category
japan
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04.26.08japanese food
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ell, being an incredibly fussy eater, and a vegetarian there wasn’t much in the way of food that I felt like eating in Japan. In fact most days usually ended in me filling a basket full of junk in the AMPM store and then going back to the hotel room to stuff my face. Japanese junk food however, isn’t as junky tasting as it’s western counterpart and for someone with an incredibly sweet tooth like me then it turns into a very very yummy trip.
A few things I miss terribly on a daily basis from Japan are:
I do not drink pop, I’m not a fizzy pop drinker. I never have been, however I had more than one of these every day of the trip. It can be found pretty much everywhere in Japan, most vending machines have it. It tastes like sweets, sweets with a hint of grape, incredibly yummy sweets with a hint of grape. And I’m hoping that one day they’ll decide to release it over here. I’ve been hunting for it since I came back and the closest thing i’ve found is a grape drink called ‘cool light grape’ that’s in an asian supermarket near where I go to college.
Again on the drink’s front is this, which i admit I only bought this because the carton lookedincredibly cute and i love anything strawberry. It was super sweet though, and very yummy. It did not, (as I kept having to tell everyone) taste like strawberry milkshake. It tasted like milk with a very sweet edge to it, it had the consistency of milk too but with a cute pink tint.Relax Bear doriyaki!
Basically as soon as I saw it I had to buy it, however the entire trip I only saw them in Lawson stores and I’m pretty sure it’s the only place you can get them. It’s like normal doriyaki, two pancakes with filling except the filling isn’t red bean paste. It’s a thin sweet honey and a creamy white substance, both together tasted so yummy and as soon as I bit into it it made me smile.The thing I miss the most from the entire trip, is probably this ice cream mochi. Again I only found it
in Lawsons, in the freezer section but it was so tasty I wish i could have bought 50 of them and brought them home without them melting. Basically the outside is like normal mochi/daifuku, it’s soft elasticy, sweet and hard to describe to someone thats never had mochi before but it’s tasty and sweet but not like convetional western sweet things.
What sets this apart though is the filling, once you’ve bitten into it it’s filled with cold vanilla ice cream that is so creamy and yummy and goes really well with the outside. It was so yummy I went into a state of sugar shock.Some other food nice food I had and miss are a steamed bun that was green and tasted of melons that I only found in one place and never saw again. A flat, round, giant red bean paste daifuku that was in AMPM and was very much worth the 70p. Super super hot crisps that again were in AMPM and were like flaming hot monster munch meets hula hoops except much hotter.
And if you’re wondering, yes I did just live on sweets while I was in japan.
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04.21.08Kiddyland
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uring my trip to Japan I’m ashamed to say I actually ended up going to Kiddyland 3 times, I loved the place so much - try to imagine someone dashing around each floor of a store filling a basket with cute things like his life depends on it, and you’ll get a pretty good picture of how I looked when I was in Kiddyland. I can’t even begin to describe the amount of excitement it gave me.
Kiddyland, for those of you that don’t know, which is probably most is basically a very big toy shop that’s is in Shibuya, however it being a Japanese toy shop it is eight floors tall and filled with the cutest goods imaginable it has everything from sanrio goods, character goods, stationary to urban vinyl, collectable figures and very tempting expensive dolls on the top floor.
Anyone that is a child at heart would probably react the same way I did when I first entered it, which involved a lot of rushing over to things and claiming how cute they were and then filling up baskets. You have to pay on every floor though, which can be annoying as opposed to paying for everything at the end each floor has its own check outs for products on that specific floor. Each floor however is a delight, each one being set out for different things. There’s one for sanrio and san-x, one for other character goods and stationary, one that has licca dolls and kids toys, and for disney goods, and the most exciting one with blythe and urban vinyl.
Each floor also has gashapon machines relating to the goods that are on the floor as well, and seems as while I was in japan I became rather addicted to those little plastic balls full of joy I ended up getting at least one gashapon from each floor, on the top floor I ended up getting quite a few.Needless to say I do describe this shop as heaven, at least it is either heaven or a culture shock depending on who you are. If you like the cute, you’ll love Kiddyland and if you’re not used to Japanese cuteness you’ll probably be able to find at least one character or product in the store that you’ll fall in love with and have to have.
