There’s a couple of things people told me they wanted from me on the trip. THMFIC at the gym wanted me to to have an illicit affair here. I’ve never been able to pull anything like that off when I was younger, and I doubt I’m any more able now. I was also asked to take a picture of a pr0n vending machine and it turns out that there aren’t any small independent bookstores any more, so there aren’t any magazine vending machines. Here are a couple of pictures of vending machines since there still are drink machines everywhere. Mostly soft drinks, but some are beer machines out on the street.

I was surprisingly coherent today after getting as little sleep as I got last night, which was something like five hours. I figure the Oolong tea at Mos Burger was as strong as the Coke is at Mickey D’s, plus the people next door wouldn’t stop making noise. I still made it out the door with my sister’s NEW shopping list and went to Shibamata Kastushika to see the Tora-san Museum. My mom and the Kawasakis were afraid I’d get lost and my sister told me not to get mugged. Well the worst thing that happened was that I found out that the JR train turns into a non-JR subway train and if you stay on too long it costs 160 yen to get off that train and back onto a JR train. At today’s exchange rate, that’s a whole $1.62 that I lost.

In any case, I found out that there is an easy way to get to Shibamata by taking JR to Kanamachi on the JR Johban line, and then it’s just one stop on the Keisei Kanamachi line. Easy. And I now know why it’s not prime real-estate, there’s a HUGE sewage treatment plant nearby. Shibamata station has a statue of Tora-san.

After that, it’s a walk through traditional stores to the Shibamata Taishakuten temple.

I didn’t get any close-ups of the wares, but they sell traditional Japanese sweets and things you’d expect to see on the way to a popular temple. Combs, chopsticks, dango like Tora-san’s family was supposed to sell, and a lot of surprising expensive unagi lunches.

The trip to the museum is another walk through a fairly nice-seeming neighborhood. I don’t have any pictures because there really isn’t that much to take pictures of.

On the way back, I had my JR-subway-JR mishap and then went back to Akihabara Electric town for more geekery. I didn’t buy all that much but I did eat lunch which was unsurprisingly so-so. (Like I said, Tokyo food.)

Most of it was pretty good, but the Japanese curry was fairly tasteless. Besides, I had this guy eyeing me the whole time I was eating.

Of course, after that it was off to Uniqlo to shop for my sister. Uniqlo is like an Old Navy for Japan. Really cheap clothing. I felt like a total perv because she sent me to buy women’s thermal underwear. The store is divided into two sides and there really weren’t any other guys on the women’s side. Especially not in the underwear section. Like I said, my sister is quite demanding.

Other than that, it was a bit more wandering around Shinjuku stores for me. I’m so overloaded by the shopping that I just kind of wander around and look at stuff that interests me. I got some more battery-powered LED nightlights for gifts and that took a few hours. They’re not as common as I’d have thought, since Dr. Kawasaki can find them for about $10 at the DIY Home Center in Toyama.

I went to Mos Burger and ended up chatting with Chris, an American grad student at Sophia University, a Jesuit university here in Tokyo. He was talking about moving back to the US and asking how I found moving back. He’s spent his entire adult life in Japan and was kind of worried. Plus, he’s craving Taco Bell. That’s a bad sign, though Mexican food was one of the things that my sister and I always craved while we were in Japan.

Anyway, tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be on a plane headed to Portland. I’ll unload the bazillion pens and then it’s time to head home. I’m going to wander around the house and try to make it to the gym, though last year by about 9PM I’d started to hallucinate and I couldn’t discern whether I was awake or asleep. We’ll see how it goes.