May – June 2023 Japan Trip (Day 4-6)

Day 4 - Saitama2000

30 May, 高島平 -> 大宮 -> 川越 -> 新都心 -> 高島平

Google Maps has this useful feature called “Timeline”, which records the places that you have visited using the GPS. During my first trip to Tokyo, it recorded my trails and was relatively accurate… with a major exception. At some point, it teleported me to Saitama, a different prefecture, and then immediately back to Tokyo.

Jokingly, we mentioned actually visiting Saitama one day.

Well, it was time to visit Saitama.

Another catalyst was that Takashimadaira was located near the border between Tokyo and Saitama. This makes it really convenient to travel to Saitama, as opposed to our other apartment, located on the northeast side (Saitama is near the northwest side of Tokyo).

Even though we mentioned visiting Saitama as a joke, We still properly planned places to visit in Saitama, to not make it a waste of time. There weren’t as many tourist attractions in Saitama when compared to Tokyo, so we focused on a handful of locations.

We started off with a bus ride to a nearby JR station. After that, we transferred to Saikyō Line (埼京線) to reach Ōmiya (大宮), our first major location. Ōmiya station, being a major interchange in the JR network, is a large station with numerous platforms. Unlike Shinjuku station though, the layout of Ōmiya station is relatively simple, and it’s easy to navigate around. It was lunch time when we arrived at Ōmiya, so we began our journey in Saitama by finding a restaurant nearby.

In the previous trip, I visited Spaghetti No Pancho, a restaurant chain specialising in Napolitan pasta. It was pretty good, and seeing that there was a Spaghetti No Pancho nearby, we visited it again.

Spaghetti in Spaghetti No Pancho comes in different servings: small (300g), medium (400g), large (500g), mega (600g). Small is slightly cheaper, and the other servings have the same price. Some shops also provide Seijin, 2.3kg of spaghetti for the big eaters. We planned to order a Seijin spaghetti and share it but ultimately ditched the plan.

I ordered オムナポ (Omunapo), a mixture of omelette and Napolitan pasta. It was pretty delicious and the serving size was enough (I ordered mega). The restaurant looks a bit old, but the dining experience was pleasant… if I didn’t spill my cup of water. I spent a lot of time salvaging my items and cleaning up my bag. Although none of my electronic devices were damaged, I used up all my tissues to wipe my bag clean.

Devoid of tissues, we walked towards a shopping mall. While Tommy and Bosco were looking for thermos flasks and thermal lunch boxes, we visited the arcade once again. Before coming to Saitama, we had the brilliant plan to play Saitama2000, a song in Taiko no Tatsujin, in Saitama. It was a cheap joke, but we were dedicated enough to do exactly that. The arcade was pretty small and no bigger than a shop, and most of the arcade was filled with claw machines. We couldn’t find CHUNITHM in the arcade, but there was Taiko no Tatsujin, which was what we were looking for. We played a couple of songs, including Saitama2000.

After that we went to the Ōmiya Park to visit the Hikawa Shrine (氷川神社) inside the park.

In the shrine, we saw some boxes that contained Omikuji (御神籤), thin strips of paper that has random fortunes written on it. Bosco, Thomas and Tommy all drew one each (for 100 yen), and we tried to decode what was written on the paper. Unfortunately, none of us were proficient enough in Japanese to read what was written, and we ended up guessing its meaning based on katakana and kanji.

There wasn’t much to say about the park, but the view was pretty beautiful, and there was also a zoo inside the big park. We did a lap of the park, strolled along its path to admire all the views.

We sat at a bench in the park, before getting up and hurriedly rushed towards the train station - Kita-in (喜多院) would be closing soon, and we needed to catch the earliest train in order to reach Kawagoe (川越) before it shut down. While the four of us were sprinting towards the train station, Thomas was walking slowly from behind.

We did not make it.

We missed the train by 2 minutes. I bought water while waiting for the next train to arrive, and then we took the train to Kawagoe, our second destination.

Kawagoe (also nicknamed as “Little Edo”) is known for its vast number of historical buildings. The streets have a close resemblance to those in ancient Japan, and the well-preserved buildings, shrines and historical sites have attracted millions of tourists to come over every year. According to Tommy, the anime Tsuki ga Kirei also took place in the city.

Stepping out of the Kawagoe station, we were initially greeted with shopping streets - completely normal for a tourist attraction spot. But as we walked further away from the station, we were greeted with more old buildings, until every modern building was replaced with Edo-period buildings. Surrounded by classical buildings, walking along the streets felt like taking a walk in ancient Japan.

The Kawagoe Kumano shrine (熊野神社) and the Kawagoe Hikawa Shrine are two of the shrines located in Kawagoe. Even though the shrines had closed at this point, we could still enter the shrines for sightseeing. There were Omikuji in the Kawagoe Kumano shrine as well, and one great thing is that it came in languages other than Japanese, so we could actually understand what was written on the Omikuji.

