Yesterday, while writing my blog entry, I met another Spanish tourist, also a bit geeky, so we kept talking about videogames, anime, etc. for a long time, so I went to bed at 1:00... Not good, considering we had to check out by quarter to ten, and still had to pack our stuff...
After checking out, we bought a one-day subway pass, and used it to get to Shinbashi. Actually our hotel is located right above the "Shiodome" station (makes sense knowing that the building is called Shiodome Media Tower...), but you can only get to that station using Toei lines, and our ticket was only valid for Tokyo Metro lines. That is the only thing I don't like about the subway system in Tokyo, that you have two companies. You always have to plan your route keeping in mind that if you change from a line of one company to one of the other you'll have to pay extra. Shinbashi was really close anyway, so it just took us around five minutes to get there.
However, even though it were only five minutes, the weight of our backpacks and the heat in Tokyo really made us sweat. When we arrived, I felt a little awkward. I mean, it's an expensive, luxurious looking hotel, and we arrived there dressed in a t-shirt and shorts and sweating...
All this time Pia had been complaining about the amount of mosquito bites she got. Well, there sure were no mosquitoes in this hotel. At the entrance, they had some sort of ultrasound emitter to keep bugs away. The problem was that it was set way too strong, so it was somewhat painful to go through the door. We took the elevator up to the 25th floor. The cool thing about the elevator was that it had a window from where you could look over the city. The higher we got, the more awesome the views were.
The views from the room were really beautiful. We had gotten a "Tower Side City Queen Room", from where you can see Tokyo Tower, and on clear days even Mount Fuji in the background. Unfortunately, the weather forecast for Tokyo didn't look too good. It wasn't raining, but the sky was covered with clouds and the visibility was rather limited. Nevertheless, even though we coulnd't see Mt. Fuji, the view over Tokyo was splendid.
After resting a bit at the hotel while enjoying the view, we went to Shibuya to walk around a bit enjoying our last hours in Japan. We ended up going to a game station, where I spent some of the money I had left on the Gundam simulator. This time, we felt a little more adventurous, probably because we COULD spend some more money, and tried some other games. The first one consisted of a large Japanese traditional drum with its corresponding drumsticks. You have to hit the drums following the "notes" on the screen, which were represented by moving circles that moved towards a target. You had to hit them right when they reach the target. There were two main notes, the red one, meaning a hit on the drum itself, and the blue one, meaning a hit on the side of the drum. There were also some other notes such as long yellow ones, during which you had to hit the drums as often as possible, or the red ones with a balloon attached, where you also had to hit several times. With each hit, the balloon grew larger, and you basically had to make it explode. It is a very simple yet extremely entertaining game.
The other one we tried was DrumMania. I love it! It is a really addicting game. Pia, as a drummer, wasn't too happy with the game, since it doesn't have much to do with real drumming. But then again, almost no musical game has a lot to do with the thing it's simulating, and yet they are really fun, right?
We also discovered another really cool game, although, because of it's nature, we couln't play it. If anyone has ever watched Yugioh, it is much like it. You play it with cards, which you put face-down on some sort of screen which detects the card. You have another screen with the real-time 3D visualization of the battle from an isometric view. It didn't seem to have turns, so you simply had to play the cards on the right place at the right time.
At 6 pm we went back to the hotel, stopping at a store first to buy some champagne. We had a feeling that the sunset would be a great thing to watch from our hotel room. And it was! It was very beautiful to see the city become darker and darker, while more and more red lights lit up on the rooftops. The neon lights started to illuminate the city soon after, making it look even more colorful and alive than during the day.
