Mexican guys also trying to get in, and I almost tried to hang out with them, but ended up being too shy.
I resorted to visiting the shopping malls and walked over to Diver City (is that supposed to be a pun?), a 6 floor shopping mall that has a 1:1 scale model of a Gundam towering outside. I went inside looking for stickers that I could send back to a friend in the U.S., and then checked out the skate park on the roof of the mall.
The next mall, Venus Fort, was like a Disney Land set. I got in through an open History Garage, which was designed to look like the streets Italy, U.S.A., and Britain in the 1950's with some really nice historic cars parked in their appropriate countries. I went through and also found a library of old toy cars (or car models?) of historic makes. The first floor of the actual mall wasn't very unusual, but I did find a store that was selling puppies for ¥600,000 each (~$6,000)! All the puppies that were there seemed pretty happy, but the place felt super weird, and I wondered where the moms were and how they were doing.
At the second floor, the mall completely changed into a representation of an Italian city, with a fountain, a piazza, and a church facade (for weddings!). Only the most high brow restaurants and brands had shops there, though there was also an indoor Airsoft 'survival arena' in one corner. I ran out of things to check out in the mall and went looking for a replica of the Statue of Liberty on the north waterfront.
Before I got there, I ran into a ferry terminal with two companies working out of the same pier, and realized that going up the river was exactly what I wanted to do. One of them said they were closed (because they're closed on Tuesdays that follow a national holiday like Sports Day), so I got confused. I was stubborn though, and hung around drinking a juice until I saw that a Tokyo Cruise employee was helping a group buy tickets. I asked to make sure there'd be a ferry coming soon, and got a ticket for a boat that would take me up to Asakusa.
I sat on top of the first stage and took in Edo Bay. It was the most open space I'd seen in Tokyo, and even though it was ringed in by blocky modernist high rises on all sides it felt very free. Then we changed boats at Hinode Pier and I found a place in the open area at the back where I could watch the city go by. The boat tried to helpfully tell me the names of all the bridges we passed under, but I couldn't hear any of them for all the engine noise. Being on the river felt much more oppressive, being wedged between so many tall buildings.
The ferry let me off in Asakusa and I was enchanted by a huge, obsidian glass brick of a building with what looked like a giant golden daikon sitting on top of it. Turns out, it was actually a giant golden piece of shit.
I walked over to it and tried to figure out what the building was for. It seemed to be associated with the Asahi beer company somehow, but I couldn't figure out what was actually inside there. I found a restaurant nearby and decided to sit down for a while with an anchovy, tomato, and olive pizza and a whiskey-ginger.
After dinner, I really needed to charge my phone so that I could meet up with Alex in a bit. I tried going to a Baskin Robbins which had a wall outlet in the entrance. I got an ice cream and then asked in broken Japanese if I could charge my phone, but they said I couldn't, and then recommended that I go to Burger King across the street. I walked through covered markets until I finished my biscotti espresso ice cream, then came back around to Burger King. This time I checked that they had outlets first, and then got some fries.
When my phone had a decent charge, I started walking west and got a message from Alex moments later. Our options were basically to head to Shinjuku and wander around, or go to Shimokitazawa for a curry festival. We decided on the latter. I almost headed to the wrong place though when Alex just called the place by it's colloquial name of Shimo, but there's also a station that's just called Shimo. Fortunately, I figured out my mistake before I got on the train.
We met at the Shimokitazawa station and kicked off the night with some small steam buns filled with curry. We waited around eating them, looking over the list of 150 restaurants participating in the curry fest, while Alex's friends Shioka, Gabe, and Nat made their way to us. Once we were all met, we went to Banana Moon, a bar that had curried chicken wings. Then it was off to Avocado, a Mexican restaurant serving curry tacos, and then a nicer place I don't remember the name of to get curry, cheese, and omelette logs on rice. We finished our night in a bar that with some heavy hippy influence and ate curry over rice. We stayed there long after we were finished eating, just talking and using a children's Japanese atlas of the world to show off our home countries and our favorite animals.
With that, our curry crawl was ended, and we said goodnight. Alex and I went home to sleep off the crazy amount of food and drink we just had.
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