Summon the Totoro!

Good evening! Last night was our second night in Tokyo, and our first proper full day here. And what a day it was.

After the day of travel, many of us were still adjusting to the time zone and ended up waking up at 5am local time. You can say our excitement in Japan kept us up.

While the others begun to wake up to day and ate breakfast, Matt and I ventured out to in search of a Lawson Ministop to get our reserved tickets for a café we booked. Lawson is a country wide convenience store in the same lieu as 7-11.

It took us a while to figure out where it was, it involved harassing a number of people for instructions on where it was.

Once we obtained the tickets, we went back home and made breakfast for ourselves. This is where waifu Matt made his appearance.

After eating the lovely breakfast made by Matt, we went onto our first and highly anticipated destination, the Ghibli Museum.

Located in Mitaka city, a short train line from Tokyo. The area can be considered the suburbs of Tokyo.

Hey look its the gaijin train!

The Ghibli Museum has been a destination that the veterans (Matt, Colin, and Me) always anticipate every time we come to Japan. Like Disneyland, it is a place that brings out the inner child in us all.

Unfortunately circumstances ended up with me without a ticket. As result I ended to split up with the merry band and miss out on Ghibli Museum. B-But I wasn't sad. I'm not crying, you're crying! 😭

While I was by my solo south, I went and explored Mitaka and found a nice shrine and huge park nearby.

But of course, the sky happened to also decide it was the most appropriate time to storm. Ended up buying an umbrella to get by.

Once they were done we regrouped to attack our next objective. Matt, Kathleen, Marise and I assembled to hit the café we booked. The Final Fantasy 14 café to be exact 😊

The last two times we tried to get into the café we were turned away due to it being fully booked but this time we were smart enough to reserve our table a month beforehand.

The café is located within Akihabara. The famous otaku paradise.

 Since the last time we've been here, alot of the signage has changed.

 We had arrived roughly 2 hours before our scheduled reservation so we decided to kill some time the old fashion way, by playing video games. We decided to hit up an arcade that recently opened which specialized in retro games.

Once the time arrived we went to the café.

The café is themed after the Final Fantasy 14 mmo and whole menu is themed after the characters and lore found within the game.
We each got drinks and food (me and Matt got two drinks)

 Matt's Scholar cocktail.

 My Hildibrand cocktail.

 Marise's Shiva drink.

 Kathleen's Chocobo milkshake

 The thing with this dish of Takoyaki that I got was that it was themed behind the joke characters of the game. Who are known to be the comic relief enemy. The takoyaki itself was alright except for the one.

One of them was filled with wasabi 😱
I obviously took like a boss and down it in one bite

With the café done we decided to regroup with the rest to have dinner for the night. We had decided to rendezvous at Asakusa Sensoji Temple aka Bad Luck Temple

 The shopping strip was closed for the day but there were still many people walking through it

 It appears that they were preparing for the upcoming festival at the end of the month

 We decided to try our hand at the infamous fortunes and it appears that we were in good luck as we were able to pull regular to best luck

Once we found the others we went to the Okonoemiyaki restaurant that Colin, Matt and I found last time. This restaurant lets the guests cook their own okonoemiyakis themselves

And with that we ended the day. Today is a fresh start for us, time for us to head out