Halloween Horrors

So I pretty much gave up on my costume. I had been hoping to get a red bow-tie so that I could go as Detective Conan; unfortunately, could not find one for the life of me. Some of the girls were going out on Friday, but V and I still weren't feeling hot so we opted for a low-key night. We went to try this sanuki udon place across the street.

I'm not at all certain what the differences between these different types of udon are, but apparently Sanuki is a region that is famous for udon. I specifically ordered a niku bukkake udon. Bukkake udon is usually topped with fried vegetables or seafood, but in this case it was topped with meat and burdock.

I'm not sure, why but a lot of udon places also allow you to pick out various pieces of tempura. I haven't figured out if you just eat it separately or put it in the udon. Somebody needs to teach me about udon I think. It was really good and I'm sure that I'll go back for an udon fix, but V says there's another place around the corner which is just as good. Too much food to try.

Woke up on Saturday, did nothing all day, grabbed some curry for dinner, and watched a movie. This is the first time we managed to take a picture of Coco Ichibanya without eating it first. Doesn't look like much, but I tell you it's good. Actually this time it was kind of salty...

We had a pretty good time watching 14 Blades, a Donnie Yen movie, over dinner. Maybe a bit intense for dinner material, but I had a good time at least. After dinner, I wrote that last entry you all undoubtedly read and then headed to Diana's to meet up with some girls before our Halloween party. V was in no shape to pull an all-nighter, and even I was fighting my desire to take a nap.

But I only have this one chance to experience Halloween in Tokyo, right? Had two drinks with Diana and Miwa before heading to Roppongi Hills. The club was actually on the 52nd floor of Mori Tower and had pretty sweet views of the city.

There was a bit of a line to take the elevator up, but once we actually got up there the crowd was surprisingly thin. Met up with Izumi, Fuyuko, and two other girls: Kyoko and Keiko. I had invited a bunch of guys to come with me, but everybody lamed out. This is what they missed out on.

No but seriously, it was like that all night. I met up with Gosia, Josephina, Chang-min, Magdalena, about seven other girls, and maybe four guys. Next time I go out, I definitely need some bros with me. You guys know who you are.

Halloween in Tokyo is not too different from Halloween in Chicago. All the girls get to dress up like *ahem* well you know, and the guys use their costumes to get a little closer to girls than usual. There aren't too many other days that you can get away with touching each others tails. Sometime during the night, I dropped my camera and the lens got stuck out. The thought of being in Japan with only a broken camera that my wife had bought terrified me. Luckily, I was somehow able to fix it later.

As a result, I only got to take a limited number of pictures. As the night went on, the place got totally packed. Trying to get a drink at 3 AM was absolutely ridiculous. This was also about the time when I couldn't figure out how drunk I was after a bunch of rockstar vodkas. My cold was totally starting to get to me and everyone else was starting to crash a bit. I'm not totally sure what time we left the club, but the metro doesn't actually start running until after 5 AM, so sometime after 4 AM we bailed and hit up a ramen place while we waited for the trains.

Diana and I both ordered this Taiwanese Ramen which was a fairly light broth with just a hint of spiciness. It was pretty good and I really appreciated the bean sprouts. I had a tough time finishing it, but with Diana easily handling hers, I couldn't leave any behind could I? Photo courtesy of Diana.

Wasn't too hungover the next day but decided to stay in for a lazy Sunday. I originally had plans to go watch a Waseda-Keio baseball game, but the first one got rained out, so I'll be going to the next one instead.

V had the brilliant idea of heading back to Okubo for some bibimbap. So we headed out to browse menus and maybe go to the grocery. On the way we saw this awesome dog just roaming the street. He seems to be a well known resident of the area. One girl called "Ma-chan!" to him and started hugging him. He looked so nice.

Found a promising looking place down the same alley as Donki and sat down for some dolsot bibimbap and seolleongtang.

