After the late night before, we all slept in… Anita and I slept in so much we missed our hotel’s breakfast. We found a snack and took the subway to the Tokyo Aquarium. It was totally disappointing. The animals had very small enclosures, particularly bothersome were the mammals. There were many dead or dirty exhibits and not too much to read in English… We left after (something like) an hour and a half and roamed the “Sunshine 60” shopping complex (basically a big mall like the galleria in Houston without the ice skating rink). I’m not a mall person, but because there was so much Engrish everywhere, it was a lot of fun. Lots of people watching too. After we left the mall, we walked a little while around the surrounding area, checking out the street life in the afternoon… there’s a lot of it, even on a Monday afternoon.
We then went back to the hotel and played card, waiting on Keiichi to let us know if he could get off work to go to dinner with us. It turns out he couldn’t. Just to clarify, Keiichi is one of the higher ups at some company that manufactures MP3 playing devices or something (no free stuff guys, I checked)… his normal workday is from 8am to 10-11pm… 6 days a week. Seriously. He also can spend up to 25 days a month traveling… basically working all the time (always representing the company. It’s craziness. Makes working at McDonalds sound ok doesn’t it? (maybe) James Brown may be the hardest working man in show business, but it’s probably nothing to Keiichi.
We walked around the hotel area looking for food and decided on a crab specialty place for our last nice meal in Japan. It was a 6 course mean and every dish was either jus crab, focused, or crab inclusive (made me think of the iron chef). Some of the courses were kinda weird and some were really good. By the end, though, we were all done with crab… perhaps the first time I’ve ever said those words: “too much crab”.
After that much crab, we were all really slap happy (or we all got really funny). So, we went back to the hotel and played more Canasta. Anita and I lost when paired for the first game and Anita and April lost when paired on this second game. I guess that means April and I half-won and Karen really won (Anita really lost).