After our adventures in Roppongi, I woke up the next day feeling a bit fuzzy in the head, but luckily my hangover wasn’t severe. Maybe that was also caused by the fact that I only woke up around 3 o’ clock in the afternoon, but still no hangover is the way we like it! Michel also woke up a little late, so after breakfast brunch we headed out into town. It was time for me to finally get my grubby little hands on a Nintendo DS. They are sold for about 100 Euro around here, so I just couldn’t resist. Especially when Michel showed me the Japanese dictionary on his DS.

We went to Akihabara, of course, and at the huge electronics store Yodobashi Camera I found the DS I liked: Crimson / Black. Which basically means the cover of the DS is a nice shade of red (crimson) and the rest is black. So there I was standing in line, exited to buy my DS. At the register I requested, in fluent Japanese of course, the DS I wanted, and then it was time to pay for the thing. So I pull out my creditcard, only to realize that in this store they don’t want your signature, but you have to type in the newly introduced code to authorize the transaction. Of course I forgot this number, but fortunately I had just enough cash on me to be able to buy it, phew!

However, buying the software for my DS would have to wait a bit until we found an ATM suitable for European cards. After walking around in circles for about an hour, trying to find such an ATM, I finally got the brilliant idea to try a 7/11 store. These convenience stores are located everywhere around the city, and they sure live up to their name of being convenient. They’ve got an ATM that accepts European cards inside!

So now that I had some new cash, it was time to get my game. Or actually, my R4 card. The R4 card allows you to load music, videos and games on a micro SD card, and play them from the card. This way, you don’t have to carry around a ridiculous amount of DS game cards around if you want to vary the games you play while on the road. That’s my official reason I bought the R4, and I’m sticking to it.

In the evening we were both quite spent, so we didn’t go clubbing or anything, and simply stayed at home. Sunday I woke up quite late again, but I really wanted to do something touristy. So I went to the huge Meiji shrine near Harajuku. I knew temples close around 5 in the afternoon, but I decided to just give it a go. I arrived at Harajuku, quickly entered the park around the shrine, and tried to get to it as fast as I could. I almost reached the temple, when the announcement came, first in Japanese, then in English. But I already felt what was coming, I was too late, the shrine was closing.

I still went to the shrine, and managed to snap some nice shots of the area. However, I’ll have to go there again a bit earlier in the day in order to make some better pictures. Also, although the Meiji shrine is nice and impressive, it is also a major tourist attraction. So when I was walking around there, I saw souvenir shops and loads of gaijin walking around, which gave me not the serene feeling you’d expect from a religious area. It felt more like going to an amusement park or anything. Therefore, I’ll go and visit some of the smaller temples as well, when I get the chance.

Right now it’s snowing, so I’m off, trying to make some nice pictures of Tokyo in the snow! Oh, and class too, of course .

Tags: Meiji, Nintendo DS, Shrine

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 at 4:39 am and is filed under Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.