Reid Main

Either we were really tired from moving yesterday and/or our Airbnb was super comfortable but we slept for over nine hours and didn't manage to get out of bed until 10am. After our lazy butts finally got into the shower we decided it was time to sit down and lay down concrete plans for the remainder of our trip. We planned from Sunday onwards but that left today as a wildcard day that we decided to fill with shopping in Ikebukuro and Nakano.

Before we could shop we would need some fuel so we made our way back to Yodobashi Akiba and hit up the The French Toast Factory for "brunch". Elsie got the classic french toast and I got the eggs benedict. Both dishes were delicious. My eggs benedict was particularly tasty because instead of hollandaise sauce for one of the eggs they used some sort of pesto mixture that blew my mind.

After we had filled our bellies we headed over to Ikebukuro Station to find the Kit Kat Chocolatory we visited during our first trip to Japan. After stumbling around the massive Seibu department store for longer than I would care to admit we finally found it. We spent a few minutes picking out a bunch of chocolate to bring back to our relatives in Canada and just as we went to pay a group of tourists from China swarmed the store. They blocked the entire storefront and proceeded to paw at the candy before they moved on without buying anything. I cannot fathom how much the Japanese must dislike tourists from mainland China who behave like this.

Our next stop was the Ikebukuro Pokémon Center. Elsie never gets this close to a Pokémon Center without going inside and damned if she was going to stop now. After buying some merch she decided to try her luck on some Ditto gachapon where she then proceeded to get the same figurine five times in a row. Totally worth ¥1500.

Our final shopping stop of the day was Nakano Broadway, the otaku paradise that we have visited previously. We spent the majority of our time window shopping (with the small exception of some gachapon keychains Elsie just had to buy) but otherwise managed to hold off buying anything. We spent a good amount of time looking at old SNES games that we were considering buying but decided to wait. We have another shopping day planned for Akihabara and odds are the games we want to buy will be there as well. Fingers crossed their prices aren't just jacked up because it is a big tourist spot.

We got back to our Airbnb at 4:30pm and watched day 14 of the Kyūshū Basho sumo wrestling tournament. We had the honor of watching Hakuhō Shō win his 13th match and clinch the tournament as well as his 40th championship, the most ever by any wrestler. This really was one of the best possible introductions to sumo wrestling we could have had. It would be like watching the Stanley Cup Finals when Wayne Gretzky was in his prime.

We went out for dinner at Yodobashi Akiba again and chose Queen of Chickens this time. The chicken was very juicy and tasty but portion sizes were much smaller than I was expecting for the price. Since we were still peckish after the meal we decided to finally visit the Gundam Cafe for some drinks and dessert as well as see the famous bathrooms we'd heard so much about. While they didn't live up to the hype it was still very cool to push a "start" button when you walk into the bathroom and have all the lights shut off and heard the sound of Gundam booting up.

We walked home and immediately settled into bed because tomorrow we had a very busy day. We plan on getting some gyozas in Harajuku and then heading to Shinjuku for some sweet virtual reality games.