The next day, Sunday, 17 Feb, we only had 4 hours until we have to leave for Oakland Airport. Luckily a “homey” hooked us up with a small limo to the airport the night before. It was same price as an airport shuttle, but with style and no stops.

After we got ready, we left the Kabuki to search for Hotel Tomo, the much rumored “anime hotel” we keep hearing about. Eventually we found it after walking 4 blocks. It was cool inside. As you walk into the hotel lobby, there’s anime, live action and dramas playing on flatscreen TVs to the right. In front of the entrance is a wooly sitting things. To the left is the front desk. The lobby was really small. And the wall paintings were like the Corralians from Eureka 7. We asked the front desk clerk where the restaurant was. It was on the next floor.

The restaurant was all cool looking. There were more frescos of Corralians on one wall. The menus had anime characters one them!!! What more can an otaku want! Right? The guys had regular “Western” breakfasts and I had the Japanese-style breakfast. It was grilled Salmon, rice, radishes, nori, and some fermented daikon with salmon roe. After we ate, Tim asked the waitress for one of those menus as a keepsake. We only got a photocopied page.

We headed back to Japantown to take more pictures. Nothing opened until about 11AM. So at that time everything was closed. We did find a shop that serve taiyaki. We had some. We were killing time until lunch. There was this place called “Over the Bridge.” It was a restaurant that served curry and catered to otaku. An emergency came up. We did not have enough room in our luggage to carry the stuff we bought. We walked all over Japantown Mall to look for a carry-on bag. We settled for a smaller-type hand sack that cost us 6 bucks.

Over the Bridge finally opened at 11:30AM. We had 45 minutes to eat. The restaurant was so damn cool. There was wall-to-wall manga. All vintage stuff. The owner must’ve been a manga collector. We all ordered curry...all different of course. Tim, Lawrence and I had a morning cocktail. We took pictures of them. While we were waiting for our orders, we were looking around browsing the manga. The curry was equally good. It wasn’t like the box curry I usually eat. This curry was from scratch!.

So after lunch, we hightailed it back to the Kabuki. Our limo was already waiting. We got our stuff and off we went in luxury to Oakland Airport.

Check out the pictures by clicking on the Cosplay & Convention above and the clicking on Other Conventions.