Thursday was such a wet and gloomy day, but despite that, we decided to go all out and visit the Tsukiji Fish Market anyway. But we failed and woke up at 5 a.m. and missed the fish auction.

It was a huge city wet market that sold seafoods of all sorts.

The first things we saw were these. Little wheeled vehicles which have a pedal, brake and steering wheel. The people in the market use it to ferry goods around the enormous market. There are literally hundreds, no, thousands of them crawling around the marketplace like ants.

Lots of raw fish on sale. Some in nice fillets costing 200 yen. The tourist trap shops sell these at 3000 yen, so you might as well buy them yourself and eat them. Of course you need to make sure they CAN be eatenn raw.

Shellfish! Yum yum yum. These go great with Kueh Tiaw.

There are lots of deep frozen fish too. These are probably from the deep sea.

There was also a barrel full of wormlike eels crawling around. At first they looked disgusting, but once I realized they were eels, they started looking tasty.

Crabs! These look really good. They weren't even going for much! Though thats probably because they don't have much leg. Crab soup anyone?

Looks like some alien breeding site with all the plastic siphons running round the boxes.

After looking at all the fish, we ended up getting sucked into a sushi bar. (damn tourist traps!)

But I must say it was 3800 yen well spent. The tuna was so tender and the rice amazing.

Unlimited Sushi Works.

Next we headed off for Odaiba. The thing is, it was raining heavier than ever.

Despite my gallant efforts to protect my camera, it still got wet from the rain.

We managed to see Fuji TV though. It looked a lot nicer than what I saw in the photos even in the rain.

That's the Rainbow Bridge in the distance.

Nice hotel building

There was even a replica of the statue of liberty there for some reason.

On the way back to the city from Odaiba. There wasn't much we could do in the heavy rain.

Next, we headed down to Akihabara.

When we came out of the train, we had this hueg moe poster welcoming us.

There was a Kampfer one too!

We got a topside glimpse of the Akiba bridge from the station too.

And there was this big random poster of robots sitting above the stairwell.

Akihabara turns out to be crowded even in the heavy rain.

Kotobukiya!

Lots of Eva Coffee.

Lots of reading material too. These came with a Sakurano Kurimu strap.

Kyonko Posters ftw!

There were even weird things like oppais for sale.

This is one nice shop.

It had lots of good Touhou stuff.

And even large posters worth umineko'ing

I did not leave empty handed.

There were also shops that sold lots of cosplay costumes.

And Takoyaki <3

Next we bought tickets to Mitaka to get to the Ghibli Museum. In case any of you didn't know, Studio Ghibli is the company that produced some really fascinating pieces of animation such as Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, Totoro, Princess Mononoke and Ponyo.

The museum serves as a showcase of the company's awesome work as well as the genius of its head film director Hayao Miyazaki. It was a 10 min wait before we could go in after the last group had come out. The Museum was reservation only so you had to buy tickets at Lawson konbinis prior to going there.

The museum is an interesting place with lots of weird things, courtesy of Miyazaki-san. The birdcage turned out to be a stairway to the roof.

This reads: "Tickets Sold Here".
The sign above reads: "The real ticket counter is over there ->"

Big gate, but it wasn't the entrance.

We weren't allowed to take pictures in the Museum, so I don't have any of its insides. But, it did not take me long to realize that even if I took photos, you will never be able to appreciate the awesome win inside through them, since a lot of the articles employ visual tricks and human interaction to show their stuff that a camera simply cannot capture.

The Museum is filled with special effects rooms, nicely designed rooms that show the conditions film artists work under, and also lots of little gadgets like pinhole cameras, and hand powered page flippers. They even showed the stacks of paper needed to create the films Mononoke Hime and Spirited away, and showed a lot of animation techniques used to create effects in anime.

Besides that, we were also treated to a 20-minute film of Mei and the Cat Bus. And there was a kids nursery with a big Cat Bus and little black things for kids to play with.

The little black things were so cute I actually went off and bought one.

I was however, allowed to take pictures from the roof. so I got this awesome shot of rain and the statue.

Thats where we were waiting.

A nice gazebo outside. Guess what's in it.

After one and a half hours of browsing through some of the most inspired art and techniques I have ever seen, we decided to take a break at the straw hat cafe next to the museum.

Had an iced coffee and cheesecake and Kagami.

The windowed stairwell of the museum.

Finally, it was time to return to Mitaka Station.

It was this night I realized we lived near Bandai World HQ.

Had katsudon for dinner. This actually feels more like oyako katsudon.

Then went over to Lawson to grab some pudding and breakfast for tomorrow.

And we found some Eva merchandise

Got some pudding to finish off the day and Pocky and Shana's all-time favorite melonpan.

And here's the little black thing I bought from Studio Ghibli.

written by astrobunny \\ akiba, akihabara, cafe, car, cheesecake, coffee, cosplay, crab, cute, eel, fish, fuji, ghibli, kotobukiya, lawson, liberty, little black thing, loot, market, melonpan, mitaka, moe, museum, odaiba, of, sashimi, shell, statue, straw hat, sushi, tako, takoyaki, tokyo, tsukiji, tv