Saturday, July 3, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
food & drinks review
Georgia Vintage Coffee - ¥120This was advertised on the train as a double gold medal winner. Was watery & not sweet enough - 2 stars
Rockmelon Soda - ¥80This tasted EXACTLY like rockmelon! DELCIOUS!! 5 STARS!
Peach Drink - ¥120This was pretty nice, but quite sweet. Tasted like grape Zappo lollies - 3 stars
Nashi drink - ¥130Tasted just like nashi! Apparently has 10% - 3.5 stars
Seafood riceburger meal with white grape soda from Mos Burger - ¥650I ate Mos Burger in Singapore in 2000, and was excited when we discovered there was a store across the road from the hotel! The burger is made with two rice patties rather than a bun, and the middle had a patty made with seafood and tempura peas.
The grape soda was just like white grape gummi lollies, and the cup had a cute tiny bird on it - 4.5 stars
Coffee thickshake (no photo) - ¥210
SO DELCIOUS! It was the thickshake of my dreams - 5 stars
Japan 'away jersey' ramen - ¥160There was also a 'home jersey' type, but this one looked tastier. This was seafood flavour and was quite tasty, but it really lacked enough vegies - 3 stars
Boss Cafe au Lait - ¥120After sampling many types of coffee in a can, I now see why Tommy Lee Jones endorses Boss brand. It is far superior, with a lovely coffee flavour without being watery and there is enough sugar - 5 stars
When we met with Sara yesterday, I mentioned how I love coffee in a can. However, apparently all the vending machines suddenly swap from having hot coffee for wintertime to cold coffee for summertime. So I have to make sure I only come in hot weather to avoid horrible hot coffee.
I have drunk so many fancy drinks while here, I haven't drunk the same thing twice. Normally I would never ever pay for a drink, unless I left my water bottle at home. But with so many delicious choices, what am I to do? There are many more I didn't take photos of, but you will just have to imagine all the things I drank and ate.
I have drunk so many fancy drinks while here, I haven't drunk the same thing twice. Normally I would never ever pay for a drink, unless I left my water bottle at home. But with so many delicious choices, what am I to do? There are many more I didn't take photos of, but you will just have to imagine all the things I drank and ate.
cupman, explained
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Previously I posted a picture of cupman, but the text didn't email through.
I bought this guy in a fancy department store for ¥750, which I feel is worth it. His sole job is to hold down the lid of your pot noodle, rather than struggling with a fork. As the noodles cook, his arms go white, to entertain you!
I made a point that Japan has superior instant ramen technology, in the above noodles it has a separate tear off section to easily and safely pour off the water from your ramen without losing any of the tasty cabbage & meat cubes inside.
The ramen above is UFO (¥168), and is super tasty. The dehydrated meat cubes inside are DELICIOUS! We might take some to Iceland because we won't be able to afford any other food - 4.5 stars.
THURSDAY THURSDAY
Thursday was a big day because we were going to meet Sara! Sara speaks Japanese so we were super excited to ask her a bunch of questions about what was going on. In Japan you spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is going on. We were meeting Sara at 1pm at Nakano station. We were planning on getting up early and doing something beforehand but this did not work out as we are extremely lazy. Before I get to that, the night before I was reading the hotel book as I wanted to find out the price of meat lump. In the elevator there is a picture of a meat lump on a nest of shredded cheese and we think they are pouring oil on this. It could also be Ponzu which is something that Sara told us about. People put ponzu on everything even on your fried (or friend whateva) chicken (if you like). I almost wrote fried children but that is ok too. Anyway there was no price for meat lump but I did find this and racistly took a photo of it for you
So make sure you do that at the gym. So Thursday morning we went to Mos Burger to eat the naan with curry sauce, cabbage and sausage. There is also a Mexican naan with mince, corn chips and a bunch of other junk. It was quite great but not as great as the other Mos burger which ROCKED anyway this is what it looked like (3.5/5)
Yummu so then we headed off to meet with Sara. We were a little bit early so we went to look for a post office but we were on the wrong side of the train station. Webber bought some CC Lemon so he has now drunk 140 lemons or something. We met up with Sara, gave her a slightly melted Caramello Koala and went to Uniqlo which is a cool store and I got some amazing roomwear shorts and sunglasses. HEL YEH! Then we went to Nakano Sun Mall which is full of heaps of nerdy stuff including some picturesque face washers that featured Star Wars characters walking underneath cherry blossoms etc. They were magical but also about $18 so we didn't purchase any. Sara told us all about SMAP and also Arashi who are on EVERYTHING! They are on pretty much every TV show and they also manage to advertise competing cell phones! This morning I was wondering when they get to sleep as when I went to sleep they were on TV and when I woke up they were on it again! Sara told us that they all work for the same talent agency and they just get paid like a salary and you get more money the more senior you are rather than how popular or how much work you do. Also there is a girl band with 48 members! Only 20 members perform at one time but you get to vote for whoever you want to perform! They are called AKB 48 you should google them! We went to a chain restaurant which had cold green tea which was delicious and they gave us a glass of water to chill us after our spicy Japanesse curry (Japanese curry is not spicy). Then we caught the train to Harajuku so we could walk down Takeshita Street and eat a crepe!
