Let the Journey Begin

The day after our little excursion to the garden was my birthday! So Cinnamon and I headed to Ikebukuro and went to Namco Namjatown. It's like a little theme park inside Sunshine City, run by the video game developer Namco. There are some games you can play... which we declined, since we couldn't figure out what they were or how to play them. The place was not foreigner-friendly at all - almost no English anywhere.

But that's okay, because we didn't come for the games - we came for the food! In addition to the games, Namjatown has 3 special food "stadiums": Gyoza Stadium, Ice Cream City and Dessert Land - all dedicated to providing you with various incarnations of their namesakes. So of course we had to sample something from each place! We had delicious gyoza, gelato (cookies 'n cream for me, green tea for Cinnamon) and some cute little desserts that I forget the name of.

This was Cinnamon's banana thing. It was like a banana encased in mousse and wrapped in a crepe. It looks tiny, but was very filling.

And this was mine - chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. Very rich and very filling for something that was probably the size of a large muffin.

After playing around in the house of mirrors for a little while, we decided to call it a day and headed home.
The next day, neither of us were feeling 100%, so we didn't do much but go to Shinagawa to get our Rail Passes and made a mad dash to Shinjuku to try for a demachi. (It was a semi-success). On Tuesday, we intended to get up bright and early to head to Kyoto, but we both ended up sleeping in after our day of blah-ness. After packing our bags and saying "sayonara" to our happy little Tokyo room, we headed to Shinagawa and grabbed a shinkansen to Kyoto~

Three hours later, we were there. Our first night was uneventful. We checked into our (very, very nice) hostel, waited an hour for the sudden rain shower to end, then got a bite to eat before returning. Here are a couple random shots from our room.

This is Cinnamon and her Crunky. It's chocolate with... malt puffs or something. She said it could've been better. Over her shoulder, you can see the lovely flat panel TV we had in our room. It wasn't very big, but it looked brand new. The hostel had just been remodeled in April, so I suspect it was.

I uploaded this horrible shot of me (you can thank Cinnamon for that) so you could see the other side of our room. We had bunk beds and even a little couch! Not bad for something like $30 a night.

After some rest and a strange buffet breakfast, we made our way out to explore the city. Kyoto is a city that could benefit from some more trains. The main means of getting around is by bus and the train stations are generally not very close to any of the main tourist attractions. So we just sort of wandered.

I honestly thought this place was a church when I passed the entrance, but it turned out to be a Chinese restaurant. Very strange.

This is what's across the river from the restaurant - Cinnamon! And that, my friends, is the lovely Kamo River. I'm sure you're impressed by the sheer size of it, yes?

This picture was taken from one of the bridges crossing the river, looking north. As you can see, there are mountains there! Kind of hazy mountains, but still pretty.

We eventually wandered our way to the south end of Gion and walked down a lot of little shopping streets full of all kinds of things - from traditional items like fans and yukata to trendy clothing, shoes, and about 3 First Kitchen restaurants. When we finally emerged from the maze of covered streets, we came upon this:

It is a giant "hoko" float that's used in the Gion Matsuri. (Matsuri being a festival, and the Gion Matsuri being one of the 3 biggest festivals in Japan). We didn't quite know what was going on at the time, though we were vaguely aware that we had landed in Kyoto during the Matsuri period. There were a ton of people crowding the sidewalk, trying to get pictures of this thing. And there are actually close to 30 of them, if memory serves me right.

A little later on, some of the hoko had guys playing music on them (flutes and some sort of chimes, I think). I'm pretty sure they only ever played one song, so it got pretty repetitive.

For... no reason I could discern, there was some little procession of the Shinsengumi. It was really hard to get this picture, since the guys were always walking and the people on the sidewalk were just inching along, not allowing me to get ahead of them.

We ended up walking down a street where all these little food vendors were setting up,  so we got some shaved ice! Cinnamon got strawberry and I got ramune and they were delicious - and very refreshing, since it was so hot.

After finishing those off, we decided to head back to the hostel to rest for a bit, since we wanted to go out later and check out the real matsuri activities, since they seemed to just be getting set up. I'll post more about that next time, since there are quite a few pictures involved. Stay tuned!

Tourists, Tourists Everywhere

I suppose I've been slacking off here, huh? And I'm sure you've all been wondering what exciting things we've been up to. Well wonder no longer!
 
Friday, we headed to Roppongi, which is known for being a district with a lot of clubs and is somewhat of a red light area. But we went during the day to the fancy, upscale Roppongi Hills complex, so we stayed out of trouble.

This is the inside of the building - which is laid out in a very strange, confusing manner. Still pretty, though.

