Tsuburaya Convention, Fine Dining, and More (11-25-2023)

Saturday proved to be yet another busy day. Josh and I got up early and headed from Asakusa to Tokyo Dome City, where the Tsuburaya Convention was being held. Tsuburaya owns and creates the Ultraman franchise, so most of what could be seen there involved Ultraman, although sometimes other franchises such as Gridman, Dynazenon, Redman, and others could be seen throughout the hall. Many of the events such as the opening ceremonies had long been sold out, but admittance to what was basically a dealers' room full of Ultraman goods was free to walk around in and browse. We didn't have a lot of time, but for the time we did have, we saw lots of cool things and bought just a couple of small goods ourselves. Outside we saw a cute cartoon mascot version of my favorite kaiju, Pigmon.

We had to wrap things up quickly, and then headed into Ginza to meet everyone for lunch. Gluten Free Kushiage Su was a somewhat difficult to find place, at least just from the outside. The owner had to already have your reservation and then buzz you in. The elevator could also only seemingly fit about three people at a time. The food was a pre-planned meal with stages of appetizers, several small portions of what consisted of main courses, and a mochi desert. Some of my personal favorites included some of what was in the main course, including the friend prawn and fried beef. Adding some salt to the beef sent it over the top. It was a unique experience that I would not have thought to pursue on my own, and I think it's good to have experiences that you otherwise wouldn't have considered.

The group split up, as this was perhaps the last day in which we had a few hours to squeeze in to get in some unscheduled time to wrap up things we hadn't already finished, and tomorrow was already fully pre-scheduled.

Josh and I returned to Tokyo Station, back to where we'd stopped at the Kamen Rider Store previously, so that he could get an item that had just released only today. I personally picked up a small collectable Ride Chemy blind box keychain, from the currently airing season of Kamen Rider Gotchard. Opening the blind bag revealed my random Chemy was the skateboard card Skebows.

We moved back on over to Nagano to complete some things we didn't previously have time for. Seeing Nakano Broadway was pretty cool. So many collectables for every type of person, and a few really great stores that easily rival those found in Akihabara. We found a City Hunter mook book, which includes a great episode guide of the franchise. I'd also continued collecting keychains from the Undead Unluck gachapon set we'd been seeing around the city. I now have six out of the seven keychains, and am still just missing the one last main character! I don't know if I'll ever find him before we have to leave.

I have to be honest, by this point, my feet have been absolutely destroyed. The last several days had been a fairly extreme but still even pain all across the bottoms of both feet, but by the end of the day today I'd started experiencing an extreme shooting pain like lightning straight through the middle of my left foot, and I've developed a bruise under the toenail of my big toe on my right foot. All we could do at this point was return to the hotel in Asakusa and get me off my feet before I completely blew out any chance of enjoying our last day. I have been off my feet for several hours and it still hurts quite a bit.

I'm off to go soak my feet for a while now. I can only hope that this soothes the pain in time to do one last big adventure with everyone.