As the journey back to Sweden draws closer and the terrorists at Heathrow won’t allow us to bring what we want onboard, we decided to take our chances and buy stuff here to check in. So a Shochu store was the first planned stop for the day. Megumi had mailed us and made plans for visiting a famous sushi restaurant and karaoke for thursday so this was more or less our last real chance.

As usual when Shochu is involved, things tend to go out of hand. This time we didn’t even need to drink the Shochu. Ulf said that ‘I might shop a shirt but except from that I’m not going to buy anything more’. So we thought that we might not need to withdraw any more money from my account. Then we bumped into a liquor store which sold assorted famous spirits. Ulf convinced me that Lagavulin distillers edition from 1987 was the best whiskey he ever had tried. Which left me not much of a choice.

After that we needed more cash, the friendly ATM which still seems to love me happily gave it to us. Then we went to Daimaru, a large department store at Tokyo Station (among other places). The visit included two trips to the tax return office, me using my credit card to buy Ulf a DKNY jacket (really nice, I didn’t dare to try it on), us buying tableware, a shirt for Ulf and so on. To sum it up Ulf now has the record for most spent cash in one day although I’m still on top when it comes to total amount spent.

We ate some sushi at a mid-level restaurant and it was nice but not that much better than in sweden. I guess we will see tomorrow if Japan is teh shit or not when it comes to sushi. After taking the metro home like two bag ladies we thought we should give Tokyo Tower a try since the Osaka version was really nice.

After getting there we realize that the upper observatory is closed, but we decide to check out the main observatory at least. This is measly 150m up of the 333m the building streches (Eiffel tower is 320m) and the view was nice but glass panes separated us from the night. In addition to these panes there where lights here and there creating nice reflexes, which more or less made any really nice photo impossible. We managed to catch a few views though but were more or less done when the building closed thirty minutes after our arrival. Umeda Sky Building was nicer although it was cool to see Tokyo skyline as well.

Today it was time to buy a few of those things we had seen but not bought. So we started out with going to Akihabara and after that headed to Ikeburo to browse the Seibu store a bit. This is a complex which is big, I guess you could spend the larger part of a day browsing that single building and still not have seen most of it.

Both me and Ulf did some shopping but it was not to the same extent as the Roppongi Hills visit. It was quite calm and I finished reading ‘End of Faith’ by Sam Harris. Quite interesting book even though I don’t agree with him on all points. Recommended reading. I met up with Aki in Ebisu and he gave me three copies of his latest CD and one copy of an older one that would sound more like what he played at Womb. Really nice, he wouldn’t accept any money but I promised I would invite him to my place if he ever visited Sweden.

The picture on the top of the page was shot from our ‘traditional downtown Tokyo neighbor hood’ (quoted from the web page of our hostel) right outside our hostel. It is interesting that you can see girls wearing real short dresses while walking alone here. This is without any signs of fear despite the run-down feeling the homeless people in combination with the piles of garbage create.

We discussed the number of police cars we had seen in Japan so far and concluded that it would stop at three if we counted the two parked ones. The one driving was in Hiroshima and it chased a gang of bikers but except from that I would say that a regular day in Gothenburg has more signs of violence. Tomorrow we will perhaps keep up our shopping or hang out with Megumi. I guess going home will be a nice change for my economy since it’s getting a bit strained now.

I realized this morning that it’s actually really nice to sleep more than four consecutive hours. We decided that we would check out Odaiba, which is an island in Tokyo, today and we had heard that it would be quite a view from there, especially at night.

We passed Shimbashi on the way for a transfer and decided to check it out a little. It was as most stations in Tokyo, nice sky scrapers on the outside, stores on the inside and some event going on. We saw this guy painting fiercely to the sound of some fast and pumping electronica that he wore on him. It was the end of a show but it seemed that he started out with a blank canvass and then painted to the music. Kind of cool but next show was like an hour away so we decided not to wait for that.

Odaiba was nice, we didn’t do as much shopping as usual but instead spent some time reading/blogging in a park. After that we did some walking along the seashore and took pictures of Rainbow Bridge, the bridge to Tokyo mainland. We then had dinner at a restaurant with a really nice view, I guess we were the only ones in the place not being a couple though. Later we headed back and I’ve done some blogging and now plan to jump into my bed. I got a mail from the drum’n’bass DJ at Womb saying that I should meet up with him tomorrow and he would give me a cd with his music. I hope it works out, then I will try to spread some culture to Gothenburg 😉