I Am A Skill Crane/UFO Catcher Addict

The gf had to go to her class meeting in the morning, so while she was there I went into Shinjuku to waste a few hours. 

 It goes without saying that I was going to spend some time in the music store where I bought my guitar. I am SO tempted with all these reasonably priced instruments. They are a lot less than the prices I paid in Australia. 

 A top of the line Roland electronic drum kit that retails for around AUS $12,000 was around $4000 here. I wonder how much it would cost to ship it back to Australia? It's not something that I would buy now though. 

 I bought a few cheap picks and relented from buying a pack of strings. Another thing is that the string sets here are around 500 yen which is again practically nothing. 

 Once I met up again with gf outside the Studio Alta screen, we went to eat tempura at a nearby restaurant. Tempura is basically batter fried everything. It was strange eating vegetables that way but it tasted pretty good. I didn't have the shrimp though.

 

From there we made our way to Odaiba, an island precinct in Tokyo bay. It basically consisted of shopping malls, an artificial beach and a ferris wheel. Oh, and a downsized replica of the Statue Of Liberty. 

One mall was called, Aqua City, where we looked through a Toys R Us and I even found a shop selling "nude beer". 

This is in front of the Fuji TV Headquarters building. 

 

We were feeling quite hungry so we ate at an Thai restaurant called Cafe Mangrove in the Venus Fort complex which strangely looks like an Italian street with fake blue sky.

  We ordered some marinated chicken and a green thai curry with chicken and rice. The spicy food gave me hiccups, but it tasted delicious. 

 From there we went to an amusement arcade. It started innocently enough. The UFO catchers are the claw machines that manouver behind glass to grab a stuffed toy. 

 Somehow I managed to pump around about 1500 yen into them and got on a first go, a banana pillow. Unfortunately I got a little excited and thought I could win some more.

 

I called it "Daiby". I consider it a boy. I mean how can a banana be a girl, right? Anyway it's a baby for gf and myself. I left it in gf's capable hands. I really got it for her. Isn't that sweet?