Reid Main

This article is a post I originally made on Facebook about our thirteenth day in Japan which took place on April 15, 2016. On the 1 year anniversary of our trip to Japan I decided to repost it here on my blog. The original post has been edited/cleaned up a bit but its spirit remains.

Today was our last full day in Tokyo. Tomorrow we have to check out of our Airbnb in the morning and head to the airport and back to reality. We had grand plans to go to Odaiba, check out the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, visit Joypolis, see the giant Gundam statue, view the Tokyo skyline from the observation deck of the Fuji TV building. It would be a magnificent sendoff for one of the greatest cities we had ever visited.

Then we realized we could go back to Harajuku Gyozaro (原宿餃子樓), eat more of the greatest gyozas we'd ever had and play arcade games in Akihabara until we passed out. Which is exactly what we did. Odaiba will still be here next time we visit right?

While Elsie and I had previously experienced the majesty of Harajuku Gyozaro for ourselves, Jarques and Tina had not yet had the pleasure. We arrived at the restaurant before it even opened to give you and idea of how excited we were for these gyozas. Once we got our seats we ordered 60 pan fried gyozas and six boiled ones with two orders of their delicious bean sprouts mixed with mince beef. The waitress actually didn't believe us when we said we wanted 60. She probably though "those damn gaijin cannot read the menu again can they?".

We devoured the delectable gyozas, got back on the subway and looped around to Akihabara Station. It seemed like no visit to Akhihabara was complete without a stop in Yodabashi Akiba so that was what we hit up first. After pumping some more money into the Japanese economy we headed back to our stomping grounds, the fifth floor of the Club Sega arcade. For the next two and a half hours we played all of our favorite games: Chunithm, Taiko no Tatsujin, Monster Hunter Spirits, Mario Kart.

When 5pm rolled around we pried ourselves away from the arcade and grabbed a quick bite to eat before taking one final shopping pass of Akihabara. Jarques also made one final stop at Club Sega where after ¥2700 he finally won his Dragonball Z figurine from the claw machine!

By now we were getting proper hungry and bogged down with shopping bags so we made a quick pit stop at our Airbnb before heading out for dinner. We hopped on the Ōedo line and rode it to Higashi-Shinjuku Station where Shinjuku Eastside Square and some conveyor belt sushi ("kaiten") resided.

We chose this sushi place because you placed your order via a tablet at your seat and then a few minutes later your sushi would be delivered right to you on a little train car. It was the greatest fucking thing I had ever seen and is the only proof I need that Japan is living in the future. Come next week I gotta go back to flagging down servers like a savage.

After we all consumed an unhealthy amount of nigiri and were finally stuffed it was time to head back to our Airbnb. We needed to pack and prepare for our flight back to San Francisco, a place where we can't order great sushi via a tablet. Keeping the tradition alive we watched Rush Hour 3 while packing before finally crashing into our beds.