Outside the building, there was this really neat walkway that had a mist it sprayed down, which was nice because it was super hot that day (like in the low 90s when it had just been in the low 80s the day before). Also, on the right side of the walkway is a wall of cascading water. It looked really cool.

...So we took our picture in front of it. (We thought you were probably all sick of us making the same cheesy smiling faces in every picture, so we changed it up). Looking good, right?

This is Maman - a gigantic spider sculpture just on the other side of that walkway. Its purpose... I don't really know. Looks kind of creepy.

To the right of Maman is the 54-story Mori Tower. That's the building the shopping center is in, and it also houses the Mori Museum, a bunch of offices, and an observatory up top. ...But we went to none of those things, because they are expensive.

Roppongi is very close to Tokyo Tower, so we got some good shots of it from where we were. As you can see from the size of the skyscrapers around it, it's really tall (even taller than the Eiffel Tower).

Between the Hollywood Plaza/Metro Hat building and TV Asahi's headquarters lies the Mohri Garden. I assure you hat patch of grass on the right is not actually a golf course.

And here is Cinnamon on the path in the Mohri Garden. It was very pretty there, but also pretty small. And it was getting later in the evening, so it was starting to get too dark to go without using my camera's flash.

Saturday, we went to Shinjuku because Cinnamon wanted to buy some books, so we picked those up from the 8 floor Kinokuniya bookstore and... started walking. We walked and walked and walked, through Sendagaya and Yotsuya, through the Meiji Jingu-mae Park where we saw a race going on (though Cinnamon wasn't wearing her running shoes), and a ton of high school baseball players. Also, we saw this:

How can "casual frozen foods" be part of the "hot menu"? You can get all sorts of things from this vending machine though - french fries, yaki-onigiri, yakisoba - even hot dogs! ...Needless to say, we didn't try it out. Instead, we went to a nearby vending machine and got ice cream~

Then we continued our walk through Aoyama, past Omotesando Hills and eventually to Shibuya. (And if it's any indication of how much we walked that day, from Aoyama to Shibuya alone is 3km).

Sunday, we didn't do a whole lot. We walked to Shibuya from where we're staying (saving a total of 150 yen in train fare!) and it turns out it only takes us about an hour and a half. ...But somehow, I don't see us walking that far very often. Also, we had some more crepes from a different vendor this time! We're both sorely going to miss crepes when we get back home.

Monday, we wandered more around Ikebukuro, since we had always just gone to the Sunshine City area. Turns out there's not a whole lot else that interests us there, but we did find another Sanrio store to go into!

Tuesday, we went to Asakusa and the Sensoji Temple there. I've never seen so many foreign tourists in one place in Japan than there were on Nakamise Dori (the street full of shops leading up to the temple)! They nearly outnumbered the Japanese people! But I know you guys are most interested in the pictures, so here they are~

Kaminarimon Gate (that's the Thunder God) marks the beginning of Nakamise Dori. As you can see, it's huge (even bigger than Gigantor!)

Here's a closeup of the statue to the left of the gate. His eyes look like they're glowing, don't they?

And here's Mr. Thunder God on the right. I think they're both kinda scary, actually.

At the end of the street, on the left is this huge, 5-story pagoda. But you're not allowed into it. As you can see, it's also huge, and was very difficult for me to get a good picture of the whole building.

But the main attraction, right in front of you, is the Sensoji Temple.

Before you get to that, you pass through another big torii gate, and on the backside of it are these giant waraji sandals. (If you're wondering what they're for, there's an interesting article on it here.) William, we think this one's about your size. What do you think?

We went into the temple and paid 100 yen to get our fortunes from this little can of sticks. You shake it up and out pours a stick with a number on it. You match the number on the stick to the corresponding one on a row of little drawers, and inside is a paper with your fortune on it. Cinnamon got "bad fortune" and I got "regular fortune." Guess there's no good luck for us in the near future!

Outside of the temple there were some pretty gardens, like this one with the little waterfall.

On the other side, there were koi! Fascinating, right? After wandering around the temple grounds for a while, we headed back up the other side of Nakamise Dori, poking around at all the traditional gifts and goods before leaving the area.

Aside from the temple, there's not much around Asakusa, so we ended up back in Ikebukuro, where we had dinner. Cinnamon wanted to kidnap her waiter because he spoke very good English. Alas, she did not, because that would've made for an interesting story!  And then we got more crepes from a place called "Crazy Crepes." We like the places in Harajuku best, because the crepes are bigger, so you get more for your money. The one in Shibuya was good, but you didn't get a whole lot of fillings.