You can't beat Korean food on a chilly day. It's just not possible. Well, I personally think you can't beat Korean food, but yeah. Had a really good time there, and we'll definitely be back. We were checking out the rest of the alley when we saw this place called Honey Cafe. A picture of their patbingsu called to us, so we sat down to split one.

I know it looks brilliant and all, but I think vanilla ice cream would have gone better. It was just a little too fancy for my tastes. Needed more red bean and mochi and less fruit cocktail.

It did barely rain today for the first time really this weekend. Typhoon Chaba was supposed to wreak havoc on Okinawa and dump rain all over Tokyo, but instead it just totally avoided Japan.

I feel fortunate, but I also feel like someone just totally messed up their hurricane calculations. You know what I mean? This coming week is some sort of culture week at school. There are a bunch of important baseball games that I plan to go to and the school festival is next weekend. Should be interesting. Keep you posted.

Burger Showdown

This week has been exhausting. Weekends are supposed to be relaxing, but between no-sleep bus rides and walking around all day, I ended up being wiped out all week long. Got back on Monday morning and took a little nap before I had to head out for the Waseda Marketing Forum. It was required for one of my classes and I helped the professor set up at around 4:00 PM, although the talk didn't begin until after 6:30 and end until 8:00.

I was totally dragging my legs by the time I got out only to find that my bike had blown a tire. So I called V and told her to meet me in Shin-Okubo for dinner while I walked back with my bike. It was a pretty cold night and I thought some warm and fuzzy Korean stew would be appropriate. So we met up at 깡통의추억 - Tin can's memories. V had read about that place in a blog, and Korean celebrities are known to visit it when in Tokyo. In fact the interior was littered with famous photos and signatures that I couldn't recognize.

I wanted something soupy, so I ordered an obligatory sundubu chigae. We were led astray a bit though by a picture of their samgyeopsal which is apparently their signature dish. I didn't know that you needed to order two portions of samgyeopsal, so the sundubu on top of that was just wayyy too much food.

So what did we do? We ate it all. Oh my god...soo good. Everyone is sooo jealous right now; I'm sure of it. That pork belly is unholy-ly delicious. I ate it the traditional way, wrapped up with all the goodies, but it had enough flavor that V ate it straight up - no sauce.

I've come to realize that my time in Japan is pretty much food and then filler material in between. Sure I absorb some culture and language and also study some international business but look above. That folks, is my reason for living. So I think I had some classes on Tuesday, but I more vividly recall coming back home, trying to figure out what to eat, and then deciding on the long awaited burger showdown.

Freshness Burger vs. Mos Burger. My understanding is that these two chains are the most prevalent fast food burger joints in Tokyo. They aren't really that fast as most of the food is made to order, and although I appreciate that they make my food on the spot, it really doesn't take that long to make a burger. We've had Freshness Burger a number of times, but I've never tried Mos Burger although I see it everywhere in Taipei.

It was time to lose my so called Mos Burger virginity I suppose. So from Freshness Burger, we have their Classic Cheeseburger. It's an extremely normal looking burger, just like what you would find from the states.

And from Mos Burger, we have the Tobikiri Hamburger with demi sauce. Demi sauce just means demi-glace, a rich brown sauce from French Cuisine. It's commonly used on top of hamburger type meat in Japan, and you kind have to know what it is when you read a menu and see that something has demi sauce.

Not exactly the fairest fight as the Freshness Burger cost 590 Yen to the Mos Burger's 390, but Mos Burger doesn't have a normal cheeseburger. Their cheeseburger is like a McDonald's cheeseburger and costs 190 Yen. Well anyway, Freshness Burger won this fight hands down. I also tried the Mos Burger's fries which were actually way better than the ones I had at Freshness Burger, but not really to my liking.

I think Mos Burger needs another shot with another burger, but I have no idea what to choose off of that menu. Everything is so eclectic that it's impossible to distinguish what something may actually taste like. Until I figure this out a bit, I'll be sticking with Freshness Burger. If anyone has Mos Burger recommendations, please let me know.

