To me, the fish market seemed to me to be a huge giant wet market. It reminded me a lot of the markets I saw in China and the regulated fish markets in HK. It was also quite cold. There were quite a few tourists that were looking around. How did I know? For one thing, they all carried cameras. The locals pretty much just bought their stuff and left, unlike the tourists (like us), who walked around looking at the huge carcasses of fish.
So finding a sushi place to eat was not easy. Every cheap sushi place was jammed and packed with people. This was hampered because someone suggested we eat at a conveyer belt sushi place. However, as we were looking for it in the market area, we could not find it. Finally, we gave up and found the shops area, where sushi shops were already in full swing at 8:30. Everything was packed. There was one place that was empty, but the chef was smoking, so I doubt the quality of the food.In the end, we ate at a ramen place that was in the shop area. It was still packed, but we didn't know what to order. It was the sort of noodle stand that you had to know Japanese for. There were no menus, but Japanese plaques on the wall. While we could read the word ramen, we couldn't read anything else. Paul could read the katakana. I could understand what the vocabulary was. But Paul didn't have the vocabulary, and I didn't recognize hiragana or katakana, so we were in a pickle. In the end, Paul just pointed to two random plaques on the wall, and we got miso ramen and shio ramen.
Afterwards, we wandered off towards Shinjuku. There were just a lot of brand name stores. It was international to be sure, but wasn't really impressive to me. To me, it seemed like a whole bunch of mall like shopping centers. Also a lot of business buildings. I did take a picture in front of the LOVE statue that was so prodominant in the Densha Otoko live action drama. Still, it is in a lot of things, so I took a picture.We then wandered over to Harajuku. It took us a while because we decided to walk over there instead of taking the train. Along the way, while I decided to help an old lady with her luggage, she kept saying excuse me (sumimasen) because I guess she didn't expect help. Afterwards though, I realized that we looked like wannabe thugs because while we were dressed in suits, we were wearing them very casually, almost mocking the people that wear suits to work. Oh well.
I had one of the nastiest drinks I've had in a while. It was a black bean black tea that was supposed to be good for you. Paul took the safe route and had a calpis soda. Ick. I can still remember the black bean tea now. Good thing I had an onigiri that tasted good. It washed the bad taste out.So anyways, by this time, we had gotten lost by walking. I missed a left turn and we were going the wrong way. We decided to take the train to Harajuku, so we decided to sit around and finish our drinks. Meanwhile, while we were drinking, I decided to mock the police on bikes. Paul somehow made me laugh, causing me to choke on one of the nastiest drinks I've ever had. Talk about embarassing. Good thing the cops on bikes didn't catch me, or I'd had to outrun a bike.
We got to Harajuku. It was great. It was geared towards trendy people, and while I'm not trendy, I love watching people that are. ^.^ However, it was also here that I had a traumatizing experience. Not 10 meters in from the front of the pedestrian walkway, was a 40 something scruffy looking man walking towards us...with no pants on. Talk about tramatizing. It wasn't a regular thing. How did I know? There were 2-3 high schoolers that were following him with a cellphone camera. How did he miss the kids following him? More importantly, HOW DID HE MISS HIS PANTS??? And how did Paul miss the whole thing? He didn't see it at all.
So while walking through Harajuku, we checked out some stores. Claire's, the accessories store for girls, is everywhere. It certainly seems popular enough here.
I decided that we got to Tokyo U. After reading and watching Love Hina, it was a place not to be missed. Passing through Ueno, we saw a pond and shrine. By thi time, our feet HURT, but we soldiered on. For those that know how fast and how much I walk, you would have an idea of how far we walked that day. At Ueno, I bought a cute teddy bear face towel at a 100yen shop. Their 100 yen shop really puts our dollar stores to shame.
The University, while not gorgeous, was dignified. Their engineering hall seems much more interesting than ours, but I suspect it's only because I've been there only once, instead of how many hours I've spent at RCH and the rest of the campus. We went ot the cafeteria because I'm obsessed about food. Their food is cheap! Everything looked awesome and it was all under 500 yen. UGH. Why do we have such relatively expensive food in Canada?
So after taking some pictures at the university, we went back to the hostel to rest. Went to Shinagawa to meet up with Ling, our co-worker from Broadcom who was there for business. We ate dinner with them and some people from Sony. Went to a pub like place and had weird food like horse sashimi (raw horse slices). It was like beef, but more gamy. It wasn't bad, but I wouldn't want it on a regular basis. Yakitori was good.
Since the tradition is to go out drinking, we also tagged along. The pub was only the first round. We went to a bar that was nearby for second round. Since it was Halloween, lots of people were dressed up. One of the waitresses dressed up in a panda suit, noting that we were foreigners, just came up to us and shouted "I am panda" and throwing up her arms. It was such a cute little moment. The rest of the bar was very lively. After talking at the bar for a while (since it was that packed) and chatting with the natives, me and Paul decided to get back, while the rest of them went out for third round in Roppongi. We were too tired to do anything else. Plus, our feet were really complaining at the time. I really wish I had more cushioning for my Geoxes.
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