Day 15 - Tokyo, JAL Tamachi, Akihabara

We finally left Takayama and took the long train ride into Tokyo. It was a 3.5 hour ride and we couldn't resist picking up some eki-ben at the stations. Most stations will sell bento for you to eat on the train and most places will sell bentos that have the regional specialty.By the way, if you want to know, eki-ben literally translates to station bento.

Up above, I bought the sarubobo eki-ben, sarubobo being the Takayama mascot/protector. Truthfully, I bought this because of the container, it's so cute!

Upon peeling off the cardboard cover...

You get a little phone charm of a sarubobo!

Finally at the food layer...

 

At the station they display the contents of each eki-ben, but I just wanted the container. This one has beef (Hida I think), shredded egg omelet, an umeboshi plum and some fried fish cake sitting on top of a bed of rice. The sides had a prawn, half an egg, some pickles, some cut vegetables and some seaweed. This was definitely a kids eki-ben, but the container! If I recall correctly, this was really cheap too, 300 yen.

Hubby's choice had to include Hida beef

Looks like the packaging! That's what I like in Japan, the food always comes out looking like the menu picture. This bento was 600 yen and had lots of beef, with some small slices of vegetables underneath, and of course, sitting on a bed of rice.

We also picked up this snack. Now kamaboko is fish paste and this said "cheese kamaboko" and it looked like cheese sticks. Remember the ones back at school? The sticks of processed cheese? So we thought they were cheese sticks with bits of fish paste in it.

 NO!

It was the other way around, fish paste with bits of funny cheese in it. Not the most pleasant thing to try for us!

We arrived in Shinagawa station and we hopped off and hopped on to another train back up to Tamachi, one station away.

 Wow, the train driver wears gloves.

We chose JAL Tamachi partly because of the reviews and for it's location to the JR line. Since we already had the JR pass, we thought why not continue using it in Tokyo? The Yamanote (JR) line will take you to the majority of sight seeing places in Tokyo. The hotel was about 2 blocks away from the station.

It is a big hotel and when we first entered we could hear the wedding march tune being played. Confused us a bit, but since we arrived well after 2pm, we could check in. Staff speak good English and best of all, the ladies get a face pamper pack!

When we went up to the room, strangely the wedding march song was louder, but became evident. All the rooms surround a central atrium. Looking down, there was a full wedding going on!

Room was reasonably sized, it had that semi-double bed again (bigger than a king single, smaller than a double). Very clean and Shiseido/Kose products for the toiletries. We paid $88 per night.

We looked at the JR line and picked Akihabara as our next destination.

 This is the famous view you get when you step out of the station. Walk to the right and you get to the main street.  It was a Sunday afternoon and they seemed to have blocked off the street for pedestrians.

Akihabara is known as electric town. Here you can buy all the electronics that you want. It is also known for figurines. We went into a few electronics store, mainly to see if they had any crazy Japanese gadgets (not really). I think because everything is so globalised nowadays, the prices seem similar to what you can buy back home. Plus it doesn't help that the voltage rating in this side of Japan is 120V, not compatible with the Australian 240V.

Most pieces of equipment you can play with. So we took our blood pressure. Mine on the left, hubby on the right. I think mine was bit low and hubby a bit too high?

As we were not interested in gadgets Akihabara was not that interesting a place for us. Although we did find a Donkihote in Akihabara. This is a famous chain that seems to sell everything you could possibly want. Gadgets, costumes, kitchen items, food, electronics, cosmetics...it is a chaotic but awesome place to visit. The prices are usually quite low as well.

On one of the levels of the Donki store, there is an AKB48 theater, a Japanese all singing, all dancing troupe of girls (the members seem to change). There was also a maid cafe (no photos though).  I did take one outside. Yes, Akihabara has a high number of maid cafes.

Other weird stuff, cockroach magnets.

After exhausting ourselves in Donki, we went to Tokyo station. Which was actually quite boring as it was night time, but it was surrounded by department stores.

For our late night dinner we bought:

Some shashimi on rice

 A variety of croquettes and maki sushi filled with fried croquettes.

 And a little bento for some veggies.

Funny thing, back at the hotel, there was a drunk guy in the lobby. Not violent, but obviously wanted a good chat. He was surrounded by hotel staff (men) who were just keeping an eye on him and humouring him along with his conversation. The drunk guy was absolutely delighted in having such an attentive audience!

The next day, we were off to the famous Tokyo fish market!