That said, the Classic Cheeseburger was not nearly as good as a simple well done burger you can from a small joint in the US like Five Guys. Forget about it, Japan. The burger's been mastered already and although a "fresh" tasting burger is pretty nice, a real burger needs to be "fat and delicious."

On Wednesday night we decided to check out Ikebukuro. Ikebukuro Station is only a couple stops away, but we've only been once before when Carlos and Kevin were in town. This time we went to look for Gyoza Stadium, a collection of gyoza stalls. Last entry is at 10 PM, so we used the time before to explore the department stores in the area.

Seibu department store was pretty large and had a good collection of food and clothes, but we didn't really find much that we don't have in Shinjuku. We did find a Graniph, a design t-shirt store. I think that there is one in Shinjuku as well, but it provided another perfect example of the Japanese bulk pricing model.

What is wrong with that picture? Winner wins nothing. After a while, we headed out to Sunshine City where Gyoza Stadium is located. Sunshine City is a city funded self-sustained complex, similar to Roppongi Hills. Unlike Roppongi Hills, Sunshine City is largely regarded as a failure and we barely saw anyone there. As fate would have it, it turned out that Gyoza Stadium is actually located in an indoor theme-park called Namjatown. I wasn't mentally prepared for going to a theme-park at 10 PM, so naturally we turned around and started looking up ramen places. It was on our way back we saw a sign for Bankara Ramen.

The name sounded familiar, so we decided why not check it out. Turns out that was a great idea. I got the house special Bankara Ramen, which I think was a version of shoyu ramen. I think I need to figure out what exactly a Bankara Ramen is because it was delicious. The extra piece of meat that came in my deluxe version was ridiculous. Reminded me of Menya Musashi.

V had the Tonkotsu Ramen which was a surprisingly light broth. Both of the ramens had floating chunks of abura, which I think is just fat.

I've started a google map titled the Ramen Report. I'm basically linking all the ramen places I've been to and my relative ratings for them. I'm pretty sure my ratings vary significantly from native Japanese people, but this is what I like.

We also went into a puppy store in Ikebukuro. Huge crowd there looking at puppies, and I really wanted to take a picture. However, there was a clear sign warning me not to take any and plus the store clerk was hawking me and my camera. Puppies are reallllly expensive in Tokyo! V thinks that they're all pure-breeds, but the cheapest ones were about 70,000 Yen. The most expensive came close to 300,000 Yen. That's thousands of dollars for a puppy. I kinda want a Shiba Inu, but I don't think I can afford one anymore.

Thursday was a low key day. We ate in, but decided to go looking for a throw. It's been getting quite chilly and we both have been wanting a casual blanket to use. We left pretty late and had to rush to get to Franc Franc. Turns out their blankets are pretty damn expensive. There has to be an alternative for a cheap comfortable throw. Blanket, space heater, anything to keep our heating bill down.

I did get to check out the Evangelion exhibit at Lumine. Supposedly this has been going around for a while and is about to end. It was actually a little bit disappointing. We were talking about the giant Gundam that used to be at Odaiba Island in one of my Japanese classes, and one of the girls mentioned that they have an Eva in Shinjuku now. So I went to check it out and it turned out to be this:

Somewhat disappointed, we started to walk back when I got distracted by some bread. This place called Sun Pierrot is having some sort of melon bread special. So, I bought myself a normal melon bread, sweet potato melon bread, milk melon bread, and caramel melon bread at 100 Yen each.

All of them were pretty dry, a bit buttery, and not overly delicious. I think I'll settle for Hokuo for now.

I'm supposed to party this weekend for Halloween, but my costume refuses to come together. Also, I'm still kicking this cold and I'm super afraid that if I drink it's just going to go full blown. Halloween, drinking, and Typhoon Chaba in the vicinity; let's hope I manage to get some rest this weekend.