We walked past the Toki no Kane (Times Bell Tower). Toki no Kane is a famous landmark dated back in the 1600s and rebuilt in the 1800s. Embarrassingly, while everyone else noticed the bell tower, I walked past it directly and didn’t notice the 16m-tall tower.

We bought some traditional food from a shop nearby. The ancient-looking shop was run by an old man, and he even gave us a pack of biscuits for free.

After visiting the shrines, we visited the Hatsukari Park, where the remains of Kawagoe Castle can be found. Inside the park we all sat down to have a rest and gaze at the sunset.

It was getting dark, so we left and headed off to Kashiya Yokocho (菓子屋横丁), an alleyway with a lot of tuck shops. I would be buying some souvenirs, but most stores had closed down at that point, so we could only do a runaround of the alleyway.

While walking to a bus stop nearby, we walked past the Toki no Kane again. This time I made sure to take a picture of the bell tower.

We took a bus back to Kawagoe station, and then had dinner in a standing up restaurant, on the platforms of Omiya station. I had some warm Tanuki soba with a mini butadon (豚丼). The ingredients for the Tanuki soba were pretty simple. However, the combination between the soup and the tempura pieces worked well and gave the soba a great flavour. You can also ask for a cold soba instead, but I think the Tanuki soba works the best with a hot soup. The butadon was also decent.

After the dinner, we headed towards Saitama-Shintoshin (さいたま新都心), our last destination in Saitama. While Saitama-Shintoshin is meant to be a new urban centre, it was presumably still under development and we only saw some pedestrians walking by. Even though it had a lot of facilities and Government buildings, it still wasn’t as popular as other major locations in Tokyo.

We visited Cocoon City, a three-part shopping complex in Saitama-Shintoshin. Tommy and Bosco still had not bought the lunch boxes and flasks, so we went around stores to look for them. We visited a couple of shops and could not find them. In addition, the stores were closing since it was getting late, so we sat at some chairs in the mall to have a rest.

Thomas went for a toilet break. After that, all hell broke loose.

Some background information:

• There wasn’t much entertainment back in the apartment, so I watched about 45 minutes of Oshi no Ko.
• Meanwhile, Peter (not on the trip) had finished 10 episodes, or about 4 hours of Bocchi the Rock!.

Anyways, we had an online conversation. Thomas compared the speed of me to Peter and said that I “got schooled”. In my defence, I was travelling abroad, and it would be unwise to watch anime all day long instead of going outside. It is an unfair comparison, and “getting schooled” is unjustified.

Revenge is a dish best served with plasma. Thomas was still in the toilet, so we sent him a message. We pretended to be leaving Saitama-Shintoshin, when in reality we were still staying in Cocoon City. In the span of 15 minutes, supposingly, we went from Saitama-Shintoshin back to our apartment, with everyone else being ready to sleep. Even though he was sceptical at first, he still believed in us and entered the Saitama-Shintoshin station. That was when he realised that everything was a lie.

In the meantime, we did a tour of Yodobashi Camera to look for goods (didn’t find any). He finally met up with us outside the train station (the ticket fee is 150 yen, btw).

We also visited the Saitama Super Arena, but it was very dark and we could barely make out the shape of the arena.

We took a train back to Takashimadaira. We took the Keihin-Tohoku Line (京浜東北線), transferred at Itabashi station and then boarded the Toei Mita Line (都営三田線).

Generally, it isn’t recommended to transfer between companies (as it makes the trip more complicated and costly), but since it was faster we still did it. In addition, we bought some food and drinks at a supermarket near Itabashi station.

This concludes our trip to Saitama… but this won’t be my only trip to Saitama.

Day 5 - Heart of Tokyo

31 May, 高島平 -> 御茶ノ水 -> 東京大学 -> 上野 -> 秋葉原 -> 有楽町 -> 高島平

For the past few days, we have been focusing on west Tokyo. This time, we are heading towards the central region.

For my first trip to Tokyo, we lived in central Tokyo. As a result, we had already explored some part of it. This still didn’t stop us from visiting it again, touring the region via a different path.

We predicted that we would be travelling on the metro a lot, so we bought a one-day ticket for Tokyo metro and Toei Subway. But as it turns out, we did a lot of walking as well.

First off, we took a train to Ochanomizu (御茶ノ水). Ochanomizu is known for the campuses residing nearby. It is also known for its many musical instrument stores and sportswear stores.

However, there are more reasons for coming over to Ochanomizu. Some fans of anime visit real-life locations where anime series are set, an act known as Seichi Junrei, or Anime pilgrimage. These locations can be concentrated in a region, scattered across Japan or around the world.

We finished watching Suzume in March. The locations in Suzume are scattered across Japan, so visiting all of them would be very difficult. However, we can still visit individual locations like the Hijiri-bashi Bridge (聖橋), which happens to be in Ochanomizu.

The Hijiri-bashi Bridge bridges over the Kandagawa (神田川) and provides a good view to the train tracks nearby. We took a couple of pictures over the bridge, and then moved on to our next destination.

