we started this day with a tea ceremony at our hostel, which was offered by one of the people running the hotel. so the lady invited us into the little tea room[02-05] inside the ryokan, with access right to the garden[01]. notice the pit, which is for western people if they cannot sit japanese style, on their knees, so they can sit on the ground and put their legs in there. also there is a samurai armour displayed, and now we could take pictures of it (remember when we did not take any at the wakayama castle because it was forbidden), and even touch it - ha. and then we started our tour for today and drove to tokyo dome city[07-21], with its giant ferris wheel, the roller coaster, and amusement parks. we wanted to take a cohi break at the moomin cafe, but it was crowded, and - of course - people were queuing outside. but soon we found out, that they offered lunch sets that are available until 14:30 o'clock. actually, we found out waiting in the queue at around 14:20. so we were the last ones to queue, and were asked if we wanted to have lunch, which we did not. instead we had ice cream desert with moomin cookies on our moomin table with moomin cutlery. but there was no huge plush moomin sitting at our table, which made us sad. and while the waitresses carried the plush toys from table to table to shuffle the mute companions, all we got was a small snufkin, the character i dislike the most (which nina found quite amusing, and inspiring to mock[28] me). pah, snufkin... i wanted a moomin, or maybe cute stinky[29]. well, also nina was disappointed we did not get a moomin seated at our table. too bad. we came to the conclusion, it might be we are gaijins, thus most of the times getting not the best tables in bars, restaurants, cafes, and now, not getting the beloved moomins. but at least nina got a free plate with her order, as there was moomin day on the 9th of august. so they're giving away those dishes. too cute! outside there was a big moomin[30], which we then hugged hearty and extensively, and after a walk around tokyo dome we drove on to akihabara[31-42,90-92], the electric city. here i met gullevek on my last trip, but unfortunately this year it seems he will have no time to meet us. while on my last trip to tokyo i had no troubles finding a cat cafe, as they seemed to have been everywhere, especially in the akihabara area, it was not really easy to find even one nowadays. so we asked loads of maidens, advertising maiden cafes, and even some girls with nekomimis handing out leaflets for nekomimi cafes (yop, that's waitresses wearing cat ears, and costumes that, in a way, resemble a cat - very kawaii). but even asking the girls where to find real cats did not help, although they seemed pretty surprised i asked them. but a lady at a counter in a big shopping mall could help us find one. and since it was quite far away, searching the cat cafe was our next quest. but finally we found the... "neko cafe jalala" - yuhu. this neko cafe seemed pretty small and rather strange when it came to house rules. at the entrance we got instructions what to do prior to touching one of the approximately ten cats, and how to interact with them. that included going straight to the bathroom where they had soap and liquid alcohol to kill all the bacteria on our hands. it seems all those rules work well for japanese guests and protecting the cats. so we approached the cats as instructed and had fun petting and admiring them. strangely enough only the staff had toys to play with the cats, it seemed guests were not encouraged to play with the kitties. also, in our opinion, there were way too many cats in the cafe, that actually consisted of only one room. but it seemed the cats got along together quite okay. after having extended our stay, and thus paying for one hour, while we had planned only half an hour, but we could not resist, we sadly left the cute kitties and walked around akihabara by night, but then drove home, as we already were rather tired. also we tried to book tickets for the studio ghibli museum, which you can only do at a lawson's stores with a loppi ticket vending machine. unfortunately the museum is all booked out during our entire stay in tokyo. seems again we hit a bad combination of holidays, and the new film that was just releases. oh nooooo, no totoro, and no huge nekobus, and no giant metal robot. i really wanted nina to see that, as the museum was definitely one of my highlights on my last trip. too sad.