All Over Tokyo on a Sunday

 Japan, Photos, Travel  Comments Off on All Over Tokyo on a Sunday
Dec 182011
 

My main plan today was to go to Harajuku to see some cool outfits, go to Ginza to see the pedestrian mall and maybe shop a little, and do other stuff as it came up. I also needed to go to Ikebukuro to get some presents at the traditional arts center there.

A shot outside of JR Shinjuku– another beautiful day! (Nothing to do about the pole, though.)
Heading to JR Shinjuku, South Side

I started off in Harajuku. I headed down the main street, turned right, and headed to Kiddy Land, which had great souvenirs/toys last time.
Harajuku Kiddy Land

This time, it wasn’t as exciting. For starters, they moved the store to a new location with less room in it, and a lot of the funkier stuff has been replaced by theme goods, like Hello Kitty, Peanuts, etc. That’s all stuff I can get in the US for my nephew and my godkids.

I liked the old store better. It had more “funky” stuff and a cooler vibe.

Meiji Jingu Shrine

Then I headed towards Meiji Jingu shrine, and took some photos on the way.

Streets near Kiddy Land:
Harajuku Back Streets

The MoMA (NY) Design Store in Harajuku?
MoMA, Harajuku

Looking back at the main street of Harajuku as I head towards the station and the shrine/park:
Harajuku Main Street

I only saw one bunch of people really dressed up, and they were on their way out. Too slow to get a photo.

I guess I missed it? I dunno.

I got to the shrine, and walked and walked and walked. It was difficult to take good pictures, because the lighting was bad.

Here’s the entry with the IXY, which really struggled with the conditions:
Meiji Jinguu Shrine, Entrance.

My giant 60D did a little better, but not much, to be honest:
Meiji Jinguu Entrance.

A lantern I saw on the path:
Meiji Jinguu Lamp.

The shrine grounds are really pretty, but lots of shade means it’s hard on photographers:
Meiji Jinguu Gardens.

I thought this sign was interesting. The English takeaway? No smoking. But in Japanese, it also says no eating and drinking while walking:
Meiji Jinguu. No Smoking Sign.

This area was a collection of donated Japanese and French wines to dedicate the shrine with:
Meiji Jinguu, Consecrated Wines of France and Japan.

Sake:
Meiji Jinguu, Sake Barrels.

Meiji Jinguu, Sake Barrels.

Barrels of wine:
IMG_1915

Moving on to the inner garden grounds:
Meiji Jinguu Gardens.

See the red umbrella? That’s a wedding party:
Meiji Jinguu Shrine, Entrance to Naien

Meiji Jinguu Shrine, Entrance to Naien

I saw a couple of Americans in Santa suits. WHYYYY? Of course they kept getting in the way of my photos. No, I’m not showing them. They weren’t that good, anyway.

While I was snapping away, a wedding procession came through, then came back. That was pretty cool. I tried to take a video of it with my 60D, but it kept not wanting to shoot video. It was very grumpy about the whole thing. I was probably pressing the wrong button or something.

Meiji Jinguu Shrine Naien.

A few shots of the inner garden and the honden:
Meiji Jinguu Shrine Naien. Detail.

Meiji Jinguu Shrine Naien. Honden.

Meiji Jinguu Shrine Naien. Door.

After that, a group of girls and a group of guys asked me to take their pictures. I guess they figured that I knew what I was doing.

Then I headed out.

One last shot of Harajuku, near JR Harajuku:
Heading to JR Harajuku.

I went back to the room to recharge for a bit and have lunch.

Road Closed

Refreshed, I went to Ginza. Since it was Sunday, the main road was closed to traffic, and the main street turned a giant pedestrian plaza. It was like a giant outdoor shopping mall.

The buildings looked great as sun was setting.

Ginza Pedestrian Sunday

Ginza Pedestrian Sunday

Ginza Pedestrian Sunday

Ginza Stores

I headed to Itoya, one of my favorite stores on the planet.

