Tokyo

Two days of craziness...

We've been in Japan for more than two weeks at this point so we figure we know a few tricks when it came to subways and bus. Tokyo is a whole new city.

We stayed at the Sakura Hotel, ironically, one of the cheapest hotels of our trip. Close by (walking distance) is the emperors castle (good for a morning visit), and a number of subways connections. Andrea, Mark and I are employees of Electronic Arts (Canada) so before we left we arranged to get a tour of the Electronics Arts building in Japan. Our Japan offices are interesting micro version of the Electronic Arts world wide and their generosity showing the office was appreciated.

After the tour (and lunch) we headed up to Shinjuku to see the Tokyo Metropolitan Building - the center of government in Tokyo. This 50 story building has two observation decks - one on each tower and we were happy to go up and take a look around.

Watching sunset in the towers and canyons of Tokyo was invigorating - orange light is slowly replaced by blue and the neon gets brighter to replace it. For dinner we took the train to Shibuya and found a Jackie's (as in Jackie Chan's) restaurant and tried Chinese - our first chinese of the trip. Shibuya has a great night life and a 100 Yen store, so we filled our tourist bags and returned home.

Akihabara

For geeks, there simply isn't another Akihabara. Also close to the Sakura Hotel, we spent the better part of the day exploring the shops. My personal best was DVD-R's, 50 discs for 80 Dollars US - I only bought 5 discs and I'm kicking myself. David found 30 meter SVideo cables. Mark found a translation PDA that was state of the art and cheap.