Tokyo: Day 4

Well, first off, I am going to start lowering the resolution and size of my blog pictures so I can save room on my hard drive and upload them faster. If you want a full resolution/quality image don't hesitate to email me. I also will post a little less frequently, or if I post there will be less pictures just because posting the pictures takes a lot of time. Without further ado, Day 4 in Tokyo.

Today Erin and I decided to go to Ginza and check things out there. When we got off of the train the first thing I noticed was a Nissan dealership with a gorgeous, bright red, brand new Nissan GTR sitting inside the window. I had to go in and see it. The car was splendid... too bad I don't fit. Yeah, thats right, if you didn't catch that me knowing I don't fit means I actually sat in the new GTR. It was really, really cool. Here are some pictures.

There I am, sitting in the GTR and backing in all of its glory.

I know I look pretty happy, but I don't fit all that well. There is enough room for me to move the wheel and stuff, but I wouldn't be able to operate the peddles well, so it looks like I will never own a GTR.

Such a nice car... mmmmm.

After I stopped obsessing over the GTR I turned my attentions to Ginza itself. It is pretty cool but seems like a posh, upper class shopping district of Tokyo. Well, not all shopping, but all the really high end designer brand's stores are in Ginza. Anyway, Erin and I went in search for food and on the way I took some pictures of the city.

I really liked the colors on that building.

Somehow, we finally found some quick, cheap food to eat and decided to go in and sit down. It was, you guessed it, a Japanese Wendy's.

You may scoff at us eating at American fast food establishments while we are in Japan, but I really have to say... that is the best fast food burger I have ever had, ever. If I had the chance I would go get another one right this second. It was, however, a little more expensive than an American Wendy's burger, so it had one drawback.

After Wendy's we went to find the famous Ginza Apple store. Erin remembered where it was, well the general direction at least. Once we were in the area the building was pretty easy to find. It was a huge silver building with smooth sides and an Apple logo. Kind of hard to miss. Venturing inside, we realized that this was no run of the mill Apple store. It was several stories of Apple goodness with glass, button less elevators! How fun, right? The first floor were general merchandise, you know, computers, iPods, all that good stuff. The second floor was one big "genius" bar where people could get customer service and troubleshooting help.

On the third floor there was a presentation theater room, shown above. Finally, the 4th floor was a showroom for dock/speaker units and spiffy headphones. There was also a computer lab of sorts where people would sit down at computers and employees would show them cool stuff they could do with an Apple. Erin and I sat down and decided to look up other things we should do in Ginza. This is when I found out that Japanese keyboards are a little different, and therefore very weird.

They were also showing off printers, I forgot to mention that.
I took a picture of myself taking a picture of myself in the elevator.
Erin with an Apple aura.

When we were sitting at the computer lab we figured out that the Sony building would be a cool place to go, so we decided to head in that direction. Along the way we got distracted by the super cute/weird looking mascot of the Tokyo Police Department.

It turned out that that building was the Police Museum, so we decided to check it out. Unfortunately they didn't allow photography.

About this time Yasu called wondering where we were. I told him we were in Ginza and arranged a meeting place. Yasu said he would be a few minutes so Erin and I decided to stop at a fancy dessert shop. I got ice cream and Erin got cake. My ice cream wasn't normal ice cream but it was really, really good so I didn't complain. Plus, it came in a fancy stand.

I guess this good time to mention one of the things I really like about Japan. When you order food it almost always looks like the picture or the example. For example, when I got a meal the other night, even the three little sweet onions were arranged how they looked in the picture. I guess I really like that for some reason. I guess it is one of those cool novelties that we don't have in America because I guess Japanese chefs and cooks are super attentive when it comes to the details of food.

Anyway, we met up with Yasu and went to the Sony building. It was pretty cool, 90% of the building was a showcase of Sony products that are both on and are coming to the market. I even got to see the XEL-1 OLED TV.

It is 11mm thick and has a 1,000,000-1 contrast ratio. That isn't a DCR, that is the actual full contrast ratio.

They had a lot of cool products from digital cameras that automatically detected when you smiled and took the picture, to HD video cameras that looked great. I was hoping to get to see one of their robots, but that didn't happen. However, I did get to see one of their future products that I really liked. It is called the Rolly. Basically, it is a pocket sized-ish MP3 player/speaker system that lights up, rolls around and dances dynamically to the music that it is playing. The speakers sound great too. I thought it was really cool.

Here is another picture of me taking a picture. This time I was on a HDTV.

We left the Sony building and walked around a bit more. I found that Manneken Belgian Waffle place that my friend Adam recommended. Unfortunately we didn't get a waffle due to the line, but we might go back and get one later.


Once we got bored in Ginza we decided to hop on the train and go to Shibuya. The ride was pretty short and I was amazed at what I saw. If Ginza is the place for the older, rich crowd to go shop and hang out (which it was, I didn't see many young people wandering about in Ginza), Shibuya is the place for young, hip, fashionable people to hang out. Chris Escobar, you would have a blast there. Shibuya is filled with cool designer stores, music stores, sports stores and any other store a young person can imagine.

The sheer number of people around and crossing the street was amazing.

Ok, I guess I need to explain this. All over Tokyo there are these mini police stations with a few officers inside and standing outside. I guess they are just there to have a presence and to help the public by giving them directions and helping with other things. They probably also are the first responders to crime in the area. The police boxes (that is what I call them) are all architecturally different and creative. This (above) was one of the coolest ones I have seen so far.

Erin and I explored a couple of stores and went into a music store called HMV. It was 6 or 7 floors and had a techno/dance floor. I took a picture for Derek and Chris.

They also had an advertisement for Bones (this one is for you, Mom and Dad).


We then wandered into a store called Loft, which I now believe is Erin's most favorite store in the world. It housed everything she liked in a hip way and even had an entire floor of office supplies. Needless to say, we were in there for a while. At some point, Yasu and I just sat down on a couch and waited for Erin to finish browsing. We were sitting for a while =P.
I liked this paper fan, there was a whole rack of them.

There was also this huge robot thing. I thought it was picture worthy. I didn't think to see how much it was.

When we left the Loft it was raining, so we just headed back to the hostel and Yasu went home. He had to be home early anyway, so it worked out.

After the rain settled down and when we got hungry. Erin and I went and found the Kaitenzushi, or sushi go round, in Asakusa and ate there. It was quite an adventure and the sushi was really good. Basically, how it works is you sit at a bar around the sushi chefs. There is a conveyor belt that the chefs place sushi on. The sushi is on color coded plates, each plate is worth a different amount coinciding with the price of the sushi that is on said plate. You stack your plates as you eat and when you are done the plates are counted and you are charged accordingly. It was a fun and challenging meal since we didn't really know what was what. The food was definitely good though. I would go there again.

We wandered a little more after dinner, looking for dessert, and finally settled on a Baskin' Robins (or however you spell it) after walking for about an hour. I got mango flavored ice cream, which was very tasty.

Thats the end of our day, I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. I am sorry I am a little behind on posts, I will try and make up for it by posting the next two days worth tomorrow morning. For now I need to go to sleep. Good night!