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This blog entry will cover the past two days as they were more me days than Laura days, she was nice enough to allow me time to geek out. Coming to Japan was something I always wanted to do although I had no idea what I wanted to do here. The technology has always appealed to me but I was more surprised by the people. A far cry from China, the people of Japan are polite and courteous.
On the first of the two days we attended a Japanese baseball game, baseball has always interested me and I have watched it on tv. Japan happens to have one of the biggest and best leagues in the world and the teams mirror there American counterparts. The team we went to see was the Yomuri Giants verses their Tokyo rivals the Yakult Swallows. Baseball is a game of 9 inning one batting and pitching per inning. It's also long....really long. I can only remember them being an hour or so. I was shocked to learn the average game in Japan is 3 hours long. Outside the area everyone was wearing the orange colours of the giants from little old ladies to small boys. From the merchandise shop we could tell why. Everything was neon orange, of course after the game I picked myself up a shirt. The game itself was fairly mediocre for the first 3 innings and then it picked up with 2 home runs and one player splitting their bat in two. It was a fun experience, we left after about 2 hours and went back to rest. Neither of us had slept well in a tiny bed and I've been nursing a cold leading to restless sleep. I'm not sure I can get use to rice bowls over burgers if it was a football game but an excellent start to a man day! Later in the day we moved to electric town Akihabara for food. Akihabara is the Tokyo you see on TV with bright lights everywhere, we had a bite to eat and decided to return the next day when we had more time.
Day 2 was spent in Akihabara pursuing the stores. The place is a haven for gamers, hosting some of the most famous retro game and arcade businesses in the world. Even Laura enjoyed it once she found a Yoshi toy of Mario fame. Laura and I then hit the arcades with games of today and yesteryear. We found our speciality was the guitar instrument games and rocked off to 3 songs. The light had faded and we were off again to another landmark, the Tokyo Skytree a huge structure spanning the Tokyo Skyline, with a large viewing platform. From bottom to top the lift takes less than 5 minutes and travels at over 600 m/s. The skyline of Tokyo and its 360 panorama were something to behold. Unlike the Eiffel tower the skytree encompasses a whole plaza. Where on the 6th floor we dined on traditional udon noodles and tempura. A great 2 days........
- comments
Deborah Clements Akihabara sounds interesting, if a little overwhelming! Tokyo skyline sounds amazing! Prefer the sound of the latter - must be an age thing!! x