Galspot: Day 2: Wednesday 4th of October (Tokyo)

Set my alarm for 7am. That didn't happen. I was feeling weary and tired and the bed way too comfortable, plus I thought I should try and avoid the peak hour. So much for making the most of my trip I thought, as I dosed off. Eventually, hunger struck me and forced me to get up, so around 9 oclock, I reluctantly rolled out of bed, grabbed a few things, and made my way out into... Tokyo!

Learning my lesson from last night, I found my way to the nearest train station (which was surprisingly hard to find on the map which showed it was just down the road) and made my way from Asakusa to Ginza Station. It shouldn't have surprised me that in Ginza, the urban and metropolitan capital of Japan, was filled with... fashion stores, everywhere! There were upper class French fashion stores on every corner, department stores filling in between, and hordes of neat Japanese people walking around in their stylish designer clothes, punctuated by the occasional group of gaijin gazing around at the sights.

Food was harder to come by than expected, not because for a lack of shops, but because there was too much choice. Following my trust LP, I eventually wiggled my way through the clean and trendy streets and found - Lion Beer Hall. Apparently established in 1899, this place had an unassuming exterior, but an inside that evoked mixed images of European style beer gardens and my junior school camp dining room. As I would find in most all the other cities I would visit, there were faithful representations of the meals I could order on display outside the entrance - I ordered the daily special.

Filling up on the deepfried stuff, and guzzlind down a nice cold beer, a then departed and continued walking and gawking around Ginza. Searched for a while for a non-existant Godzilla statue (according to LP), left then found the Sony Building. An extremely vertically oriented building, this place was less impressive than what it looked. About 8 floors of stuff greeted me, but with only a few gadgets per floor, this place took less than 40 min to walk thru. There were some nice big TV sets that I refused to carry around with me in my backpack.

Found my way to the northwestern part of the Tokyo and into, The Imperial Palace. A totally amazing sight to see - in the middle of one of the busiest suburban densest city in the world stood this gigantic castle, moat, and surrounding grounds. The scale of the grass and neat little trees all in a row was astonding, and I spent a long time wondering around the grounds and the building, reading about the various wars and history of the castle and the city of Tokyo.

Still proceding on foot, I left the grounds and travelled around eastwards, passed the Tokyo Grand Central Station (which was still being rebuilt), lost myself in the growing homeward peak hour human traffic, caught a train, and found my way to - Akihabara! This, from what I had read, was the electronics district of Tokyo, all the latest of the latest would be here. I was greeted by a wave of advertisement, with young people dressed in school uniforms waiting all in the line outside the train station trying to bombard the outgoing with little papers detailling what they could miss out on if they didn't visit this shop or that. Got bombarded

with multicolour neonic lights filling up my entire vision, perused a few humongous multistoried electronic department stores, filled my bag with gadgets and gizmos, and then finally managed to pull myself away. Had dinner at a fast food noodle chain (after not being able to locate few of the recommended restaurants in LP), and then headed for a late night stroll of Ikebukuro.

Went to a big escalator, which wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be, and then found 'Black Sheep'!, a comfy international/Irish pub, drank a few brews, journalled, and watched the few locals wandering in and out. Found my way back with a bit less walking this time, grabbed a few snacks from a convenient store nearby home, and settled down for the night.

Which did I have again?