Off we went to the aquarium, in the same direction (and the same train line) as yesterday when we went to the baseball game. It's in a nice little park, but the building itself appears pretty underwhelming - all you see is a dome. It turns out that the dome is only the entrance. The entire aquarium is underground. The first thing you see is a tank full of hammerhead sharks, which is pretty damn impressive. I wish I could show you... but there's no flash photography allowed, and there isn't a lot that's lit brightly enough to get a shot. I did my best. The things you won't see: great "flashlight fish" that have luminescent spots on their sides, tons of colorful tropical fish, a herd of tuna in a huge tank, and seahorses and starfish. I did my best to get shots of the things that had enough light.
Outside, there were penguins. And everyone knows, you can't go wrong with penguins. There was also a separate tank with puffins swimming around.
After the aquarium, it was a trip to Shibuya to hit the Harley Davidson dealer there, to pick up a Harley t-shirt with Kanji writing. Since we had time to kill, I suggested that this might be a good time for me to have my first pachinko experience. Pachinko is essentially a vertical pinball machine. Your only input into the process is how hard you shoot the ball. It then bounces around on spinners and pins until it either hits a target or gets lost. The machines are every bit as elaborate as the latest American pinball machines. Flashing lights, sound, and in this particular case, a full-color LCD screen in the playfield. The particular machine I was playing had a Star Wars theme, so all the video clips were all Star Wars, and there was a little R2D2 model that moved when you did something extra good.
So I bought ten bucks worth of balls to see what pachinko is like. I didn't have a clue what I was doing, and Rieko couldn't help - she'd played pachinko once before, when she was 10. But the 20-something girl next to me pointed out a few things (and I do mean pointed - she didn't speak any English). She showed me where to try to get the ball to land at the end of the shooter, and told me when to start and stop shooting. And it's not one at a time - you don't pull a plunger to shoot the balls, you hold a knob in a certain position to control the power of the shooter. So off I went... and went... and went. The helpful young lady was long gone, and I was kicking butt. You don't score points when you play pachinko, you win balls. The ones you win go into a little tray at the bottom of the machine, like coins in a slot machine. And when you fill the tray, there's a lever that releases the balls into a little bin supplied by the parlor. After two hours, I'd had enough. I had filled ten bins.
Now, I fully realized that bins full of balls might win me a $1 prize like a Bic lighter or a can of soda. The attendant ran all the balls through a counter and printed out a ticket for me to take to the redemption counter. And I was right - I got maybe a 6-ounce bottle of some kind of vitamin drink that tasted like cough syrup. Ah well, it was a fun experience.
But then... after I took the little bottle, the lady behind the counter also counted out a handful of heavy, ornate chips. Neither Rieko nor I knew what to do with them, so the lady came out from behind the counter to lead us outside to the other redemption counter. I handed in my chips and got in return... 54,000 yen. Let's see, that's.... $540! My eyes got big, Rieko's eyes got bigger (and that's saying something), and we walked away in a daze. I insisted upon paying for dinner. She let me.
This dinner was much like the others we've had. A traditional Japanese pub. But we sat at a table instead of on the floor in the tatami room. The appetizer that came with our beers was peas - in a pod. You hold it like a little ear of corn and bite, and the peas break through the pod. Neat, but nothing special. Then we had buttered cut corn, yakitori (grilled chicken on skewers), and "rice bowls." These are actually things like raw, vinagared fish, teensy roe of some variety, and something else I didn't try. All are added to a fist-sized mass of sticky rice, and then wrapped in nori - dried seaweed sheets. It was delicious and really hit the spot. All of this for the princely sum of $27.
The day would have been a winner without the pachinko, but there's something decidedly rewarding about winning a few hundred bucks. Especially when you didn't even know you were winning it. I didn't even know I was doing anything that special.
That's it for today. The weather tomorrow is supposed to be good, so Rieko and I really will hop the bullet train (called the Shinkansen around here) and head to Hakone. I hope to have lots of pictures and enough time tomorrow night to get them all posted!
Enjoy the pictures!
