Our last full day in Tokyo began with Phil and I taking the Keisei Line train to Oshieage (Sky Tree Mae) train station. At our local Aoto train station, we both used the ticket machines to load another 1,000 yen onto our IC cards which we mainly used to pay for train tickets and occasionally drinks at the vending machines. At that point I was out of Japanese notes and Phil had dropped to 7,000 yen. I had the equivalent of about five dollars in coins in the purse in my pocket. I had $300 in US currency with me that I hoped to exchange for Japanese yen at the Sky Tree Mall.
From the Oshieage underground station, we entered the Tokyo Solamachi shopping center and had to climb three or four flights of escalators to reach the ground level. The directorates informed us that the Chiba Institute of Technology’s permanent exhibition was on the eighth floor. One specific piece of exhibit, the life-size Macross VF-25F Gerwalk, was the reason I wanted to come to Sky Tree Mall. The Valkyrie is immediately to the right as you enter the exhibit hall. We circled the rest of the room, which offered replicas and displays of robotic technology used to collect meteorite samples. One exhibit allowed visitors to touch a piece of meteorite.
Phil and I politely skipped the other rooms of the exhibit because our time was limited.
We headed down the escalator to the fourth floor, which offered Japanese souvenirs and a variety of character shops. We passed by Marvel, Medicom Toy and Pokémon stores. To the Kirby Coffee Shop Phil bought a bag of Kirby dried pasta as a gift for a Kirby fan at home.
At Jump Shop Phil bought two Dragon Ball Daima blind box figures and a Haikyuu Plastic fan for friends in Florida.
At the Sengoku Damashii store, a gift shop dedicated to the “samurai spirit,” Phil selected a pair of small paper lantern magnets for 550 yen each. When he took them to the cashier, the lady politely asked Phil why he had chosen the small magnets when the similar but much larger ones next to the register were the same price. Phil explained that he was worried that their size would make them easily fall off the refrigerator door; therefore, smaller three-dimensional magnets were preferable.
On the fourth floor, we were surprised by the Asakusa Amezaiku Ameshin store that sold sweets that looked like ceramic and glass figurines. We were also blown away by the unique Japanese character of the Ganso Shokuhin Sample-ya store, which specializes in plastic food replicas.
We stepped out onto the balcony to pop our heads into the beautifully decorated Donguri Republic store, one of several Studio Ghibli specialty stores in Tokyo.
We also went to the Daiso store where I bought four shikishi frames for 200 yen each, some resealable plastic bags and packing tape to prepare for the trip home, and the only A5 document case I could find in the store, to store some of my doujinshi purchases. Phil paid for the lot because he had virtually no cash on hand.
I was sure that a place as touristy as Sky Tree Mall would have at least one currency exchange office, but apparently the mall didn’t have one. So Phil and I left the mall and headed back to the Oshieage train station.
There we thought that if we could get to ground level, we might see a money exchange shop. So we walked through the nearest exit, which ended up taking us through a series of long tunnels before leaving us in the sunlight on a road with virtually no business. We ended up walking around the outside of the station in search of a nearby currency exchange stand which turned out to be a simple ATM inside a supermarket.
So we walked across the pedestrian bridge across the Kitajukken River and then crossed another block to find a Mizuho Bank branch. But a sign posted inside the bank informed us that this branch did not offer currency exchange. We walked down the block to the crosswalk, crossed the street and entered the Mitsubishi Bank. The guard at the door informed us that this bank branch also did not offer currency exchange. I poked my head into the Mizuho Bank building, next to Mitsubishi Bank, and realized that the building housed financial planning management, not conventional banking services.
With our last day looming, I announced that I would simply continue to Nakano Broadway, where I knew there was a currency exchange office. Phil took our purchases from Daiso and returned to our home base.
I got on a train on the Chuo-Sobu line and practically fell asleep exhausted. Half an hour later I realized that I had been traveling on a train that was going in the opposite direction of where I wanted to go. So I got off the train and got on the line going in the opposite direction. Finally I arrived at Nakano.
Phil dropped off our groceries and then took a train north to Shimabata. At that time, the Shibamata Taishakuten Shrine was open and operating, so Phil purchased the two amulets from the shrine for 700 yen that he had not been able to purchase the previous Tuesday when the shrine was not yet open to the public.
He also located the little neighborhood trail he’d seen and fallen in love with on a random YouTube video.
