Shinkansen to Akihabara - Electric town.

Finally! Tokyo!
We took the shinkansen to tokyo today. It's a bullet train with a topspeed of 300km/h. Our luggage was sent to our next hotel already by Ayako, so we didn't need to worry about that.

When we got off in Tokyo, we started by walking around for a bit. And the cherry blossoms were great! I'm really glad we did this, as we've seen a few rather beautiful places.

And then it was time for Akihabara, the electric town. I honestly did not know it was called the electric town. I thought it was just a place for anime/manga fans. But apparently, you can also buy any electrical device. It was really an impressive sight. Anime posters everywhere!

When we were walking around this place, I really had the urge to buy something. Didn't really matter what. But I'm not someone who buys figurines or such.. Still, I had this urge. I almost bought a pikachu cushion though. But then I thought it'd a hassle to bring back home, or to carry it around all the time as I move from hostel to hostel in a few days. By the way, this trip to Akihabara wasn't on Ayako's schedule, but it was something the younger generation of our group all wanted to visit. Walking around Akihabara is quite fun on its own. You'll see a lot of cute girls standing outside, inviting you to maid cafés. Which is something like Hooters, but cute. There was this one girl, dressed up as a ninja. (Ninja!) She was jumping and dancing and filled with joy when I took the flyer she was waving about. I melted.

Dinner this evening was a bit special once more. Ayako invited her best friend to join us. This might need some explaining too. Us, the young ones, had been asking Ayako where we should go if we wanted to get a drink and meet people of our age. She didn't seem that eager to answer that question, but at a certain moment she mentioned something similar to speed dating. And she told us she'd ask some of her friends if they'd be up for it. So she actually asked a couple of her friends if they wanted to meet up with some Dutch dudes. I actually did not agree to this, but as it was already happening without me knowing, I thought I'd just go along with it. Stepping out of my comfort zone, right?
Well as it happens, only one girl was up for it. I think her name was Hinomi, or Hiromi maybe.. sorry.. A lesson to all of you reading: You should never forget a girls name. Anyway. We went to have okonomiyaki. What? Again? Yeah! Again! Different though. This was Okonomiyaki, Tokyo style. So without noodles. And we had to bake it ourselves. I even had some with fish in it ;). Anyway, we were at this place, with the low tables and legless chairs, like in the ryokan. Some of us really had some trouble sitting here, because as you know. Dutch people are all really tall. All of them. I'm serious.
Ahem. So, two of the youngsters went downstairs to sit on a regular chair. And they were accompanied by Ayako's friend. It had only occurred to me later that I was probably supposed to be down there as well. Maybe that's why Ayako kept asking me if I was sure I didn't want to go downstairs as well. I was feeling comfortable sitting here. I was the only one who fits. And I wanted to experience Japanese stuff as best as possible. I wasn't in Japan for the girls, though it would've been a nice bonus.

After dinner, Ayako practically begged me to join them in going to a bar for some beers. Another hint, maybe? I don't know. It was fun though!