We went to Yushima Seidō (湯島聖堂), a Confucian temple dated back in the 1700s. The construction of the temple was reminiscent of ancient Chinese buildings. We also took pictures of the large Confucius statue found inside the temple.

We also visited the Kanda Shrine (神田明神), a temple with 1300 years of history. It also seems to be a popular site for anime pilgrimage as well.

Next, we went to the Yushima Tenjin Shrine (湯島天滿宮). Every year, numerous students come here to pray for good grades for their entrance exams.

I visited the shrine on my first trip to Tokyo and bought some pencils, hoping for a good grade for my brother. For this trip, I had also bought something as well… but not what people would normally purchase in a shrine.

A great thing about Japan is its widely distributed vending machines that sell all kinds of stuff, from bento to tobacco. If you are thirsty, walk around and you are likely to find a vending machine nearby.

I found an ice cream vending machine in the shrine.

Ice cream is a sweet relief for a hot summer day, even though the weather in Japan wasn’t hot.

It was lunchtime. We had been walking around for quite some time, all of us were hungry and wanted to have a good meal. Thus, we started looking for restaurants nearby. There were a lot of suggestions, but Bosco suggested infiltrating the University of Tokyo and having a meal inside its cafeteria. It wasn’t the worst suggestion, and we were stepping closer to the university anyway, so our lunch was decided.

We entered the campus from the Kasuga gate, and walked towards the middle of the campus, where the Chuo Dining Hall is located. The University of Tokyo (東京大学) is really big. In fact, it is much larger than the one I am attending right now, and we even almost got lost in the University.

After around 15 minutes of walking and sightseeing, we reached the cafeteria. The entrance of the cafeteria is hidden underground, only accessible via an old staircase. In contrast to its aged exterior, the inside of the cafeteria is very modern, shaped like a large dome. To me, it felt like being in a space base.

None of us studied in the University of Tokyo (even though Tommy expressed interest in doing so). As a result, we had no idea how to order food inside the cafeteria. We started by inspecting a machine near the entrance of the cafeteria, but determined that it was only used for topping up your IC card. After standing for quite some time, we decided to give it a go and try to order some food.

I don’t like talking to strangers. I would avoid talking to cashiers and use a kiosk if there were one, but there weren’t any. We were basically stuck with manual ordering.

There were a lot of food choices in the canteen. As one would expect, most of them were authentic Japanese food. I did not know what to order, so I just picked the most popular ramen on the menu - Akamon Ramen (赤門ラーメン), named after a red door in the campus.

The ordering experience was pleasant. We started off by queueing at one of the food stalls in the cafeteria. It seems that they understand some basic English (this is a university, after all). I told the server what I wanted (by pointing at the menu), I said the word “large”, and they immediately served me with the large-sized ramen I ordered. After that, we added toppings to our noodles. What surprised me though, was that the payment came after the ordering. We carried our tray to a cashier nearby, the cashier calculated the cost, and we paid up. It ended up being a straightforward process, just in a different order than what I was used to.

We found some seats and sat down. That was when I realised that what I ordered wasn’t exactly the ramen I expected: it was served with a rather thick sauce instead of a soup. It was a decent bowl of ramen. The mushrooms and ground pork are great, but I very much prefer having soup instead of thick sauce. The price is pretty low though.

Another thing that stood out was its tray-returning mechanism. Instead of a shelf or a window, it used a conveyor belt to transport all the empty trays back to the kitchen! What a great invention.

After that we took a detour to a stationary store near the canteen. I found some card games that were developed by students in the campus, and while the game intrigued me, the price tag still put me off from buying it.

Exiting from the university, we went to Ueno (上野). We planned to visit the Tokyo National Museum, but the entry fee is high, and the museum would be closing in a few hours. We ultimately ditched the plan and decided to make a brief stop at the Uenokoen, a very large park.

I also witnessed something pretty funny in the park: there were a number of performers in the park, one of which was an accordionist. The accordionist was surrounded by a bunch of people and was playing a song. While the accordionist was playing the piece, an middle-aged woman started clapping, completely off-beat.

We headed off to Ameyoko (アメ横), an open-air, popular marketplace in Ueno. It was really crowded, with all kinds of shops selling various items, from clothes to seafood. Thomas went inside one of the shops to check out some clothes, though he did not find any that suited him. Even though Ameyoko is a popular shopping place for tourists, we did not buy anything inside the Yokocho.

After visiting Ameyoko. We took the metro, rode 1 stop (we had a one-day pass), and finally arrived at Akihabara (秋葉原).

Akihabara is a very popular tourist attraction, particularly to anime-lovers and tech-savvy users. Retail stores in Akihabara generally fall into one or more of these three categories: Electronics, Video games, Anime & Manga. There are an enormous amount of stores specialising in these kinds of goods, far exceeding anywhere else in Tokyo. If you need to buy a new camera, or if you are looking for a newly released manga, or if you are in search of an old video game, this is the go-to place.

I had visited Akihabara twice in the past, but this didn’t stop us from visiting the place again to look for goods.