This was the guy we got! Delicious! He had a whole slice of cheesecake in there! The whole crepe was soft unlike the crepe I ate at ice cream city which was crunchy on the outside. At one of the shops here Lyndal bought a small straw hat!
It was only 315 yen! Bargainb! Then we walked to Shinjuku because we wanted to go to Loft and Muji. Loft was full of amazingness such as this
(Sara-lobster, Lyndal-flon and Webber-pig)
They had some pretty awesome paper sticky tape there but it was too exxy and also woah they had some super special furniture. There were many things to buy but we don't have a house in Japan to put them all in. Then we went to Muji which is all stuff that is unbranded. I drank peach nectar DELICIOUS! Lyndal drank jelly drink DELICIOUS! Then we went to an izakaya where a man crouches by your table to take your order. Webber ordered a cocktail which was a carbon offset cocktail and he got some free chopsticks! We all got tiny foodstuffs to eat with drinks and it was delicious good times. We left at about 20:20 and Sara had to catch her train back to her town which takes about 90 minutes! Sara explained many mysteries to us like why people all go eeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhh all the time (they think this is what western people do) and she told us all about what the magazines were saying. Oh my this post is huge ok so then we came to hotel and went to sleep after watching Arashi. This is to ensure that we dreamt of Arashi which of course we did! So des ne!
So make sure you do that at the gym. So Thursday morning we went to Mos Burger to eat the naan with curry sauce, cabbage and sausage. There is also a Mexican naan with mince, corn chips and a bunch of other junk. It was quite great but not as great as the other Mos burger which ROCKED anyway this is what it looked like (3.5/5)
Yummu so then we headed off to meet with Sara. We were a little bit early so we went to look for a post office but we were on the wrong side of the train station. Webber bought some CC Lemon so he has now drunk 140 lemons or something. We met up with Sara, gave her a slightly melted Caramello Koala and went to Uniqlo which is a cool store and I got some amazing roomwear shorts and sunglasses. HEL YEH! Then we went to Nakano Sun Mall which is full of heaps of nerdy stuff including some picturesque face washers that featured Star Wars characters walking underneath cherry blossoms etc. They were magical but also about $18 so we didn't purchase any. Sara told us all about SMAP and also Arashi who are on EVERYTHING! They are on pretty much every TV show and they also manage to advertise competing cell phones! This morning I was wondering when they get to sleep as when I went to sleep they were on TV and when I woke up they were on it again! Sara told us that they all work for the same talent agency and they just get paid like a salary and you get more money the more senior you are rather than how popular or how much work you do. Also there is a girl band with 48 members! Only 20 members perform at one time but you get to vote for whoever you want to perform! They are called AKB 48 you should google them! We went to a chain restaurant which had cold green tea which was delicious and they gave us a glass of water to chill us after our spicy Japanesse curry (Japanese curry is not spicy). Then we caught the train to Harajuku so we could walk down Takeshita Street and eat a crepe!
This was the guy we got! Delicious! He had a whole slice of cheesecake in there! The whole crepe was soft unlike the crepe I ate at ice cream city which was crunchy on the outside. At one of the shops here Lyndal bought a small straw hat!
It was only 315 yen! Bargainb! Then we walked to Shinjuku because we wanted to go to Loft and Muji. Loft was full of amazingness such as this
(Sara-lobster, Lyndal-flon and Webber-pig)
They had some pretty awesome paper sticky tape there but it was too exxy and also woah they had some super special furniture. There were many things to buy but we don't have a house in Japan to put them all in. Then we went to Muji which is all stuff that is unbranded. I drank peach nectar DELICIOUS! Lyndal drank jelly drink DELICIOUS! Then we went to an izakaya where a man crouches by your table to take your order. Webber ordered a cocktail which was a carbon offset cocktail and he got some free chopsticks! We all got tiny foodstuffs to eat with drinks and it was delicious good times. We left at about 20:20 and Sara had to catch her train back to her town which takes about 90 minutes! Sara explained many mysteries to us like why people all go eeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhh all the time (they think this is what western people do) and she told us all about what the magazines were saying. Oh my this post is huge ok so then we came to hotel and went to sleep after watching Arashi. This is to ensure that we dreamt of Arashi which of course we did! So des ne!
