The day after the Tokyo Auto Salon ended, I woke up early to pack up my gear and stowed everything away in my luggage. Once done, I decided to walk around and take some pictures of Makuhari, the city surrounding Makuhari Messe convention center. The area surrounding Makuhari Messe is a business district. I did not see any clubs or any kind of night events other than Italian restaurants, McDonalds, Baskin Robins and some other places to eat. There’s also a Sega arcade in one of the small malls by the Plena building.

So I walked out of my hotel and just took a stroll around the area. It was early Monday, and the streets were full of salary men and women walking to their offices. The most predominant color was black, I felt out of place wearing regular street clothes and a heavy brown jacket to keep myself warm for the freezing cold. The entire movement of people was a little inspiring. This mass of people coming and going and no one made a sound, not a single damn sound. So quiet. So efficient.

I had walked all the way to Carrefour, something called a hypermarket. It’s basically a big ass Walmart, Super Target, and Costco rolled into one multi-story building. I thought I’d buy something. When I got there, I was too early – it was closed.

So I was hungry and as I was looking around, I wanted to try the Lotteria Burger place I was trying to avoid. Wasn’t sure if I wanted to eat another burger in Japan after I ate at McDonald’s earlier in the weekend. I was hungry and I figured the taste would be different, like how a Whopper is different from a Big Mac.

I first had to figure out how to get into Lotteria. Took me some time to figure out how to open the door. Finally got in and smiled at the nice old lady behind the counter. I used Japanese pidgin as I ordered, and she used her English pidgin with me. It was all good, because I was able to order my burger, fries and drink – I think it was a Coke. I think they had to make it special order for me because they were only serving their breakfast meals. They were really nice about it though!

Yea, the burger was different. The burger I had was pretty good. I took a bite and damn, what the hell man, that there wasabi in that burger was good! That was my first reaction after taking that bite. Yea, it was a hella good burger! I never thought that wassabi in a burger would taste that good!

Coming out of Lotteria, I just watched the people walking by and looking at the hot looking Japanese girls.

The sidewalks were wide, very wide. As I looked, something odd popped up in my head. There were old guys picking up trash as I took my walk, and that’s when I noticed that there were no trash cans. No bloody trash cans were seen. That’s one way to create jobs right?

The weather in Japan? It was freezing cold. If you come to the Tokyo Auto Salon, bring your heavy jacket and a warm scarf. Everyone was wearing jackets, and scarves in the morning. The high school girls still wore there short skirts, but most of them had thick thighs, so they were well insulated. I dunno man, it’s like as Japanese girls grow older, a majority become slimmer and those thick thighs lose that blubber fat.

So I walked over to the elevated sidewalk towards Makuhari Messe and took some pictures of what you would see if you walked to the convention center from the train station and finally took some pictures of Makuhari Messe!

I was thinking of walking over to the beach next to the Chiba Marine Stadium that is next to Makuhari Messe or even go to the park near the beach, but I decided to just head back to my hotel and go to the bathroom and get ready for the airport bus and finally fly back home.

So was the trip worth it? Yea, Tokyo Auto Salon was an awe inspiring experience. I’m glad I stayed at a hotel near Makuhari Messe instead of a hotel near Tokyo where I would have had to take an early and long ass train ride every morning to Tokyo Auto Salon and then take another train after the show back to Tokyo. I do miss the fact that I missed seeing Tokyo nightlife and the sites of the big city.

I was just driven and focused on taking pictures of what I saw at Tokyo Auto Salon, and after each day ended, my back, my legs, and every part of my body ached from walking the ground floor from morning to late afternoon. I just walked to my hotel and had to take a few hours rest in my room every day. All in all, I got my money’s worth!

Will I come back? Hell yea.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 30th, 2010 at 9:39 pm and is filed under car show, Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.