We started off with Yodobashi Camera, located right outside the Akihabara station. Tommy and Bosco were still finding their lunch boxes and flasks, and unfortunately, they could not find them. We also found a bunch of Gashapon (Capsule Toy Machine) on the floor selling toys, though none of us spent any money on them.

We visited the 7/F floor, where DAISO is located. We found some portable fans inside the store. Since Peter was experiencing a heat wave at that moment, we joked about buying them as souvenirs.

There was also a food plaza on the 8/F of the building. However, the food plaza wasn’t there in the past.

During our first trip to Tokyo, we also visited Yodobashi Camera. What we saw on the 8/F was a bookstore, Tower Records, and a bunch of other stores. Unfortunately, they had shut down right after our visit. In fact, Tommy visited Akihabara again on our first trip, and witnessed the bookstore’s closing ceremony. The food plaza was probably the cause for all the stores’ closure.

Nothing is forever. Enjoy it while it lasts.

After visiting Yodobashi Camera, we went into yet another “Camera” shop - Bic Camera. While Thomas went to a different floor to check out bluetooth earphones, the rest of us followed Tommy and Bosco. Even though they found thermos flasks, their desired brand was missing from the shelves, so we did a tour around the floor instead.

We found a section of the store dedicated to fans, and we pulled the same joke on Peter once again.

We checked out their fridges and had a discussion on them. Most fridges on the floor had two doors, something that I rarely find at where I live. I spent some time toying around with the fridge doors. We also looked at the toilets and bidets, a modern invention found exclusively in Japan.

In the meanwhile, Thomas found a pair of bluetooth earphones that suited him, but it was out of stock. So Thomas had an additional side quest now: find a store where the earphones were in stock.

Next, we visited a bunch of random stores selling anime merchandise.

Volks Akihabara Hobby Paradise was one of the places we visited. On the ground floor, there were numerous display cabinets, and each one of them contained many figures. Customers could purchase them by filling in the figures’ ID on a form and then handing the form to the staff there. I think this is a pretty efficient way to display all the figures while still protecting them from damage. On the first floor, there were a bunch of anime merch, and we did a quick tour of them.

There were also a handful of Gashapon. Tommy spent 300 yen on one of them, but it jammed but no capsule came out. I tried telling the staff that the machine was stuck, but it wasn’t very effective: I couldn’t speak Japanese, and the staff were very busy. Eventually, a staff member noticed us, and Bosco told the staff that it was stuck. A staff member helped us unstuck the machine and Tommy finally got the capsule.

Animate was another prominent place. Animate is the largest retailer of anime, video games and manga in Japan, making it a popular choice for buying merch. The store is divided into two buildings, connected by a walkway in between. Building 1 is the main building, selling all kinds of anime goods, while building 2 focuses on manga and books.

We started with building 2. There were a lot of books, and it would be a bargain to buy them in Japan directly, since the selections were newer and at a lower cost. However, none of us could read Japanese, so we did not buy any of them. Through the walkway filled with Gashapon, we entered the main building.

The main building is filled to the brim with merchandise, and it would be dumb to try and list them all.

We toured the first floor and the basement. There were racks and racks of discs from idol groups, animes, and games. Early on the trip, Peter, who was not in Japan, asked us to help him buy two CDs, one of which was just released. Unsurprisingly, we also found those discs in the store. However, while the store provides a great selection of discs, animate is not a tax-free shop. Therefore, we decided to buy them elsewhere.

We also did a tour of the top floor, which has various anime goods, including acrylic figures, models and posters. Thomas also gave his opinion on the acrylic figures, stating that some cheaper figures could be better than the more expensive ones. Even though I was interested in some of the figures, I did not buy any of them. Maybe next time.

We headed off to a store selling earphones, and this was when Ming Hin, who wasn’t really interested, decided to take a break. Therefore, while Thomas went upstairs to look for earphones, the rest of us stayed at the ground floor.

Eventually, Ming Hin fell asleep. So while others walked outside to look for more goods, I had to look after Ming Hin in the store.

He woke up after an hour, and he said that he was tired and wanted to stay. Therefore, while Ming Hin stayed in the store, I left the store to look for others. In the meantime, Tommy bought a plushie for 100 yen.

I met up with them in Deniz Turkish Kebab, a Turkish restaurant. Tommy and Thomas were hungry so they ordered a chicken wrap, while Bosco and I decided to walk around and look for more CDs.

We visited a few more shops selling second-hand items, including video games, CDs and electronics. We dug around the junk section to see if we could find anything we wanted. Later, we entered yet another store, but the store was more specialised in idol merchandises. While I did not follow any idol groups, Bosco, who was interested in idol groups, was hooked by the selection of items. He spent quite some time looking around the stores and inspecting the goods. He also spent 500 yen on a Gashapon. Funny enough, he wanted the lowest tier prize, and he actually got what he wanted.

We met up with everyone outside the store, and then we headed out to the Akihabara station. But before leaving Akihabara, we decided to visit a couple more stores.

