Ever-busy Shibuya

So, as continued from my last post, we got back on the Yamanote Line and headed to - you guessed it - Shibuya! Somehow, there's always something to do here, even if it's just walking around and people-watching. And after about four weeks of being in Japan, I finally have some pictures of the neon lights to show you!

I will admit, they could've been better, but we were tired from walking around all day. You take what you can get. But we're in Shibuya often, so there'll be other opportunities to photograph it at night.

While we were walking around, we spotted this little shop selling some interesting and exotic merchandise - including these weird shoes.

It's sort of hard to tell from the picture, but a couple pairs of these shoes (the ones on the ends) have curled toes like elf shoes. No clue why. I think they're pretty ugly myself, and look uncomfortable.

This place, however, always catches our interest. Unfortunately, every time we pass by, neither of us are hungry. But one of these days, we are going to go get ourselves one awesome dessert. How could you pass up food that looks that good?

The next day, we went to Kinshicho (which is on the way to Funabashi, but much closer) and hit up the Tokyo Arcakit Kinshicho Daiso store. As you may have guessed, it's another 100 yen store, only this one was half the size of the other one. However, we still didn't leave without buying anything. Such is the beauty of 100 yen store shopping.

Since the store was on the 7th floor of a big department store building, we checked out some other stuff on the way down and I was again unsuccessful at finding shoes. After that, we chilled (quite literally!) outside for a bit while Cinnamon ate her Pucca snacks. They're essentially like chocolate biscuit cookies (shaped like fish and octopuses) filled with vanilla cream. ...I know you were wondering.

We checked out a few fruit stands in the area, then headed back home.

Thursday was surprisingly COLD and overcast. Seriously, I think the high must've been something like 72. Compared to the warm weather we had gotten used to, it felt pretty chilly! So dressed in pants and armed with jackets and umbrellas, we set out for Harajuku, in search of the last Daiso store on our list. It was disappointingly small, but luckily the street it was on was chock full of interesting shopping places and Cinnamon came away with a new hat.

Then we were off to Shinjuku to search for the Sanrio Shinjuku Gift Gate, as it was the only Sanrio store in the Tokyo area that we hadn't been to. We found it with a minimum of trouble and I came away with a couple of things you'll see in a later picture. From there we walked back to Harajuku and hit up Lotteria for dinner. Finally, a genuine Japanese burger chain, hahaha! Someday, we'll make the rounds to Mos Burger and Freshness Burger too. Cinnamon was disappointed that the burgers pictured on the menu didn't look at all like the ones we got, but they were still really good. And they had melon soda there! I wish we had that in the US, because that stuff is really good.

Yesterday (Friday), was the last day our rail pass was valid, so we used it to go back to Funabashi and hit up the 100 yen store one more time. (What? You can't argue with good quality, cheap goods!) Cinnamon and I both ended up buying several really cute bento boxes (essentially Japanese lunch boxes) and accessories. Here's that picture I promised you, of the things I bought at Sanrio and my bento boxes.

That would be a set of 4 nesting Cinnamoroll containers and a little set of Cinnamoroll picks (to use with the containers... for picking food).

From Funabashi, we went to Kinshicho (again) and actually bought some fruits and veggies from one of the grocery stores we had passed before. It was surprisingly cheap (for Japan)! So it's too bad Kinshicho is so far away from us or we'd go there more often to buy our fruits. It was an absolute pain (quite literally) to carry them all the way home, but that's what we get for buying all the heavy fruits.

Why all the fruit? To bring with us on a mini picnic at PaniSuta today! I know you're all dying to know what PaniSuta is (I'll give you a clue - it has to do with *pnish*), and I'd be more than happy to tell you, but I am dead tired after our busy day today, so I'll let you know how the picnic went in my next post. Two is enough for one day, I think. So look forward to it soon!

Real Tokyo

Well, I guess somehow it's been 5 days since my last update. The days really do go by so fast. This past week, we took advantage of our rail pass (which lets us ride any JR line train for free for 7 days) and visited a whole bunch of 100 yen shops (which are essentially the Japanese equivalent of dollar stores, only things are much better quality). Tuesday, we went to a 7 floor one in Funabashi, which is outside of Tokyo kinda in the middle of nowhere. I think we ended up spending close to 4 hours there.

And there it is! After spending the afternoon there, we took the train back to Tokyo (as that's where the Sobu Rapid Line stopped) and figured we might as well see what the actual capital of Japan had to offer. I assumed it would be nothing but a bunch of big skyscrapers and office buildings, but I was wrong!

But not entirely! There were plenty of skycrapers to be seen (along with that guy down there who was stretching. Cinnamon wanted me to include him in the picture).

We started walking in some arbitrary direction when we passed a map and noticed the Imperial Palace wasn't too far away. So we started walking that way and came across this neat little park with all these fountains.

Here I am standing in front of them, looking like an idiot. (In case you were wondering, I was trying to hide my tacky plastic bag full of dollar-priced merchandise behind me).

Just look at those big cheesy smiles! The next few pictures were taken from the grounds around the Imperial Palace (since it was late when we got there and I'm pretty sure they don't allow just anyone to walk on up there). It seemed like a really big place, and we only saw two sides of it. So here's what we saw:

At this point, as I was taking this picture, this old Japanese guy (who I'd say was probably in his 60s or 70s) came up and started talking to Cinnamon, asking her where she was from and stuff. So we ended up talking to him for close to half an hour, I'd say. Clearly, he was just using us to practice his English, but he was doing a pretty good job. We were impressed. When we told him we had been in the country since June 5th, he assumed that we must be wealthy millionaires, seeing as how Japan is such an expensive country. Hahaha, I wish!

We were trying to get a picture of the two of us with the palace grounds in the background. Can you tell it was a little windy that evening?

Lastly, Tokyo Tower! This was actually the closest we have been to it, even though the place where we're staying is within a few miles of it. Maybe one day we'll actually get to see it up close. But for now, this will have to do.

After that, we headed back to the station to go find somewhere to eat. And since I still have quite a few pictures from that night, I'll stick them in my next post so this one doesn't get too long.