A few days have passed since we arrived. It is now Sunday morning. Wednesday was our first full day here. We started the day by searching around for good grocery stores. Later that night, we took a train to Kichijoji, which is just West of the main center of Tokyo. At Kichijoji, we met Elder Jon Maruji (Kari and Kimi's s brother) and took him and his companion out to dinner. We ate katsu at a restaurant that Dave liked while he was in Kichijoji a couple of years back.
The next day, we headed to the Hiro/Minami-Azabu area to visit the LDS temple there. Kari and Kimi went in while I took Jeff to the Arisugawa park just across the street. Jeff slept for two hours while I sat and looked at the waterfall, river, and pond. That evening, Dave, Kimi, and I (Kari and Jeff headed back to the apartment to get some sleep) went to Akihabara. Unfortunately, we arrived after almost everything closed down. Luckily, there was a Laox electronics store open. We went upstairs and found the massage chairs (costing anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000 yen) and each sat down in one. Mine was called the Robostic, because it had a joystick that popped out of the armrest if you wanted to manually control the chair. When we got there, there was a man dead asleep in one chair tucked back the corner. Upon hearing the loudspeaker announce that the store was closing, he didn't budge. We left quietly, so as to not disturb his sleep.
On Friday, we went to Shibuya. There, we ate at a ramen shop before checking out a music store, a book store, and a clothing store. That night, the weather cleared up, so we decided to go to the Tokyo Tower in Kamiyacho. We rode up to the lower observatory deck (250 meters). We tried taking pictures, but without a tripod, it was impossible to hold the camera still during the long exposure. So, we've decided we'll come back after we buy tripods. Also, we'll go up to the higher observation deck, which is 100 meters above the lower deck.
On Saturday, we headed to the Edo Museum. Edo is the old name for Tokyo. The museum covered the Edo period (1603-1867) up through the Meiji Period and a little past World War II. The exhibit was superb. Go to the link to find out more about the exhibit:
http://www.edo-tokyo-museum.or.jp/english/index.html
After the Edo Museum, we got back on the Sobu line and went to Akihabara to look at rice cookers and Japanese-English electronic dictionaries. Before looking at electronics, we ate at an all-you-can-eat shabu-shabu place. After that, we spent the next five hours or so going from shop to shop, looking at all sorts of cool electronics.