We visited Recofans, a record store in west Akihabara. The shop sold CDs but also a lot of vinyl records, and there are a number of tourists from the west picking and purchasing CDs. We also visited BOOKOFF again. This time, the building has more floors, but each floor is slightly smaller.

We finally finished touring Akihabara! It took us a lot of time, and it was getting late. Someone suggested having Sushiro for dinner, so we took a metro to Yūrakuchō (有楽町).

Sushiro was located on the 6th floor of Bic Camera. Tommy and Bosco wanted to look around in the building. However, Sushiro would be closing soon, and it was a very popular restaurant, which meant that we needed to queue.

In the end, we decided to split up: Tommy and Bosco would look around in the building, while the rest of us would queue for Sushiro. You might remember that Thomas was looking for earphones. Why didn’t he join them then? Well, as it turned out, it was unavailable in all Bic Camera shop in the entire Kantō region (関東地方).

It was 21:20. Sushiro was closing in 1 hour. At first, I was expecting less people to be queueing, or maybe being able to walk-in! But when I arrived at Sushiro, I realised how wrong I was: there were still tons of people waiting outside the restaurant. I underestimated the popularity of Sushiro.

We waited for 20 minutes in total before being able to take a seat inside Sushiro, and Tommy & Bosco still had not come back. Time was running out, so we started ordering immediately.

Orders were done using a tablet. We started by ordering an udon each - to make sure that everyone won’t starve. We also sent the menu to Tommy and Bosco, who would then reply with their choices and we would pre-order food for them. Ming Hin also ordered some sushi in the meantime.

They finally arrived at 21:57. We were scrolling through the menu and rapidly ordering food, hoping to order as much food as possible before they stopped accepting orders. I managed to add a couple sushi as well as a dessert, recommended by Peter. I was really hoping that they would stop accepting orders at 22:15, but nope, Bosco was still selecting sushi when the clock hit 22:00, and the tablet stopped accepting orders.

On the bright side, everyone had eaten at least a bowl of udon. On the other hand, the serving wasn’t quite enough for dinner, especially for Bosco.

We asked Tommy and Bosco what took them so long, and they answered by showing us the large bags that they had been carrying: a thermal lunch box, and the rest filled with tons of thermal flasks.

As for the food quality of Sushiro, the sushi is pretty standard but cheap. The udon is good (I especially like its Agedashi dōfu, it’s pretty delicious), and the dessert (Strawberry sundae) is great.

Major takeaways here:

• Leave adequate time for dinner
• Don’t visit Sushiro when they are closing

I won’t consider this a fiasco - we technically get to taste the food at Sushiro, but rush-ordering in a sushi restaurant certainly isn’t a great experience. That is why we would be visiting yet another sushi restaurant later in the trip.

After that, we walked to the Hibiya (日比谷) station and went back to Takashimadaira.

Bosco was still hungry, so he bought curry rice from a convenience store near our apartment. According to him, the curry rice wasn’t good, there were too many vegetables and not much beef.

I was also running out of clothes to wear, so I did laundry with Tommy.

For my last trip, there were washing machines, but those were only activated until 9pm, and we usually came back to our hotel much later than that. I had to look for a 24-hour launderette nearby, but that also led to the accidental discovery of maruetsu, a supermarket with low prices. This time, there were washing machines and dryers in this building, so that’s a plus. There were 2 small washing machines and 1 medium-sized dryer, but one of the washing machines was occupied. We washed our clothes in two batches, and then used the dryer to dry our clothes in one go.

While I was waiting for our clothes to be washed and dried, I decided to look up discs that I intended to buy. I checked them on Surugaya’s website and discovered that the discs can be found in a Suruguaya… in Ōmiya.

Also, there is a feature in CHUNITHM that keeps track of which prefecture you have played in, and I still haven’t done that for Saitama.

Funny enough, this wasn’t the first time I visited a prefecture, and then having to visit it again. On my first trip, I visited Chiba (千葉) twice, for the exact two reasons. I visited Chiba without playing CHUNITHM, and later discovered that a disc I wanted to buy was in Surugaya in Chiba.

I decided to visit Saitama once again on Day 7 (2 June), the day where we switch to a different apartment near central Tokyo.

Day 6 - Glimpse into the Future

1/6, 高島平 -> お台場 -> 未来館 -> 月島 -> 高島平

Bicycles are very common in Japan. Nearly everyone living in Japan knows how to ride a bike. Thus, cycling is also a common mode of transportation in Japan.

While planning for this trip, Ming Hin expressed interest in cycling in Japan. On my first trip, I actually cycled near Mount Fuji, surrounding a lake nearby. Even though we won’t be visiting Mount Fuji this time, there were still lots of suitable places for cycling, including Odaiba (お台場), an artificial island with mostly flat surfaces. Thus, we decided to reserve a day for Odaiba, and we would borrow bikes and cycle around the island, as well as visit any attractions nearby.

Since Odaiba is an artificial island, it could only be accessed by bridges. We decided to take a train to Mita (三田) and then switch to bus, entering Odaiba via the Rainbow Bridge.

