Added a few more photos to folder.

Well today we all get up to meet vocal, some people aren’t ready on time so we have to delay meet up an hour. Get a load of trains once again. This time we also get the monorail over the rainbow bridge which was pretty cool. Much smaller inside that the trains, kinda reminds me of London Underground. Arrive and we are meeting vocal at the Statue of Liberty. It’s much smaller than the other ones, guess the french cheaped out on the one they sent to Japan. Vocal isn’t around yet, so wait a few mins and he shows up. We go into a shopping centre while we decide what to do. Nice and cool inside, amen for air con. Is a big dragon inside advertising the new Monster Hunter game, obviously grab some photos of it. Grab some food, a few of us try the local BK, Whoppper is best thing I’ve tried from a western outlet so far. Rest go eat some Japanese stuff. Afterwards girls want to go shopping so holo and jecht go off with them. Vocal stays with us and asks what we want to go see, he suggests a few things in the local area, so we set off to go see them.

First stop is the life sized Gundam, Vocal knows a far bit about it, so we basically get a guided tour. Looks cool as fuck, take a load of photos. Apparently there’s a Gundam amusement park on the roof too, but we decide against going there in favour of seeing more stuff. Next up we start heading to the Toyota car showroom, vocal say’s it’s the largest one in the world, so might as well go see it. Before we get there we decide to take a side trip into Venus Fort.

Venus Fort is a shopping centre aimed at woman, inside it kinda looks like France I guess, with columns and French street names. The ceiling is pale blue with clouds on it, as you walk it looks like the clouds are moving too, pretty nice stuff. Loads of shops, we decide to stop for a crepe and ice cream at one of them. So sit down for a while and talk about stuff with vocal. Decide we best move on if we want to go see more stuff, so carry on. Grab a quick look at the fashion show that’s currently on in the centre, don’t stay for long then head outside again. Still hot as hell outside, don’t know why I keep expecting it to have cooled down. Make our way over to the Toyota showroom.

Quick look around the showroom and vocal convinces us to try out the driving machines. Basically you queue up and get a go on a driving sim, you get 2minutes or something in two modes. First mode is a basic car with no assisted stuff, hard to drive. Second time they turn on all the abs, trc and stuff so you can see the difference. We wait in line and watch the people before us. Some guy gets like SSS rank or something ridiculous, suspect he goes there daily. Some loli goes up next and she just puts her foot on the accelerator and goes for it. Doesn’t touch the brake for 4mins, hits pretty much every wall going, want to laugh but suspect I’ll be just as bad.

TT goes up, gets vocal to film him doing it. Stefl goes in 2nd machine, somehow manages to score worse in the assisted mode than unassisted mode. Vocal takes his turn along side teg, Vocal manages an S rank on assisted mode and comes 4th overall. Teg gets SS rank on assisted but comes 8th overall, vocal beat him on speed. I get to go last with everyone telling me how to do stuff while standing next to me. Not distracting at all. Totally fail the first round and get a D, manage to redeem myself with an S for 2nd round though. Time to go meet up with everyone else now, so off we go. Spot a pikachu car on way out, grab a few photos. Walk back to first shopping centre, get there a few mins late, find rest of group, girls still shopping… again.

So minus two of the girls we head over to Tokyo TV building, pay the 500 yen to go up to the 24th floor ball and look around. No one is impressed with it, way out is confusing, end up walking around the entire floor to get to the back of the queue for the elevator. End up getting split up mulitple times. Eventually all meet back up outside first shopping centre with holo having to go off and rescue odin and stefl.

Decide to go for food while girls shop, go to some raman place up on top floor, turns out to be best raman so far, soup actually has a nice flavour to it, and is a decent sized portion. No English menus but guy there speaks perfect English, so no trouble ordering anything. Eat up and go meet the girls. Tell them how awesome Venus Fort was compared to this place and tell jecht about the gundam 😀

Next on our hit list is Tokyo Tower, is a fair bit away so monorail back across the bridge and a train later we set off walking there. Girl group lags behind again, so rest of us carry on. Get there, is a huge queue, some of us get another crepe and then we queue up. Some guy comes talks to vocal, apparently we are queuing for wrong thing. So go to right place and get served straight away. We have to pay to get to the 150 metre floor, and if we want to go up to the 250 metre floor we have to pay again once we get up to 150m. Not cool! We do it anyway. Get to top floor, vocal tries to take some photos, but we can all feel the tower swaying as we stand up there, so he can’t get any decent pics. Unimpressed we go back down to the 150m floor. Spend a couple of hours here, vocal tries to get some more photos, tower is swaying less down here, but the lights are reflecting on the glass so much it makes it hard to get a good picture. Teg jumps a few timers on the glass for to test it’s safe, better safe than sorry after all. It’s almost closing time now so we go down and I grab some more sweets for family. We go outside get a few pictures outside and then go back to station. Arrange to meet up with vocal tomorrow so he can show me his favourite places in Akihabara and he heads off home before his trains stop. I head back to hostel, I really want to cool down and shower, everyone else goes off for more food. Teg also decides he cba to go eat, so we both stop by a 7/11 and get some snacks then back to hostel. Stay up way to late again chatting on IRC to rest of Doki staff.