Having fun in Tokyo

Hi, I think everybody is following how their countries are winning medals at the Olympics, but you know in Japan the games begin around the evening, so people go out without being concerned about the results of the Olympics. So my friend and me came to Tokyo again last weekend. 

As usual, I had searched for a nice restaurant in Tokyo. My friend had a stomach problem, so we had kept eating some Subway until recently, but since he recovered completely, we decided to have something that has a very thick taste. 

This restaurant "Chicken Place" is basically a bar, but it serves good rice and curry during the day. I took a pic of this bar, and the pic you're looking at is typically a room for the Japanese bar. 

This rice and curry's price was only 650 yen and the iced coffee 150 yen. I did enjoy the taste and since there weren't many people past 1pm, we could relax after the lunch.  

We were in Akihabara, but my friend found on his iphone that an exhibition of "Tut Ankh Amon" was being held in Ueno. So we came to Ueno to have some fun. 

One ticket per person was 3,000 yen, which translates into 38 US dollars, or 31 Euros. It was costly, but we decided to take a look only to get disappointed because they didn't bring the Tut's mask from Egypt. We waited in line for only 20 minutes. 

It was past 3pm after the exhibition, so we were feeling hungry. So we had sweets at a Japanese cafe called "Mihashi" in Ueno. This is called Kuzu mochi, which was elastic like rice cake. It tastes better with the brown powder (Kinako).  

And this drink was Matcha ice cream. As I said again and again, Matcha is like bitterer green tea. It helped me regain energy enough to walk around in Akihabara again. 

I learned this morning that the Japanese women's soccer team "Nadeshiko" had been defeated by the USA and that failed to grab gold medals. But they won silver medals for the first time, which made me happy nonetheless!  

Update on Akihabara

Hi, it's been a while since I updated my blog, but I haven't been feeling well until recently. I went to AKB last weekend because like I said the summer is when you can feel that energy coming from the area. 

It seems some lewd anime is ongoing now. But I don't think it's rated R because any anime that gets broadcast can't be too lewd. But in my opinion, an anime's quality depends on its story like Haruhi and K-On!  

As I said two years ago, Kebab is something you can enjoy as a foreign dish in AKB. It seemed to be still selling.

 I saw some graffiti-like painting for a live house. I think the artists would play something related to anime because I can see the anime-like girl in the center. 

 I was looking for an LED pen light, and walking from one shop to another. I was sweating a river as the temperature was about 95 Fahrenheit. The price for the light was only 3 dollars. Akihabara  is where you can buy electronics on the cheap. 

One side of a Sofmap. It's quite typical of AKB. One thing I was told by a Chinese was that there were mostly guys in this area. So even if you don't have a gf, you can walk around comfortably in this area, haha. ^^;

 My friend and I was looking for good earphones for our ipods. This shop is where you can try every earphones, which I think is important because you wouldn't want to feel disappointed after spending about 100 dollars. 

I saw this figure standing in front of a Pachinko parlor. It's where you can play slot machine-like pinballs. If you get many balls, you can exchange them for money. Some people are really addicted to this gambling. 

Obviously, there are many cafes, but instead of relaxing at a cafe, walking down the streets of AKB would let you feel more entertained.

魚べい (Uobei)

I tended to go to the same restaurants these days because there hasn't been a newly opened one. But when I went to the biggest mall in my city, I saw this Kaiten sushi restaurant for the first time.

 The kanji 魚 means "fish". I came here last weekend, and it was really crowded as each dish cost only 100 yen. It's close to a little over one dollar. 

Usually they put two pieces on a dish. But if the sushi is really good like fatty tuna, you can have only one piece on one dish. 

Most of the Kaiten sushi I've seen tend to serve cake too. I guess it's because they want to entertain kids too. I've seen kids taking cake only. When I was very small I didn't like sushi either.  

And sweet potato was available too! 

As each dish was only 100 yen, you'd feel full with only 8 dishes or so. That translates into 800 yen for lunch. It would be reasonable for anybody and you can also have fun picking up only your favorites :)

神 ice

Let me introduce an ice cream shop in Akihabara called "神 ice". The Kanji 神 means "God", and if Otaku people want to refer to something very epic, they would call it 神-something, which means it is as good as God. For example, you can call a very good song 神曲. The latter Kanji 曲 is "song". So I think the owner of this ice cream shop wanted to mean it serves ice cream that tastes superb to you.

This shop is on the first floor of a building "AKIBA 神TOWER", and it has other floors where you can get massage, and see amateur idols sing in front of you. You can see how to go from Akihabara station to this shop by seeing the video below. Also, here's a link to the website of this tower.

Normally Akihabara is very crowded like the pics I showed you before, so I guess this video was shot in the early morning.