Misc Japan photos, 23 April 2012

Today we went to this shrine that brings good luck for love (I think Shara wanted to go there so Shinee would fall in love with her). Anyway they also had a million Maneki Neko there, including two giant ones.

People had written their wishes and tied them up. They were all from Japanese women wanting to get married. Rows upon rows of them. If you know a Japanese woman WATCH OUT SHE WANTS TO MARRY YOU

Would you trust this ape with your pet?

AT LAST, MY SEARCH FOR CHAIR SOCKS IS AT AN END

This was where we went for dinner. It was a sushi train, but in addition to the conveyor sushi (which not many people seemed to be interested in), you could order whatever you wanted using a touch screen, and when it was done, it would whizz to you using a separate conveyor belt above the regular one. BUT the best part was that when you were done, you put your plates in a slot (shown just at the bottom of this photo), and then after it registered five plates, the screen would show a small pachinko-style game, and if you won, you would get one of the capsule toys shown at the top of the photo. THIS IS THE GREATEST IDEA OF ALL TIME. The toys are super cheap but they definitely kept us eating in order to get another shot at winning them, and it was tonnes of fun. Whoever thought of this is a genius.

:(

 This guy is on all the subway trains. You are very stern, Mr Agent!

Liquor review: Slat (Grapefruit and ???)

I'm sure I don't need to tell you that chuhais own. My preferred Cocktail Partner was not available at our hotel's vending machine, so I had to make do with Slat. I had a choice between a Slat that was clearly lemon, and one that was either grapefruit or blood orange. I went with the unknown. Looking more closely at this can, it appears to be grapefruit and something else, but I'm not sure what. Orange maybe? I am a huge antifan of grapefruit, but it was actually pretty good here. You could taste the grapefruit but it didn't have that horrible bitter aftertaste, it was just sweet. I later found out that Slat's gimmick is having chunks of fruit pulp in their drinks. It's pretty great, but it was a bit of a surprise to start with. Anyway this was pretty good, but my aversion to grapefruit still knocked it down a few points. Give me Cocktail Partner any day. 3.5 stars.

Misc Japan photos, 22 April 2012

heh, butt

#unintentionalpoetry

Don't put this orange juice in the microwave okay?

Oh we missed the Happy Thanks Fair! :(

This is a statue of a lady we found. Not sure why she is doing that sexy pose.

Day 4: Toyko

Yesterday we took the train to Shinjuku to have a look about the place and went to a fancy department store where there were many beautiful things such as these toasters:


Shara & Webber bought some cool stuff including a new alarm clock, but when we took it to the counter they couldn't find a new clock and seemed embarrassed they had to give us floor stock. Then the cashier brought in an extra person to help her find a spare box, and when they couldn't be found a 3rd person helped wrap it beautifully in foam.
I bought the cup man featured in a previous post, I did explain him in my email post but apparently that doesn't go through. When I next go downstairs to the free wireless hotspot I will email a better picture to myself and then download it in the hotel room then upload it to the blog SEE THE WORK THAT GOES INTO WRITING THIS BLOG JUST FOR YOU?
I gave the cashier a ¥10,000 note and she had to check it with another employee, count the change with him and then count it again with me.

We walked for a bit to look for Kinokuniya, a 7 floor bookstore, but while I was taking the above photo for a cat cafe Webber was trying to figure out where we needed to go. A middle aged man asked us in English if we needed assistance, then told us where to go. I felt bad that I had left the little gifts of chocolates in the hotel room.

In Kinokuniya we were looking for the Maru book, but discovered on the magazine floor ther were ONE MILLION MAGAZINES ABOUT DOGS & CATS. I bought a magazine called CreatCat which cost ¥880 and is worth every single yen (this was also the cheapest one), and Shara & Webber bought one called Corgi Style (there were at least 3 just about corgis).
Luckily my cat magazine had a feature on Maru, along with other famous television/internet cats, so we were able to muddle together with the sales staff what book we wanted. The book was only ¥1600 which was way cheaper than Amazon, so if you ever need books about Japanese cats I suggest you come straight to the source.

At some point I took this photo of a little fruit market stall, just look at the price of those watermelons! About $30! And the apples are massive, if you can compare the oranges and grapefruits on the left.

And then we had planned to walk to Harajuku before catching the train back, but the maps on the street in Tokyo are a bit crazy because they are oriented to the street which means they are not always with north at the top. So when we knew we had to travel south, we started off and started walking only to discover after a couple of kilometres we had just been walking back north towards Ikebukuro. We were too tired and just went back to the hotel.

In the evening we went back to Tokyu Hands department store to buy all the presents and fun things we saw when we went earlier to go to Nekobukuro. We spent ¥11,000 so we could get the tax back, but in the end it was only ¥600 back oh well.

One of the really great things about Tokyo is that there are heaps of super cute lady european bikes everywhere with baskets, nobody locks their bikes because nobody would steal it because that would just be terribly rude.