I couldn’t list everything I bought on my visits to Kiddyland, as it would probably take up half the post but to sum up I bought a whole bag full of stationary, stickers and pens, many many Rilakkuma (relax bear) products (he’s my favourite), various Robin and his 100 friends cute things, a little re-ment, another blythe doll (even though I promised myself I wouldn’t), and what ended up being the bottom of my bag full of gashapon.I’d like to say that Kiddyland hit my ‘cuteness peak’ when I was in Japan, but I could have went there another 5 times and still got excited, I think what is so special about it to someone like me that’s wanted to go to Japan since they were 12, or for someone that likes cute Japanese products is that it is full to the rafters of items that you’d pay double for on ebay, and each of these floors -
the first time you visit is like a little surprise that you feel building up inside your tummy like when you get given a present and it’s all wrapped up and you’re wondering what is inside and when you open it it is way more than you expected. Kiddyland is just like that, or at least to me it was even if it was to the detriment of my wallet. -
04.16.08The hotel
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very confusing map was all we had to find the hotel from Shinjuku Station once we got off the Limosene Bus, it didn’t seem that far away at all and it turned out it wasn’t but it was still confusing. We must have looked rather idiot just sort of standing there, with gigantic cases in the middle of an incredibly bust street scratching our heads.
Within a minute, an old japanese lady come up to us and asked us where we were trying to find, I was rather taken aback by her kindness and overall lovelliness as she struggled with the lanuage barrier trying to tell us which way to go. She turned out to be the first of many lovely people in japan, seems as five minutes later when we were lost again an old man approached us to look at our map and even went as far as drawing a line which we had to follow on it.
We managed to find the hotel eventually, and it turned out it wasn’t that difficult to get to it all it was pretty central. There was an AMPM store across the road, which i’d obviously later decide were the best thing ever and we later found that our hotel was also very near quite a lot of malls.
The hotel itself was quite lovely to say it was the cheapest one we could find, the lobby was huge and very impressive, and the room wasn’t as small as i’d been expecting and of course the toilet had various buttons on it to do various things.The first thing we did was explore, a little walk down the street and across the road was Lumine which turned out to be a huge, rather expensive mall, and just beyond that I could see OIOI Young (marui young) which we saved for another day but made me very excited. The entire area around the hotel was busy, and bustling and felt so much like Japan. Basically, we were staying in the very middle of ‘Lost in Translation’ land. In fact the hotel in the movie was somewhere in the area, I probably passed it without knowing.
The thing that both surprised and pleased me the most was how little shinjuku sleeps, it ended up true of most of Tokyo but I’d never expected so much to be going on so late at night near our hotel. Firstly, most of the shops are open until 8pm so there’s no going back at 5 wishing you could shop for a few more hours, and most of them don’t open until 11pm so you can get a really good lie in.
But once the shops are closed the streets stay busy, and you’re wandering around in the dark feeling completely unthreatened by anyone despite the fact you’re in a completely foreign country.
Anyway, on the first night there we went back to the hotel and watched some japanese television, which wasn’t as wacky as I’d expected at first but was enjoyable none the less. At this point I was totally unaware of Tokyo at night, and what to expect or even what there was to do, but we decided to wander around anyway. Tokyo really is spectacular at night.
All over the place were views like this, everywhere was lit up and sparkly it was really amazing. Back in the other direction towards our hotel though, we found something that no one had mentioned in any of the reviews for our hotel and something none of us were expecting. A little way past the hotel were a small maze of streets that attracted us because of their lights, and they were filled with electronics shops and small arcades, apparently this part of Shinjuku is like a small taste of Akihabara.
It was 11:30pm and the streets were still full of people, teenagers, buissness men all kinds of people. And these arcades were no different, there were still people playing in them, mostly buisness men to be honest it was a little surreal but great to have something to do so late at night.
The claw machines kept us incredibly entertained as they’re filled with the cutest things, and this on the first night is where I probably think my obsession with gashapon started.
We wandered around the streets until about 1:30, people were still out and most of the places were still open by this point we’d probably ran up to every claw machine in the area uttering the word ‘cute!’ and most likely looked like complete tourists.
We ended up going to that part of Shinjuku a few nights on our trip, it was only about 2 minutes from our hotel and really was so much fun - in fact we saw a fair amount of claw machines and arcades on our trip, but there is something incredibly joyful about doing purikura at 2 in the morning.
this image sums up the entire first night. -
04.15.08Tokyo, Japan - First Impressions
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ecause I’m a dumb ass, I left my charger for my ibook at home when I was packing. So basically I only got 5 minutes use of it while I was there - the trip in itself however is something that I have to write down, even if it is in retrospect.
Before Tokyo came what turned out to be a very long, and rather uncomfortable flight. Air France of course tried to make it as comfortable as possible with the tiniest pillow known to man, and a blanket that looked like it was made out of goat hair even with these wonderful additions after twelve hours i swear my spine was thinking of dislocating from my ass and running off for therapy.