Yesterday, we spend the day bumming around in the Aoyama/Omotesando/Harajuku area, checking out places we hadn't gone to yet. A lot of the time, when we get there, it's late and most of the stores are closed, since just about every store in Tokyo seems to close at 8pm. And when they want you to get out, all the stores play what I call "the get out music" - Auld Lang Syne. At first, we just thought they didn't realize that's a seasonal song, but eventually we figured it out.

No idea what we're doing today. I guess we'll cross that bridge when Cinnamon wakes up from her nap. ...Which is apparently right now (I have good timing~) Until then~!

Old Town

Time for another update from Japanland. (Are you getting sick of them yet?) Admittedly, we haven't been doing much, just visiting random areas of the city and doing a ton of walking. My poor feet still aren't happy about that, so I keep looking to see if there are any good, comfy shoes in my size that I can buy to replace the ones I brought which are strangely all much less comfortable to wear in Japan than they were back home. No luck yet, unfortunately.

But onto more important things (like pictures), yesterday we visited Ueno, which is in the northeastern part of Tokyo, and one of the older districts. Since we never really have a plan when we get to these places, we consulted a map across from the train station and decided to head into the park which was just down the street.

It's a very big park with all kinds of things inside it, making it feel less like a park-park and more like some sort of amusement park,

This museum is in the park, as well as a music hall, a Western Art museum, a zoo, an art college, an amusement park, a pagoda, and a few temples. There are probably some other things I'm forgetting. But I guess Monday isn't a very big day for museums because they were all closed. It's just as well, since we didn't actually want to go into any of them anyway.

I'm really not sure what this little shrine was, since there was no one around it at all. If you make a 90 degree turn to the left from where this one was, there's a bigger shrine that people were constantly going in and out of, so I guess this one wasn't such a big deal.

 

I mean, I don't know why, since this one had a pot with a Triforce on it! Cinnamon noticed that right off the bat... so she took a picture of it.
 

Both of the shrines were in the middle of this big pond which is actually 3 ponds. It was a very pretty area, and as you can see, you could even rent a boat to go out on the water. But of course, that costs money, so we didn't do it.

Just a random shot of some fish in one of the ponds. Don't know what kind they were, but some of them were pretty big! Also, there were a few little turtles in the water too.

In case you guys were skeptical, we took a picture together just to assure you we are indeed both still alive and haven't killed each other yet. Also, we're super stylish in our sunglasses!

After all that walking, I was getting thirsty, so I coughed up 130 yen for what promised to be delicious tea (it said it was delicious in, like 3 places on the bottle). But oh man was it the worst tea I had ever drunk! For reasons I can't even comprehend, it tasted like it was made in a dirty coffee pot. I seriously expected it to have coffee grounds or something in it. Needless to say, I just couldn't bring myself to drink the whole thing and I won't be buying it again. Yuck.
 

As we walked the perimeter of the ponds, the entire path was lined with beautiful, flowering hydrangeas on one side. It's still kind of hard to see in this picture, but there were tons and tons of flowers.
 

Here's a closeup shot of one of the clusters (my specialty!). I'm surprised it came out so clearly, to be honest. The wind was certainly not making it easy for me to photograph them.

After leaving the pond area, we found some swings, so Cinnamon had to test them out. They were a little low for her, hahaha.
 

After leaving the park, we headed over to Ameyoko, which is kind of the "bargain basement" alley of Ueno, formerly Tokyo's black market after WWII. There, we found everything from clothing and shoes to golf equipment, pachinko parlors and bars, and a ton of places hawking fresh fruit and fish of questionable freshness. (Sorry, I don't trust fish that's been sitting in an open air market all day, no matter how loudly you proclaim it's on sale.)
 

Since we couldn't think of anything else to do in Ueno, we hopped back on the train and went to Ikebukuro for food, where we ate ate a nice little place called Miami Garden. Cinnamon had a tomato, basil and mozzarella pizza (which was tasty), and I had spinach and bacon spaghetti in cream sauce. That was... interesting, on account of the bacon seemed like it was barely cooked (it was still pink). You can argue that it's not Japanese food, but it's definitely the Japanese take on Italian - not something you can get in the US, that's for sure.

Just for Greg, I found this sign while we were walking back to the station after dinner. We didn't actually go to the cat cafe, but that's the first sign I've seen for one. (In case you were wondering, the Sunkus is a convenience store).

Today consisted of walking around Shinjuku and then going the wrong way to Yoyogi and ending up in Nishi-Waseda. But we got to take the new Fukutoushin train line that had just started operating on the 14th. The stations were very clean and definitely felt brand new. After walking around in Shibuya for about the 5th time, we came back home and watched an episode of Full House in Japanese. Good times.

I was able to upload one of the Kitty Guys videos to Youtube, so if you want to see some goofy dancing to a very catchy song, go ahead and check it out!

