Too many Harley Quinns

29102016

We tried today to mail the Gundams and since unnecessary clothes over to the US, unfortunately the Post offices around here don't have very large boxes on hand, so we went home empty handed, or rather still-full-handed.

The morning wasnt a complete loss, we did discover 7-11 had tasty smoothie drinks for waaay less monies than the smoothie place in the train station, not as good, but well worth a buck fifty.

We decided to go over to Aomi, which is one of the islands made up of reclaimed land in the bay. It has one of the main ports of Tokyo, meaning there is alot of area that we couldn't go to, but interesting for a "logistician" like myself to view through the metro train window.

It is also a sort of entertainment hub, given that it is all less than 75 years old, it was very curated, they had the space and forethought to build it purposefully. There are a few enormous mslls, like 7+ story buildings with hundreds of shops in them. Many of them shops you would find in our malls, a few unique brands, but really the same stuff you would see in a mall in the States. There was also a huge ferris wheel and presumably other rides/attractions around.

The primary reason for heading to Aomi was so I could check the block and be done with my fan-girling for Gundam here.

We went to Gundam Front Tokyo. Which is basically the factory store and museum for all things Gundam. They have a full size one outside, inside they had on display at least one of nearly every model kit they have produced. They have a big shop with a big selection. And they have a paid session where you can go and see how they are produced, and watch some only-available-there films, and some more displays. I elected not to pay. $10 a head to see a plastic injection molding machine (which laura and I literally stole a peek at at a Chicago museum), exclusive videos from parts of the franchise I don't care about, and the minor display didn't seem worth it.

Mostly i wanted to see the historical log of kits, and see if any of their exclusive kits tickled my fancy; they didn't.

Given that this weekend is holloween, and Aomi is an entertainment center there was a huge concert going to go down later in the day, there were many many people in the area, and many in costume. In the various malls was really the first moment that we really realized how many goddamn people there are here. And this theme will come back later in the day.

Wandering around the reclaimed island we stumbled upon a very large tennis complex. Many many courts, and with it being the weekend most were filled. I'm not sure whether these were pick games or clubs or lessons or what but it was fun to walk around. We even found an actual scored and spectated match. We sat and watched them play. My favorite part was the 5 ball boys/girls that ran around chasing errant tennis balls and tossing the players fresh balls. Those kids were determined to keep the court orderly and free of wandering tennis balls.

We take the train home and start researching what to do for halloween. Everything said to check out Shibuya. Shibuya is where that iconic super busy intersection is, we figured would get crazy.

It was.

That doesnt really do it justice. There were people everywhere, shoulder to shoulder, most bars were standing room only it was bananas. And again about 2 in 5 people were in costume.

This is one of the prime tourist spots in the city, there were alot of Westerners here, which actually was nice. I am guessing the competition among the bars has sorry of been a race to the bottom on price, no where else have we consistently found inexpensive beers, and beers that didn't come with obligatorily buying food.

So laura and I got drunk. We did have a few snacks, but mostly drank. By the time we were about done we stopped at a ramen place in the thick of it. I was in no state to be sitting, so I told laura to stay put and I was going to walk the block.

Terrible idea, I got completely lost. After about 10 minutes of not recognizing the front of the ramen shop I just started going into places and looking for laura.

Unfortunately after a few minutes laura freaked out about MY being gone so long, and left the ramen place.

Even worse idea.

Luckily, and I have no idea the chances we stumbled into each other within a few minutes. And decided it was certainly time to go home.

We stopped at 7-11 for snacks and breakfast, laura puked outside. And we went home to our final night at the Shinbashi hotel.