Japan Day 13

While we started early it was still a relatively easy day. We had breakfast at 7 then reassembled and got out of the hotel before 8:30 I think. In any event we headed out to the O-Daiba and Daiba areas early. This is the waterfront area of Tokyo. We walked around a lot but the shopping malls and whatnots all didn’t open until 11am. We waited around and had the worst coffee that wasn’t instant that we’ve had since being in Japan at a place called Tully’s. This was basically filter coffee like the serve in the UK but it had been collected into a large pot and was dispensed from there. The end result was a chalky bitter coffee that wasn’t all that pleasant to drink. After that we searched the malls and the area for a bit before returning briefly to the hotel.

From there we set out to truly find the statue of Godzilla that was between Ginza and Hibiya right in front of the Toho building. We were successful in finding it and took a few pictures. From there we managed to march through Ginza for a bit before getting on a fairly well crowded subway to return to the hotel so we could get ready for the evening.

We later met up with Jun, one of George’s former coworkers. He took us to a Hokkaido style restaurant which had some fairly unusual things to eat. There was squid liver sashimi which was frozen. Also salmon sashimi which was frozen. A whole fried fish which was challenging to eat with the chopsticks. I have a hard time mentioning the next one. It was the, ummm, special leavings, of a male fish… if that makes sense, both raw and cooked. Neither proved to be to my taste but George pretended he liked it even when Jun said most Japanese people don’t like it. In any event there were a few other dishes, like a very good fried chicken thing and we had beer and sake, three types of sake in a sampler set actually which were very good, and some ice cream. Mine was lamb raison, whatever that means but it was good. Jun had to go back to the office to prepare for his week coming up so we let him go and returned to the hotel. He was very nice just as Hans and Adam were from the night before and I had a lot of fun there even if some of the foods were a bit iffy. I was full by the time we left anyway so I guess that counts for something.