TacoCat’s Travels #38 (Japan Ver1): Shopping and Sushi 🐟

Cover image source: asia.nikkei.com

Hey Steemit!

If you missed the last few posts, I'm recounting my first trip to Japan way back at the end of 2015!
I'm so glad people enjoyed my previous post on the deer at Nara! It was really interesting recounting and reading up on it. Anyway, this post will (un)fortunately be the end of this series! I don't have many photos left so I'll be combining the last 3 days of our trip together in this post since there's not much to cover. It'll be like a 3-day supercut ending of sorts. Here we go!

4 January 2016. Monday.

Since we were pretty tired from the previous day of walking in Nara, we slept in a bit and took the shinkansen at about 1:30pm. We were lucky it was pretty sunny out and we could see Mt Fuji from the train!

At the time we were staying somewhere in Osaka, but because we were gonna be flying back from Tokyo, we had booked another airbnb for our last few days. So we checked out of our airbnb in Osaka and were enroute to our last airbnb in Tokyo!

By the time we reached the apartment and unpacked it was pretty much dinner time. We went to grab some food at Ootoya!

I had claypot-style curry chicken

Sean ordered chicken katsu rice

We were staying near Akihabara; the famous electric town - a buzzing shopping hub famed for its electronics retailers and shops specialising in manga, anime and video games. Akihabara is a major tourist spot, even for non-gamers.

After walking around for a bit, we bought some snacks for dessert.

This waffle is soo goood! Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. Even their most basic maple waffle has a nice thin coating of maple syrup on the outside so it's not plain at all.

And of course, we couldn't resist beard papa.

Akihabara is full of electronics shops so we went to check out the biggest one - Yodobashi Akiba!

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Another reason why I love Japan so much is the huge retail stores they have here! Almost all Yodabashi Cameras have at least 5 floors full of products to see and buy, and their floors are very wide as well, so there's sooo much stuff to see!

Since we're only interested in the games section, we pretty much skipped all the other floors.

I don't play Fallout, but everyone knows of Vault Boy by now.

Their games section was huge! I was blown away with how much stuff they had; from games to amiibos, and all sorts of merch.

I mean I didn't buy any but it was still fun to look at.

sooo many plushies!

We also took some silly pictures 😆

They also had a pretty big toy section on the same floor as well.

Who remembers this

I remember watching the TV commercials for this Sylvanian Families toy collection when I was much younger. After a while my mum asked me if I wanted one and even then I was like, "what for?" They looked nice but I wasn't into Barbies or dollhouses since I started playing GameBoy so they seemed pretty pointless to me. And they were really expensive! Even when I was that young I could see that games were much more worth it.

They had this really cool Mario display that I could never put in my house because I know it'll just collect dust. Curse my pragmatic and frugal self.

I think this was the current amiibo lineup at the time, and now there are sooo many more! I know a lot of people collect the amiibos but man, at 15-20 bucks a pop, it sure costs a lot!

That's pretty much it for this day. On to the next!

5 January 2016. Tuesday.

We started our day past noon once again, and while walking to the station we saw this interesting parking lot, where the cars were parked vertically!

We don't have this system in Singapore despite it being even smaller than Japan, so this was the first time I saw a parking lot like this. I'm sure this is a common sight in Japan and some other places like India and New York.

I'm not sure about other countries, but I read that Japan has the distinction of having had some of the first Automated Rotary Parking Systems in the world. These car parks are engineering marvels, involving car elevators and a circulation system so that multiple cars can be parked in a small area that would otherwise only fit two or three cars. Not only does it save land space since you're stacking the cars vertically, but the entire process is automated, eliminating the need for driving around a crowded lot to try and find a parking space. This allows drivers to save on both fuel and time – two things that are increasingly important in Japan. How neat!

Source: esconelevators.com

Anyway, we took the train and walked to the famous Tsukiji fish market!

Famous for their early morning tuna auctions and wholesale market with the freshest seafood, Tsukiji's inner market has since moved to the Toyosu waterfront district. The move was announced very early on in Nov 2016 but got repeatedly pushed back until Oct 2018. Many merchants have since made the move to Toyosu, but Tsukiji's outer market with numerous shops and restaurants are still there so you can still eat fresh sushi at Tsukiji.

It was pretty unfortunate, but on the day we visited Tsukiji, there was a huge crowd around Sushi Zanmai. And there was a film crew there too!

I'm not sure if it was the official opening, or maybe some celebrity was there, but it was crowded af! So we hightailed it out of there and went to see the other parts of Tsukiji.

We found this quaint little sushi shop and decided to give it a try.

We ended up ordering quite a bit and it was pretty good! I remember the salmon and anago (saltwater eel) being really tasty and smooth!

After that yummy lunch we walked around the market some more.

I dont know what fish this is but look how big its head is!

After exiting the market we started walking along the main street and saw these 2 women dressed in kimonos! They looked really nice!

Kimonos are actually pretty thick because there are so many layers so it's pretty fitting for winter.

Actually this post has been going on for quite a while, so I think I'll end it off in the next one or it'll be too long! Sorry for the abrupt ending and cliffhanger!

Thanks for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

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Check out my previous post in this series!
TacoCat’s Travels #37 (Japan Ver1): A Very Endeering Experience