For the previous trip, we rented bikes in a bike rental shop. This time, we decided to stick to bicycle sharing instead. Since we had no prior experience in bike sharing in Japan, I decided to look it up while we were on the train.

To rent a bike, you would need to register an account on the service provider. We certainly did not want to waste half an hour standing next to a docking station to finish registration, so I checked for docking stations in Odaiba and tried to register an account.

This was when I saw something problematic: even though there were multiple service providers, all of them required a credit card for payment. In fact, you need to enter your credit card information during registration. None of us have a credit card that would work in Japan, and meant that we could not rent a bike.

Well, we could still walk around in Odaiba.

After passing the Rainbow Bridge, we alighted at DECKS Tokyo Beach, a shopping mall. It was 12:30, so we decided to head for lunch in the mall. However, after walking around, we discovered that most restaurants in the mall were either too expensive, or the ratings on Google were too low (the ratings on Google Map is a good metric, since Japanese people tend to rate restaurants on Google Map, and their ratings are usually quite strict). There was a Chinese restaurant that had a fair price, but the restaurant was not ready yet and we would need to wait for quite some time. In the end, we settled on a McDonald’s nearby.

I went with a Big Mac set. There were also Japan-exclusive items on the menu, but I didn’t order any of them.

It is said that even the quality of McDonald’s in Japan is good. Well… it’s just burgers and fries so I can’t say much about its taste, but at least the burger looks nice, and the meal is cheap.

Earlier on, while we were on our way to McDonald’s, we walked past ODAIBA Gamers, a hobby shop that collaborated with LoveLive! School Idol Festival ALL STARS. Tommy was interested in the Love Live! franchise and he wanted to check out the shop. Both of us had finished the meal before everyone else, so I decided to follow him and visit the shop, while the rest stayed in Mcdonald’s.

The shop sold mostly Love Live! Merch, including posters, figures and discs. What’s more interesting though, was a car that was parked right outside the store.

The car was selling special drinks based on the members of Nijigasaki High School Idol Club. All the drinks were somewhat expensive, but since it was a special drink based on anime characters, you couldn’t really say much about its pricing.

Tommy bought a drink (He mentioned that it was based on Setsuna Yuki). From its appearance, it seemed to be a strawberry milkshake mixed with jelly and ice cream. The servings weren’t big, and he finished it in the blink of an eye.

We met up with others at Mcdonald’s and strolled along the seaside. We also walked past the Statue of Liberty, a small version of the original statue in america. While walking, we saw some people (seemed to be Japanese) riding on Tokyo No Kaba, an amphibious bus. We didn’t get to see the bus going across the water. However, when the bus slowed down, they waved towards us, and we waved them back. It was a small, nonetheless awesome interaction with other people.

We turned south-east and continued walking on the promenade. Since the island was artificially made, it is completely flat and you can see buildings that are far away. It is also right next to Tokyo Bay, which means that it is quite windy. As a result, we were sometimes blasted by sudden gusts while walking around in Odaiba.

After a bit of walking, we arrived at DiverCity, a place with much better choices of food (I had my lunch in DiverCity on my first trip. There was also the Unicorn Gundam Statue, a life-size statue that can undergo transformation, and also the Flame of Liberty Statue, which I initially recognized as a bell.

We walked further along the southeast direction and finally reached a major checkpoint on our map: The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, or Miraikan (未来館, “Future Museum”). As with other museums in Japan, you need to pay an entry fee to visit Miraikan. At first, I was a bit reluctant to visit the museum, as the museum would be closing in 2 hours. However, I was intrigued by Miraikan (in contrast to the Tokyo National Museum), and the entry fee was surprisingly low (only 210 yen). In the end, we still decided to visit the museum… and that was one of the best parts of the entire trip.

As its name suggests, Miraikan is filled with all kinds of innovative things (even more so than the National Museum of Nature and Science). You would need to visit it in the morning in order to finish seeing everything.

We started with 1/F, which was actually reserved for special (or irregular) exhibitions, and additional payment is needed to visit them. However, the atrium was still accessible by us. We were greeted with a giant model of the Earth made of LED displays, hanging on top of the atrium. 1/F was at the bottom of the atrium, and there was some AR equipment that allowed us to play with the Earth model, displaying collected information around the Earth, such as ocean currents and tweets.

At my first glance of the Earth model, I recalled seeing it being introduced in a book, and I could not believe that I accidentally stumbled upon this place. That was when I firmly believed that we made the right decision for visiting this place, and all the experiences later did not prove me wrong.

We moved on to 3/F, which was themed around “Creating your future”. At the entrance area was “Nobel Q”, a section to display questions prompted by Nobel prizes winners. There were also a bunch of small exhibits demonstrating various technologies and human perceptions as well.

“Backward from the Future” is an interactive game about thinking backwards. The primary goal is to send an ideal future of Earth across the timeline to 50 years in the future, while dodging the obstacles along the way. There are multiple “Earths” to choose with varying difficulty. What makes this exhibit challenging, however, is that the path that the Earth moves must be drawn beforehand, without being able to see the exact positions of the obstacles. While others managed to beat the game quickly, it took me a lot of attempts to beat the game.

