Japan 2009: Saturday, April 25th- a rainy day in Tokyo

And did it ever rain... We weren’t sure how soon the weather would clear, so I decided to do laundry today & give it 2 days to dry inside the apartment. There is quite the contraption the unfolds for hanging the laundry, but it fit the space pretty well & handled all but the pants, which I hung outside on the breezeway in spite of the rain.

After laundry & breakfast we packed up, grabbed the umbrellas kindly provided by the apartment, & went out looking for a place to cash traveler’s cheques, & an internet cafe. Traveler’s tip- even though there is no “Sunday” in the sense that we think of it in the US (church day, government offices closed, etc.), Japan definitely closes-down on the weekends, so we had no luck with the travelers cheques :) We found an indoor mall near the train station & asked at an info desk about an internet cafe, which we found after slogging back out into the rain, down narrow, abandoned-looking streets. Unfortunately, it didn’t have any sort of wireless connexion, you had to buy time on their computers. Since we weren’t interested in that, we went back to the mall to do some looking around.

Charlie found a phone & so we called another friend living in Tokyo that we’d been trying to contact. Yay, Marian was home! We asked if she was busy tomorrow & she was free to get together, so we arranged to meet her at the Tokyo Edo Museum in the morning. I also asked her about the internet cafe thing, & she said that the wireless thing was not as common as in the US, & that our best bet would be a Starbucks, maybe. So, we asked at an info kiosk where the nearest Starbucks was, & actually found it. It was lovely to take a break & have warm beverages on a rainy day, but they didn’t have wireless internet either, so we had to make do with our drinks. On the way home we found a bookstore, where i found some of the mange I’d been hoping to buy here in Japan & Brendan found another Kamen Rider book. Then we trudged home, stopping at the conbini for lunch & dinner food on the way.

During our rainly afternoon Charlie made a trip back to our Ryokan in Ueno, as we had inadvertanly taken our room key with us when we’d left. He was gone about an hour & a half, so Brendan & I played games & then popped the Weird Al Yankovic movie “UHF” into the laptop & settled in for some fun. Charlie came home during the movie. After watching the dvd extras Brendan decided to watch it again with the commentary, which was definitely worth it. Then it was time to cook dinner, & after dinner, watch more silly game shows.

Tomorrow should be a lot more fun- meeting Marian at the Tokyo Edo Museum!