We arrived at the Pokemon Center around 10:30am to be greeted by a growing line of people lining up waiting for the opening at 11am. Both children and adults seem excited at the prospect of picking a bag of goodies.
Unlike Australia, many adults play computer games in Japan and you see lots of people playing Nintendo DS on the trains to pass the time on their journey. It is a shame we didn’t bring Pokemon Diamond with us as we could have downloaded an exclusive pokemon using the wireless connection around the shop.
When the doors opened there was a rush to get into the store and see what was on offer. Very quickly Emma’s basket began to fill as did the shop and it became increasingly difficult to move around as a large throng of adults and children excitedly grabbed products off the shelves.
We eventually escaped after spending over 22,000 yen on merchandise. Unfortunately there was a little less range of products available than when I visited the Pokemon Center last year and only a few tshirts which were too small for our boys.
We returned to our hotel to drop off the loot before heading out again to Shibuya for more shopping. Things were a little calmer around Harajuku station than Sunday and we had a better opportunity to browse. Emma found an incredibly ostentatious black jacket with elaborate white brocade trim but baulked at the 40,000 yen price tag.
We traipsed through five floors of toys at Kiddy Land covering a bewildering array of old, new and incomprehensible interests. We escaped without purchasing anything!
In the evening we went to Roppongi and found a little restaurant in a back street. We had to take off our shoes to sit at lowered tables with a foot well under the table.
Despite the staff speaking basically no English, we ordered off a quirky Jinglish menu and soon found ourselves feasting on tuna and octopus sashimi before tucking into a mixed hot pot of meat and vegetables. As we finished off the light and tasty contents, the waiter then topped up the broth before adding noodles and rice for us to polish off. Emma polished off three jugs of sake and we left feeling extremely content.
At home, we warm sake by putting a container in a microwave, but in Japan they have a dedicated machine for the purpose.