Leaving Tokyo - Osaka

Kyoto has a bit of a small town feel although it has a population of almost 1.5 million. Osaka on the other hand has a much more big city feel at over 2.6 million people. However, the general tourist consensus is that there really isn't much to do in Osaka. Well, I was about to find out anyway.

Hilton is an impeccable business hotel located in the Umeda District. My only complaint is that I actually had to pay to use their business center. I understand charging for internet in rooms, but charging for printing and internet in the business center seems a bit much. Umeda is a sort of downtown type area that we didn't really have a chance to check out. We spent the first part of our day meeting up with Shiang Ping, orienting ourselves, and them finding some Okonomiyaki.

I got a recommendation from the information center for a place in a strip mall under the train tracks, but unfortunately the place was closed. We did luck out when Sarah took us to Okonomiyaki Sakura in the same strip mall. What did I order? Yaki-udon of course! It's just that everyone else was ordering okonomiyaki, I felt like I had to break from the norm. Plus I really wanted to eat it.

It was awesome. I also tried some of Sarah's deluxe okonomiyaki which includes the dubious combination of mochi and cheese. I think I might have tried mochi cheese before, but I have to admit that it's way better than I ever imagined. Imma eat it again.

The one must see in Osaka is Osaka Castle, so we didn't mess around and made that our first stop. Once we entered the grounds of the castle park we noticed the normal Japanese park activities of people doing whatever they want. There were people pseudo skiing down a hill on modified roller blades as well as a smaller group practicing these regressive skateboard type roller skates. More importantly, there were crazy trees.

I'm pretty sure that these trees don't grow like these naturally, but there were a ton of them. Grooming them has to take a long time and why do they look so weird? Getting to Osaka Castle actually required a bunch of stairs. It's built in a very strategic location and I imagine it was an extremely effective stronghold back in the day. I mean we had a fairly tough time making it in.

On the way we saw a whole bunch of old people with ridiculously expensive cameras all looking at something. So we went to check it out. I asked one of them what everyone was looking at, and we all felt a little foolish when we discovered they were just bird-watching.

Osaka Castle has been thoroughly modernized so that the interior is all concrete and houses a museum about it. The exhibits were pretty fascinating as they explained how Japan was unified by Toyotomi Hideyoshi and then subsequently controlled by Tokugawa Ieyasu. We were lost in the exhibits when we realized that it was already 3 PM and Shitennoji Temple closed at 4 PM. We split up with the girls who were going to go shopping in Umeda, bailed, navigated out of Osaka Castle, and got to Shitennoji Temple ten minutes before it closed.

We had purchased the Osaka Unlimited Pass, and entry was essentially a sunk cost, so we asked to be let inside for ten minutes. I'm glad we did because it was nice to have a temple all to ourselves. Well, in all honesty, Shitennoji was nice but underwhelming after a day in Kyoto.

On our way over to Shitennoji, it had started raining and we debated either going to Tennoji Park or to the Osaka Museum of History. As the temperature continued to drop and the rain increased, we decided to stay indoors as much as possible. Unfortunately, we ran into the all too familiar problem of the museum closing shortly and were denied entry.

Time was slipping by as we scanned our guidebooks for a place we could still use our free passes and decided to go for the Floating Garden Observatory. This place was literally out in the middle of nowhere. After walking through Osaka Station, we had to continue down the street in the rain, backtrack on the other side, and take a tunnel under a JR storage facility...

But we successfully got to the Umeda Sky Building and starting making our way up. Funny thing about the observatory is that the ticket booth is on the 39th floor and the building goes up maybe another five floors past that. So realistically, you can not pay for the observatory and just get the views from that floor. I wouldn't recommend that though as the Floating Garden Observatory was actually pretty cool.

