Haaaave You Met...WT: Day 3

Mon 15/10

I apologize for the delay. Midterms, job applications, and a phone interview got in the way…but now, back to blogging!!!

Tsukiji Fish market is a big wholesaler for fresh fish. “Tsukiji Market is the largest central wholesale market in Japan, which has long supported the kitchens of the huge city of Tokyo. Restaurants offering fresh seafood dot the market, as well as the Jogai outdoor market.” We were supposed to wake up at 7am but it was hard so we got there around 9am and walked around. The place was really dirty and smelled like fish, obviously. There wasn’t much to do here, but look at dead fish. It was also pretty hard to maneuver around the place because of the many transporters driving around everywhere.

At the fish market, we got some sushi. We thought it would be really cheap, but no, it was the same price if not more expensive than the rest of Tokyo.

Basically this was what we saw everywhere

Watch out! You might get hit by one of these, so be careful when walking

The sushi stores just outside the fish market

This is our chef when we ate sushi there

Our next stop, Odaiba is a “huge amusement zone where you can enjoy shopping, delicious food, entertainment, and a view of Tokyo Bay all at once.” At Odaiba, we intended to go to Palette Town, Pokemon’s Ash’s home town. However, we didn’t get anywhere except the nearest shopping mall. We basically needed to use the restroom here and ended up staying here for the majority of the day. This mall had an indoor Sega amusement part called Joypolis. It was full of awesome rides, attractions, and hardcore arcades. At first, I didn’t expect much of it, but MAN, it was FUN. For only $35 US dollars each person, we had unlimited play. I will go over some of the attractions:

- House of the Dead 4: super fun! It’s a first person shooting game but you sat in a rotating car. Two screens surrounded you and the car. Cliff and I almost beat the whole game..the last boss was too difficult and impossible to kill.

- Halfpipe: my favorite attraction. It’s a snowboarding stimulated experience game. The objective is to do a front or heel slide at the midpoint of the U shape and you will get points. When you did the front slide correctly, the board will do a 360 degree spin! Since I love snowboarding, My Thanh and I beat out all the competition 2 times! Cliff and Josh...yea they weren't that coordinated together. Our first trial: My Thanh and I: 34 vs. Cliff and Josh: 14 points. Second trial: My Thanh and I: 53 vs. Cliff and Josh: 33 points.

- Stimulated rides: similar to Universal Studio’s Back to the Future ride. All the rides had different themes like airplane flying, water rafting, jungle…

- The attraction, called “House of the Living Dolls” was the scariest thing ever!! We sat in this pitched-black room and listened to a recording; a state-of-the-art audio recording. It felt like there was a person talking behind me the whole time. Luckily, it was conducted in Japanese so I couldn’t really understand it, but if I did, I think I would have peed in my pants. It was that scary…there were these two 7-year-old girls that went in there and came out crying…man, they were so brave to go in there by themselves in the first place.

- There was also an Initial D type racing game. You actually sat in a real car and raced around…it was pretty cool.

- They had a track racing game! The set up was four treadmills and you get to run on them. The events consisted of 100m dash, hurdles, and the long jump. For the 100m dash, I thought I was going to win since I'm good at sprints, BUT out of nowhere, My Thanh beat all of us!! What the!!! In the end: Cliff got 1st, My Thanh got 2nd, I got third, and Josh got 4th so no medal for him.

- Thank you Sega for Joypolis, I had a great time!

We left around 7pm and started taking pictures of the Rainbow Bridge. It was quite a scenery…while Cliff knocked out on the bench.

Behind these doors is JOYPOLIS!!!!!!

WOW...it was Halloween-themed as well

Best first-person shooting game at Joypolis

That's the car inside...with two wide screens on the front and back

This is Halfpipe...My favorite attraction at Joypolis.

Initial D driving game. If you were hardcore, you could drift in these too...

The attraction of the day!

Rainbow Bridge

We left for Akihabara which is “an area with the most advanced electric products and an area with a retrospective atmosphere…good for shopping and walking as well.” It was known as Electric Town, but by the time we got there…we saw…NO LIGHTS! We didn’t really see much because most of the shops were closing. I never knew that places in Tokyo closed so early. We went into many of the Anime stores just to check it out. One of friends in Hong Kong, Jack from NY, wanted us to get him Naruto stuff, but I couldn’t find any at all. After browsing around the opened stores, we went home to Shinjuku.

Endless rows of Anime...