Overdue! Japan Trip: Day 2 :)
Day 2 was Room Escapes! We escaped all 3...Spoilers ahead!
- Room 1, escaped in :55, wasn't sure we were gonna make it :) It was samurai themed, based at the end of the Edo period. As a gate that would open one of two final puzzles, we had to make a choice -- power or strength. We chose power, which then revealed that we helped the assassin kill the shogun. We were like "Oh no, we chose the evil route!" but apparently that was an OK thing because it ended the Edo period and ushered in a new era, etc...I think this was our favorite room, overall.
We had tea after each room with these umaibo puffed snack tube things. Nice touch :D
- We escaped Room 2 in about :35. It was zen themed and the first room was gorgeous. Sadly, they had a lot of do-not-touch symbol stickers, so maybe the room was TOO pretty with too many fragile things :) There was a riddle puzzle about the number of times a bamboo bucket filled up in a day, and there was a real bamboo fountain in the first room that we thought would be part of that, but the puzzle turned out to be clued by audio, while we were in another room away from view of the fountain. Not sure if that means the fountain was broken by asshole customers or if it was just there to stir your imagination if you were like "wtf is this audio?" later in the game. When we went into the second room we opened up, the game masters popped their heads in the room and said "You can't come back in here through this door" and we were like "bwa? what does that even mean?" so...maybe that could have been cued better? How would one enforce a one-way gate in a room escape without majorly freaking people out? The second room was a tea room and we had to dissolve some tea in a cup to read something at the bottom, which was fun. We made our way into a third room that was solid white...we had to solve the "water clock" bamboo riddle to get BACK to the first room (at which point the one-way gate made sense) and solve a final puzzle with some things we'd collected from the other rooms. There were these really nice locks with 4 digits that you had to push a button on the bottom of the lock to release, which were really sturdy and super satisfying to solve :) Cuts down on guessing and doesn't explode in your hand if you accidentally get the right numbers in it -- I'm a fan :D
- Room 3 took us almost the whole hour, again. It was a bride room about a 100 year old wedding mystery... the premise was a bit shaky. Maybe the story makes more sense in Japanese culture, where it might be a mystery why a bride would disappear on her wedding day, where in the USA we'd be like "that bitch didn't wanna get married. the end." ...turns out (spoiler!) she wanted to have a career instead. Clutch dem pearls. It didn't really make sense for their to be modern shoeboxes, blacklight, and weird painted handprints all over a mirror in this story, but whatever. We went with it. There was a cool puzzle where lamps came on behind cutout shapes that were super tiny against the bulb, but were magnified when they hit the floor.
After room escapes, we went through the restaurant supply district and saw lots of cute things. How did we know when we found the restaurant supply district? I'm glad you asked...
I may have purchased a good number of kitchen implements... and some fake food. Fake food is a huge thing in Tokyo! All upstanding restaurants have visual representations of their menu items laying around.
I love the girls posing with shrimp and pizza slices...
We also found a milk vending machine and, like you do when you find a new vending machine in Tokyo, we had some :) It was delicious!
One of the unexpected perks of being in Tokyo when it was super rainy was that we got to see a number of cool "umbrella etiquette" posters...
Don't be that guy!!
You wouldn't punch a businessman. You wouldn't assault a head-wound victim. SO WHY DO YOU BEAT PEOPLE'S SHINS WITH YOUR UMBRELLA?!
We also saw a fun "do not feed the pigeons" sign...
If you let pigeons eat in the wild, like they are meant to do, they will poop on flowers, not on people's faces. Simple enough.
From there, we stopped at a Freshness burger to sit for a bit with a cheeseburger and an avocado burger...most of the burgers we had were like "cheese food" or "milk beverage" level...didn't seem like it was roughly-ground beef shaped into a patty and grilled, but it was still tasty. Just had a kind of mild taste and smooth texture...like a big swedish meatball, squished. Then we went walking to find crafty markets and while we didn't find the market we had read about, we did find touristy goods.
A sea of grumpy looking animatronic dancing bipedal cats. Like you do.
Pickle-on-a-stick bait, gets the tourists every time!
We bought a fish-shaped cake cream-filled hot gooey donut thing and Drew accidentally the entire thing. Cue feeling sick and gross for a bit...
We also bought an umbrella that turned out to be a parasol. Oops. We didn't realize this fact until later, when water was coming through it onto my face. It was fine in drizzle, not so good in downpour. It's very unnerving to be walking under an umbrella and to still have water streaming down your face. I was walking behind Drew swearing up a storm, and at first he thought I must just be really bad at holding an umbrella, but then, nope...
We wandered back to the station, passing an amazing Karl Lagerfeld display. Of course Japan's version of Karl is super young and cheerful looking. Plus Choupette. Love.
We headed to Shibuya to try Tokyu Hands again (it was closed the night before), but it started raining super hard, so we dashed into the arcade (again) to dodge the worst of it, but I was already soaked through. Thanks for nothing, parasol. We did catch Tokyu Hands open and we were determined to look at every item in the whole place. SO MANY THINGS. My feet were totally soaked so I ditched my socks and hobbled about in my wet sneakers. Didn't even matter. There were so many cute things. There are no words. We were there for hours. We bought a jazillion things...more on that coming later :)
So many cool crafty supplies!
Sexy root veggie poses!
Adorable, or creepy? Adorable!
I like the skeleton eating kebabs and sake...and the one with the IV and crutch.
Even the cutting boards are cute!
We had some tasty chicken heart, chicken skin, pork, and salmon and avocado kebab snacks and hot sake, like our skeleton action figure friend, then we called it a night.
On our way back through our home station, we found a more modern vending machine...whoa...
Before bed, Drew went for a run to burn some fish-cake glucose and I took a bath in the tiny tub to sooth my sore feets. Most adorable tub ever...wasn't even mad about having to hug my knees to fit in it.
