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gundam: man or woman?, originally uploaded by skelethulu.

I look forward to my inevitable return to Japan with more excitement than I have welled up in years. Last day summary:

• Ate at a Japanese fast food place called Yoshinoya. For like $5 I got a huge bowl of curry and rice, a bowl of udon WITH A FRIED EGG ON TOP, and a couple tempura’d things. They also had free tea.
• Jess and I went out to Asakusa, a particularly old part of town. Outside of the most important shrine in Tokyo (I think it was even in Azumanga Daioh), there was a huge tourist trappy market. There were lots of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese tourists out there!
• Wandered around for a little while in Asakusa and found a sweet amuzement park. We didn’t ride anything, but I bought a shirt.
• Walked up and down this restaurant supply district; bought a bunch of chopsticks, saw some really great deals on a lot of stuff that we couldn’t fit in our luggage.
• I bought a GIGANTIC Mountain Dew for 120 yen. Seriously, this thing was a MAN’S Mountain Dew.
• Rolled out for Akihabara, for the last time. Saw an American or Australian jerkwad in a girl’s kimono (it looked as if he didn’t know this, since he was a pretty “tough” guy with sharp teeth). Walked into a game store that sold import games from the USA for like 300% the cover price.
• Met up with Tim; he showed us to Super Potato. By the way, Super Potato has a pretty good selection, but there are definitely better stores around Akihabara. I think the reason US gamer guys think it’s so sweet is because it’s the only store in Akihabara that lets you take pictures. Everything was about 2-3 times what it should have cost…
• Walked over to Ueno, our favorite part of town. I’d been saving up change for a couple days for this one particular gashapon machine, and it was a glorious feeling to practically empty it. It was the only machine of this type I’d seen in all of Japan (I think it was exclusive to this one store), and I ended up making the items inside it exceedingly rare!
• I bought a Lavendar Purple PSP at a Yodobashi Camera. Jess had been eyeing them the entire trip. It’s the “rare” color over here, in that it’s the only one that is consistently sold out. The Yodobashi in Ueno only had one left… Coincidentally, the PSP Slim was hacked a couple days ago!
• Met up with Jess’ friend and did some Karaoke. This experience will get its own post later.
• Went out to Tim’s apartment (near Asakusa) and got my PSP Slim hacked. The first game this PSP ever ran was Cave Story. It was a pretty small apartment! That would be something difficult to deal with, I assume! However his rent was only $700 a month, so there are probably larger places around.
• Got some conveyor belt sushi. It was a pretty fun experience! We put our plates into this counting slot machine thing and I made a bet with fate that were we to win a prize I would fight as hard as I could to live here.
• We won a tiny car toy!
• Went into an actual Japanese supermarket. It was weird, since this was an American-style supermarket, the first of its kind I’d seen here. Stocked up on some candy.
• Walked over to Mos Burger, which is a moderately popular burger joint here, and rocked some of that. It was pretty tasty! It was also like the first food I’d had here that seemed bad for me!
• We said our goodbyes.

The sun is coming up, and I didn’t sleep all night.

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