We got up at 5 this morning for an early start at the Tsukuji Fish Market here in Tokyo. This is one of the biggest fish markets in the world and thousands of pounds of fish are bought and sold every day here. We headed over through the suprisingly quiet and calm streets of Tokyo and found our way there relatively easy after I started off in the wrong direction to start. When we got there the calm ended abruptly as there were people pushing hand carts and driving little motorized carts in every direction. We tried to figure out where to go in and eventually just headed in a door that looked promising to see row after row of little stalls each filled with every type of seafood imaginable. We say tuna of course in every stage from whole huge fish to broken down into large loin pieces to smalled pieces ready to cut into sushi or steaks. We saw whole fish, octopus, squid, cuttlefish, clams, scallops, oysters and sea urchin, and probably several others I am not thinking of. After wandering through the rows of stalls (off the main corridors where you were likely to get run down by the carts) for a while we decided it was time to find our way our and find some breakfast. We headed to a road that was lined with stalls and noticed a sushi restaurant across the road so we headed right to it. The sushi chef was very nice and there was a nice english menu where we each chose a set. Becky got the “morning” set which had a variety of sushi (salmon, flying fish fin, tuna, shrimp, etc) and I had the tuna set which had several varieties of tuna. This was very good and just about the freshest sushi you could imagine as all of his fish comes directly from the fish market across the street. After finishing up and thanking the chef for the wonderful meal we headed back to the hotel to take a little nap before continuing on our day. When we woke we headed out once again this time to the train station to go to Akihabara, aka “Electric Town, which is a neighborhood filled with huge electronics, game and anime stores. On the way to the station we stopped in at a Japanese “fast food” diner type restaurant where they served rice covered with roast beef and other toppings and miso soup. We ordered the basic meal and it was very good, I may try it again and be a little more adventurous after seeing what a few of the other patrons had. When we got to Akihabara we looked around in several stores looking over the gadgets and uniques Japanese electronics. I was a little surprised that several of the items that we can get in the US were much more expensive here (TV’s Netbooks, etc) but overall it was a fun time looking. We also struck out again trying to find a charger for Becky’s camera battery which is almost dead. We went through a coupld of different arcades and even played a few games in one, Becky played a traditional drum game (like Guitar Hero, etc), we both played a Haunted Museum game with guns and then I played street fighter (got to the final level and lost). We also stepped into a pachinko parlor which is the casinos you find regularly here and is a game where you drop these little metal balls through a seried of pins and they land at the bottom where you get points or not. These things are VERY loud, if you have been to Vegas them multiply the noise in the slots area by about 10 and you will get the idea. In one of the duty free stores I saw a rice cooker I may go back and get but I have to do a little research first. We then meant to head to Shibuya but because I got mixed up reading the subway map we ended up in Shinjuku which we were going to go to anyway later in the week so we went out and looked at all the big skyscrapers including the iconic Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. We went into the TMG building as it has a free observatory on its 45th floor and after looking around a bit we got into line behind a German tour group and waited our turn to go up. When we got to the top we looked around and took a few pictures and I bought a couple of things at the toy shop (yeah I know wierd) that they had there. We headed back down and decided since it had started raining pretty steadily to make our way back toward our station and maybe find something to eat on the way. We got to Tokyo station so we went outside to take a couple of pictures in that area before heading on to our station. We were a little confused which direction to take the main loop line to get to Yurachuko and a nice Japanese lady asked us in fluent English where we were trying to go and helped us get to the right track. We got there and decided to go to the Sony showroom which is near the station (and inside) and we went through it. The showroom consists of several levels of sony products on display that you can interact with. They pretty much have their entire product line there including several very new things, the Xperia Android Phone (very cool), their 3d line of TVs and video cameras. I have been pretty skeptical about the use of 3d TVs but I definitely saw the benefit with some of the video games they had running in full 3d and even a clip of the FIFA Confederations cup that was filmed in 3d. I am still not sure I like the idea of wearing glasses but the ones they had on display were MUCH less noticeable than the standard ones you get at the theater. After heading out of the Sony building we headed to go into the Wako department store but it was clearly much out of our reach (we saw several purses for 250,000-300,000 yen ($2,500-3000) but we looked around the first floor and decided it was definitely time to find food. I had seen a little side road earlier to we went down it and Becky noticed one of the little restaurants where you order from a vending type machine and take a ticket that prints out with your order to the counter, another fast food type place. We each made our order, I had soba noodles in broth and tempura on top of rice with 2 little sweet rice dumpling things and Becky had the soba noodles and fried shrimp and veggies over rice with some hot sake. It was really good, fast and best of all at this point in the trip super cheap and I would highly recommend trying either of these types of places if you ever visit Japan. We then headed back to the hotel to relax a little early tonight as we have a pretty full day again tomorrow.