Itoya-- My Favorite Stationery Store

People were jammed in tight there. I shopped a bit, and as I was heading out, I stopped by the pens. I found a beauty. Pilot made a special edition pen for earthquake relief for Tohoku. There was one red one left, and I bought it. It’s a gorgeous pen, and hopefully someone will benefit from my impulse buy.

I also bought some decorative paper for my sister, who loves the stuff.

Then I headed back out, and took a few photos.

Ginza Pedestrian Sunday

Ginza Pedestrian Sunday

Ginza Pedestrian Sunday

Ginza Pedestrian Sunday

Ginza Pedestrian Sunday

Ginza Pedestrian Sunday

At 5 there was an announcement, “We’re going to open the road to traffic now. Move it.”

Pedestrian heaven quickly became pedestrian hell, as everyone jammed back on to the sidewalks.

One last shot of a random Ginza Christmas tree:
Ginza Pedestrian Sunday-- Christmas Tree

I made my way to the subway, then headed to the hotel to drop off my Itoya purchases, and then turned around and went to Ikebukuro.

The Best of Japan in One Place

The reason for my trip to Ikebukuro was to pick up some souvenirs at the Japan Traditional Crafts Center. Some of the best craft work in Japan is for sale there, all in one store in Ikebukuro.

Finding it was slightly tricky, but I found it. They had a really good selection. If, like me, you want to buy a good handmade calligraphy brush, they have them from all over Japan.

The downside is that you won’t forge a relationship with the people who made it, like I did in Anjo and in Toyohashi. You also won’t get a discount for being nice and speaking Japanese. This is Tokyo, not Aichi Prefecture.

But you can find all kinds of stuff here. I found some nice brushes, one for my calligraphy teacher back home, one for a classmate of mine, one for me, and a nice print for my girlfriend back home.

On the way to the station, I found another Krispy Kreme.

Of course I bought a few doughnuts! I need the carbs… for energy! I still have way too many Krispy Kreme coupons. Every time I use one, they give me two back. I will never be able to get rid of them, and have fallen squarely into their trap!

I headed back to the hotel again to drop off my souvenirs, and decided to go to Roppongi for dinner.

Christmas in Roppongi

I went to Roppongi Hills, because the food there is good. There was also a Christmas tree-like decoration in front:

Christmas Tree at Roppongi Hills

Christmas Tree at Roppongi Hills

Christmas Tree at Roppongi Hills

I found a good sounding teppanyaki place, until I checked their menu. The prices were way too high for my budget.

So I went to the noodle shop across the hall, called Masudaya, and got great chicken soba for a third of the price.

I still kind of suck at slurping my noodles like a local, but who cares? It’s delicious!

I wanted to go to Cold Stone, because I was craving something cold and sweet after all those hot noodles, but it was closed by 9. Boo.

On the way back to the station, I stopped by Aoyama Book Center for a book for my brother in law. I may have found something there, but I’ll have to double-check with my sis to make sure it’s in his strike zone.

I saw this neat Roppongi sign made out of lights. Kind of looks like the signs on Bourbon Street in New Orleans:
Roppongi Sign

One last gratuitous photo of a subway poster while waiting for a train, full of things you shouldn’t do on the platform:
Subway Warning Poster

After all of that, I headed back to Shinjuku and passed out.

Tonkatsu, Point Cards, and Burning Eyes

 Food, Japan, Travel  Comments Off on Tonkatsu, Point Cards, and Burning Eyes
Sep 272011
 

This was my first full day in Tokyo. I started with the hotel buffet for breakfast. 1,200 yen for all you can eat, either Western or Japanese style.

Some of the Western stuff is a little odd, but it’s good enough for me. Plenty of yogurt, and a decent strawberry sauce. Other stuff was available, of course: poached eggs, “baking bread,” whatever that is, Japanese-style bacon and sausages that don’t taste like either bacon or sausages, and some good croissants and OJ.

The most important points here are that: I didn’t have to make it, and it was right there in the hotel, so I didn’t have to find a place to eat breakfast.

It’s the most important meal of the day, you know.

