We got up early for teamLab Borderless — early enough that Alex, who clearly hadn't slept enough, was grouchy for most of the walk in. The exhibition was visually disorienting in a good way, which is about the most honest thing you can say about a place that makes the floor, the ceiling, and the walls indistinguishable from one another.

The mirror rooms were where the cameras came out. When the floor reflects as cleanly as the ceiling, you stop knowing which version of yourself is the real one — a disorientation that, judging by the photos, nobody seemed to mind.

Somewhere in the middle of it there was a tea ceremony, which landed as a quiet counterweight to the sensory overload around it. We also found a drawing station — Kyle produced a card that looked like a proud, round-headed man in blue trousers striding into the unknown.

The orb rooms came later — a different installation, darker, packed with hanging glowing spheres multiplied by mirrors into what felt like a full galaxy. We each took a turn standing in it and looking up.

After that, Alex split off to his cooking class and Kyle and Aidan headed to Akihabara. Conveyor belt sushi first — very tasty, per the record — and then the afternoon was given over to hunting for Pokémon cards through the district's floors of merch.

The group reconvened for dinner at a packed, double-height restaurant with globe lights strung above the tables and enough noise to suggest everyone had the same idea about where to end the evening.

The day opened the same way the last one did: Kielo Coffee, another pour-over served in a ceramic cup with a glass beaker alongside it. Alex was presumably still asleep somewhere. We had five hours of sleep between us and no particular plans, which felt like the right amount of structure.

From there we drifted into Shibuya — its side streets, its competing signage, a wagyu burger poster wedged next to an entrance so ornate it looked like it had been imported from somewhere more theatrical.

Lunch was at an okonomiyaki restaurant Aidan had found using Claude, which felt like a reasonable use of the technology. Kyle recorded the scene with some precision: sauce flakes around Aidan's mouth, Aidan somehow in two layers of what looked like wool or flannel and not visibly suffering for it, a small orange juice soda stream thing on the table that turned out to be genuinely good — the kind of drink that gets quietly reordered. The waiters were nice. We were content just wandering and taking the morning as it came.

Somewhere in the early afternoon we found a café that did latte art of people's pets. We were on the train to Shinjuku by 2:51, coffees with our animals printed on them presumably somewhere in our bags.

Shinjuku delivered its usual density of things to look at — including what appeared to be a Samurai Restaurant advertising itself with maximum commitment, and at least one stairwell interior that had been treated as an opportunity to use every colour simultaneously.

After walking around Shinjuku, we made our way to the Lumine department store and took the lift up to the rooftop, where a yakiniku restaurant had set up its grills in the open air. It was table-cook-your-own-meat, which meant the evening's first challenge was getting the grill started. The wind had other ideas. It took longer than it should have, but we got there.

The night ended at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, which had been given over to a full-facade PAC-Man projection — the words "CONTINUE? PAC-MAN EATS TOKYO" spread across several floors of concrete in pixel-art lettering. It was a strange and very large thing to encounter at the end of an ordinary Tuesday.