Day 4 - Tokyo (Fish Markets, Shrine and Robots!)

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Geo: 35.6835, 139.697

Another good day!

We started very slowly this morning, not getting out the door until 10am. We went around on the tube to the Tokyo Fish Markets, the largest fish markets in the world. The tuna auctions started this week, and are closed to the public (not that we were getting up at 3am to see them anyway) and most of the action was finished when we got there closer to 11am, but there were merchants with scallops in bags riding away from the markets on bicycles, little stalls selling seaweed, knifes, dried tuna and seafood - plenty to look at for 30 mins or so. We also visited the shrine to the "wave calming fox", who protects sailors.

Then, back on the tube to the Asakusa area, where we enjoyed a fabulous meal of pork cutlet - the owner told us that her father has been cooking this dish since 1971. We had 6 variations - with garlic, with bean paste, with cheese, with shiitake mushrooms etc and all were delicious. Nice Swiss girls at the table next to us (one of them has a dad from Mudgee!)

Asakusa's main attraction is Sensoji, a very popular Buddhist temple, built in the 7th century. The temples were rebuilt after the air raids in World War II and are very beautiful. The temple is approached via the Nakamise, a shopping street that has been providing temple visitors with a variety of traditional, local snacks and tourist souvenirs for centuries.

Ok - then things got crazy! We decided to go to the Robot Restaurant...I don't know really how to describe it - the reviews say "Tokyo hasn't seen anything like this since the Bubble Era. Every night in a basement in Shinjuku's Kabukicho district, bikini-clad women stage mock battles using enormous robots – though it's more steroid-enhanced fairground attraction than modern-day Gundam. Fitted out at a cost of ¥10 billion, the nubile staff take to the floor on giant robots, including a neon tank and enormous female 'borgs – complete with (literally) pneumatic busts. Customers seemed a little too gob-smacked to know what to do at first, but by the end they were waving their glowsticks like hardened para-para dancers." It was hilariously ridiculous - imagine bikini clad taiko drummers, a giant panda killing a cyborg, giant statues of women and unicorns....bizarre, weird, hilarious.

We were all tired, by the time we had come out of the show - the Krispy Kreme donuts beforehand, the popcorn and soft drinks during and the kitkats on the tube platform hadn't filled the children - so we grabbed Barilla pasta and sauce for a quiet dinner at home.

iPhone tells me we only walked 10km today!

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