Wanna Play Some Baseball? (Day 3421 - 4/7/19)

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Stephen says that Alex and Hayley are traveling to Osaka, while he, Mallory, Chaz, and Jeff take the train to Kawasaki to visit the Kanamara Matsuri, a festival celebrating ease of conception that features plenty of phallic decorations. Stephen says that they lined up to get in to see the shrine of the phallic statue, but thousands of people were in that line so they gave up. Instead, they walk to the entrance of the shrine and Stephen films it from outside. Chaz and Jeff decide to leave because of how crowded it was. Stephen and Mal grabbed a bite to eat at the FamilyMart and then ran into Derek back at the festival, who they had last seen in 2014 during their road trip.

Stephen and Mal, joined by Dan and Lindsey, watch the parade, then visit Kawasaki Warehouse, a huge arcade modeled after the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong. Stephen says that the music at the entrance of the arcade sounded like the music from the title screen of Resident Evil 6. Mal plays Space Harrier and Stephen and Dan try out a baseball game. Stephen and Dan talk about how there is a whole floor dedicated to gambling games. Mal wins a set of Kirby themed cups from a UFO Catcher.

Dan and Lindsey head back to the Airbnb while Stephen and Mal go to a cat shrine, decorated with hundreds of lucky cat statues of different sizes. For dinner, they were planning to go back to Uobei Shibuya Dogenzaka (the conveyor belt sushi restaurant), but it was packed. So they decided to eat yakiniku in Shibuya where they tried Kobe beef for the first time. They both agree that it is delicious, and Stephen calls it "the meat equivalent of butter." On the way back to the Airbnb, Mal stops to buy a Detective Conan themed drink. Stephen mentions that he bought a spare hard drive from Yodabashi Camera. Tomorrow, he and Mal will be heading to Kyoto.