No pics today; my go-between for uploading images is MIA after our most recent excursion...
Woke up at around 10am today. Struck out for Nakano on my own around 11am. Ended up in the wrong part of Nakano, but thanks to the help of a convenient store owner and a future foreign exchange student, I ended up in the right place. My destination was Nakano Broadway, which I'd heard about online prior to the trip. Nakano Broadway was a massive mall, and the shop I was most interested in was Mandarake, a store with space on 4 floors. There were tons of vintage and new comic books and action figures there, though I was most interested in the Transformers they had. They had quite the collection of Transformers, some I never thought I'd see. Unfortunately, their price tags matched their rarity, so I left empty-handed, but it was still cool to see.
After that, I went back to Ikebukuro and wandered around the city streets to places I hadn't checked out before. As I walked around, I realized just how great a city Tokyo is (or at least this district). It's calm, peaceful, clean, and safe. I never once felt worried about my safety walking the streets of one of the biggest cities in the world, yet I wouldn't want to walk the streets of Pittsfield alone without a pocket knife or something. It's a whole different environment over here, and I'm really going to miss it.
After my wandering, I went back to the hotel around 5pm to hang out for a while, because we had to meet with Professor Huang at 6:30. He basically just told us what's going to happen tomorrow.
About half an hour later, myself and three other guys took a trip to Palette Town. This was a waterfront shopping district and is home of the famous Tokyo Ferris Wheel and Rainbow Bridge. The train ride there and back was awesome, because we got to see Tokyo in all of its electric glory lit up at night. Rainbow Bridge was cool, but wasn't completely illuminated tonight.
At Palette Town, we went into the main shopping center, which was pretty cool. It was stylized like Italian architecture on the inside, and the ceiling was a false sky that changed colors now and then. We went to Seiryumon, an upscale Chinese-style restaurant. I ate an awesome stir fried chicken and cashew dish, along with a glass of lychee juice (which was pretty good). I also tried some jellyfish that one of the guys ordered.
From there we went to the ferris wheel, which was lit up with changing neon lights. One of the guys, the one whose computer I normally use to upload pictures and do my blog, decided that the ferris wheel "didn't interest him at all," so he stayed behind while the rest of us went on it. It was worth the admission price. It's the highest ferris wheel in the world, and from it we got a great view of Tokyo lit up in all directions. After that we looked around for the other guy, but couldn't find him, so we went back to the hotel, taking in one last look at Tokyo at night.
Overall, it was a great end to a great trip. Tomorrow we leave at 10am for Ueno, then on to Narita, where we'll take off for home at 4:30pm.
Thanks for reading my blog; I hope you enjoyed seeing some of what I saw. For those of you who are friends with me on Facebook, expect a ton of pics once I get home.
Sayonara!
