here's most of my photos from tokyo, my new phone takes really shitty-looking photos unfortunately. we didn't take many because there was nothing to take photos of! just generic buildings.

the night bus building in sendai + the bus itself:







arrived in shibuya, this was what we saw after walking for a little bit


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okay, so my wife pointed out some stuff i forgot.

1. almost every single store that people said online was "huge", was actually smaller than sendai versions, or the same size.

2. sendai book-off has 100-yen books; at tokyo book-off the lowest price was 200 yen.

3. a certain secondhand shop chain sells stuff at like 300-500 yen in sendai; in tokyo 800 was the minimum. so like, accessories no matter how small were still 800 yen.

4. went to a 3-floor daiso in tokyo marked as a "huge daiso" and they didn't even sell hats or sun visors like every single 100 yen shop in sendai does.

5. basically saw no JAPANESE food advertised anywhere, except ramen and occasionally curry. no japanese-style restaurants. no sakura-flavored stuff. no japanese-style sweet shops. no baked sweet potato. that was part of the whole "tokyo doesn't even feel japanese" feeling we got overall. we only saw like one yakitori shop, which are eeeverywhere in sendai, and izakaya/bars were few compared to sendai too (you can buy traditional japanese food at japanese bars, more or less).

6. the manga they sold in the chain shops and book-off were different. in sendai, advertised everywhere is series relating to northern japan (ex. ainu stuff, blue giant supreme and wake up girls which take place in sendai, jojo's bizarre adventures which was written by a person from sendai). in tokyo it was totally generic stuff that didn't look interesting one bit (i spent like 4 hours look at EVERYTHING in the bookstores so i know!) and also they didn't really have those series that are everywhere in sendai.

so if you do ever go travelling around japan, it might be worth it to pop into some bookstores just to see the differences between regions.