The Great Gain Hunt

Yesterday, Sunday, Cinnamon and I decided to take a trip to the grocery store to buy some food to make ourselves. The one we went to is about 7 or 8 minutes away and is called PoroRoca. It's not a very big store, but they have a pretty good selection of various foods. We ended up with some bananas (5 for about $1.80), yogurt, Ritz crackers (which were expensive), cream cheese (which was also expensive - about $4.80 for a box), pasta and sauce, mini pizzas and some other stuff.

Also, we bought some cup ramen and I just don't understand why it's so expensive! This is the country that created cup ramen! Why is it $1.50? Even a little 6 pack you have to cook on the stove is something like $3.00! I think it's very strange. And as I expected, fruit is very expensive. A single lemon will run you about $2.50 and a cantaloupe the size of a large grapefruit will set you back $7.

Anyway, moving on~ After we got back from the store and had lunch, we headed off for Shibuya. For some reason I always thought of Shibuya as more of a financial, business-type area, but it's full of trendy clothing stores and big name international stores like the Gap, Apple, Nike and Adidas!

Here we have Shibuya Crossing. It is considered to be the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world. Right in the center of the picture is Shibuya 109, a super trendy shopping center. The glass building you see on the very right side houses one of the world's busiest Starbucks. Unfortunately I didn't get a good picture of it from the corner we were standing on.

A little further down the street is a huge Tower Records. A lot of these buildings have big video screens showing ads for new movies, CDs, concerts and video games. Many also have audio and often you'll hear two or three different things playing at the same time right next to each other. Total auditory overload. Also, I'm slowly learning that Japan really loves Avril Lavigne. I hear her music in TV shows and commercials all the time. That Tower Records screen was advertising a concert of hers (coming in September!) when we passed by later.

This picture is overlooking a street running parallel to the one in the last picture. It was also taken from a pedestrian crosswalk.

This is just a shot of the left side of that same street. There are always lots of people walking in the city - no matter the time of day or day of the week.

Down a side street, we came upon this place. Don't know what it is, but it had some interesting signs, so I snapped a picture.

But what we had really come to Shibuya for was to seek out this store here - Gain (the green and white sign in the middle, if you can't see it right away). I had to figure out where it was so I could come back today (which I did) to buy a $135 jacket (which I also did). But the jacket is not for me, so don't worry! Yamashita-tenchou, the guy who runs the store, is very nice, though I didn't get to talk with him much. I also didn't get to see any quasi-celebrities, which I was almost hoping for, if only to have a story to tell about it. Ah well, maybe next time.

And lastly, across from Gain was this interesting graffiti that Cinnamon made me take a picture of. It's... kinda creepy, haha!

Today we spent mostly wandering around Shibuya again and we went to KFC (the 500th store!) for lunch. ...The Colonel would not be proud. Seriously, the chicken was batter-dipped! We all know the Colonel's secret recipe is breaded chicken. Breaded. It was still pretty good, though.

But it started raining while we were walking around Harajuku, so we walked up to Yoyogi Station and just headed home.

I almost forgot! Here's a picture of a street address sign down the street from where we're saying. (You pronounce that word "cho-may", so you know).

And this is looking left down the street in front of where we're staying. It's in a pretty quiet residential area with a n elementary school nearby. The houses all seem to have paper thin walls, because we can occasionally hear our neighbor's toddler having a tantrum. Also, there are lots of crows. Everywhere. And they are loud. But they must all be up high, because while I can hear them, I very rarely see them.

Cinnamon is napping now, so it'll likely be another quiet night for us. One day we'll get to see the neon lights of Tokyo at night. For now, we're still trying our best to get adjusted to things here. And hopefully you all are enjoying vicariously experiencing Japanese culture! Look forward to more interesting things in the near future~