I wandered around the third and fourth floors of Nakano Broadway in vain, looking for the Genkinya currency exchange counter. I finally found him on the second floor. I exchanged $300 US dollars at a very favorable rate of 147.70. I went to the Apple Symphony store on the fourth floor, hoping to buy a Lemon Cream production cell which I thought cost 9,900 yen. I discovered that I didn’t remember the price well, as it was a little more expensive: 11,100 yen. Continuing to browse through the portfolio, I found another old production cel and a genga of a topless woman. This mobile was priced at only 6,600 yen. I’m pretty sure this cell isn’t actually from the Lemon Cream series but rather some other H OVA of the time. I decided I preferred the image and value of the second cel and purchased it instead of the 11,100. Lemon Cream the one
I went to 2D Gallery with the intention of purchasing the 4,400 Galaxy Angel Mint background cels that the store had in its display case. But upon closer inspection, I realized that the cell phone was cheap because it had damage to the bottom of the image. Someone framing the cell phone could easily crop out the damage so it is invisible. But if I bought the phone, I would always know that its bottom was damaged, regardless of whether I could see the damage or not. So I stopped buying the cell phone.
I took another tour of the male doujinshi shop on the second floor. I found and purchased four inexpensive comics that caught my eye.
Just outside the gate of Nakano Broadway, I stopped at a luggage store to buy a half-dozen kitschy tourist refrigerator magnets from Japan.
I left Nakano and stopped in Shinjuku. I took the east exit of the station, which was supposed to put me closer to the city’s main Kinokuniya bookstore. However, the density of the city repeatedly confused Google Maps, so it took me much longer than I had anticipated to finally find the store. On the eighth floor, I found multiple copies of the dirty couple Illustration archive book. Even though I already had one copy, I wanted to buy a second one. So I did it.
I took the train back to Aoto Station without incident. At the station candy store, I bought two extra bags of Japanese-flavored Kit-Kat candy to share with my coworkers at home. At the Daiso store I bought four more A5-sized plastic cases to store doujinshi, a couple of large document cases to store and protect our production cell purchases, a couple of large plastic boxes with lockable lids, another two cans of Kimetsu no Yaiba canned coffee, and three 200 yen blankets to use as padding material in my luggage. I arrived at our rental house in Aoto shortly after 7 p.m.
Almost exactly an hour later, Phil and I met Jon at the Yotsuya train station. Jon took us to the nearby Indian restaurant Bistro Hitsujiya. Izakaya style, we ordered several dishes of lamb curry, lamb kebabs and chicken marsala. The bill for three of us came to 8,800 yen.
We then walked several blocks to the True Blue basement bar, an intimately sized, dimly lit jazz bar where the 1995 film was showing. Aquatic world repeatedly on a silent corner TV. Mixed drinks ranged from 1,100 to 1,600 yen. Phil and I also ordered two small squares of the maestro’s dark chocolate for 500 yen, surrounded by rich milk chocolate. I had a drink. Jon and Phil had two each. Our bill was 9,500 yen.
To get home before the last trains stopped running, we split up with Jon and arrived home at midnight, just after stopping at the local 24-hour Lawsons store so we could buy two bottles of CC Lemon. Phil went straight to sleep. I wrote this blog post and then prepared to walk to the nearby Don Quijote store, mainly to spend the 495 yen we had left on 1, 5, and 10 yen coins that weren’t worth the weight and effort of bringing them back to the United States.
I wrote up my events of the day for the AnimeNation blog and then at 2 in the morning I walked down the street to the Don Quijote store with the intention of trying to spend the little change we had left. I seriously considered purchasing the tortoise and deer powder male supplements, but the packages are not as pretty as the horse one, and at 999 yen each, I decided that the remaining two were not worth as much to me. So I ended up buying less than I expected. I bought a pack of three hand towels for 199 yen. The next day I used two of them while packing my trunk for the flight home. And I bought two or three additional cans of drinks with anime labels. Then, just to spend more, I picked up a 1,000 yen DonKi Mystery Box with random prize figures (which I haven’t been able to open yet). To my surprise, when I included all my 100 yen coins, the cashier told me that I had paid 250 yen too much and gave me change. So I managed to get rid of Phil and my one yen, five and ten yen coins, I thought.
I walked back home and left the bag, the large DonKi bag cost me an extra 19 yen, at the door. Then I walked next to the 7-11. Early on in our stay, I noticed that the store had a selection of promotional Street Fighter VI Red Bull trading cards, but I wasn’t sure how to claim them. I thought that at 3 in the morning, the store would be dead enough that I would have a hard time understanding the cashier and buying enough cans of Street Fighter VI Red Bull to get the free cards representing Chun-Li and Juri. But, to my dismay, the cards were no longer available. However, the special edition cans were, so I bought one of the remaining cans of Ryu and Chun-Li Red Bull for 198 yen each. At that point I had two 5,000 yen bills and a small bag of change left.