Point Cards

Belly filled, I headed off to Kinokuniya in Shinjuku to get my JLPT application. It wasn’t too difficult. Just ask at one of the desks and you can get an application.

I also picked up a Kinokuniya point card.

That’s one thing you should definitely do while in Japan– pick up point cards whenever you get a chance. They’re very handy. You get points for every purchase, and then you can cash them in like money. A lot of times, though, they expire at the end of the month, so be careful. Better to use them as soon as you can, especially if you’re just on a short-term visit.

You may need an address and phone number for the point card. If you decide to specify one, well, I leave that up to you.

Ginza

Application in hand, I headed off to Ginza to do some shopping. First I stopped off at Itoya, which is my favorite stationery store. It’s 8-9 stories full of interesting stuff to buy.

If they don’t have it, you don’t need it.

I was looking for the a calendar similar to the kind I picked up 4 years ago, which is a standard yearly calendar on nice paper with a traditional Japanese woodblock print on it. But after combing through the store and the annex, I had no luck. I spent an hour wandering around, because Itoya is a great place to just wander around and look.

I managed to find double-sided sticky tape. I’ll need that for my JLPT application. (To attach the photo.)

It was soon time for lunch.

Rengatei

In the US, I usually watch a show called “Tokyo Eye” that comes on TV-Japan on Saturdays, and they did a show on a Ginza eatery called Rengatei, which is famous for being either one of the first, or the first place to serve tonkatsu in Japan. (Sorry, I can’t remember which.) It’s been in business since the 1890s, if I remember correctly. I’ve been dying to try their tonkatsu, and thanks to remembering to star the place on Google Maps, today was my chance.

Their tonkatsu comes with a pile of thinly sliced cabbage, and I ordered some rice and lemonade to go with it. The sauce they have is a bit thinner than the usual tonkatsu sauce. I poured it on the side, and dipped the katsu in it, as well as the cabbage.

It was a great tonkatsu. I’ve never had anything that light and crispy. The regular is 1,300 yen, and the large is 2,000 yen.

And it’s worth it.

Kyukyodo

After that, I went to Kyukyodo, because I still hadn’t managed to find those calendars. Kyukyodo is a very nice stationery store, but it can get pretty expensive. The 3rd floor still has a nice gallery full of calligraphic art. This time there was a display of calligraphy carved into wood. There were some really interesting pieces there. I spent some time talking to the dotients in my broken Japanese.

On the second floor, they had some nice seal carving knives, and some great-looking calligraphy books, but nobody was interested in helping me, and I wasn’t interested in carrying them all over Japan, so I decided it was probably for the best.

I’ll get that stuff in Nagoya.

Marunouchi & Maruzen

I got on the subway and rode to Tokyo Station to go to Maruzen. Maruzen’s always a pain in the butt for me to find. I spent a good 10-15 minutes lost around there looking for it. I did the same thing four years ago, too.

Google Maps wasn’t much help, because once I was underground, there was no GPS signal, and one building is a lot like another. I did find it eventually. I didn’t buy anything, though. Again, the issue was the whole “Carrying books all over Japan” thing.

I inquired about the BJT, or Business Japanese Test, because I was thinking about taking it as a backup to the JLPT, but nobody there had ever heard of it, and didn’t know where to get the forms.

I suppose I can ask at Yamasa when I get there.

After that, I headed back, since my eyes were starting to hurt, and it was getting late.

As the evening went on, my eyes were really starting to hurt. I stopped by the drug store kiosk in JR Shinjuku and bought some Visine, and tried it when I got home.

Eyes On Fire

Using Visine was a big mistake. It made my eyes burn even worse.

My eyes have been hurting ever since I got off the plane, and they’ve only been getting worse. So I decided to use Skype to call my insurance company’s overseas “OMGHELP” number. They were very helpful. They told me to go to any doctor I wanted to, and they would pay the claim when I got back, so long as I filed the right paperwork, and I had a year to file the claim.

Awesome.

They even told me the papers to get from the doctor, and not to worry if the papers were all in Japanese.

If you’re ever in that kind of a bind, make sure you get the paperwork taken care of.

