Japan 2020 - Day 4

Japan 2020 - Day 4

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Sightseeing shrines and temples in Northern Tokyo, then shopping in Akihabara.

Thursday 27th February 2020

Tokyo

Asakusa

The next day it was time for more history only this time it was outside and it was looking at old buildings. We went to Asakusa (浅草) and started off admiring the Kaminarimon Gate (浅草寺 風雷神門) leading up to the Sensō-ji (浅草寺) Temple and the Pagoda. To get from the gate and the temple you walk through the Nakamise-dori Shopping Street (仲見世商店街) we wondered part way down but decided to get some food first.

Apparently we went to a Unagi restaurant Funachu although I don’t recall having eel. Then it was back to the shopping street leading up to the Hōzōmon Gate (宝蔵門) which is just before the Temple. Here people posed in front of the gate all dressed up, I now know that you can rent kimono to wear so I would love to do this next time.

To the left of the gate is the Five-Storied Pagoda (浅草寺 五重塔) and after passing through the gate we finally reached Sensō-ji Temple

The old and the new, Tokyo Skytree towers over the skyline in the distance.

Akihabara

It may sound silly but I was excited to check out Japanese shops, one that had been recommended to me was called Bic Camera.

It’s a big department store that sells everything including but not limited to, fancy toilet seats, fancy ceiling lights, video games, label makers, rice cookers and big televisions. I didn’t actually buy anything but it gave me some good ideas of what I would like to get in the future now that I know it’s available.

As we were in Akihabara that can mean only one thing, retro video games! First up was Super Potato, as it has become the most famous retro store it’s also become the most expensive but still worth checking out, they didn’t seem to have any of the items that I was most interested in and flipping through games trying to work out what they are by the picture was very time consuming, another lesson learnt I need to know the exact title in Japanese so I can read it off of the spine for cd/dvd games and maybe even a picture of the front cover/label.

I found another store down the road which did have some of the bits that I needed including the disk system game that I had been after Doki Doki Panic (released as Super Mario Bros 2 in the west) there was another store I wanted to visit but I had lost track of time and it was now 8 pm and the store had closed so I would need to return another day.

I arranged to meet back up with Oli but not before another exciting stop for me in the form of BookOff, from my research this was an second hand shop equivalent to CEX in the UK, here I found another few to tick off like a Wii U, a drum controller and 2 Taiko no Tatsujin games. I was worried I had spent too long in there but Oli was running late too so it worked out fine, I took a train and met him back at the station near Hiroshi’s place and we stayed in for food.

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