After sleeping almost 11 hours, Rita and I set off to explore the neighbourhood. As it was only 8am, there weren’t many places open so we decided to hit the local “Friendly”, a restaurant similar to Denny’s. Our first encounter at a restaurant in Japan wasn’t as traumatic as I thought and we were able to order a basic meal. Interestingly, we were the only ones eating a Japanese style breakfast. Everyone else was eating the breakfast all-you-can-eat buffet. I guess you don’t go to an American style restaurant to eat Japanese food.

We spent the next 4 hours walking around our neighbourhood, visiting shops and checking out whatever caught our fancy. Since we’re in the business district, there aren’t many touristy places here. Damn, it’s hot here…we basically baked after the first hour out. Exhausted from walking so much (we aren’t huge walkers), and the heat, we headed back to the apartment where our host was sleeping. He had stayed out all night at his gigs and had come home in the mid-morning to sleep it off.

Rita had a bit of a nap while I worked on my various websites. When she woke up, our friend made us lasagna. A tasty homemade meal is always good in my books! I asked him about electronics in Japan. Contrary to what many of us in North America think, electronics are NOT cheap here. They are simply ahead. Unfortunately, they do not discount what’s older stock, or if they do it’s not much.

I had purposely held off buying a little HD camcorder like the Flip Mino HD because I figured Japan would have crazy advanced stuff for way cheaper. Turns out that they’re not so interested in that type of camcorder since no one really sells that stuff here. I did find a camera that I think I’m going to buy online that’s a little bit cheaper than in North America. It’s a point and shoot digital camera that also happens to take HD video. We’ll see how that turns out.

We headed out to Yodobashi Camera, which is essentially a huge building owned by the electronics store Yodobashi Camera which actually sells all sorts of electronics and appliances. After the first few floors, the upper half is broken up into a mini mall of other retailers. Mostly it’s clothing and food. It’s here that we visited one of the bigger Uniqlo’s. For those of you who don’t know, Uniqlo is basically like the Gap if the Gap also sold funky bright clothing, and was about half the price. It’s basically the best clothing store you could imagine. You can get a full suit including 3 pairs of pants for about 200 dollars US, alongside a 20 dollar neon pink men’s windbreaker. Awesome.

Even though we had only spent about an hour and a half in Yodobashi Camera, we were spent from the rest of the day’s activities so we headed back home for some much needed sleep. Here are some pictures of the day: