January 20.
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My flight back to Tokyo leaves Naha Airport at 8:00am, so I'm basically on the first monorail train in the morning, and I'm nowhere near the only person on this train to the airport. Security at the airport moved very fast, but they requested to take a closer look at my backpack because they couldn't determine what was in one of the pockets. I told them it was keychains, and a lot of them.
Every place I enjoyed, I bought a keychain, and mostly stuck to a three part criteria:
- It looks like the place I visited.
- It's attraction specific, and can't be bought from any old store.
- It says the name of the attraction or city.
It doesn't need to perfectly fit this criteria, but 2/3 would be preferred at a minimum. In total, I bought something like 30 keychains, and stuffed them all in the same pocket of my backpack. Run that through an X-Ray machine and it looks like Freddy Krueger has been compacted into my bag. When I opened the pocket and showed them, they waved me through and told me it was fine.
My arrival to Tokyo this time was Haneda Airport, which is pretty much in downtown Tokyo. No crazy 45 minute train ride from the airport is needed, in fact, it's only about 15 minutes by shuttle bus to drop me off at my hotel's front door. For the last time on my trip, I leave my bag at the front desk of the hotel, and make my way back into Tokyo for one last jaunt.
I don't have anything lined up on my itinerary for these last two days, well, day and a half, because I wanted to leave room on the table for the things I hadn't done that I'd like to go see. So what I'm going to try to slam into one day: Pokemon Center Mega Tokyo, Anime Museum, Ramen Museum, and Palette Town (not related to Pokemon).
Pokemon Center Mega Tokyo is slightly different from the other Pokemon Centers that I've been to in that it is larger than the others, and it also has a Pikachu Cafe called "Pikachu Sweets." The Pineapple Spark drink they sell has pop rocks inside it, so it actually sounds like it's sparking, and they also sell cupcakes that look like Pikachu. Unfortunately, I didn't find any cool Team Yell merch at the store, so I moved on to the next destination: Anime Museum.
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| Chef Pikachu, Pokemon Center Mega Tokyo. |
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| Pikachus enjoying some snacks, Tokyo. |
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| Snorlax merch like whoa! Tokyo. |
Tokyo Anime Center is in the basement of the DNP Plaza building, and to say the least, it wasn't what I was expecting it to be... I assumed it would be an all encompassing Anime Museum, but instead it was mostly just one network's show "The IdolM@ster" and even all the merch being sold was for just this one anime. The drawing wall was there and guests are welcome to add their drawings on the wall, but when I realized this wasn't going to be an A+ visit, I bailed out to the next site: Ramen Museum.
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| Anime wall, signatures from various artists, Tokyo. |
Certainly, we can't have two duds in a row, right? An anime museum with a lack of anime seems like a faux pas, will the ramen museum even have ramen? The answer is yes, and a lot. The first floor of the museum is dedicated completely to the history of ramen, and covered from end to end with instant noodle cups, mangas featuring ramen, magazines, and bowls from various ramen restaurants. The basement floor is designed to look like a street market, and there are seven different restaurants offering various different types of ramen (when I was there it was something like 28 different bowls available). I was only able to eat four of smaller bowls they offer as a way to "try them all," but even though the bowls were smaller, it still was a lot of food. Head down to the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum, it's an A+ place.
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| Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. |
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| The various ramen styles across Japan, Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. |
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| Manga Wall, Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. |
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| Hacchan Ramen, Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. |
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| Ryu Shanghai Honten, Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. |
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| Rishiri Ramen Miraku, Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. |
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| Ryu's Noodle Bar, Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. |
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| One of the walls of ramen restaurant bowls, Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. |
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| View of the street market in the basement of the Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum. |
Last on my list is close to the Hotel, Palette Town. It's actually a third building that goes along with where the Gundam is located, but Palette Town has a giant Ferris Wheel that I'm excited to ride as a kind of "one last hurrah!" in Japan. I have typically hated Ferris Wheels, but over the past 10+ years of doing everything I can to stop my fear of heights by going for it and just being as high up as I can go, it's worked out great at stopping my fear. Even with me riding solo, I had a good time and didn't worry for like 95% of the trip.
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| Sunset diving behind Tokyo. |
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| More views from the Ferris Wheel, Tokyo. |
On my walk back to the hotel, I walked inside the exhibition hall in Palette Town where Toyota has a display of their cars and concepts, which includes all electric cars and hydrogen fuel cells. They also had a driving simulator, but there were a bunch of kids having fun crashing cars, so I didn't bother trying to hop in one.
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| Hydrogen Fuel Cell Toyota, Tokyo. |
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| Rally Car vroom vroom, Tokyo. |
I had a cupcake for dessert and called it a day. Before I went to bed I had a couple options to look at for tomorrow: Yokohama & tall buildings, DisneyLand Tokyo, or spend $300 on a pair of Evisu Jeans.
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| Pikachu Sweets Cupcakes, Tokyo. |
January 20 by numbers:
- Photos: 130
- Miles walked: 8.8
- Steps: 19048
- Total Calories Burned: 4183
- Bowls of Ramen: 4
-Joe
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