Having woken up feeling much more refreshed after such a hectic day yesterday, Hugh and I decided to check out the nearby suburbs of Tokyo, and hold off on daytrips for at least today.
We started off with breakfast in our hotel Suburb, having a sweet bun with coffee/hot chocolates for breakfast. We wandered around a little, going past Tokyo Dome. Peering in the windows of one area, I could see a giant children's play area that badly invoked the envy of the child in me. I wanted to play!
On the way back we stumbled across what we assume is a temple or shrine of some sort, but I can only read Hiragana, so wasn't able to tell what it really was.
We then headed to an ATM to withdraw some cash as we've noticed that so far, the Japanese much seem to prefer cash. Hugh had no problems. I had bought a Travel Money Card from Commonwealth bank and it refused to read at every single ATM we tried. We returned to our hotel so I could call Commonwealth Bank and try to get them to put the money back onto my normal card. Nope, not a chance, apparantely they can only do this in store. The really ridiculously unhelpful guy on the other end of the phone simply told me to "Get my family to wire me some money" as I was left completely cashless by the fiasco. I told him that my parents did not have $3000 spare dollars to loan me and he seemed to not give a flying fudgepop. At this stage I dissolved into tears because I was in a foreign country with no way to access any money because I had put it all onto a card that's sole purpose was to aid with travel, but in fact did not work in Japan's ATMs. Luckily Hugh saves better than me, so our solution was that he would loan me the amount until we get home, at which point I will be closing all my accounts with Commonwealth Bank and transferring my loan to another bank.
After all this I was feeling pretty darn stressed, to say the least. We decided to head to busy Shinjuku so the crowds could take my mind off things. It was a pretty amazing place to be, and we easily spent hours getting lost in a myriad of bright signs and underground shopping centres. I bought a few souvenirs with the Yen I had exchanged before leaving Australia and gawked at all the random things they sell. At one place, they had an attachment that will turn your Sony MP3 player into a phone. We also found a 'Cat Cafe' and saw their menu of cats availble for patting. Pretty weird, but I guess they don't have the room for pets in Tokyo like we do in Australia.
Just before lunch we wandered down a side street and into a small lane of peace and quiet in the heart of bustling Shinjuku. The city noises completely diseappeared.
We had lunch at a tiny below ground cafe, 'Like: Shinjuku' and I had Karage Chicken & chips, whilst Hugh had some mostly raw steak slivers that were actyally really delicious. I couldnt stand the feel of the raw meat in my mouth though so happily left him to eat his steak by himself.
We returned to our hotel, sat our weary selves down for half an hour and then headed on to Akihabara, which was even brighter and more colourful than Shinjuku somehow.
It was getting pretty rainy, so we got to see the classic Tokyo rain picture, where everyone walks around with see-through umbrellas above their heads.
Sunday's the streets are normally closed off in Akihabara for markets and Cosplay people to strut around, but due to the rain the markets were closed by the time we arrived. We did see 1 little lone girl dressed up. Then we discovered that she was working as advertising for what looked like Gentlemen's accommodation, where all the girls were dressed as schoolgrirls and incredibly cute. I actually find this really creepy.
The rain continued to get heavier, so we left to go back to our hotel, where some freshly laundered pyjamas were waiting.
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