Day Eleven - Need for Speed - Tokyo Drift

This morning we took a most unusual tour of Tokyo taking in sights such as Tokyo and Ginza Railway Stations, Ueno, Asakusa and the Tokyo Sky-Tree, but we had to wear costumes and drive Go-Carts. We took the MariCAR tour of Tokyo, which is becoming increasingly popular. MariCAR is obviously a Royalty-free version of Mario Cart Racing and the costumes we wore all tended to revolve around the Mario Cart theme. 

Maureen was dressed as Luigi, I was Bowser, Sky was Mario, Kyle was Wario and Jen was Yoshi. 

Luigi

Wario

Bowser

Mario

Yoshi

The tour lasted two hours and we covered around 25 kilometres, driving on Tokyo's streets. At every intersection we pulled up, people were taking photos of us and waving. It was pretty cool. Not exactly the best thing for my back, but it was well worth it. Our guide (who we followed in single or double file depending on how many fingers he was holding up) was a guy from Munich called Matt. In fact Matt took most of the pictures for today's blog...thanks Matt!

When we finished we headed back to the apartment, grabbed our stuff and headed out to lunch in Akihabara before catching the train to Shibuya.

Shibuya is known as one of the fashion centers of Japan, particularly for young people (like me), and as a major nightlife area. Shibuya is also famous for its 'scramble' pedestrian crossing. It is located in front of the Shibuya Station and stops vehicles in all directions to allow pedestrians to inundate the entire intersection. The Starbucks Cafe which overlooks the crossing provides a great vantage point for photos and as such is one of the busiest in the world. The Shibuya crossing has been compared to the Times Square intersection. 

The view of Shibuya Crossing from Starbucks

Whilst at Shibuya, we all headed out in separate directions for two hours for shopping or any other activities. Maureen and I walked about two kilometres to visit a specific shop selling Japanese Crockery, whilst the others bought clothes and Music.

This is the Cat Street District

After Shibuya, Maureen, Sky and I headed back to Akihabara and I had my first Steak in a few weeks, it was so nice. Kyle and Jen stayed in Shibuya and hour or so longer before heading back to the Apartment.