At 8pm we went down again and asked at the reception for some good sushi restaurant. We had enough money, it was the last day, and we hadn't had sushi even once, so it was about time. They told us to go to the fish market, which was just ten minutes away by foot, and gave us the name of a good sushi restaurant there, even though the place was full of sushi restaurants. The restaurant looked like a bar, although instead of mixing and serving drinks, they prepared and served sushi behind the bar. When we got there, a staff member at the entrance told us to sit in front of one of the cooks, who spoke both English and German, as we found out when he greeted us. He told us that he had worked for five years in a Japanese restaurant in Düsseldorf, Germany. He recommended the two menus that included a bowl of miso-soup and a large plate with assorted sushi. We were there to try as many different varieties of sushi as possible, so each of us took one of the two menus. The miso-soup was excellent, much better than the one we always had at our usual Japanese restaurant in Madrid. About the sushi... Well, I really don't want to compare it to anything else. It was the most delicious thing I've ever eaten. The fish was extremely fresh, and it tasted very sweet and juicy. Before going to the restaurant I was thinking of buying some onigiri for tomorrow, since I loved them. After eating the sushi, however, the mere though of eating onigiris made me feel a bit sick. Seriously, I'm happy to have tried it at the end of the trip, since I'm not sure if I would have been able to eat the department store food we ate during the whole trip after tasting such a delicious, fresh sushi at the restaurant. You really can't compare it to anything in Europe, at least not anything with a somewhat reasonable price. Here, we payed 3150 yen for the whole menu, with 15 pieces of sushi and the miso soup (no, not sushi rolls -or makisushi-, but REAL sushi). That's about 20 euros. For 20 euros, in our (actually really cheap) usual restaurant we would get 6 to 8 pieces, and the taste wouln't be the same at all.
While we were eating, a German man came in. He told us he had been living in Japan for 12 years and he uses to eat at that restaurant. The cook that attended us spoke in German with him, and he answered in Japanese. I suppose that they do that to help each other practice.
After spending an hour and a half in the restaurant eating and chatting with the cook and the German customer, we used our daily subway ticket to get to Akihabara for the last time and look for a last-minute souvenir for a friend and spend some of the money we had left at the arcade. Pia asked me to try and get her a teddy bear from a "UFO-Catcher", one of those machines where you have a joystick to move a hook around and a button to make it fall and catch something. From my experience, those machines never work, since the hook is not strong enough to sustain anything. In Japan, however, the staff at the arcades always puts one object somewhere near the edge of the hole where the hook is supposed to drop them, so the aim of the game is not actually try to catch something, but to try to move it sideways in such a way that it ends up falling into the hole. Actually, you can call the staff and ask them to put the object you want near the edge. The first time we asked, the clerk put the bear really on the edge, so one try should have been enough to make it fall. We put in 100 yen and I tried to get it. I didn't know the size of the hook, however, and I was afraid that I would miss it, so I dropped it really near the teddy bear, and couldn't move it enough to make it fall. Since you could get either one play for 100 yen or six plays for 500 yen, and we were afraid that I wouldn't make it on the second try either, we put in 500 yen. This time, I managed to get the bear on the first try. We called the clerk again and asked him to put a different one, a panda, near the dropping place. This time, however, it wasn't as close to the edge as on the first time. After a few tries I only managed to move it a bit. I only had one try left, and didn't think i would make it. I dropped the hook as far from the bear as possible to make it move as far at the hook could force it to. The hook actually grabbed it, put the feet up in the air, but soon dropped it because of the weight of the head. The feet fell almost on the same place as where they were at the beginning. After a moment, however, they slipped down into the hole. The head was heavier than the rest of the body, so at first, the panda was hanging there with it's feet in the hole but its head still on the main platform. Luckily, the head soon slipped down, and we obtained the panda. Hey, two large teddybears for 600 yen is extremely cheap!
Afterwards, I had two more rounds of Gundam, which will be my last ones, at least until I get back to Japan, although by then the game will probably have become too old or something. We also played DDR and Drummania once more before leaving to catch one of the last subway trains.
Back at the hotel, we drank our champagne while enjoying the "Lost In Translation"-ish view over Tokyo at night, with that cloud of red lights illuminating everything as far as the eye reached.
Yeah, today we spent around four times the money we usually spent per day, but it surely was the greatest day ever.
I WILL DEFINITELY COME BACK AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!!
Good by Japan!
PS: Sorry for the delay. I wrote the entry on the plane back home, but I couldn't upload it until now...
