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Today we decided to tackle two trips - a tour of craft shops in Kichijōji and vintage games shops in Akihabara. We woke up early with the sun streaming into our room and saw that we had a clear view of Fuji-san! Cool! We decided that it would be easier to eat breakfast at the hotel even though it's a bit expensive (¥2400 each) but it was lovely. Christina was having a bit of trouble with pain in the morning so we tried to take things as slow and carefully as we could!
We went out to Kichijōji on the JR Chuo line from Shinjuku station which was a very quiet trip. Christina had a "craft tour of Tokyo" ebook on her iPad with a bit list of shops in Kichijōji and had decided which to go to. we walked through a lovely small shopping street to get to the first yarn shop "Avril". Avril turned out to be 100% weird crafty sort of yarn. With bobbles and sparkles and stuff. Well it might have looked nicer in the ebook! They did have a cool multi spool spinning machine and a mini loom to look at. As usual, they had some sample projects on display but the best they could come with was a knitted water bottle holder - weird.
Second shop was L'Musee - a button shop. We went on the wrong track a but for this one but eventually found it backtracking from Avril. It was the big button shaped sign that tipped us off! This shop was lovely but too small for Charles who hit his head on the lights and had to sidle around everything. Christina bought two sets of buttons for two blouses. The shopkeeper poured them all out of the jars and Christina had to choose exactly the ones she wanted!
Next we sat down for a coffee at Dotour and planned out our next move to a fabric shop: "Antique Fabric Pinks". Maybe this one was talked up a bit by e-book as well... It was a tiny shop completely full of vile plasticky pink prints. Gross!
After this we had one more shop to try - "hobbyra hobbyre" which is supposed to be a big chain. The one in the station department store was quite small - but we had fun looking at lots of other shops in the station.
So the e-book was a bit overly enthusiastic about the craft shops but we still had a good time in Kichijōji which is a really lovely area. We went back to the hotel for a rest with onigiri for lunch.
The afternoon plan was to visit a famous retro game shop in Akihabara called "Super Potato". Game fans aren't as good as crafters at making cute maps for their favourite shops so we got a bit confused about finding the shop. Eventually Christina said "there it is" but Charles was sure it wasn't and that it looked totally different. Anyway he had a picture of the shop saved in his phone and it turned out that Christina was totally right.
Super Potato was awesome and we both had a great time. Charles enjoyed looking at the piles of second hand consoles and Christina found lots of Animal Crossing stuff (Dōbutso no Mori). Charles walked out with an old GameBoy Advance and the Japanese version of Pokemon Leaf and Christina got an Animal Crossing tote and 3DS case. Fun! Christina decided that our Akihabara snack should be a Maid Café so she found the nearest maid spruiker in the street and we went upstairs for expensive drinks and cake! This maid café had a little stage and the girls had an anime style dance and some kind of light twirling performance? On the way out of Akihabara Charles got to look in the electronic part markets which are a lot of fun. So many plugs!
We went back to the hotel for a short rest and then headed out to dinner at Takashiyama. On the way we got our JR passes and reserved some Shinkansen tickets for tomorrow! Dinner was at a katsu restaurant. Finally we did a big `ol sweep of Tokyu Hands and got a few things including some more zebra sliding ballpoint pens and refills!
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