Today was a really long day. I haven’t fully adjusted to the time zone change and woke up about an hour after I posted my blog last night at 3am, and went to sleep for another hour from 5:30-7. We put together a list of places we wanted to check out from our ideas pool and started the morning at 7-11 for breakfast. I have to say that grad school would be MUCH easier if I had these super cheap and delicious sushis at home.
We headed to the mall that had the pokemon center in it. Unfortunately, I forgot to pack one of my 2 extra spare batteries on my camera and I was running low so I don’t have too many pictures from when we were at the mall. I did my best to not spend $80 at the Pokemon Center this time. The checkout line was close to 45 min and there will be one in Sapporo so I’ll probably get my fix when we’re up there in 2 weeks. The mall trip was mostly just Gretchen and Joanna shopping for makeup and clothes while we watched a Jpop group called Camellia Factory dance in front of a crowd of middle aged men who knew all the lyrics and choreography to the music. I looked up their bio and they range from ages 14-18…weird but hey we’re in Japan
Jack had a great idea to get Okonomiyaki which is like a savory pancake with toppings like meat, cheese, and eggs. The restaurant we found at the mall had a cool setup where they have a heating thing in the middle of the table like at a teppanyaki place where they cook the thing in front of you and it’s your responsibility to flip it when ready. We got one with beef and cheese, pork and soft boiled egg, and pork and soba noodles. All delicious.
We decided to split up, the group headed to the shinto shrine near Harajuku and I went back to the hostel to grab spare batteries because I was getting anxiety seeing the low power meter on my camera and to drop stuff off. We met up again and walked through the super touristy Harajuku street with all the food and shopping stalls. We all pigged out at this point. Joanna and Gretchen got some kind of fried hash brown thing stuffed with mac and cheese and shrimp slathered in mayo and lettuce at Mcdonalds. They seemed to like it.
Jack, Alex, and Stephanie got crepes as they are a popular thing to get here. We walked by a candy store where girls were walking around with GIANT balls of colored cotton candy. I thought to myself, who the heck would get something like this? I turn around and Joanna and Gretchen are holding one for themselves.
It started getting dark and cold, Alex was under dressed so we went underground into the subway system and found ourselves at Tokyo Station where they had an underground “Ramen street” with 8-10 different ramen shops. Every single one was full of people and we were overwhelmed with the choices. We decided to pick the one with the shortest line. In Japan, they use vending machines outside of the ramen shop where you pick what you want and it prints out a ticket. There was a bit of a learning curve and the line started growing behind us while we trial and errored our way through the ordering process.
Finally got our orders in and I guess this ramen shop specialized in Shoyu (soy sauce) ramen broth with either beef tongue or pork belly as the meat. Both were delicious and we were very full and warm.
On our way back to the hostel we started putting plans together on what we wanted to do tonight since it was only 6pm. I got into my bed to “rest” and woke up at 1:30am…it’s 3:30 and I’m starving. Lucky for me the convenience stores with the sushi triangles are open 24/7.
Oh ya I wanted to mention that I only spent about $26 today on food. $4 on breakfast and milk tea, $9 on my share of the okonomiyaki, and $13 for the ramen and a beer. It’s pretty easy to eat well and not break the bank here considering it’s Tokyo.
