Day 2 began in the Shinjuku neighborhood in Tokyo.
I woke up early and got a chance to write the post for day 1 while having breakfast and coffee at the hostel. After doing some research on Tokyo, Nate and I headed out to explore some different parts of the city. The plan was to head over to one of the train stations across the city, and then walk our way back and explore along the way.
On the way to the Shijuku, we passed through a Shinto shrine that is nestled between a number of buildings in a very urban area.
We took the Tokyo metro across the city. One thing I can say is that, without question, the Japanese have public transportation figured out. There are metro trains, like a subway, that cover nearly the entire city of 9 million people. There are also regular trains and bullet trains that take you around the city and between cities.
In general, there is a general transportation efficiency that we often lack in the states. For example, when approaching an escalator, you stand to the left if you wish to stand. The right is reserved for those that want to walk. This holds true 100% of the time. You will never find someone standing on the right side of the escalator, ever. You also drive on the left side of the road and walk on the left side of sidewalks. That takes a little getting used to… I frequently drifted to the right side of the sidewalk on the first two days, but I think I have it figured out now.
When traveling around Tokyo, you see a lot of people that wear masks. There are a lot of different reasons for this, but the primary two seem to be 1) preventing others from getting sick when you have a cold, and 2) preventing you from getting sick when others that have colds break the social norm and don’t wear a mask.
Tinkering with phones, both texts / internet browsing and playing games, seems to be extremely common while shuttling around the city as well.
We arrived in a neighborhood on Tokyo’s north east side called Akihabara. It is an interesting neighborhood known for many different things, one of which is video games.
Since I work for a restaurant company, it is always interesting to see international chains in other countries and see how they operate. KFC is definitely a presence in japan, as is Starbucks (they are everywhere, so much so that I use them to navigate – “we need to take a left at that starbucks”).
Japanese people really like cute things. There are all kinds of cafes where you can go sit with cute animals, like cats or hedgehogs. Not my speed, but fascinating.
One thing Akihabara is famous for is video games. We browsed a few different stores which were a wonderful return to childhood. Most of the stores have the older games for the Famicon and Super Famicon. Famicon is short for “Family Computer”, and is the equivalent of Nintendo in the US. It was a lot of fun to browse and see all the Japanese versions of the games I played as a kid. My favorite of the stores was called “Super Potato”, and was three floors of old school video games.
I could post 80 pictures from those stores. There were Final Fantasy games (some of my favorites as a kid) and numerous others. Most are only $7-10 USD. In the interest of not boring you, I will continue on.
Since we were in the video game district I had to play one of my favorite games.
I guess I am getting old because, sadly, I lost. 
It was time for lunch, so we did a traditional Japanese Ramen restaurant that had great reviews. It was amazing. We had a few language barrier challenges and managed to hold up the line for a while trying to figure out how to order, but the server was extremely gracious and the food was fantastic.
After lunch we walked around the city some more and stopped by a shrine in a public park and one of the large gardens downtown by the Tokyo Dome. While walking around Tokyo, you will find there are lots of vending machines, and NO trashcans.
I am out of time, so in short we walked some more and stopped by a craft beer bar. And then it was back to meet our other friend Chinedu, eat a quick Thai dinner, and then head to sleep.
More to come tomorrow!
Chambers Adventures 