Today we had to keep ourselves busy in Tokyo til 10pm when our nightbus was. We checked out as late as we could (11), dumped our bags in lockers at Tokyo Station and then made our way to Shinjuku to see the I.C.C (fancy communications place) where they had some really good interactive media exhibits. It beat my University Degree Show my miles. On the way there, I saw the Square Enix building across the road. They make my favourite games. Their place was actually pretty small.
The plan for the afternoon was to go to a planetarium which turned out to be ages away from the main Shinjuku station and also impossible to find. So that was a few hours wasted but we had a lot of them to spare today.
It was getting dark when we got back to Shinjuku so it was a good time to see the view from the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan Building. It was a good view but they seemed to have built a 'Toy City' right in the center of the observatory so you have to walk around a toy shop to see Tokyo's most sophisticated view which was a little odd. It was quite popular too and there were some interesting gadgets in the toy shop, so I enjoyed it.
For dinner we headed to a vending-machine ramen place in Tokyo station's subway/department shop. We had butter-corn ramen which was good but not as good as the one in Sapporo. But it was a lot cheaper too, so in a way its better if you dont mind sitting in the middle of a load of single salary-men.
The night bus was pretty interesting. I didnt plan to sleep much so I kept my Nintendo DS on me. However, I didnt expect them to do a lights-out at 11.15pm. So I abandoned it and tried to sleep which was a bit difficult when they turned all of the lights back on for their 2-hourly stops. There wasnt much leg space either but I guess that serves me right for booking so late. Apart from that, it went pretty fast and we arrived in Kyoto earlier than planned, which would have been good if it wasnt for the fact that nothing is open at 5.55am.
