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| The streets of Ginza |
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| 12-story UNIQLO building!! |
This weekend, I went to two famous districts in Tokyo !! The first one was 銀座
Ginza, famous for big brands and upscale international shopping. Right when we got out of the Ginza station, the familiar school atmosphere of nature and forests now became an bustling metropolitan section in a big city. There were huge skyscrapers filled with department stores, businesses, huge banks. For all you UNIQLO fans, this is where the 12-story high UNIQLO store is, with each level unique from the other. The top level is the UT store, in which UNIQLO partners with other companies, such as Hello Kitty, Batman, etc, for a special line of t-shirts. Basically, the largest UNIQLO store around. We definitely spent hours in that store checking out every floor. Then our main purpose in Ginza was actually to get a prepaid cell phone, and we went to an English speaking Softbank, only to find out that they do not have any more prepaid phones available and they directed us to the nearest Softbank that does which was around 5 blocks down, 5 long blocks... We got there and although none of the salesmen spoke English, we were still able to communicate with translating apps on their phones, gestures, and some of us understood a little Japanese. After lots of paperwork and more paperwork, we finally got our phones!! <insert picture> It is quite the old-fashioned, in my opinion. those flip-phones that you have to type the 1 key three times to get to the letter C... haha.
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Some BBQ/grill Restaurant on the roof
of a shopping mall but we weren't able to
go to because the line was too long!
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<culture note>
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| So I ate Takoyaki for dinner... :) |
In Japan, text messages are hardly ever used because each phone has its own "email address" called メール
meeru, literally "mail" and they just send emails to each other's phones. The phone plan features unlimited メール exchanges but it will cost money if you send it to your friend's phone number instead of their email. It costs 90yen/minute on the phone, which is quite expensive, so I'll definitely be only using mail to contact people, and that's what everyone does! Assimilation process hereeeee!
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The street leading to
Sunshine 60! |
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Look what I found :)
Rilakkuma!! |
Then, the second place was 池袋
Ikebukuro, an entertainment district in Tokyo. Our goal was the Ice Cream City!! Near the Ikebukuro station is a building called Sunshine 60, which used to be the tallest building in Tokyo, and it has 60 levels. While trying to find the ナンジャタウン
Nanja Town, where Ice Cream City was located inside, we suddenly heard children voices screaming, as if there were a concert going on. We headed in the direction of the voices and saw that on the 1st floor, there was an アイドル parade
idol parade. Different groups were performing and idol music is a completely different culture in Japan. Idols are usually girls, sometimes really young, that generally older men like to sing to. It is quite funny. A huge percent of the people sitting on the first floor watching the parades were middle-aged men who knew the dance moves to all of their songs. AND were dancing along. It was really cute and hilarious at the same time.
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| Looking down at Idol group dancing! |
I wish I got a picture of the old men dancing....
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| We are all cats !! |
Then, off to Nanja Town, which is basically a mini theme park with food and games to play. The ticket was more expensive if you were going to play games inside but it was only 300Yen to get in to eat the food. The place was filled with cat mascots, and we got to take a picture with one of them. At the end of the picture, the cat gave each one of a handshake but the cat gave me a HUG :) it was really really cute!
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| Whaaat?? Sweet gyoza?? o.O |
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| Whaat?? Pig shaped gyoza?? o.O |
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| Ahhh! Normal gyoza!! |
Inside Nanja Town, there is also a 餃子
gyoza "dumplings" stadium. There were so many different kinds of gyoza flavors, it's ridiculous. You would think gyoza only has salty ones, but nope. they even have sweet gyoza, and gyoza shaped in penguins and pigs. We definitely weren't able to try everything, and I will definitely come back one day for sweet gyoza!!
Then finally, we got to Ice Cream City, which is heavenly.....!! They have amazing looking ice cream desserts, and the best part was there was a "Ice cup museum," basically a section with packaged ice cream in cups that they sell individually and that was the most exciting place because it literally has 2384238438 flavors, even really absurd ones that do not sound very appetizing, including: crab, uni (sea urchin), shrimp, fried noodles, eggplants, rice, pearl powder, ox tongue, squid, caviar, viper (I would personally not want to eat a viper....), cheese rizotto, soy sauce, chicken wings... (YUM CHICKEN WINGS, but ice cream tho....), eel, seaweed, corn (corn was surprisingly really good!), wasabi, sunflower, tulip, and the list goes on. Of course there were also normal ones, like milk, salt (my favorite!), pear, apple, strawberry, green tea, vanilla, etc. All in all, we tried a total of 17 flavors, and they were all really different and so crazy. Surprisingly, charcoal flavored ice cream was really good!! I didn't go too extreme and tried something like chicken wings, but I tried their salt ice cream, and it was delicious :) It made me melt inside. So so yummy!!
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| Crab?? o.O |
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| Caviar?? Pearl Powder?? Silk?? VIPER?? o.O |
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| Chicken wings..... |
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| Charcoal! YUM :) |
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| my salt ice cream!! |
**if you want to see more pictures of weird tasting ice cream or what flavors they have, just check out my Facebook album titled " studying in Japan :) "
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Beautiful area to sit in
and eat your desserts! |
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| My amazing dessert! |
Then, while the others went to get more ice cream, I went to another section of Ice Cream City that sells desserts,
and I got this:
I don't know what this is called in English, but it was so good! The top part is chestnut flavored cream, the middle filled with red bean and other sweet beans, and the last section was a cake. the texture, the taste, were amazing. I didn't regret getting this instead of more ice cream flavors. At the end of the day, we had eaten so much sweets that it was definitely not very healthy for us... But it was worth it to explore one of Tokyo's popular districts!
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| Does this look familiar? ^_^ |
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| night view of Ikebukuro street! |
More exploring the districts to come :)
Then, off to Nanja Town, which is basically a mini theme park with food and games to play. The ticket was more expensive if you were going to play games inside but it was only 300Yen to get in to eat the food. The place was filled with cat mascots, and we got to take a picture with one of them. At the end of the picture, the cat gave each one of a handshake but the cat gave me a HUG :) it was really really cute!
