Mia-tachi no tabi - Day 3 - A tour through time

Today we had but three simple goals: the Edo-Tokyo museum, shyabu-shyabu, and Akihabara. So we lounged around in our hotel room until 10. It was very relaxing and I can't really remember how we pryed ourselves out. It was worth it though, sine the museum was fantastic.

It looks a little strange from the outside, but as we are often told 'don't judge a book by its cover'. Upon entering the exhibit area, we saw a table for free guided tours. As luck would have it, exactly one of the volunteer guides spoke English. So our group was joined by a couple from Russia and we spent the next 2 hours learning about the last 400 years of Tokyo (Edo) history. This might sound boring, but it was far from it. The museum is full of replicas and models of various buildings along with a spattering of artifacts. They had a full sized kabuki theater front:

Nihonbashi, the most famous bridge in Japan:

Model of an Edo street:

A full sized model of a common class apartment in Edo:

And much, much more. Our guide was a very nice and entertaining lady with a decent grasp on English. She probably could have made the tour another hour longer, but when she noticed the group was getting tired, she moved things along at a much quicker pace.

After the museum, we went to Akihabara to find a shyabu-shyabu restaurant. Shyabu-shyabu is a meal where you cook your food in a pot of boiling water. The waitress brought us a big plate of vegetables and individual plates of meat and we cooked and ate to our hearts content. 

It was tastey and lots of fun! We each got our own little bowls of a creamy sesame sauce, a ginger sauce, and something that was like chopped beef jerky. We also got bowls of rice and miso soup. There was plenty to eat. We also good a good view of Akibahara from our table:

The building with the apple on it to the right is a pachinko parlor. Rich and I had made it one of our goals to visit such a place, so we thought today the perfect opportunity. So after eating, we entered.  We saw row after row of flashing games:

And then Rich tried to play one:

He didn't have much luck. Before entering the parlor, none of us actually knew what pachinko was. We left in pretty much the same state. Rich spent 500 yen and we don't really know how. The machine demanded bills only, the lowest bill in Japan is 1000 yen, so that is what he put in. We thought that it was 100 yen a game, but it appears to have immediently taken 500. 

After this we parted ways - my mom returned to the hotel to rest and Rich and I explored Akihabara.

Really, all I wanted was a cellphone strap with a cat character I like, but after wandering all of Akibahara twice, I could find one. I was sad. So I bought some books at a used bookstore and called it a day.