We headed on to the exhibition nearby, “Hands-On Model of the Internet”. It was essentially a boiled-down version of the Internet, visualised using black and white balls and mechanical tracks. We started by encoding an 8-bit message, and then moved to one of the senders to deliver the message. A special thing is that since the entire setup is mechanical, we had to construct the message using physical balls, representing bits of information. Somehow, our message was lost on our first attempt, and so we sent yet another message on a different receiver. The message travelled through different towers (representing routers) to reach the receiver, where the message could be decoded.

Overall, being able to see the “message” travelling through all the different mechanical tracks was a very cool experience, and I especially liked the physical visualisation of abstract concepts, which is missing from a lot of exhibitions in museums of other places. I wish there were more exhibitions similar to this one.

Opposite to the Internet model exhibition is “Songs of ANAGURA”, an area demonstrating spatial information technology, and it is my favourite exhibition of Miraikan. The exhibition took place in a fictitious, post-apocalypse laboratory called “ANAGURA” (which roughly translates to “basement”). There were 5 devices located in ANAGURA (well, 4, one of them closed down due to hygiene concerns), each demonstrating a different aspect of the usage of spatial information technology.

Visitors of ANAGURA will need to “sign in” in order to check out the laboratory. This might look unnecessary, but it has to do with how everything inside the laboratory works. In the laboratory, visitors are followed by ME under their foot, a physical embodiment of the spatial information collected in the laboratory. This is also why it is important to maintain a distance between people: the exhibition has to keep track of everyone’s position. When I was walking around in the laboratory, my ME suddenly disappeared, and I had to “re-login” in a terminal (this did not happen to anyone else).

The four devices that were still open are named as follows:

• NAGAME, observing the environment to build a 3D space model of the laboratory
• IDO, collecting the position of visitors in the laboratory (this is also the device responsible for tracking the movement of visitors!)
• WAKARANU, anonymising data
• SHIAWASE, using data

The spatial information of visitors are realised into songs through SHIAWASE and played in the laboratory.

There are many reasons why I like this place, I’ll list the major ones here.

Firstly, the mood. The environment was dark, but the songs were mesmerising. The devices were eerie but attractive. All devices consist of a display panel, which shows the eye of a person widening when being activated, and closing at the end (according to some comments on Youtube, it could also be displaying your OWN eye to you, but I did not encounter that). It would also play a synthesised audio of a person speaking, and these things infused personalities to the devices.

The entire experience was a rollercoaster ride, especially hearing my personal “song of ANAGURA” at the end, seeing how my information was weaved into the song was… uncanny. It was a fever dream, a surreal, yet fascinating experience, and something that I would like to experience again.

Secondly, the devices - referring to everything that coalesced to form the exhibition. This entire exhibition was very innovative, from the process of “sign in”, to having virtual avatars, to collecting the spatial information to make a song. Everything weaved together very well to form an immersive experience. What surprised me the most, was how complete the entire exhibition was. Anonymity was something very important but often forgotten, yet they dedicated their efforts to respect the privacy of each visitor: WAKARANU allows each visitor to optionally, anonymise their data (since their names would be displayed when their song of ANAGURA was playing). When “signing out” of ANAGURA, visitors can choose to retain or delete their data, an indication that the creators value the privacy of all visitors.

I would stay in ANAGURA a bit more, but time was running out (remember, we only had 2 hours to visit Miraikan) and we had to move on to 5/F.

There were a couple more exhibitions on 5/F, but we did not have enough time to explore them all, so I had only visited two of them. One of them was “Stories of One, Everyone, and You”, which was about how the human brain functions when interacting with society. The other was a marble model in “Mission Survival: 10 Billion”, which used marbles to physically represent disasters, their lethality, and how technologies can increase safety. Both of the demonstrations were really cool.

At this point, Miraikan was closing. We gathered up left, but Thomas was nowhere to be found. For some reason, he liked walking really slow compared to the rest of us, and this had happened a lot in the past. At this point, we decided to just leave Thomas behind and send a message to him later.

We walked to the Telecom Center Building and took some photos. I liked the interior of this building.

Thomas was still nowhere to be found, apparently he got lost and walked in the wrong direction. The act of him travelling alone was already reminiscent of Day 4 (both Ōmiya and Saitama-Shintoshin), and we were getting sick of it. He also blamed it on GPS and tried to switch the topic. As a result, he got kicked from the group chat (but added immediately afterwards).

Ming Hin also made the joke of referring to this act as “Bocchi the Travel!” (lonely travel), due to Thomas’s love of that anime. The joke was pretty accurate (there were a number of solo ventures throughout the trip), so later on I changed the title of group chat to that.

Anyways, Thomas found us, but claiming that he was always closely behind (5-10m), when he was pretty far away. He even took a photo, except that the photo showed that we were very far ahead. Peter got sick of it and Thomas got kicked a second time (and added back afterwards).

