A very slow day, not much excitement going on with me. Only interesting bit was Moving Into My Apartment Baby! The electricity is running, got the spare bed, and so after ferrying my stuff from the hotel to the apartment, I checked out and have now set up base in my Japan Home. Of course it is still devoid of furniture and key electrical appliances (like a fridge) but those should be arriving soon so no problem.
Now, it is said only mad dogs and englishmen venture out into mid day heat. Well I'm a mad Englishman, and with no food at home it was a given that I would venture out in search of food. Not only that but I discovered there were a few key essentials missing from the apartment which I tried to track down in Akihabara.
Before doing that though, I decided to hit up a new place for Lunch - The Gundam cafe. For those of you who don't know, Gundam is one of the most famous anime from Japan known worldwide, and it is all about giant robots being piloted by youngsters and having epic battles in space for control of the earth (30 years of history summed up into 3 lines). The cafe is a fairly new construction I believe; basically a pub themed around Gundam, with special foods, models and merchandise for sale, and huge TV screens showing trailers and scenes every hour. It's a fun place and certainly worth a stop for any anime fans visiting.
My search for apartment items was a 'God bless and curses' results -
Curses - it turns out the building right next door to my hotel had basically everything furniture related that I had to carry back from the other side of Tokyo yesterday
God bless - the Japanese. I was in a supermarket trying to work out which of the bottles on the shelves were the right one to use for clothes washing. And a woman in the same isle, who had no reason to do this, came up and asked if she could help me. She not only did she confirm I was in the right section, she also pointed out what were the best choices and what weren't. That really is the best thing about Japan - all the people are open and friendly and don't mind helping out total strangers. In any other city in the world, it is impossible to walk down the street without having hands in pockets clasped firmly on phone and wallet, and staring shiftily around at other people. This is in no way the case here in Tokyo, and It is over half the reason I have wanted to come here for so long.
With the apartment goods sorted, I took to opportunity to explore more of Akihabara (I'll have a mind map ready in 3 days) and spent a good hour in an arcade playing a Gundam video game (would've one too if not for a lucky shot on level 6 of 9). For supper I felt lazy, so I went to the Ice cream shop I had visited before (which it turns out is more of a maid cafe than I thought.....I'm an anime fan and the staff are friendly, thats my only reason) and ordered an Akihabara special: omu-rice. This is chicken and tomato rice wrapped in an omelette and it is a famous dish on this street, and served everywhere.
The only real let down of the day was a few minutes ago when some guy mumbled at me about wanting to borrow 100 yen - guess moochers are an international problem.
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