Hullo!
I have to talk about what happened after we went to look at fake food. Fake food was super expensive so every time you see a fake food display in Japan you should think about how that fake bowl of ramen cost at least $50. So after this we caught the train and went to Ginza. We wanted to show Lyndal Mitsukoshi which is a super fancy Japanese department store. Last time we went it was full of $100 mangos but this time it was being renovated and was not fancy at all! But the exciting thing was that there is now a Ladurée in Mitsukoshi! OH MY GOD!
Delicious! Anyway there is high tea for 7100 yen which is pretty sweet (this is for two people) and you get to choose what delicious cake you would like! Anyway I wanted to eat the St. Honoré Cake but it would not have lasted the trip home. Lyndal and I bought four macaroons
We bought raspberry, red fruits, coconut and chocolate. All were delicious and not sickening? That was odd. Anyway delicious and amazing Japan ilu! Please excuse these terrible underexposed photos! After this adventure I am pretty sure we went home and may have watched the best show ever which is called Dero which means Let's Exit (we know this thanks to Sara).
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In this show you get locked in a room and you have to answer questions in order to escape. These girls were wearing big wooden circles on their feet and they were in a room of rice or something. They would sink 1cm every few seconds if you get the question wrong. Both of these ladies sunk. The next segment was about two adults and a child in a room where the roof was coming down on them. I didn't watch this one too closely but in the next room two ladies and a man were trapped and the water was slowly rising. They had to solve very complicated puzzles and find keys to open boxes and at the end they had to answer a quiz and if they got one wrong they suffered a 30 second penalty where they couldn't do anything as the water rises. Sara said that one of the questions they got wrong was name countries which have a higher population than Japan. They had one country left and instead of saying India or something obvious they said Korea! Dumb! Anyway they got out in time. Oh I forgot there was also some people who were eaten by huge fake monsters? I wasn't really watching that one either but Lyndal and Webber know all about that one. It was a pretty great show!
Delicious! Anyway there is high tea for 7100 yen which is pretty sweet (this is for two people) and you get to choose what delicious cake you would like! Anyway I wanted to eat the St. Honoré Cake but it would not have lasted the trip home. Lyndal and I bought four macaroons
We bought raspberry, red fruits, coconut and chocolate. All were delicious and not sickening? That was odd. Anyway delicious and amazing Japan ilu! Please excuse these terrible underexposed photos! After this adventure I am pretty sure we went home and may have watched the best show ever which is called Dero which means Let's Exit (we know this thanks to Sara)..JPG)
.JPG)
In this show you get locked in a room and you have to answer questions in order to escape. These girls were wearing big wooden circles on their feet and they were in a room of rice or something. They would sink 1cm every few seconds if you get the question wrong. Both of these ladies sunk. The next segment was about two adults and a child in a room where the roof was coming down on them. I didn't watch this one too closely but in the next room two ladies and a man were trapped and the water was slowly rising. They had to solve very complicated puzzles and find keys to open boxes and at the end they had to answer a quiz and if they got one wrong they suffered a 30 second penalty where they couldn't do anything as the water rises. Sara said that one of the questions they got wrong was name countries which have a higher population than Japan. They had one country left and instead of saying India or something obvious they said Korea! Dumb! Anyway they got out in time. Oh I forgot there was also some people who were eaten by huge fake monsters? I wasn't really watching that one either but Lyndal and Webber know all about that one. It was a pretty great show!
Day 5: Tkoyo (part 1)
Sorry I forgot to talk about yesterday and a lot has happened since then so please forgive me if my memory is patchy.
Yesterday we decided to go to Asakusa, because Shara and I hadn't been and it looked like it might have some exciting things. We got out of the subway station and were immediately confronted by a giant panda hell yeah:
We are doing that pose because we once saw an elderly man do it while posing for a photo and it was amusing to us. Anyway we first went to Senso-ji because Lyndal had yet to see a temple. While we were looking at the map on the street trying to plan our trip a man came up to us and asked us if we wanted directions. We told him what we wanted to do and he gave us very detailed help. We thanked him and gave him a Caramello Koala that Lyndal had brought with her for just such an occasion. He initially refused but we insisted and he got really excited and said "thank you! It is so rare!" which was good.
