Food Review: Tokyo 2

Weird spicy chips

I was emboldened from the last spicy chips I ate that weren't really spicy at all, and I thought these would be a piece of cake. The first few were not too spicy, and so I ended up eating about a third of the bag. Then my mouth went on fire, and hasn't really gone out yet. Really tasty though. About as hot as red hot cheetos, but definitely more delicious.

Rating: 4.5 stars

Weird panda biscuits

These were fake Hello Pandas, just small biscuits with chocolate on one side. However these guys have white and milk chocolate, which I don't think Hello Panda has? Anyway the white chocolate made these totally delicious. Would eat again.

Rating: 5 stars

Asahi Peach Juice

We were a little worried that this would end up being a Calpis-esque milk drink (which is okay, but a little weird and not that refreshing imo), but it was actually just peach nectar I am pretty sure. Had lumps of peach pulp in it too. This was totally totally delicious and I want to drink one million of them. A+ best beverage in Japan so far

Rating: 5 stars

Fanta weird energy drink thing

They have heaps of awesome Fanta varieties in Japan, but I had never seen this guy up until now. Judging by the branding and the relatively small size of the can, this was some sort of energy drink. It tasted pretty good for an energy drink. It tasted like green jellybeans! Probably got a bunch of shit in it that is going to give me cancer but whatever if I get tired and there is a vending machine around I am going to drink this again.

Rating: 4 stars

Namjatown

Last night we went to Namjatown, it was real great! It is an amusement park that is in the place we are staying that is run by Namco. It's basically a repository of arcade games made by Namco that you have to pay to get into, but it also has GYOZA STADIUM and ICE CREAM CITY, which are collections of many different stores that sell gyoza and ice creams respectively. Lyndal found a super fun drum game and played it (the people in the video are very bad at this game). Judging by ads on TV this game is coming out on DS shortly so if you know what it is called you should tell us immediately. [Addendum I have just found out that this game is called Taiko Drum Master and it is out on PS2? It is fun and I want to buy it]


This was a burger store at Namjatown. Should we have eaten here? Yes that burger does have corn in it. They also sold an America burger with a USA flag in it and some cheese with "HERO" burnt into it, p. great.


These cats were all over Namjatown, together with a really surly cat with a monocle and a pocket watch. Is this some secret mascot for Namco I don't know about? Anyway these cats are hilarious.


All of the stalls in Gyoza Stadium have these info sheets that tell you how big their gyoza are etc. We chose this lady because when we walked past she rushed out and told us that her gyoza were NUMBER ONE, which was good enough for us. Also this lady was literally half Shara's height.


She recommended the regular gyoza, so I tried that. Very salty and garlicy but I liked em 4 stars!


She also recommended the garlic butter gyoza, and Lyndal got excited and ordered that. It turned out that garlic butter gyoza is just regular gyoza but with a lump of butter and some dried garlic on top. Still the gyoza themselves were good and she liked them well enough, so she gives this 3.5 stars.



I ate this icecream. I got it from a place specialising in soft serve in Ice Cream City. They had like ten different soft serve machines to dispense many many flavours. This is chocolate and strawberry. It was pretty good 4 stars. Shara and Lyndal bought some crepes from Ice Cream City that will be reviewed at a later date, when we get the photos off Shara's camera.



We did not go to this restaurant but maybe we should have so that we could have eaten rice in the shape of a cat and a gigantic goblet full of jelly and icecream?


On the way back we saw this guy standing around a courtyard in a mall at 9pm. He was trying to catch a bug in the net he is holding. This appears to be his job. Also the courtyard was very large and encompassed two floors, so the bug could just fly away. Japan

This guy was delicious 10/10

Dese are the guys at the cat cafe

IMPORTANT

for your information

YOUR BUTT X 1

Hi we have been watching Japanese TV for three hours now. It is p amazing. Anyway I have to talk about things or something. I think I have to review things. Listen up these photos are all unedited as there is no editing software on this tiny computer. So I am apologising in advance HOW EMBARRASSING like seeing someone WITHOUT THEIR MAKE UP. Anyway I ate this thing it was 1100 yen or something. It was pretty great the lettuce was hot though. The meat lump and rice was most delicious and the pasta, which was eggplant, actually tasted like fish, weird. That is the only thing I have a photo of yet so I will just say what happened today.

Under exposed and angry cat. There is an angry rock star chair on TV right now singing. A hugely muscular man just did aerobics with three children and then a talking cactus appeared. TODAAAYY or MONDAY MONDAY MONDAY MONDAY as Hollyoaks would say. Today we got up at 9am which means we slept for 10 hours! If there are crazy typos in here it is because this machine will not inform me of them. So we got up and then spent three hours trying to decide what to do. We eventually decided to go to Gyoza Stadium and Nekobukuro. We did go to Nekobukuro which is a cat playground but have not gone to Gyoza Stadium yet. Nekobukuro would not Lyndal and me enter as a couple which is rude we could have saved 200 yen! It was pretty amazing and we met many angry cats. There was one trapped in a train! There was a huge fluffy Maine Coon tried to bite Lyndal, me and also another lady! Hilariously there was one of those cats with a squished face but it was all shaved. I have photos of all these cats but due to their uneditedness I have only included this guy. There was also a Jose guy and some happy cats ho were trapped in their weird cat rooms. We were there at dinnertime so we got to give everyone a little bit of kibble. Sorry I am majorly distracted by the most amazing show which is teaching Japanese children English. Ha-ha-ha-ha I'm Happy!

Before we did this we spent about an hour walking around an AMAZING store where we decided to buy EVERYTHING! We haven't done this yet but we will OH WE WILL. I can't tell you about this look I have to stop typing TV is too amazing

Things about Japanese TV

I believe there is a lot that can be learned by watching a country's television shows. Here are some things I have observed about TV in Japan:

• There is writing all over the place. Hardly anyone says anything that isn't accompanied by some sort of writing on the bottom of the screen. Or the side. Or in the middle.
• Everyone says "ehhhhhhhhhh~" a lot. A LOT.
• There is an ad with some some dude just making a mii on his Wii. It goes for like 30 seconds, and has been repeated several times. The Wii was released four years ago.
• There is a show where people (I assume celebrities?) do karaoke to the themes of famous animes.
  
• Almost all ads in Japan feature women. Most have both men and women in them, but there are almost no ads with only men in them. Many beer ads do not have men in them, which is totally weird coming from Australia. There is an ad for whisky which has a woman being all "whisky~!" and drinking it up, which surprised me quite a lot.
  
• Japanese people love watching shows about food. They seem to be far more interested in watching people eat food rather than cook food, too.
• News and current affairs shows here seem to rarely show graphics. If they want to show a graph or something, they print it out on a bit of paper, and then point at it with a stick. This is one of the weirdest things.
  
• Japanese TV has the worst production values I have ever seen. All TV shows fit into one of the following categories: shows where people make food, shows where celebrities eat food and other celebrities watch them; shows where one celebrity goes somewhere in Japan or somewhere else in the world and does something ridiculous, while other celebrities watch; soaps about samurai that look like they were made by a cable access channel; news and current affairs shows that point at charts with sticks; shows about animals; anime. For this reason I posit that Japanese TV networks are the most profitable companies on the face of the planet.
• In Japan they show advertisements for elevators in primetime television.

Classic Japan