Weekend in Tokyo

Over drinks at the Lion's head Saturday night, Chris and I decided we were bored with Utsunomiya and I offered to take him down to Tokyo Sunday. We didn't really have a plan, but on the train we decided to try Shinjuku and Akihabara.

First in Shinjuku, we went to this temple where they were supposed to have a flea market on Sunday. It was funny seeing these ratty tables with peoples random junk in the middle of this ancient temple. Didn't they cover this in Sunday school?
After the temple we walked around for a while. From what the tourist book says, Shinjuku doesn't really come alive until dark. Then there's a section filled with these little bars with maybe 4 seats in them. And nearby is an area that's very much a red-light district. Nothing was really going on in either of these places when we were there, but I want to see what its like at night.

We walked to the other side of the station to go to the bookstore to get me a Kyoto guidebook, and then went on to a mall. The place wasn't very big in area, but we rode the escalators all the way up to the 12th floor looking around. Here's the part of Christmas they decided to embrace.
The city offices in Shinjuku have a 45th floor observation deck, so we went over there. The view was incredible. If you have really good eyes, or I had a better camera, you can see Mt. Fuji.
Look a little to the left of that, and I saw a dome. The "and if you look over here..." picture said it's the Tokyo dome. Gives a little sense of the scale of Tokyo when the baseball stadium looks like this. We stopped in Akihabara, Electric Town, on the way back. The place is just crazy, you start going down a 20 foot wide street, and every time you turn, the streets get smaller and more crowded with electronics until you're just walking down an aisle with gizmos all around you.

The place is not as big with electronics as it used to be, and it's picking up the economic slack with Anime and porn. When we walked out of the station, there was a big crowd around something, so I had to go look. Here's what it was:
I think this girl was selling DVD's, and I think, maybe she was in them. I don't know, and I don't think I'd recognize her even if I saw the DVD. I'm not sure if that's her on the billboard or not, I didn't get a close enough look at either the picture or the back of her (although that guy behind her sure did). Really can't tell how old anyone is here, can you? I kind of felt bad for all the girls in maid costumes standing around being ignored while there were dozens of people snapping pictures of her.

On another topic, I watched that Browns game last night. That was the first time I felt really like I was missing something. It's going to suck to watch them in the playoffs alone with a computer and a Kirin.