Today we were on our own, and we thought that a trip up one of the towering buildings would be a good thing to do. Our choice was the Shibuya Sky which towers over Shibuya Scramble Square and the famous Shibuya crossing. At peak times up to 3000 people cross at one time. Unfortunately or maybe fortunately it wasn’t too busy when we were there. As we sat under a tree to watch the shenanigans a young chap with a professional looking camera asked if he could film me. I had to drink from my water bottle and he said it would be on the news! Not sure what news, or what the topic was. Maybe “Elderly woman lathered in sweat takes a water break at Shibuya.”
The tower was well worth the 2500 yen (approx $25NZD) and we inadvertently arrived just before it opened and beat the crowds. The whole place was very upmarket and it looked like they had large events on the roof top. It was blistering hot and puffs of cool steam floated out of large poles and the security guards had air conditioned jackets! I just thought they were a bit pudgy until I saw the motorised fans in the back of the jacket.
Descending from the ‘Sky Stage’ on the 47th floor we decided to seek some relief from the heat in the nearby department store. ‘109’ has several floors, all for women! Not what you think, I didn’t spend a penny, or yen; the whole place was for very young women, mainly Lolita style garb and tiny ruffled skirts with stretchy socks above the knee are not for me! But we did enjoy observing the clientele some of which were completely transformed from human form. Some cute and some a bit scary!
Shibuya crossing is right by the Shibuya train station and it was a breeze to navigate our way to the correct platform. Trains are so frequent that you don’t even look to see when one is scheduled.
Back in Shinjuku we wandered in a different direction and paid a visit to Uniqlo, but almost every thing was too small for me, even extra large! I will just have to wait until I am next in Australia as we don’t have Uniqlo in NZ.
Realising that it was way past feeding time we found a place to eat. This time Lance’s requirement was ‘air-con and a chair with a back on it’ as many of the places we have been have only stools. We had no idea what the food was to be and the guy at the front desk just pointed to a laminated menu and we said yes. At the table he spoke rapidly in Japanese and when we expressed our confusion he grabbed an English speaking waiter and it worked out that we had 90 minutes to eat all that we wanted. We still had no idea how much it was but it was not a salubrious establishment so we felt comfortable that all would be okay.
The food was a mixture of Thai and Japanese and was all buffet, but really great. I gave the deserts a miss as they all looked a bit jellyish.
Fed and watered we made our way back to the hotel. There is a large square out the front of the main entry to Kabukicho Tower where our hotel is located. On our first morning there was a movie being filmed there and this evening there was a sort of dance off thing happening. There are queues of people waiting to enter the building for a variety of shows. Our hotel lobby is unlike any the we have been to, the desk is a large circle inn the centre and the reception staff are on the outer, on our side, of the circle. Check in is done on an iPad by the customer with staff close by to assist. Robots are sitting in their stations to do something? But we never quite worked out what they did. We would definitely stay here again.
I had spied a small bar through the glass wall of the elevator, it was just around the corner, so after a rest and a shower we found it and sat with a beer and a mojito listening to some old school music.
And then moved further up the road and found a nice sushi restaurant. A young staff member introduced himself and proceeded to ask where we were from. “Ahhhh, I lived for a year in New Zealand.” It transpires that he spent a year in Te Puke on a high school exchange, and his sister is currently studying English in Auckland. The sushimi, and tempura were delicious. I had tempura sweetcorn and Lance tempura prawns, although here they call them shrimp even though they are large.
After dinner we found our way to Golden Gai, another serious of tiny alleys, this time filled with tiny bars. As it was early in the evening it was easy to wander through until we found a nice little gin bar.
Our young lady serving in the bar told us it was quite a large bar for Golden Gai as she could fit 12 people sitting. And will not take standing patrons. She lured me into a lovely Japanese gin, that I will likely never be able to experience again. Lance some Japanese beer that he said was good. We had a lovely time chatting to her, her English was great and we asked how she became such a good speaker of English. “Working here,” was her reply. “That’s why I work here.” It was early in the evening, perhaps 8pm? And she would have the bar open until 5am!
Arriving back at our hotel we felt that it would be rude not to experience the delicious chocolate fondant desert one last time, and a beer and wine. Tomorrow we would be departing for Kyoto.
No comments:
Post a Comment