for lunch, we headed down to ebisu and got the kyushu style honten kasane aji ramen at ippudo, i bought a sweet chien ming wang action figure at a toy store that specialized in american toys, and then had stopped at frames in daikanyama for a rest and some sangria. a good chunk of our afternoon was spent in the starbucks overlooking shibuya crossing, just watching the insane number of people that cross the street from five different corners, and all the funny things the japanese wear.
that night we went to roppongi to try the kogashi (black) ramen at gogyo. mind-blowing. then we headed to shinjuku just to see the craziness and walk through the golden-gai a bit. it's a series of about 5 very small alleyways containing over a hundred tightly packed bars, each holding only about 7-10 patrons. it's nuts. we stopped in one that we had read about to be foreign-friendly (many places in shinjuku are not) called la jetee and had a beer.
sunday we slept in - the first time i've slept in in several weeks (yes, since before i went on vacation) - and grabbed a coffee and sandwich at doutor. it was raining, but we decided to head back to asakusa again to see it during the day. i found a store specializing in studio ghibli stuff and bought a sweet totoro fabric panel. while walking the nakamise shopping area between the kaminarimon gate and the sensoji temple, we found delicious azuki (sweet red bean) filled pancakes. we also later munched on some tako (octopus) pancake balls.
after stopping at the nissan and sony showrooms in ginza, we bounced over to jingu stadium, home of the tokyo yakult swallows. unfortunately, it had been raining all day, and the game was cancelled. normally, you can't get the money back on tickets until the next day, but we must have looked super lost, dejected and confused, because they gave us our money right away in the main office. plus they gave us each a gift (a little jar of jingu stadium dirt). and then they offered to let us see the stadium, so we got to go on the field and take some pictures. awesome.
since we got our money back, we decided to go do a nice dinner instead and settled on an izakaya place called en on the 42nd floor of the shiodome city center building. it had a pretty great view (and would have been better if it weren't raining) and the food was really great. we had an order of sake, and quite a few yummy eats:
kougen-cabbage and crab salad
deep-fried whale meat in tatsu style
grilled long eggplant
grilled skewered scallops with sea urchin and soy
seared fatty tuna with garlic soy
miyazaki hyuja chicken on hot pebble
broiled sea bream collar with rock salt
rice flour dumplings with azuki
and yes, i had whale meat, and it was delicious.
monday morning we went to shibuya to take care of a few errands, and went shopping in a couple variety stores (the loft and tokyu hands). after grabbing a beef bowl at sukiya, we spent the afternoon doing laundry and packing, before heading to tokyo dome for the yomiuri giants game against the orix buffaloes. japanese baseball is nuts. first, you can bring drinks, including beer, into the stadium. when you enter, you just have to let them pour it all into paper cups for you. there are tons and tons of food options. they have designated smoking areas, which are really glass cages. and instead of the walking vendors being men, they are cute dolled-up girls in shorts/skorts and bright shirts and hats. and most of them are "beer girls" with small kegs on their backs. as for the game itself, when a player hits a home run, he gets a stuffed animal. and the fans have many different chants that they do for the entire game, and whole sections are standing and chanting, being led by fans playing trumpets. the whole thing is crazy. and amazing.
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