I'm pretty sure it caters heavily towards couples as there are numerous couple chairs and you can rent out the space to host your wedding. I didn't get to sit in a couple chair, but I did obnoxiously float around them to get this view.

You can also take an elevator up to the rooftop. It was inevitably windy up there and since they don't allow the use of umbrellas we were forced to endure the rain. I'm surprised they kept it open as it was actually quite dangerous on the roof. The entire space is blacklit and little neon spots on the floor produce a fluorescent atmosphere. Here's what Osaka looks like when you turn the exposure up on your camera and then run in the rain.

This crazy activity compelled Wei to do the same thing and everyone looked on as we ran on a rooftop some 173 m up in the air with whipping winds and rain.

After evacuating the building, it turned out the hotel was not all that far away. We headed back to put on some layers and I checked where my night bus back would pick me up. Everyone else was staying another night. After a quick consult with Shiang Ping, we found out that if we didn't head towards Namba, all the shops in this shopping district would close. And so we headed south and were in the area within half an hour.

Namba is somewhat reminiscent of Shibuya with a largely younger crowd and plenty of shopping. Nothing other than restaurants were really that unique to Osaka and after a short walk down the Shinsaibashi Shopping Arcade, we decided to turn around and get some grub. Wei and Micah grabbed some crepes at a nearby crepe stand called Crepe Ojisan, then we headed down Dotonbori past the famous Kani Doraku and made the brilliant decision of eating kaiten sushi.

Sarah and Shiang Ping caught up with us and went hunting for a place we could get cheap drinks. We finished our dinner and found them waiting for a table at a 280 Yen restaurant. A 280 Yen restaurant is just like a 270 Yen restaurant just 10 Yen better. Good times. We had a couple drinks as the clock wound down to my night bus back home.

Last time I ever take the night bus. The seats are uncomfortable, but the thing that really kills me is that you get woken up every hour or two by the bus stopping and the bus driver turning on all the lights. It's horrible.

I definitely need to come back to the Kansai region. Wei and Micah went to Nara the next day and fed wild deer. There are a couple other towns to visit and although Himeji Castle is under construction right now, it's supposedly the most beautiful castle in Japan. Two days is way too short for Osaka + Kyoto.

Leaving Tokyo - Kyoto

V came to Shinjuku Station on Friday night to see me off. I got on the 9:30 PM night bus to Osaka with two buddies from school, Wei and Micah, and we were off. 9:30 is too early for a night bus since you're just not that tired. Luckily I had planned ahead and not slept much the night before. So I chatted up the guys for a little bit and tried to tuck in for the night. The seat was a bit more uncomfortable that I thought it would be, but what I really didn't anticipate were the stops at Tokyo Main Station, Shinagawa Station, Yokohama and every two hours after that until Kyoto.

Although our hotel was in Osaka, we had planned to do Kyoto first and managed to get off the bus early. As a result we ended up in Kyoto before 6AM. So, we took in the view of Kyoto station for two seconds, dropped off our crap in a coin locker, grabbed a bite to eat, and hit the road.

Koji Temple is home to Japan's tallest pagoda and was our first stop in Kyoto. The problem was that we arrived in Kyoto so early that even temples hadn't really opened yet. So we gazed at it from afar, took a look at some of the surrounding little temples and walked north to the Higashi and Nishi Honganshi temples. These two giant temples are both zen buddhist temples and rival institutions merely a few blocks from one another. We stopped by the west one first and prayed vehemently before hitting up the east one. These temples are ridiculously huge and largely neglected by tourists. The interiors just exude zen and we ended up spending quite a lot of peaceful time there. Below is the Higashi Honganshi Temple.

If I had to pick which one I liked better, I guess I would say the east one. Something about it really appealed to me. The west one had a white lady practicing tai chi alone in the courtyard and the east on had people feeding pigeons. I mean pigeons are kinda cool. We spent the next hour or so trying to figure out what to do next and how to get there. The subway system in Kyoto is quite expensive and doesn't always stop where you need it to. The buses in general hit up all the sights but are impossible to figure out. We decided to pay the 500 Yen for the unlimited bus pass and use the trains as necessary.