Anyway here are some photos of a temple (Shara wanted me to point out that she hasn't fixed things in Photoshop yet):
While Shara was taking that last photo she got stuck in a river of elderly Japanese people. It was a very slow-moving river.
These people walk very slowly
Fortunez
Shara and Lyndal got their fortune at the temple (they both got "regular" fortunes which is better than a bad fortune I guess?) and while they were doing that some old Japanese dude came up to us and spent 5 minutes asking us English Conversation 101 questions. After he ran out of english to ask us he took his photo with us and left.
This woman is a taily
ilu vending machines
This guy is everywhere
Thoughtful Lyndal is thoughtful
After we had a look around the temple we wandered through Asakusa looking for Kappabashi-dori. On the way there we walked past a porn theatre which just had a bunch of pictures of nude ladies out the front which was weird to us (NSFW obviously). Next door were these clown figures:
The entrance to Kappabashi-dori had many streamers for some reason, maybe to differentiate it from the streets with brothels and porno theatres for the tourists.
Lyndal waves to Japan
The purpose of Kappabashi-dori is to house many different shops that sell supplies to people who own or wish to own diners. There were heaps of stores selling knives, bowls, cooking equipment, LED signs, and what we were there for, fake food. Almost all Japanese diners and restaurants have a bunch of shelves of fake food in the front window, showing people what they can order and how much it costs. This all gets sold in Kappabashi-dori. Unfortunately because it is being sold to businesses it is all mega-expensive, so we couldn't buy anything :( It looked amazing though!
This fake beer is very cold (it is not very cold)
On our way back to the station we found our first ever Japanese supermarket! This was very exciting to us because up until then we had only ever been into the convenience stores that populate the cities. Here are some exciting products you can buy from a Japanese supermarket:
This watermelon was like $30
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After this we went to Ginza for a look around and some more stuff happened, but it is late and everyone else has gone to bed so that will have to wait until tomorrow.
Yesterday we decided to go to Asakusa, because Shara and I hadn't been and it looked like it might have some exciting things. We got out of the subway station and were immediately confronted by a giant panda hell yeah:
We are doing that pose because we once saw an elderly man do it while posing for a photo and it was amusing to us. Anyway we first went to Senso-ji because Lyndal had yet to see a temple. While we were looking at the map on the street trying to plan our trip a man came up to us and asked us if we wanted directions. We told him what we wanted to do and he gave us very detailed help. We thanked him and gave him a Caramello Koala that Lyndal had brought with her for just such an occasion. He initially refused but we insisted and he got really excited and said "thank you! It is so rare!" which was good.
Anyway here are some photos of a temple (Shara wanted me to point out that she hasn't fixed things in Photoshop yet):
While Shara was taking that last photo she got stuck in a river of elderly Japanese people. It was a very slow-moving river.
These people walk very slowly
FortunezShara and Lyndal got their fortune at the temple (they both got "regular" fortunes which is better than a bad fortune I guess?) and while they were doing that some old Japanese dude came up to us and spent 5 minutes asking us English Conversation 101 questions. After he ran out of english to ask us he took his photo with us and left.
This woman is a taily
ilu vending machines
This guy is everywhere
Thoughtful Lyndal is thoughtful
After we had a look around the temple we wandered through Asakusa looking for Kappabashi-dori. On the way there we walked past a porn theatre which just had a bunch of pictures of nude ladies out the front which was weird to us (NSFW obviously). Next door were these clown figures:
The entrance to Kappabashi-dori had many streamers for some reason, maybe to differentiate it from the streets with brothels and porno theatres for the tourists.
Lyndal waves to JapanThe purpose of Kappabashi-dori is to house many different shops that sell supplies to people who own or wish to own diners. There were heaps of stores selling knives, bowls, cooking equipment, LED signs, and what we were there for, fake food. Almost all Japanese diners and restaurants have a bunch of shelves of fake food in the front window, showing people what they can order and how much it costs. This all gets sold in Kappabashi-dori. Unfortunately because it is being sold to businesses it is all mega-expensive, so we couldn't buy anything :( It looked amazing though!
This fake beer is very cold (it is not very cold)On our way back to the station we found our first ever Japanese supermarket! This was very exciting to us because up until then we had only ever been into the convenience stores that populate the cities. Here are some exciting products you can buy from a Japanese supermarket:
This watermelon was like $30.JPG)
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After this we went to Ginza for a look around and some more stuff happened, but it is late and everyone else has gone to bed so that will have to wait until tomorrow.
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