After the extremely exhilarating yet exhausting weekend (Day 6 was a Monday, for reference), I finally had some time to slow down and relax. I began my day with a spicy beef bowl at one of the local places then headed to Nakano. I didn’t really get to explore the previous day so I figured I’d check out the mall this time around. After walking around and checking out some of the shops, I headed straight to Sunshine City.
Keep in mind that Sunshine City is probably my favorite mall I’ve ever been to, so I’m probably going to make it a point to go every time I go to Japan. I walked around and checked out shops for a while. There was an advertisement for Shin Godzilla in the form of a giant Godzilla foot in the mall, which made me chuckle. The plaza where we often see promotional performances had a water show that I checked out as well.
I also went to the Pokémon Center, of course. They had these really cute plushes of Ditto as Eevee evolutions. I got an Espeon along with some other goods for myself and others. It came as no surprise to me that the Pokémon Center was actually a Pokémon Gym in Pokémon Go. I fought for the gym (which was held by Valor) and managed to take it and keep it for a whole 5 minutes before losing it. I was quite happy that I could say that I helped keep the Pokémon Gym at Pokémon Center Mega Tokyo. Even if it was only for a short while. I kept seeing it change teams throughout my time in the mall almost non-stop.
After that I went to a Hawaiian restaurant and got tuna rice with a salad. It was actually pretty good. I grabbed my customary crepe from Dippin Dans as well. I had an apple ice cream crepe and it was absolutely heavenly. At that point I headed to Shibuya to pick up my KOTO CD from Tower Records.
After I got my CD I went outside and opened the bag to check it out and noticed that it wasn’t KOTO! I went back in and argued with the lady for a while telling her that that CD was NOT KOTO. It wasn’t even under the same record label! She kept insisting that that was the CD that I pre-ordered. I even went as far as having her grab my form so I could point out to her how the serial number on the form doesn’t match what she gave me. After an exchange for a while in my broken Japanese, I finally gave up and left (in all fairness, when I got back to America and finally listened to the CD, I actually liked it, but it still wasn’t what I ordered). Most of the store was closed off due to some event going on so I decided I’d just come back tomorrow to purchase the KOTO CD properly.
The day was starting to reach its end, so I made a trip over to Nezu Shrine. After all the time I had spent in big city-like areas, it was kind of nice to head to a somewhat more suburb-like area. Everything was closed by 6pm and it was nice and quiet. The shrine itself was really pretty and relaxing. I ended up strolling through it a few times, spotting some other foreigners while there (French and German by the sound of it).
After turning my mind off at the shrine for a while, I got a message from my friend who wanted to meet up for dinner. We ended up meeting at Ikebukuro and went to an izakaya there. We had a good time eating many snacks and drinking melon soda and chatting. Afterwards we stopped to catch some Pokémon on our way to the station before parting ways.
Despite the dumb associate at Tower, it was a fun and relaxing day. The next day would be another concert!