Day 15: Gone Fishin'

Our first full day in the Shinjuku area ended up being one of our favorites of the whole trip. Chrissy had heard about a place called Nakano Broadway. I figured this was some theater or something, it turns out is a nerd mecca on par with or possibly even better than Akihabara.

We spent all day here shopping around and eating. I'd show you a picture of all of the stuff we got but some of it is just too crazy, you'll just have to stop by the house some time to see them all displayed. I also finally got my white whale of this trip, an Alien figure. I'd been wanting one since we got here and would find them at different stores here and there. Literally every single time we found one it was sold out, and they won't sell you the display model for some reason...

So after wasting a ton of money on Chinese plastic in the shape of our favorite pop culture characters we sat down to get some snacks and rest our feet. Little did we know we would be treated to the largest toast either of us had ever seen.

By the time we were done at Nakano it was already pretty dark and rainy so we decided to make attempt number two to make it to the local restaurant that we had trekked across Shinjuku in search of our first night. It is call Zauo, it is on the first floor of the Shinjuku Washington Hotel and you get to do this...

The shark is their "pet", we were kindly asked not to catch him

That's right, you actually get a pole and some bait and catch your own dinner. It seems like a gimic but it was actually a lot of fun and ended up giving us the freshest fish possible. It took both of us a while to catch our fish, there were a ton in the tank, which sits below a fake boat that houses most of the tables, but none seemed interested. We tried moving the bait right in front of them, letting it sink and completely ignoring them, we even tried the patented Hanson fish call that my Dad taught me but nothing was working. Finally I tried a small bouncing method that seemed to garner a lot of attention and caught the first of our two meals.

I may have been slightly drunk

After you catch the fish they ask how you would like it prepared, I figured I'd like it to be as fresh as possible so I went with raw sashimi. While they prepared mine Chrissy tried frantically to get her fish to no avail. Finally I took a turn and got one in a couple of minutes. Chrissy, having had quite a lot of raw fish over the last couple of weeks, decided to go for deep fried.

Something that I had read about in the reviews but still was a little unprepared for was that they don't just serve you the edible portion of the fish, oh no no, they let it sit there and judge you for what you've done to it.

Luckily it took us so long to get the second fish that by the time I made it back to the table the fish wasn't twitching as I had heard was very common. It ended up being a bit expensive but in the end a very unique and very Japanese experience for the both of us.

Day 14: Back to Tokyo

Not too much to report today as we spent almost the whole day traveling, but still had some fun to report. We woke up at the Machiya and got all of our stuff ready, the manager showed up to swap the blanket as the next tenant had an allergy and needed special accommodations. We thanked her for a great week, packed up our luggage and headed out. On the way we soaked in all the Kyoto goodness we could while lugging around 50lb bags.

Me in Kyoto, on Shigeru Miyamoto's 60th birthday...can't say I thought that would ever happen

We made it to the local train station and did our usual subway hop over to Kyoto station. There we used our magical passes to get two seats on the next train to Tokyo and hopped on. The ride was great as usual, riding a train for 2 hours seems to be much better and easier than riding on a plane. We had a lot of leg and luggage room and could relax a bit reading our Kindles. We had missed it the first time around due to fog, being on the wrong side and napping, but this time someone alerted us so that we could get a shot of this...

We made it to Tokyo station and had to almost entirely relearn the Tokyo subway system, not only because we hadn't been here in a few days but also because we now had the JR passes and would want to use their lines whenever possibly. We mapped out our route to Shinjuku and hopped aboard. The greatest thing about these is if the station we are going to is JR we don't even have to get new tickets or swap anything around, just show the pass when we get there.

We got off at Shinjuku station and switched to the local subway. Shinjuku station is considered the busiest train station in the world so it was an interesting adventure dragging huge luggage through it. We made it unscathed but our blood pressure may have been a bit high when we jumped onto our final train.

Once we made it to the hotel we checked in and checked out the room. No walkthrough video this time, it's just a standard hotel room. To be honest we're enjoying a bit of the normalcy in our last week as we get ready to go back to our regular lives.

The view from the hotel and the area around it is much more active than our comparatively sleepy areas in Kyoto and Asakusa. Huge skyscrapers tower over the sidewalks and stretch for quite a while. We are actually not too far from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government buildings and have a great view of them from our hotel window.