After checking out, we bought a one-day subway pass, and used it to get to Shinbashi. Actually our hotel is located right above the "Shiodome" station (makes sense knowing that the building is called Shiodome Media Tower...), but you can only get to that station using Toei lines, and our ticket was only valid for Tokyo Metro lines. That is the only thing I don't like about the subway system in Tokyo, that you have two companies. You always have to plan your route keeping in mind that if you change from a line of one company to one of the other you'll have to pay extra. Shinbashi was really close anyway, so it just took us around five minutes to get there.
However, even though it were only five minutes, the weight of our backpacks and the heat in Tokyo really made us sweat. When we arrived, I felt a little awkward. I mean, it's an expensive, luxurious looking hotel, and we arrived there dressed in a t-shirt and shorts and sweating...
All this time Pia had been complaining about the amount of mosquito bites she got. Well, there sure were no mosquitoes in this hotel. At the entrance, they had some sort of ultrasound emitter to keep bugs away. The problem was that it was set way too strong, so it was somewhat painful to go through the door. We took the elevator up to the 25th floor. The cool thing about the elevator was that it had a window from where you could look over the city. The higher we got, the more awesome the views were.
The views from the room were really beautiful. We had gotten a "Tower Side City Queen Room", from where you can see Tokyo Tower, and on clear days even Mount Fuji in the background. Unfortunately, the weather forecast for Tokyo didn't look too good. It wasn't raining, but the sky was covered with clouds and the visibility was rather limited. Nevertheless, even though we coulnd't see Mt. Fuji, the view over Tokyo was splendid.
After resting a bit at the hotel while enjoying the view, we went to Shibuya to walk around a bit enjoying our last hours in Japan. We ended up going to a game station, where I spent some of the money I had left on the Gundam simulator. This time, we felt a little more adventurous, probably because we COULD spend some more money, and tried some other games. The first one consisted of a large Japanese traditional drum with its corresponding drumsticks. You have to hit the drums following the "notes" on the screen, which were represented by moving circles that moved towards a target. You had to hit them right when they reach the target. There were two main notes, the red one, meaning a hit on the drum itself, and the blue one, meaning a hit on the side of the drum. There were also some other notes such as long yellow ones, during which you had to hit the drums as often as possible, or the red ones with a balloon attached, where you also had to hit several times. With each hit, the balloon grew larger, and you basically had to make it explode. It is a very simple yet extremely entertaining game.
The other one we tried was DrumMania. I love it! It is a really addicting game. Pia, as a drummer, wasn't too happy with the game, since it doesn't have much to do with real drumming. But then again, almost no musical game has a lot to do with the thing it's simulating, and yet they are really fun, right?
We also discovered another really cool game, although, because of it's nature, we couln't play it. If anyone has ever watched Yugioh, it is much like it. You play it with cards, which you put face-down on some sort of screen which detects the card. You have another screen with the real-time 3D visualization of the battle from an isometric view. It didn't seem to have turns, so you simply had to play the cards on the right place at the right time.
At 6 pm we went back to the hotel, stopping at a store first to buy some champagne. We had a feeling that the sunset would be a great thing to watch from our hotel room. And it was! It was very beautiful to see the city become darker and darker, while more and more red lights lit up on the rooftops. The neon lights started to illuminate the city soon after, making it look even more colorful and alive than during the day.
