A picture of The Blue Parrot from tokyosurvival.com
Today I actually woke up at a decent hour and headed to Tokyo for a day of shopping.
Since I am doing a lot of reading on the train to and from work, I was looking to buy some new books. Terry from Hello House recommended a used English book store in Tokyo called Blue Parrot. I took the Odakyu line from Noborito to Shinjuku, then switched to the Yamanote line bound for Takadanobaba.
Blue Parrot was well hidden near the station. The store was tiny, but filled floor to ceiling with used English books, CDs, and movies. Shopping for used books is always an adventure, because there are no guarantees on what you will find. I ended up walking out with some new books, a set of English – Japanese / Japanese – English dictionaries, and some CDs.
From Takadanobaba I took the Yamanote line towards Akihabara. The goal was to look for a new camera, but there were way too many stores and too many choices in each store. It was fun exploring Akihabara, but I didn’t end up buying anything.
After striking out on camera shopping, I took the Keihin Tokoku line to Yokohama. I bought a few souvenirs for my family, and a few more books for me at a new book store. My messenger bag was loaded with heavy books for my two trains back to Noborito. It was a fun day with a whole lot of walking. I was very happy to get home and unload all of the books.
(2014 Update) The Blue Parrot closed in the past few years, which is sad news.
Drinking in Japan 