I insisted that we go to Fushimi Inari Taisha next as it was one of the must-sees on my list. After asking a friendly policeman how to get there, we took the train there and then made our way through the little Fushimi town. Actually, we got distracted along the way by yatsuhashi - triangle filled mochi. This one famous store Shogoin Yatsuhashi has been selling them since 1689. Man that is a looong time. I ate a lot of free samples and then bought the obligated box. We headed further uphill and stopped again to buy a couple of these strawberry filled chocolate ones to fuel up before heading up the shrine stairs.

Fushimi Inari Taisha is known for the thousands of gates you pass through on your way up. At the bottom, there's a large shrine to pray at. So I did.

I shook the crap out of the bell.

And prayed.

And off we went to climb up the shrine. The gates of Fushimi Inari start out huge and then taper down to size a bit.

But they go on forever. There are construction crews constantly building new ones and renovating old ones. Personal and corporate donations fuel the construction and the size of your gate depends on how much you donated. I'll come back one day and built a gate of solid gold. The ones near the bottom are the most dense, but they consistently covered our entire path to the fourth station (not even halfway) and it took us over half an hour.

At the fourth station, we took a nice break. Wei and I had Kyoto's famous matcha warabi mochi and Micah had a kinako ice cream. I was a little disappointed to find that the warabi mochi wasn't cold at all; something that I would remedy shortly. Still delicious of course.

Someday, I would like to climb the whole thing, but we really needed to get moving with only one day in Kyoto. Getting down the stairs was a breeze and once we made it back to the stairs we decided to go to Kyoto's most famous temple, Kinkakuji. This is also about the time I started to stalk schoolgirls. Schoolgirls are the most chatty bystanders, and I was extremely amused to listen in on Kansai-ben. A lot of people native to Kyoto and Osaka speak with a regional accent that just sounds like tons of fun. せやな～。

The fastest way to Kinkakuji was to take the train partway before switching to a bus, so we hopped onto the JR and got off at enmachi (better known as money town; no seriously, that's a direct translation). In money town, we got asked by a nice man if we needed some help. He told us to take bus 204, so we took bus 205 to the wrong place. Not so shortly thereafter, we figured out how to ride the bus properly and finally got to where all the tourists were.

Except we ate lunch first. Everyone was hungry. Luckily there was a soba place nearby and I got to try another one of Kyoto's specialties: Nishin (herring) Soba. Pretty good. More importantly I ate me one of them matcha ice cream anmistu's.

It was yummy. Matcha is simply ｇround up green tea leaves. So in traditional Japanese tea, the leaves aren't steeped into hot water, but rather mixed in. This makes matcha sound kind of like a cheap version of tea, but in reality the process for creating matcha is quite labor intensive. In order to create a tea leaf that can be ground and drunk, the tea plant must be shaded for it's entire life to generate more sugar content. The tea is then dried, but unlike normal tea, it must be kept flat so that it can be ground later. The labor intensive nature of certain matchas can make them extremely expensive.

Kinkakuji was beautiful but unpleasantly swarmed by Chinese tourists. There are so many goddamn people in China that when they visit other areas of Asia in force they just take over the place. Places like Tokyo do not qualify for obvious reasons. I think I enjoyed the tranquility of the Honganshi temples more. Plus you can actually go inside those and pray. No one can come close to touching Kinkakuji; it's covered in gold.

From here, the Kyoto bus failed us as it took us nearly an hour including a half hour transfer to get to the Imperial Palace. Once we got there, we walked around trying to figure out how to get in before I asked another police officer. Turns out that if you're a foreigner you need to go and get a pass and reserve an hour long tour between 10 AM and 2 PM at the Imperial Household Agency.

