The underside to the famous spider sculpture at Roppongi Hills. I went here for my birthday sushi dinner. My sushi dinner was from the modest "Seizan Sushi" and only cost 35 dollars. Most of the other sushi restaurants in the Hills were offshoots of Michelin rated Tokyo establishments with set menus running close to $200.

Here's my birthday sushi. It was quite good but by no means remarkable. The only sad part was that I was completely by myself for the entire day. The waiter brought me an extra table setting. I said to him, "It's sort of depressing, but I'm here all by myself." He took the table setting away. This line made the mother and daughter seated at the table next to me start to crack up. Speaking of the mother and daughter, they both ordered the same chirashi set and then proceeded to spend the entire meal in complete silence.

Chiba Take Two

Today I spent the day in Chiba. This time I’m happy to report that there wasn’t a rain drop in sight, so I was able to fully enjoy the area. In fact, it was one of the first blue skies in weeks. This meant of course that there was no cloud cover and it was a real scorcher. It was easily over 90 today with full humidity. Ugh!

I first made my way to Chiba Minato (Chiba Port) via the inverted suspended monorail that I posted a picture of earlier. Evidently the monorail is primarily for transportation purposes, but it doubles as a fun tourist attraction! The monorail car actually swings side-to-side quite a bit while traveling.

There might have been a sightseeing worthy spot or two in Chiba Minato, but I couldn’t find too much of interest other than a church and children’s play park. There was also a group of skateboarder punks practicing tricks outside the monorail station. Some of them took quite a few wipeouts.

I ended up taking the short train ride to Kaihin-Makuhari (doesn’t that sound like an Indian guru’s name?) and spent the rest of my time window shopping. Kaihin-Makuhari is Chiba’s version of Odaiba, albeit with less attractions. The only attraction I saw was a solitary street performer out in front of the train station juggling knives for mesmerized little kids.

The main tourist pull of the area was a large outlet mall. Now Japanese people don’t have to travel all the way to America for their favorite clothing and accessories! I actually saw quite a few Westerners lugging around bulging bags. The stores were mostly selling the same brands we have in America, such as Nike, Coach, Adidas, and Billabong. There were also quite a few stores that I had never heard of before. For instance, I wonder if “Franc Franc” is actually from Paris or just a Japanese original.

There were several other shopping centers in the area that I peeked around in, but since I had actually spent all the money in my wallet (there wasn’t much), I literally had only a few hundred yen left. Luckily, I had loaded up my Pasmo beforehand so I was able to get back to Asakusa alright.

B.E.W.

The inside of the monorail car doesn't look that different from a regular subway or train car I'm afraid.

This represents the view out of the moving inverted monorail car.

NTT DoCoMo had a building in the area. I decided to snap a picture of their majestic broadcasting tower.

I liked the blue sky in this picture so I decided to include it. Most sincere apologies for the repeat.

I passed this church in Chiba Minato. Since churches are fairly rare in Japan, I snapped a picture. As far as I could tell, the building is used exclusively for wedding ceremonies.

The church close up.

These cute rides were at a play park in Chiba Minato. Here's the dolphin.

This one is a cute otter.

The third ride was a whale. I named him Benjamin Evan the Whale.

Here's the girl bird mascot for the local baseball team. Is she an eagle?

The Chiba Lotte Marines are the official team of the city. Their stadium was also close by. I think there was some sort of Star Wars event going on in the stadium (or at least some place nearby), as I saw lots of people with bags filled with Star Wars merchandise walking around.

Here's the boy...he's ready to hit a homer!

Here's the entire display put together.

The only thing I purchased in the outlet mall was this ice cream cone (I guess it was technically gelato). My flavor was annin tofu. I'm not sure what, if anything, the flavor has to do with real tofu. Needless to say, it was YUMMY TO THE EXTREME!!! Even though it looks white like vanilla, the flavor was rich and creamy. I think it is supposed to be almond flavored. To me it tasted like crème brûlée.

This is what the area looked like. The green building on the right was the outlet mall. There was also an outdoor component to the mall as well. In general, I found Chiba to be far less crowded than Tokyo, however these shopping centers were pretty crammed packed with shoppers.

A patch of pretty flowers outside a shopping center in Kaihin-Makuhari, Chiba.

There was a vendor out front of the outlet mall that was selling mystery boxes for 300 Yen each. Each box was completely wrapped and contained a prize of some sort. He said some had video games and figures in them. I just couldn't help myself; I bought a mystery box. My box contained a box of 80 plastic zip lock bags featuring these "Pretty Cure" characters. Since the bags are really tiny, I can't think of what you'd use them for besides adding a little splash of Japanese culture to your drug dealings.