teamEggers

Choco-Bear

What’s that adorable little chocolate bear beer?  Crazy japanese beer? An exotic bottle full of fizzy wonder and mystery?

Nope. It’s brewed in Portland at the Rogue brewery.  Who knew they had such a worldwide reach!

Tokyo – the big, big city. [1]

While our trip to sumo-town was technically our first trip to Tokyo, this was our first trip to *tokyo*.  The Tokyo you dream about – fast cars, busy streets, high fashion.  Men dressed up like cell phones?  More on that later.

This day was crazy long, so I’m going to break it up into pre-Ginza and post-Ginza for your reading pleasure.  Part one.  Here we go.

The transit system in Japan is incredible – by navigating the trains and subways, you can’t get anywhere with really fantastic efficiency.  But. That’s the Japanese, right?  Incredibly efficient.

So the plan for sunday goes like this:  Home > Shibuya > Ginza > Akihabara > Home

Shibuya

Shibuya has often been called the world’s busiest crosswalk. It wasn’t a majour destination, but since we were transferring subways here anyways, we thought we should stop and look around. (click this image to see larger version)

I wonder if we’re missing something that really makes Shibuya unique, because aside from the sheer amounts of people, there didn’t seem to be much separating it from any other part of the city.

Some highlights from walking the largely pedestrian streets:

Call it what it is, eh?

An Eggers throwback. For what it’s worth, we also saw an Outback Steakhouse. Just think, if I would have “stuck with it” and “ran more food, princess” I could have been here. Livin’ the dream. Or… living a different dream. Would you like a bloomin’ onion with that diet coke, ma’am?

This was really cool, from a design perspective. Though of course… I wonder what happens on the 31st!

Back to the subway station. It should be noted that jon is very tall here. I don’t see much difference because men and women alike are about my height (5’6), but jon is a good head above most crowds. Here, he had to duck not to hit his head on the ceiling. Of the train station.

Ginza

Ginza is noted as the most expensive shopping district in Tokyo, which happens to be a pretty high-fashion and costly city all on its own. Ginza is also home to the famed 5-story mac store, which was the inspiration for leaving the house this Sunday morning.

Ginza is busy, busy, busy, thought not in the shi-shi Cherry Creek North sort of way that I was expecting. Lots of tourists.

Okay. Where there are lines of people lining up, there’s probably something incredible at the other side, right? This worked for the pizza joint in San Francisco. I should trust in the line. I’m always happier.

So what was it that all these people were in line for, you ask? What was it that we got at the end of our 20 minute wait? It was cake. Oh, but not any cake. It was baum kuchen. It came in “mountain” flavour and “straight” flavour. so. Weird.

And there were crazy little cake elves working behind the cabinet. It reminded me of santa’s factory-style.

Anyways, this seems like a good breaking point. We’ll continue with Ginza in the next post.

Tokyo – the big, big city. [2]

Back to the streets of Ginza.  You may be wondering what kind of stores are here.  No Coach this time, as it’s not high class enough for the Ginza.  Burberry, Dior, Bvlgari, and Lladró

This is jon and I in front of the mikimoto pearl store.

A while back I remember thinking, “If all the greeting cards in the bookstores and stationary shops are in English or French, where do the Japanese buy the regular cards?” It’s here.  They all crowd into this tiny little stationary shop and have their way with the postcards on the wall. The rhythm of the japanese society is really interesting to me.  Like a colony of ants, they flawlessly maneuver around one another, regardless of how busy and how small the space is.

If there’s one thing to be said about my experiences so far in japan, it’s that it is tremendously busy. Everywhere.

And then, there it was. Choirs of angels started singing in my ear.

And you know, after we got there we realized “yeah, this is an apple store.  of course it looks and behaves exactly like this.” Granted, there were things that you’d never see in the Mayfair store.  There was a glass encased elevator, reminiscent of the G5 cube, that automatically stopped on all the floors. There was a theater for live demonstrations and private events. I would imagine it a great place to watch keynotes.  There was a whole floor of genius bars. There were a lot of people. It was apple in technicolour.

Across the streeet there was a giant orange paperclip.  Jon and I love office supplies, so we thought we’d wander over and look at the $500 fountain pens and Moleskine notebooks made specifically for Tokyo. 5 floors later we found a carbon fiber pen set.  Dad, if you’re reading this, we thought of you!

9 floors up there was a little cafe and a model boat exhibition.  Crazy, crazy.  A man came over to us and was telling us about what they were doing and asked if we had begun building our boat yet (of course not many people just “stumble upon” a gallery on the 9th floor of an office supply store), so when we told him we were just appreciating the craftsmanship he looked a little confused.

Nonetheless, back to the station.  Onward and upward.

Akihabara

This is the electronics capitol of Japan.  Need coaxial?  they’ve got it.  Need a new computer? they’ve got  it. Need a man dressed up as a cell phone?  Why yes…. I do.

Lots and lots of stores. Lots of people.  I think that may be the overwhelming feeling of the day.

After standing in a used electronics store for the better part of 20 minutes, watching the final matches of the sumo tournament, we realized that we were hungry. The place we found for dinner had a vending machine that you ordered out of.  It’s an odd Japanese phenomenon that (once mastered) could really help the wayward traveller out. Really cuts out that awkward pointing-to-the-menu part of the meal. “Kore, kudesai.” (that one, please)

The trick was to put your money  in *first*. When you push a button and instead of ordering your meal it gives you a screen full of kanji (that quite obviously says “pay me, you dumb american”) the correct response is NOT to assume that the machine is broken and pace in front of the restaurant like a retard.  Oh michelle. Stop throwing tantrums in public when you don’t understand something.

Lesson learned: it’s okay to not understand things when you’re in a different country.

Back to the train.  Back to home. We did have to try our crazy cake, after all.