Undefeated, we headed towards Nijo Castle which supposedly closed at 5 PM...unfortunately it turned out last entrance was at 4 PM. Perhaps a bit defeated, we started checking the closing times of Kyoto landmarks and discovered that Kiyomizudera closed at 6 PM. Determined to get there on time, we got into a taxi this time. 1500 Yen later, we were finally there!

So, we actually went to Kiyomizudera not knowing how amazing it is, but apparently it's one of the most treasured temples in Japan. The temple is basically built into a cliff and overlooks Kyoto. It's an amazing view, but suffocatingly coupley for three guys. Pretty sure there's some sort of love link with that temple.

It was getting pretty dark and we kind of just rushed through without being able to see anything. Two girls from school also happened to be in Kyoto at the same time, so we met up with them for dinner. But not before I stopped to eat a matcha creme puff. Kyoto is famous for matcha and so I ate me some matcha. But I could eat more. Lots more.

We walked from Kiyomizudera into Kawaramachi with Shiang Ping and Sarah. Sarah had previously lived in Osaka, so Kyoto was also somewhat her stomping ground. It still took us at least an hour to pick something to eat as we roamed down some geisha streets to find that the restaurants were all too expensive. Kyoto is home to the not unsavory type of geisha and supposedly they treat it like an art. Maybe I'll find out someday.

We ended up eating a delicate Kyoto cuisine meal which was kind of good and severely overpriced. At this point everyone was pretty much crashing from a full day of walking and lack of sleep, so we bid the girls goodnight and headed for Kyoto Station to catch a train to Osaka. While trying to figure out how to get to the Hachijo exit, a random guy offered to help us again. Kyoto people are really nice! Train -> Osaka -> hotel -> bed.

Kyoto was really interesting but a pain to get around. It definitely requires more than one day, but I think it might be both convenient and cost effective if I can rent a car with a bunch of people and drive. Some of the landmarks are pretty inconvenient to get to by public transportation. We started sightseeing at 6 AM and ran out of time rapidly as we spent a whole lot of time walking (and climbing stairs). Another important thing to consider when visiting temples and such is that most will close at around 4 PM. Well I'll be back for sure. There are a million other things to see that I missed out on.

Tokyo Tower + French Date #2

Yes it's true that we haven't been to Tokyo Tower yet. But to be frank, it's a little bit out of the way, and unless you work it directly into your schedule, you won't find yourself there. Even having been there now, I think that it is a nice place to visit, but not a must see for those short on time.

Yesterday was a bit gloomy and although it didn't rain, it was quite overcast. As a result, I decided that we should go for the night views rather than the day views. I'm so smart. So we headed out after it got a little dark. Tokyo Tower is a short walk from the Akabanebashi Station, and the entrance we actually took to get to it is a bit of an alley. I feel like maybe we went through a side entrance, but it made the walk quite a bit shorter than if we had walked around it.

Inside we ended up on the 2nd floor which is populated by a food court and various gift stores. Tokyo Tower actually has three or four floors of touristy shopping. At the time we went, things seemed pretty empty except the one gift store we went to. We saw a gold Kitty that V really wanted to buy, but there was no smaller version in sight.

We did buy some snacks though...like we always do. We've heard a few thing about Tokyo Banana, which are Banana Custard filled cakes, and we also went for these 半月- Han Getsu - Half Moon crackers. Tokyo Banana is really banana-y. If you like bananas, you'll like Tokyo Banana... Han Getsu are thick french gaufre cookies filled with red bean or matcha cream. Yums.

Tokyo Tower is accessible from the first floor and is split into two tiers. The first tier is the main viewing area and is 150m up. You're high enough to see over all the buildings, but low enough to get a good look at the landscape. The second tier is 250m up; you actually have to buy second tier tickets separately and after buying the tickets we started walking up about three flights of stairs. During the second flight of stairs we started to get worried that we would have to climb 100m worth of stairs, but luckily we did find an elevator eventually.

