May 2

Today, Matt left early in the morning (he had been called away to compete in a boxing match by his trainer) so it was just David and me. We went to DenDen again in the morning because there was something I wanted to buy that I had seen yesterday but wasn’t sure about at the time. We ended up going in a bunch of otaku stores that we had passed the first time around. We also saw some girls dressed up as maids and handing out pamphlets for thier maid café’s. I decided I wanted a picture with one of them (none of them were skantily clad), but when I asked, the girl said I couldn’t have a picture because you had to go to the café (and pay) to do that. We decided we would take a picture of her from afar, but when she figured out what was going on, she went around the corner. That was okay though and we got pictures of other people. We also passed by a parking lot where a bunch of riced up cars were covered in vinyl anime decals (which we took pictures of). I didn’t think otaku drove fast cars. O:

After this, we headed back to ShinSekai to get to Festival Gate (where the roller coaster is) but when we got there, we heard no noise and saw no cars. The coaster wasn’t running that day either!!! None of the shops around were open either, so we decided my guide book was probably out of date and the rollercoaster was no longer in operation.

We spent the rest of the afternoon looking for takosen (tako yaki in a giant ebi cracker) and playing taiko at the arcade. I ended up getting the takosen all over my hands, much like the time I ate a crepé at Versailles. It wasn’t quite enough, so we stopped by a cafeteria-like restaurant and had rice and crokets before heading back to the hostel to drop our belongings. There, we tried to decide on something to do for the evening and somehow, while talking, we both passed out for about three hours.

When we woke up, we decided to go back to Ebisu-bashi, but this time by foot. It only took about a half-hour to get there even with getting a bit lost. This time, we saw a garage full of (about five) lambos and we were going to take pictures, but in the time it took to get our cameras out, the parking lot attendant waved us away. Zannen... We did go into a restaurant on the river though to have ika okonomiyaki. It was one of the best I’ve ever had. Unfortunately, we were running out of time because of our curfue, so we booked it to the crepé stand for a final treat and then to the subway to get home fast. We got on the wrong direction train though, so with our reverse-change, we got back to the hostel just in time.