From the second I got off the plane however, I felt like I was in Japan - it didn’t look like Japan at first, it just looked like any other airport on the outskirts of nowhere. It wasn’t until we got inside and were greeted by a lovely looking air hostess pointing us the way and welcoming us to Japan that the smile really spread across my face. Of course we had to wait inline for immigration for a good half an hour, the que was pretty boiling hot and wasn’t moving at the fastest speed known to man but it was all rather interesting. I kept myself amused by looking at the giant cartoon picture behind the people at the desks, that was a big brown dog with a big badge on his chest displaying the letter ‘C’ - it took me about ten minutes to work out this probably meant ‘customs’ and my suspicions of this were later confirmed by the exact same dog on the ‘what to do at customs instructions’ so yeah, Japan have a friendly customs dog.
Anyhow, at the front of the que they took your photograph, and you pressed your fingers onto this machine and that took your prints, all rather FBI movie feeling.I got to practice my Japanese a little after that, when booking three tickets for the airport limousine bus, which is completely the best way to get from the airport to your hotel seems as the airport itself is miles away from ‘actual’ Tokyo, or at least what our eyes would consider Tokyo.
The women at the counter were lovely, and marked the fourth time I’d been bowed at since entering the country which made me feel incredibly humbled.This was the bus we took
Well okay, it looked like a normal everyday bus but the illustration was very cute, and much later on in Harajuku I did see a bus that actually had a face on the front of it, I didn’t get a picture however so I’ll just have to pretend our bus looked like this.
The bus journey was lovely, Emily and Jon fell asleep after about five minutes but I just sat taking photographs from the window and feeling more and more overwhelmed the entire time, and if I’m honest trying not to well up. Needless to say, I was quite happy.
Some of my first views of Tokyo looked like this, they photographs themselves are terrible but I really was to excited to think about arty crap for pretty much the entire trip.
at first the views were obstructed by various walls/fences and such, but they were still spectacular I kept thinking ‘if this is how big these buildings look on this bus way up above this sea on a bridge how big are they going to look when i’m standing in front of them’
My first sight of the many cherry blossom tree’s I’d see on the trip.
Everything I saw pleased me, I still couldn’t believe I was in Tokyo but I had to believe my eyes and everything was beautiful we passed tiny shrines with huge cherry blossom tree’s with huge high rise buildings just next to them and it all looked perfectly right and normal, and merged beautifully. It’s actually difficult to describe in words just what it was like, it was probably the most awe inspiring thing I’ve seen in my life. Like, when you’re tiny and you get taken into a church or cathedral and it all seems so big, and atmespheric and it’s like your eyes are getting bigger and bigger trying to take it all in. It was just like that feeling for the entire bus journey.
And then, we got off the bus and I was stood right next to what seemed the biggest building ever pretty much forcing myself to believe that my feet, and everything attached to them were in Tokyo. Finally. -
04.01.08Pre-Japan jitters
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currently can’t sleep, though I must admit I carry more than ‘a few’ insomniac qualities at the best of times. My brain never shuts down, in fact when I shut my eyes seems to be the time when it likes to think the most.
And right now, it’s doing a lot of thinking.This time tomorrow I will be on a (hopefully very comfortable) aeroplane and it’s destination will be Japan, Narita Airport to be exact and from there it’s quite a long bus journey into Tokyo. It’s about sixteen hours of traveling if you count the sitting around with nothing to do at all in france for two hours waiting to get on a different plane. I am sure however it will all be worth it. Which esentially is why my brain wont shut up.
I’ve wanted to go to japan ever since I was around about 15, back then I was as they say quite an ‘Otaku’ with my manga reading, anime watching, illustration drawing antics. It seems really strange now that all these years later I’ll actually finally get to go, for seven whole days and my brain seems to know I’m going.
These are on repeat in my head right now, I can’t get them out. (right click to download if you really want to)
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& I have to keep constantly getting out of bed to put things on the floor in the middle of my room so I know i wont forget to put them in my case or take them with me, that’s the sort of thing I have to do. I’m very unsure of myself, packing wise. I keep going through lists of objects in my head and ticking them off mentally.
It’s not that it even matters if I have or havent packed something to be honest, I have to go and buy a bigger case tomorrow as the one I have is tiny and completely full with all my stuff and my brain keeps telling me over and over that I clearly need a bigger one for the amount of pointless crap I’m going to spent too much money on and need to bring back.
Needless to say I’m incredibly excited, and everytime I do try to sleep I keep breaking into the biggest smile.