I spent a couple of hours trying to find one of the “recommended doctors” on their website, but it was kind of a pain in the butt. I never found any of them in Google Maps. I’ll probably just ask at the front desk in the morning.

So I Was Shopping in Ginza Today…

 Japan, Photos, Travel  Comments Off on So I Was Shopping in Ginza Today…
Nov 092007
 

I’m going to use my new favorite phrase now.

So I was shopping in Ginza today…

… yeah, that’s my new favorite phrase.

Some massive stores in Ginza (with matching prices, I’m sure!)

Seibu department store:

Ginza Wandering

Anyway, I was shopping in Ginza today, looking for two stationery stores mentioned in Time Out Tokyo. But first, I hit the Sony Building to look at their shiny toys.

Sony Building, Ginza

I saw a 70″ 1080p (not i) HDTV that’s coming out soon. Drool.

They also had some great artist-designed laptops, but not only weren’t they for sale, but they had chiclet-style keys, which aren’t my favorite. I also saw those same kinds of keys on the new iBook at the Apple Store, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Sony building isn’t as big as you’d think. But the way it’s laid out is interesting. You start on the first floor, look at stuff, climb 3-4 steps, look at more stuff, and so on… until you hit the 6th floor, where you can buy stuff. There really isn’t anything earth-shattering here, just a lot of Sony stuff. Some of it is neat, most of it I’ve already seen at Bic and Yodobashi. The 70″ Flat panel 1080p HDTV was nice. Very very nice. Probably costs well over $20k, though.

Kyukyodo

Ginza Wandering--Kyukyodo

Then I got my bearings again, and went to Kyukyodo, a very nice stationery store. I looked around a bit, then saw an interesting calligraphy exhibit on the 3rd and 4th floors, and moved on. It’s a nice store, with some really good-looking calligraphy tools, but if you really want stationery, head a few blocks down Ginza Dori to Itoya.

Paper Paradise

Itoya. It’s like heaven for those of us who love pens, paper, paint, brushes, and all of that good stuff. I found all kinds of neat things there. I found brushes for my brother-in-law, and I also found brush markers for myself (don’t worry Bill, I got you a few as well.) They’re black ink markers, but they have a synthetic brush tip. Not felt. It’s an actual brush. Very cool. I got my mom some fine paper and envelopes, and I bought myself a pretty printed calendar and some flat bar paperweights for calligraphy.

If I had time, I would have spent all day there. They have 3 different buildings. They even have a scrap-booking center, if you’re into that. (My sister is.) The main building has 8 floors and a basement full of goodies. Just look for the big red paperclip next to Matsuya department store.

Just a ways back towards the station and across the street is the Apple Store on Ginza Dori. It’s nice. It’s an Apple Store. I checked it out, but it didn’t really do much for me. Really, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all. It’s not like they have anything special there you can’t get at the mall, you know?

Look, it’s LV! So it’s Ginza!

Ginza Wandering

Ginza is nice, but it’s mostly overpriced. Itoya was one of the more reasonable places I found there. Most of the other stuff is boutique stuff with names of people I couldn’t care less about.

But then those who know me, know that I’m not one to worry about names as much as I worry about pockets. You can’t have enough pockets!

Maruzen

After that, it was time to move on to Marunouchi, and a visit to Maruzen, the other wonderful bookstore in Tokyo. After a short ride on the Marunouchi line, followed by lots of wandering underground, and offers of help from nice people, I found exit B-4, and found the way to Maruzen. (I wound up closer to Tokyo station than to Otemachi station, though.)

So Maruzen. Ahh… so many nice Japanese books. I did find a really nice JP-> JP dictionary that was mentioned on another site here:

http://tinyurl.com/2cx9x2

I thought I was looking in the right area, but in the end I had to cave in and ask for help.

I also raided their manga section. Manga is a great way to learn Japanese while being entertained at the same time. The downside is that it’s pricey outside of Japan. $3 for manga here, compared to $9-$15 in the U.S. I’d buy more from Amazon.co.jp, but the shipping is too painful.