We ended the night with a long walk around the area. It started off as an ill fated attempt to find a certain restaurant whose special trait I won't spoil since we found it on another day. By the time we realized my address had been completely wrong we were already halfway across town and surrounded by bright lights, busy streets and tons of good smelling food. We've both gotten a little addicted to the noodles here so we swung in a noodle shop and got some along with some fried dumplings, a new favorite of mine as well, then made our way back the way we came to get back to the hotel.

Day 13: Osaka Aquarium

When you look at a list of the best aquariums in the world, two from Japan will usually show up, Okinawa and Osaka. To get to Okinawa we would have to take a couple hour flight and probably end up staying a day or two down there...we don't want to do that so we went to Osaka!

The Osaka aquarium is called Kaiyukan which translates to "playing in the sea pavilion", the name turned out to be fairly accurate. We started the day by hopping on the train and taking the 30-45 minute ride down to Osaka. As usual we had arrived earlier than the local eateries and attractions were expecting so we had to kill some time waiting on the aquarium to open and find some restaurant that felt like feeding us before 11am. Unfortunately the only place that was open was McDonald's. We'd tried to avoid them since we have such easy access to them normally and wished to experience the different environment we were in, but also we were starving and no local place was willing to feed us.

Luckily we still got to see the minor differences between Japanese and American McDonald's. The first major difference, and this is a near universal difference across the restaurants here, was drink size. We ordered a small drink each as part of a combo (called a "set" here), we weren't prepared for how small it would turn out to be though.

There was more straw outside of the cup than there was inside. The other difference turned out to be much better though. The food was much fresher and the egg that was on my McGriddle and Chrissy's McBiscuit seemed to be, prepare yourself, REAL EGG.

Other than those alterations it was pretty much a standard McDonald's breakfast. Once we were done with breakfast and had walked back to the aquarium entrance the place had opened. As is usual for our larger excursions there were many school groups that were there on a field trip. I'm pretty sure, based on my very limited experience with the matter, that every school in this country goes on at least one field trip every day. There really is no other explanation for it.

The aquarium itself lived up to its reputation as one of the best in the world, not that I've been to that many aquariums but still it was cool. It starts at the top of the building in the "Japan Forest". There was a cool waterfall and some otters swimming around. As you go further into the aquarium you descend deeper and deeper underwater exploring some areas multiple times at different depths or seeing wholly new places with totally different animals.

The deeper we got into the aquarium the more interesting the animals became. Sometimes we would even be able to revisit certain areas and see the same animals but from a different perspective. The dolphins, seals and penguins were especially cool for this.

The smaller areas, like the Great Barrier Reef, and deep ocean also added quite a bit to the adventure. We got to see a lot of varied environments along with the unique and sometimes strange animals that live there.

Chrissy...don't look behind you

I said DON'T look!

The main attraction of the aquarium, and the thing that got me to sign on for this particular day trip, was the main aquarium that covered the pacific ocean. It was stationed in the very middle of the building and ran up about 3 or 4 floors throughout. It had sharks, rays, an entire school of smaller fish and one of the few whale sharks in captivity. This thing was massive, I'm not sure if the pictures truly convey it. It was obviously a smaller whale shark but still it was the biggest fish in the tank and swam around in circles with just a few fin strokes.

Beside the whale shark in the tank but in a separated area was a manta ray. It was cool to get to see it swimming around, especially when it would do loops over and over skimming the top of the surface and diving back down.

After wading our way through the whole aquarium and the sea of school children we were nearing the exit. Right before heading out they give you one final treat, an area completely dedicated to jellyfish. They had various species all separated into their own tanks. Most would just float or swim around in circles. Some had  very cool colors and glowing features. The camera had some issues picking up these but you get the idea.

After making our way out of the aquarium we headed over to the giant Ferris Wheel next door. When we bought our tickets for the aquarium we got a combo pack that let us ride the Ferris Wheel as well. It turns out this is one of the tallest Ferris Wheels in the world and it gave a great view of the Osaka area.

We finished out our time in Osaka with some shopping and dinner in the food court before hitting the train back to Shinjuku. Nothing amazing to report there except for...

Fish custard...yum!