hello tokyo bye bye osaka

Day 3: Ginza - Akihabara - Ueno Park - Aoyama - Shibuya - Tokyo Midtown

Unless you have loads of cash to dispose of, Ginza would probably not be the place for you as I soon discovered. The streets are lined with rows of expensive designer labels and department stores like Matsuya Ginza, Seibu and O1O1. Apart from that, there wasn't much else to see or do in Ginza. Even the Apple Store was sold out in the iphone case I wanted - how disappointing!

Being a Naruto and Bleach fan, it was actually really hard to find cool merchandise of them in Akihabara. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right place or maybe they were old news on the anime scene in Japan. Of the merchandise I did come across, about 95% of it was unfamiliar to me.

Akihabara didn't live up to the hype of being this anime/manga and electronic town mecca for me. What I do rememeber in Akihabara, was spotting my first supermarket "Y's Mart" in Japan and also having the worst margherita pizza in my life!

Our next stop was Ueno Park and it was really cold here. I think I remember more how cold it felt then actually seeing the cherry blossoms.

Ueno Park was packed with both tourists and locals, most of them already deep into their hanami parties. Even though there were more cherry blossoms out in full bloom here, I could have of easily traded it for a more peaceful stroll through Inokashira Park. At Ueno Park, there were plenty of food vendors lined in one section of the park. It was here, I got to try my first takoyaki (octopus balls). You could only buy them in lots of 6 and unfortunately for me, I couldn't get pass the first one.

Heading off to Aoyama, we got so completely loss and found ourselves in the back alleys of the streets, yet again. It's funny because we always say, "I bet you they didn't mention this place in the guidebooks!"

After unintentionally walking all the way back from aoyama to our hotel in akasake-mitake, we later realise we couldn't find any of the stores on the map because they were all located in Ometesando and not Aoyama!



That night we were off to Shibuya to try our first piece of sushi in Japan. Though I'm not usually big on sashimi, I didn't mind it here. 

By the time we wrap up dinner, it was still kind of early to clock off for the night so we decided to check out Tokyo Midtown. When we got there most of the stores had already closed for the night, except for Tsutaya Book Store - a place I could of spent hours just devouring their fine collection of design books.