That's actually a zoomed in view of Ginza from the second tier; so it's more representative of the view from the first tier. V recognized the random obstacle things on the second tier from a Detective Conan movie, so we went on to reenact the scene where Conan hides from people trying to kill him.

Once back on the first tier we checked out the look-down windows which give you a view of how far 150m is. V performed a test of courage by jumping on the windows multiple times. Crazy girl. She's scared of heights by the way. The first tier also apparently has a random performance stage where bands and artists come to perform at certain times of day. We missed it, but we saw a chick signing cds.

Back down on the ground and down the alley again, we saw three cats sniffing at some shrimp that had obviously been planted there for them. Homeless animals are pretty well taken care of in Japan. I tried to give one of them Tokyo Banana, but he didn't want to have anything to do with me. So I left it on the ground and told him to make sure he eats it.

Our original plan was to go for unagi for dinner, but the place we had targeted closed pretty early. So I used this as a chance to try out the ramen stall right outside of Shinjuku Station. Just like the movies! I'm not exactly sure how to read the sign, but this stall is outside the West Entrance pretty much every night. They sell both shoyu ramen and miso ramen along with a selection of oden.

V got some oden, and I decided to go for the shoyu ramen. It was not bad at all; the bowl wasn't too large, so it wasn't a great value for 700 Yen. However, it was pretty good and totally hit the spot. I totally see the appeal of ramen carts.

Our grand plans for all of Thursday amounted to Tokyo Tower and ramen. Good times. Today though, we made it out in time for lunch and we headed back to Kagurazaka for the French lunch date I had originally planned.

I'd read about Maison de la Bourgogne on various websites as being really good French bistrot faire for not too much monies. Seemed like a must try. Last time, we went to Iidabashi Station and walked from there, so we didn't really get to experience Kagurazaka, but this time we were solidly in the right place. Saw a couple people who were obviously European, but the area actually seemed to be home to mostly rich old women.

It's a bit hard to tell from the picture, but all the shops on the street certainly seemed geared towards them in any case. From the clothes boutiques to the traditional snacks, rich old lady crap everywhere. Maison de la Bourgogne is down one of the alleys and was a bit difficult to find.

Once we got there we were disappointed to find that they only had a Souffle Lunch. Their website advertises a regular lunch course as well as the lighter Souffle course, but maybe it's because we were a little late, they only had the souffle. The Souffle Lunch starts off with a salad, then your choice of souffle, and ends with a coffee or tea. I enjoyed my light salad, but V is not particularly partial to vinaigrette dressings. The souffle was really more of a soup with souffle on top. I think I had anticipated something a bit pastry like, but what we ended up getting was a soup and a salad. The whole thing was pretty filling, well made and decent value for 1000 Yen, but it wasn't exactly what we had anticipated. The Souffle Lunch used to be a salad and risotto which would have been awesome. Alas...

Hard to say how I feel about our lunch, because although everything tasted impeccable, we weren't really in the mood for souffle and not having regular bistrot food was a bit of a let down. The dinner at Maison de la Bourgogne is pretty pricy, and I'm not sure if we'll be back for sure.

We capped our meal with some white chocolate mousse which we never figured out how to say in katakana. The hardest part about eating french or italian or american is that you need to decipher what exactly they're trying to say. Some of the weird french sounds are impossible to figure out. We ate something that might have been called "babuarowa," but neither of us are confident that was what it was either. Plus the handwriting was hard to read! Argh.

We ended our date, the way everyone should end a meal: by praying. There was this temple with all sorts of pretty gold detail on the inside that compelled us to pray. Not allowed to take pictures inside though.

Not a bad date, but I'm starting to feel like we should just stick to Japanese food. Can't go wrong with sushi right? I'm off to Kyoto tonight with some school peeps, so I'll hopefully see V for a bit after I get back. She's supposed to leave soonish though...

Nooooooooooo