At 8pm we went down again and asked at the reception for some good sushi restaurant. We had enough money, it was the last day, and we hadn't had sushi even once, so it was about time. They told us to go to the fish market, which was just ten minutes away by foot, and gave us the name of a good sushi restaurant there, even though the place was full of sushi restaurants. The restaurant looked like a bar, although instead of mixing and serving drinks, they prepared and served sushi behind the bar. When we got there, a staff member at the entrance told us to sit in front of one of the cooks, who spoke both English and German, as we found out when he greeted us. He told us that he had worked for five years in a Japanese restaurant in Düsseldorf, Germany. He recommended the two menus that included a bowl of miso-soup and a large plate with assorted sushi. We were there to try as many different varieties of sushi as possible, so each of us took one of the two menus. The miso-soup was excellent, much better than the one we always had at our usual Japanese restaurant in Madrid. About the sushi... Well, I really don't want to compare it to anything else. It was the most delicious thing I've ever eaten. The fish was extremely fresh, and it tasted very sweet and juicy. Before going to the restaurant I was thinking of buying some onigiri for tomorrow, since I loved them. After eating the sushi, however, the mere though of eating onigiris made me feel a bit sick. Seriously, I'm happy to have tried it at the end of the trip, since I'm not sure if I would have been able to eat the department store food we ate during the whole trip after tasting such a delicious, fresh sushi at the restaurant. You really can't compare it to anything in Europe, at least not anything with a somewhat reasonable price. Here, we payed 3150 yen for the whole menu, with 15 pieces of sushi and the miso soup (no, not sushi rolls -or makisushi-, but REAL sushi). That's about 20 euros. For 20 euros, in our (actually really cheap) usual restaurant we would get 6 to 8 pieces, and the taste wouln't be the same at all.
While we were eating, a German man came in. He told us he had been living in Japan for 12 years and he uses to eat at that restaurant. The cook that attended us spoke in German with him, and he answered in Japanese. I suppose that they do that to help each other practice.
After spending an hour and a half in the restaurant eating and chatting with the cook and the German customer, we used our daily subway ticket to get to Akihabara for the last time and look for a last-minute souvenir for a friend and spend some of the money we had left at the arcade. Pia asked me to try and get her a teddy bear from a "UFO-Catcher", one of those machines where you have a joystick to move a hook around and a button to make it fall and catch something. From my experience, those machines never work, since the hook is not strong enough to sustain anything. In Japan, however, the staff at the arcades always puts one object somewhere near the edge of the hole where the hook is supposed to drop them, so the aim of the game is not actually try to catch something, but to try to move it sideways in such a way that it ends up falling into the hole. Actually, you can call the staff and ask them to put the object you want near the edge. The first time we asked, the clerk put the bear really on the edge, so one try should have been enough to make it fall. We put in 100 yen and I tried to get it. I didn't know the size of the hook, however, and I was afraid that I would miss it, so I dropped it really near the teddy bear, and couldn't move it enough to make it fall. Since you could get either one play for 100 yen or six plays for 500 yen, and we were afraid that I wouldn't make it on the second try either, we put in 500 yen. This time, I managed to get the bear on the first try. We called the clerk again and asked him to put a different one, a panda, near the dropping place. This time, however, it wasn't as close to the edge as on the first time. After a few tries I only managed to move it a bit. I only had one try left, and didn't think i would make it. I dropped the hook as far from the bear as possible to make it move as far at the hook could force it to. The hook actually grabbed it, put the feet up in the air, but soon dropped it because of the weight of the head. The feet fell almost on the same place as where they were at the beginning. After a moment, however, they slipped down into the hole. The head was heavier than the rest of the body, so at first, the panda was hanging there with it's feet in the hole but its head still on the main platform. Luckily, the head soon slipped down, and we obtained the panda. Hey, two large teddybears for 600 yen is extremely cheap!
Afterwards, I had two more rounds of Gundam, which will be my last ones, at least until I get back to Japan, although by then the game will probably have become too old or something. We also played DDR and Drummania once more before leaving to catch one of the last subway trains.
Back at the hotel, we drank our champagne while enjoying the "Lost In Translation"-ish view over Tokyo at night, with that cloud of red lights illuminating everything as far as the eye reached.
Yeah, today we spent around four times the money we usually spent per day, but it surely was the greatest day ever.
I WILL DEFINITELY COME BACK AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!!
Good by Japan!
PS: Sorry for the delay. I wrote the entry on the plane back home, but I couldn't upload it until now...
-----------------------------------
At Shibuya
Watching the sunset from our hotel room
Coming back from Akihabara with the teddy bears
Eating the best sushi ever
The night at the hotel
EDIT (16.11.2012): I removed the map from the global page template, and I think this is the best place to keep it:
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