So I’m stocking up here.

The downside– it’s all heavy.

Carrying it all around drained me. I was starving, so I stopped at a cafe underneath Maruzen, grabbed a bite, then hit the Marunouchi line back to Shinjuku. Then I took time to grab a quick shower and rest a little.

Harajuku, Kiddy Land, and Roppongi

Tomorrow and Sunday are supposed to be rainy, so one priority tonight is to find an umbrella that does not suck. Most of the umbrellas you can get here fail utterly to cover my American bigness. I’m not fat, I’m just tall with broad shoulders and a barrel chest. (Wait, am I fat???) I’ll put it this way– I’m not fat for an American. In the U.S., I use a golf umbrella, and that works okay.

After a little rest and recovery, it was off to Harajuku to go to Kiddyland, a 5- story toy store. But it’s not the kind of toy store you’d expect. They have some cool stuff, and some weird stuff. Not all of it is for kids, either. I found some presents there. Prowling all the various levels was fun. The 4-foot high stuffed Hello Kitty was a little creepy, but Kitty-chan is popular here.

One thing you’ll notice pretty quickly is that most stores in Japan are multi-floor, so there will be a cashier on each floor to take all of your purchases to. I suppose it’s not really different from US department stores, really. Stores are taller in the big cities in Japan because it’s cheaper to build “up” than “out,” unlike most of the US.

I guess because I live in a more suburban area in the U.S., I’m not used to going to stores with a lot of floors. I’m more used to 20,000-50,000 square foot one-story monster stores with just one checkout area.

I set off for Roppongi to see Tokyo Midtown and have dinner there. Tokyo Midtown is a huge building with lots of expensive stores and some expensive and some kind-of-reasonably-priced restaurants. I had dinner there, because I heard there were a lot of good restaurants there. And they do exist. It’s just that some close at 9 p.m., some close at 11 p.m., and some close at midnight. It’s a little confusing. Most of the carry-out restaurants close at 9 p.m., so if you remember that, you’re one step ahead of the game.

I found a nice little restaurant and had some fried cheese wontons, followed by some squid tempura (which was incredible: so soft, and not chewy), and some small slices of roast duck with grilled spring onion. With 2 ginger ales, that wound up costing 3,300 yen.

Ouch.

But it was so good.

A tip– if you go to a restaurant and can’t make heads or tails out of the menu, ask if they have an English menu. A lot of restaurants do.

Eigo no menyuu ga arimasu ka?” It’s a very handy phrase to know.

Then I made a blunder. I got Tokyo Midtown’s tower confused with Tokyo Skyview, which is also in Roppongi. Midtown does NOT have an observation deck available to the public, or so the sign told me.

Shinjuku at Night

It was almost 10, so I caught a train back to Shinjuku, and after consulting the 4 squids trying to hump each other, also known as the map of the Tokyo subway and train lines, I figured out which tentacle to ride back.  I’ve consulted many versions of this map, and nobody seems to be able to make it not look confusing.

Just go with it.

The train ride back was crowded. Even at 10 p.m., the trains are packed. Get used to it. I recommend wearing clothes that breathe. Much as I love cotton, it doesn’t breathe. That’s one big regret right there.

When I got back to JR Shinjuku, I took a few photos from the bridge:

JR Shinjuku at night:

Shinjuku at Night

Shinjuku at Night

Times Square:

Shinjuku at Night

Shinjuku at Night

Time Square decorations:

Shinjuku at Night

The rain has already started, and I don’t have a decent umbrella, so that will be my first objective for tomorrow. Or maybe my second. First I need to figure out what to do in the rain. At least in Tokyo there are a lot of underground passages to get from one place to another, and that’s pretty darn handy.

I’m thinking I may head to Jinbo-cho to check out some print stores, and some book stores there. One other thing I need to locate is a cardboard tube, and maybe someone there will know where I can acquire one.

There are SO many things I want to buy here… ugh. Must restrain self, must restrain self…

Yeah, right.

This blog is protected by Dave\'s Spam Karma 2: 3159 Spams eaten and counting...