Sunshine City

Good news, everyone! Cinnamon and I are, in fact, NOT dead! We did, however, feel that earthquake this morning. I woke up because my bed was shaking, and Cinnamon was whispering "Hey Persimmon, can you feel that?" I thought she was either kicking or shaking my bed, so I told her yes, I could feel it, and cut it out. When she told me it wasn't her, we just assumed it was an earthquake. It wasn't very strong where we are, though. Apart from the bed shaking and a few items on our desk, nothing major happened, so no need to fear! But now we can say we've been in an earthquake.

Early Tuesday morning, Cinnamon awoke to the peculiar feeling that something in the room was moving, Upon looking around, she discovered she was right! Somehow, this little guy had snuck in while we had our window open, so Cinnamon kindly helped him back outside. We've also seen a pretty big gecko on the window at night, but thankfully he stays outside.

But now back to our daily adventures. Wednesday, we headed out to Ikebukuro on the north side of Tokyo to hit up Sunshine City, a complex of several buildings full of shopping and restaurants and offices and a mini theme park called Namco Namja Town (which - you guessed it - was created by the video game design company Namco). But we were mostly in it for the shopping, of which there was plenty.

That's outside the second level of the main building. I think it's called the Alta building? And the building behind it, the World Import Mart building had some sort of Tokyo Fair thing going on, but it looked like a convention type of thing, so we didn't check it out.

Across from the sign and looking out toward the road is a big Animate building and a K-books. (Both of those stores sell manga, anime DVDs and CDs and related goods). Also, somewhere over to the left of the Animate is the Amlux Toyota Auto Salon, where you can check out all the newest Japanese Toyota models. ...But Cinnamon didn't want to go there, so we didn't. Also, I don't have any pictures of it, sorry.

So after snapping a few pictures outside here, we headed on up the stairs to the 3rd floor of the Sunshine City building to do some more shopping. There were a lot of clothing stores - some pretty pricey - a lot of cheap shoes, though sadly none for me, (would you believe my feet are size LL in Japan? That's how they size shoes - S, M, L, LL), and also quite a few hats. But we didn't find anything we liked, so we didn't get anything.

I don't know, this is some sort of park next to the building. It was also photographed from the same place all the other pictures were.

Next to this building there's what's called "Sunshine 60", a skyscraper with a bunch of offices in it, but on the top few floors there are restaurants and an observatory. We were going to check out the observatory, but it cost like 640 yen (about $6) and we're cheap, so we didn't go. Maybe some other time.

After our exhaustive shopping trip, we decided to take our chances with a sit down restaurant (as opposed to fast food), so we chose - that's right - the only Mexican place in the building! Hahaha, it was really good, though! I swear one day we'll get around to actually eating Japanese food.. But so much of it is... kinda weird. And they put fried eggs on everything. You find fried eggs on pasta, on pizza, on hamburgers, and on their "hamburg steaks" (which are pretty much like hamburgers without the bun, usually dressed up with some sort of sauce or onions and various other veggies and whatnot).

But we'll be back to Sunshine City at a later date, because I'm pretty sure I'll be spending my birthday at Namja Town. They have a "Desert Stadium", a "Gyoza Stadium" and an "Ice Cream Stadium", so we will definitely be stuffing our faces full of delicious goodies~

On our way back home that night, we finally got to see some of the bright lights of Tokyo! However, most of our trip was spent on the train, so we didn't see too much and I didn't get any pictures. Next time, though!
Thursday was rainy, so we didn't go out except to make a trip to the store for dinner.

Yesterday, we decided to go see where Cinnamon will have to meet for her race on Sunday, so we headed out to the middle of nowhere. Okay, so really it was just about 25 minutes outside of Tokyo in Shimomaruko. It definitely had a small town feel to it that Cinnamon said reminded her of Florida. But we went the wrong way and didn't find the place, and since it wasn't on the train station map, we decided to just head back.

So we stopped off at Den-en Chofu!

It had a very upscale feel to it, with lots of nice, big houses, but not much in the way of shopping.

But it did have this place - the Sanrio Strawberry House! The building was actually shaped like a big strawberry! So we went inside, but they didn't have as much stuff as the Sanrio shop in Ginza. I figured a giant strawberry could fit a lot more things in it, but I was sadly mistaken. Still made for an interesting experience.

After that, we did a little shopping in Meguro where Cinnamon bought a few t-shirts at the Uniqlo before we headed home for the evening.

Today, in a few hours we're going to Tennouzu Isle to see our very first *pnish* show and I am beyond excited. (*pnish* is a 4-man theatre group who is best known for their combination of acting, comedy and dance skills). This particular play is called Samurai Mode, and I don't know too much of what it's about, but I know there's swordfighting. It promises to be a fun evening~