After all those mayhem, Thomas finally came back. We rode on a bus, made a brief stop at Ariake Arena, and continued on to Tsukishima (月島) to have dinner.

We arrived at Tsukishima Monja Street to have dinner. The street is known for its numerous restaurants selling monjayaki, a pan-fried food popular in Tokyo. We had no idea which restaurant to choose from, so we just checked Google Maps and picked one that had a good rating.

We picked Takarajima. It seemed that we were too early, since we were the only customers in the restaurant. However, that meant that the staff weren’t as busy and had more time to help with us, who never had monjayaki in the past. In fact, I knew nothing about it prior to walking into the restaurant, and I did not know that we had to cook it ourselves (like shabu-shabu).

Anyways, the staff were really helpful. All the orderings were done online. However, the menu was entirely written in Japanese, so we had to slowly translate each menu item. The staff noticed that we were having a hard time and provided us with a Chinese menu, though we ended up not using it (we had a rough idea of the ingredients in each monjayaki).

Since we had never had monjayaki in the past, we did not know how to cook them. As a result, when the ingredients arrived, we had no idea what to do with them. Therefore, the staff helped us with making the first batch of monjayaki. They added the veggies, the batter, and then the rest of the ingredients. One thing I didn’t expect though, was that the additional ingredients we purchased were also added to monjayaki (we purchased ingredients like soup and soba, expecting them to be standalone food).

Bosco and Thomas shared a griddle, while the rest of us shared a griddle. However, only one monjayaki could be cooked on a griddle at a time, so we could only make two monjayaki at a time. It would be quite a torture to watch others having their monjayaki while waiting for your turn, so we decided to split up the monjayaki according to our sitting plan: Bosco and Thomas shared one, while Ming Hin, Tommy and I shared one. We scooped the monjayaki using a small spatula and ate it directly.

Since there were three of us on our table, we finished our first monjayaki faster than Thomas’s table. However, we had to cook three monjayaki in total while they only had to do two, which offset the difference in speed. Since I still wasn’t confident enough in cooking a monjayaki myself, I opted for the help of staff again, and they gladly agreed. On the other hand, Thomas, who just finished their monjayaki, took a hands-on approach and decided to cook their next and final monjayaki themselves.

When the staff was helping us to cook the monjayaki, I tried to memorise the procedure in cooking monjayaki - I hoped that we could cook the final monjayaki ourselves, without it looking like toxic waste. Thomas, on the other hand, was very confident at what he was doing - forgetting the steps, adding the wrong ingredients in the wrong order, and cooking really slowly. Monjayaki should look roughly circular in the end, like a disk, but he somehow managed to make a square. Someone referred to it as “Minecraft grass block”.

Reusing an old joke, I referred to this as “Bocchi the Cook!” (which, when translated to Japanese, was only 1 character off from the original title), as he was solely responsible for cooking the minecraft grass block. Let’s just say that the taste wasn’t that great.

Our table had finished the second monjayaki, so it’s time for our final monjayaki. Ming Hin wanted to cook it ourselves, and we agreed. We took turns cooking the monjayaki and adding the ingredients. I am dexterous so I helped with chopping the ingredients quickly (I noticed that the staff was also chopping quickly), and it was honestly pretty fun. Our final product was a bit dull but I think it had to do with the soup that was missing this time around. Also, in hindsight, we could’ve spread the monjayaki even further out, it was too thick and couldn’t quite solidify. Other than that, it was satisfactory, and we even got a “good job” from the staff.

We finished our monjayaki. Trying new food and cooking on our own was a wonderful experience.

Ideally, what I planned to do next was to visit a Surugaya nearby: while I was checking for discs in Surugaya’s website on Day 5 (31 May), I also discovered that a certain disc could only be found in a Surugaya near Chiba. However, the store had already closed while we were having dinner. I would visit it again, but to my surprise, the only disc was bought by someone else on the same day.

Bosco suggested checking BOOKOFF, and Tommy let me borrow his phone to check BOOKOFF’s website (I couldn’t access it on my phone due to IP region blocking). The website displayed that it was sold out (when I got back home, I checked the website again, and it told me that it can be found in 7 stores, one of which is near Tokyo), so I forfeited my search.

In hindsight, I shouldn’t limit my search to Surugaya, and I should also check the websites occasionally in case of a restock.

We walked to Tsukiji (築地), where Thomas split up with us: he went to the Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara to place an order on his earphone (later on, he told us that he needed to visit Akihabara on Day 11 (6 June) to collect the earphone). The rest of us continued walking to reach Hibiya (日比谷) and took a metro back to Takashimadaira.

Meanwhile, Thomas was following a questionable route suggested by Google. The route he took somehow led him further away from the apartment. At this point, whenever someone was travelling alone, we just refer to it as “Bocchi the Travel!”. We also tried messing with Thomas a bit more but we got busted.

This would be our last night in the apartment in Takashimadaira, and we would be living in a different apartment for the rest of the trip. That meant that we would need to carry the luggage with us the day after. Thus, I decided to pack my luggage and belongings in advance. The weather report for the next day didn’t look promising, though…