Well, our last full day in Tokyo begins (we’ll be back to catch our flight, but that’ll be more of a formality, I guess).
After a quick stop at 7-Eleven, we head towards LEGOLAND, which is about an hour away by metro and train. We need to be there around 10 AM or so. The train itself is quite something—it’s autonomous, has rubber wheels, and runs across Tokyo Bay. To manage an elevation change, it does a 270-degree turn in just a few meters—not something you see every day!
Anyway, we visit this super cool interactive exhibition. There’s a miniature Tokyo made of Lego, a small 3D cinema, a mini-octopus ride where pedaling makes your arm rise, a haunted train ride where you shoot at monsters with laser guns and rack up points (call me a bully, but I won both times, hehe), and several creative play areas where kids—and not-so-kids—can unleash their imagination. A great place! We spend about three hours there (avoiding the heat in the process) and have an amazing time.
And at the end, we do a bit of shopping—some Lego flowers and custom Lego figures, where you can mix and match from tons of loose parts. We try to make three figures representing the three of us—it was fun! Though… a bit controversial, since not everyone agreed on the final designs, hahaha.
On the way back, we stop at a kaisen sushi—a sushi restaurant where you order from a touchscreen, and the food arrives via a little train on a track. It stops right next to you, you grab your plate, and enjoy… everything was delicious and surprisingly affordable! I forgot to take note of the restaurant’s name, but there are tons of kaisen sushi places—some work like this one, and others just have plates circulating on a conveyor belt, and you grab whatever catches your eye. You stack up the plates, and the price is based on the plate’s color. Then they count them up to calculate your bill, kind of like Basque pintxos bars with their toothpicks!
Since it’s getting hot, we head back to the hotel for a quick siesta while waiting for the sun to go down. Around 4 PM, we shake off our laziness and head back down to Akihabara, which is just around the corner. We browse the shops again—I was on the hunt for MSX hardware, and in a stroke of luck, we actually find some! But… the prices were ridiculous. We check out BEEP, a store in a basement, and I even spot a Turbo R computer—but it was going for around 600 euros, so… nope. They had games, too, but the only promising one was about 300 euros, and the rest were either RPGs (useless to me since I don’t read Japanese) or super basic games.
The whole store looks like this—a strangely organized chaos of retro computers, consoles, and games.
After that, we keep wandering around the neighborhood. Something that really stands out is the huge number of young girls dressed as maids—clearly otaku-style—handing out flyers. Turns out, they’re promoters for Maid Cafés, where, from what I gather, they serve you coffee while acting cute. Sounds a bit sketchy, honestly—feels like an otaku fetish thing, which is not our vibe, so we pass. We try to snap a picture, but they’re not thrilled about it and cover their faces.
After all that, we hit the arcades for a bit, then go back to Golden Ramen from our first night, since it’s on the way to the hotel. The cook today wasn’t as friendly as the one last time—by 8:20 PM, she was already giving us the stink-eye, clearly wanting us to leave so she could close. Guess we barely made it in before closing time. Good thing we eat fast!
And that’s all for today—early night tonight to pack our bags. Tomorrow, we say goodbye to Tokyo—time has flown by!