Free Tour of Akihabara

As of 7.00 p.m. (Tokyo time) today I have finished writing and submitting all due term papers for the semester – so insya Allah I’ll have more free time after this to blog …

Anyway, talking about free – we got plenty of free stuff last Sunday when hubby took us to join the free Akihabara tour in conjunction with “Yokoso Japan!” campaign. Hubby learned about it from Syah and wanted to join it the previous week, but I was just too tired after one week of attending intensive course (with mid-term paper, presentations and what nots) and the weather was not that great anyway, so we postponed the trip to last Sunday.

It wasn’t the first time we visited Akihabara, of course – after all, it’s only about 30 minutes away from our place by bike. But they did took us to places we have never been before – the Robot kingdom and Tokyo Anime Center. We could not see animation artist at work because we went there on a Sunday, but yeah, we were pretty much satisfied with the two hours tour.

The free stuff? Well, for one, I won a mug in a lucky draw at the stall promoting Vaio/Microsoft Vista in front of Yodobashi Akiba (the largest electrical store in Akihabara). Despite numerous attempts by hubby – he only managed to get lots of post-it notes. Huzaifah got three fancy balloons at the same stall too.

Then, we answered some questionnaires at the Tokyo Anime Center and each of us got a nylon bag each. Hubby of course had no idea what the questionnaires (in Nihongo) was all about – but he filled the form anyway for the bag’s sake.

There were only four of us – Jason from Canada, Joshia, a Polish married to a Japanese who’s been living in Japan for 18 years, hubby and I – in the English language tour, and two free lunch coupons were up for grabs. I had already packed nasi goreng (yes, I know, I almost always prepare nasi goreng as bento everytime we go sightseeing) for lunch, but thought it would be nice to win the coupon since it’s quite rare for us to enjoy dining in a nice restaurant. I even thought that it wouldn’t be too bad even if only either hubby or I won the coupon and the other have to pay. But alhamdulillah, as it happened – we both won the coupons!

So we had a nice free lunch at Tokyo Food Theater 5 + 1 – a nice restaurant with plush chairs, soft lighting and food served in fine china. The original set menu was unsuitable for us though, so we had to request for some adjustments, which the chef had no trouble complying to. I had a Japanese Hana lunch set, comprising rice, yaki zakana, pickles, tofu and miso soup with vegetables. Hubby had an Italian lunch set made of spaghetti in tomato, shrimp and squid sauce, plus salad and bread. Huzaifah had a little bit of both plus lots of orange juice.

A little bit of sightseeing on our own after that and we were back home by Maghrib…