Day 12 Sunday

We had a few pastries for breakfast in a smoke-filled bakery—why a customer needed to smoke a cigarette over his doughnut and coffee is beyond me—and walked around the crowds for a few hours. I really wanted to see Dougayusuji Street, which supplies food and cooking things for all the restaurants, but it turned out a bit of a disappointment; we couldn’t find any stores selling the famed plastic foods that many restaurants here display in their windows.

We headed for Den Den Town, the electronics district, to buy D some camera things. But we couldn’t find any professional shops and our most exciting moment came when we stepped into an elevator, the door closed, we hit the button for Level 5 and the elevator just sat there. We hit every other button and the elevator just sat there. Finally I hit the Open button and the doors opened. I nearly fell over myself trying to get out, but D wanted to try to get to his camera shop, so while I waited nervously on the platform, he hopped back into the elevator and this time I saw the numbers blinking up to the fifth floor. I waited about three minutes and then the numbers blinked back down and D stepped out, a bit shaken. The 5th floor, which was supposed to be a camera shop, was actually a hardcore porn shop.

On our way back to our hotel, we passed through an entire street lined with manga and anime stores. I was thrilled and managed to pick up some souvenirs from the comics I used to read in high school.




For lunch, we swung by last night’s restaurant, hoping to try a less-spicy version of the soup, but the line outside was three times as long. So we searched around a bit until we found the second ramen place Soli had recommended. We ordered from a vending machine outside, got our tickets, and then entered a long thin building and sat at a long counter with about fifty other people until a waiter rolled our food up on a trolley. The ramen was good, if not as good as last night’s place.



Now a bit sick of ramen, we went to yesterday’s hotel to pick up our bags—amazed there was no overnight storage fee—and continued to the subway, where we managed to catch a shinkansen one hour earlier than we had scheduled. It was a three hour trip back to Tokyo, and D dropped his sunglasses down the crack between the train and the platform.

Back in Tokyo, Takis took us out again. Maybe our palates were jaded, but we didn’t enjoy this restaurant as much as the last he had taken us to. We went happily to bed in our old ryokan.

But first I had to decide which gigolo was my favorite.