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Well today was a bit of a nothing day for me.
Spent most of the day bumming around in the hotel.
About 3pm I headed out to see if I could do some shopping. Happy to report I now have gifts for a few lucky individuals. Down to 7000 yen for three days in Tokyo. Every time I tell a Japanese that they laugh. Sounds like its gonna be a bit of a drag in Tokyo with that much cash but hey, the rest of the trip has been good, so glad I did it despite a few hiccups.
Tomorrow I checkout of here and get the shinkansen for Tokyo. Should be in Tokyo by 1pm so will have to try and find some cheap dinner there tomorrow.
So after hanging around the hotel I went out to a few shopping districts to see what sort of gifts I could get for the peeps back home. Found a lovely item for the parents and even managed to get the price down a fair bit from the original thanks to my being foreign. Not THE item I wanted to get but that was well out of my price range. After wandering the shopping districts I had an appointment with a guy called Yoshiaki Minami at a place called Tins Hall which I had a few drinks at last night.
Really nice guy and a retired architect. He now does special effects. He bought me a beer last night and promised to got me a deck of Japanese cards for a game called Hana Huda. They are really quite nice cards but much smaller than the ones we use in the west. After seeing these I thought of someone they would be a perfect gift for so I went and got a deck of more traditional ones. The ones he got me are disney cards as they have an english manual.
I had a few drinks with him again and we struggled through a conversation about the economic situaiton and Japan. He recommended I try a dish called Monja, similar to Okonomoyaki but a Tokyo version. We will see how much it costs. Being an ex-architect he recommended some buidlings I check out while in Tokyo, I am always up for free sights to see and am sure Kate will be quite intrigued by what is in store.
That was about all for today. A couple new pics of crazy buildings but nothing else. Next post will be Tokyo.
See ya.