Thursday rained a lot. Thankfully, those who had come before (previous tenants of the apartment) left a smattering of umbrellas here for us to use. Apparently, it rains so much here, they sell clear plastic umbrellas in the hundred yen store. Unfortunately, these puny Japanese umbrellas were no match for Matt's huge American shoulders, and he wound up getting pretty much completely soaked that day. Heck, even I did, and I fit under my umbrella pretty neatly. By the time we'd simply walked down the street to Mos Burger for breakfast (brunch???), my pants were soaked through to my knees, my canvas chucks made squishing sounds every time I took a step, and my backpack (which is thankfully, a Jansport, and reasonably water resistant, took a beating for my back, which would have been getting all the runoff from my umbrella. I didn't really take any pictures that day because really expensive DSLRs+rain= sad Mie.

So after taking a second unintentional shower for the day, we returned to the apartment to figure out what we wanted to do. We kinda just chilled for a while, but eventually decided to go to the Edo-Tokyo Museum. John wanted to stay behind.

Now, the museum wasn't a terribly far walk from the apartment, we still didn't actually get inside for a good hour. Why? In Tokyo, you're not supposed to take your dripping wet umbrellas inside places, so there are racks for you to leave them outside the door. Most places, it's an honors system, and pretty easy to walk away for free umbrellas if you're deviously inclined, but this place had actual locking slots. Which we could not for the life of us figure out how to work. No one really seems inclined to offer help when they see the dumb foreigners struggling with their weird contraptions, either, so we were kinda stuck. We actually almost gave up and left, because of those stupid things, but eventually, we figured it out, and went inside. The permanent exhibit is pretty cool, and we were able to get English audio guides for commentary on some of the items. It started out around the birth of the new capital , and went forward through to about 1970s with a really rushed single wall of stuff that happened between then and now.

The old Edo section of the museum was pretty cool, had a lot of interactive displays, painstakingly built scale models, and dioramas that lit up and played music every few minutes, but the new Tokyo section of the museum felt very much like an exhibit on WWII and how it tragically and drastically changed the lives of every Japanese. Even the English translations felt worded in such a way as to sort of not-so-subtly point an accusative finger at America. It's a perspective I haven't really gotten to see before, but it made me suuuuuuper uncomfortable, even though I personally had nothing to do with it.

So, yeah, we left there, walked home in the rain, and stopped off at Lawson (another hundred yen store chain), and then at Summit to buy stuff for dinner, which John made, while I passed out on the couch. I don't know if it was the kind of rice we bought, or the rice cooker itself, but it's honestly the best rice I've ever had in my life.

So yesterday, Friday, we hopped the metro into Akihabara, the nerd/electronics capital of Japan, and set about exploring. Still on the hunt for more clothes for Matt, we got off the train, and went into UNIQLO, a chain store equivalent maybe to Target or Kohl's, and managed to find another shirt for him. From there, we went exploring the tightly packed, crowded alleyways leading into hobby shops, comic book stores, pachinko parlors, and anime merchandise shops. It's all pretty overwhelming, and probably the closest I've come to being uncomfortable in Japan, but only because of how many times we almost accidentally wandered into porn sections, which are not as clearly demarcated by signs and words (as opposed to pictures of compromised fifteen year old animated school girls) as I would have liked. We wandered around for some time looking for something to eat, and eventually decided we were curious enough to see what a Japanese Denny's is like.

The answer is: Not even remotely like an American Denny's, even a little bit. For one thing, they still have smoking and non-smoking sections. For another, the service is excellent. They have this little, call button thing on the table, and we needed to get an extra set of hashi (they brought Matt a fork) and some shouyu, and our server was like, across the room, so we pushed it, and this little bell chimed, and a number 57 lit up on a big board in the middle of the room, and she like, booked it over to us. So I had oyakodon with tofu salad and miso soup, and it was super good. Matt had some kind of hamburg demi-glace plate with rice, and We still don't really know what John got. He just pointed to a picture, and said, "kore kudasai." It was some kind of cold, not-soba noodle soup.

So we wandered around some more, and decided we were feeling kind of beat, so we took an unhurried, adventurous path home after we got off the subway, taking tons of pictures on the way. We got in, we unwound, watched some Steven Universe (because we're determined to make John watch it all), and decided we were finally going to try the curry downstairs at the Cafe Latino.

We went in, and, it's a tiny, tiny little restaurant; it seats maybe twelve. Tadarts-san told us to sit wherever we liked, and he brought us iced tea while we looked over the menu. I got the corned beef curry, Matt got the chicken curry, and John got the "dry curry" which is like, super reduced. Mine was amazing, and afterward, Tadarts-san brought us these... yogurt drink things? I don't know what it was, but it tasted somewhat like Calpis, just more sour. Once we finished dinner, thought, Tadarts-san invited us downstairs into his basement music studio, where he gives drum, percussion, and salsa lessons. Matt and John played around on the keyboard, drums, and piano, and Tadarts-san accompanied on the bongos. I did take pictures, but they somehow all got erased when I switched SD cards, but it okay, because he invited us to come back tonight, when hes going to have a jam session with other musicians!

More pictures later!