Ok, so I’ve finished a trip to the Toyota factory today, and will have a relatively slow week next week. Well, I still have to prepare for the zemi gasshuku that’s coming up, and the Singapore General Elections are here, so I have to figure out voting, and oh wait, I might not be that free. At least I’ll get to sleep in for roughly a week (also, I want to see the summer Huis Ten Bosch! I have to go look and see if I have enough money :3)
So, going back to the topic of the blog post, as written in the title, I’ll be talking about/sharing many many photos of the second part of Simone’s and my trip around Tokyo, to eat at the shops I saw in that guide book I was translating.
For some reason, our Domique Ansel breakfast really, really stayed with us. After we bought our croissants, we just sat in Brick Square for a while, enjoying the scenery. This summer hasn’t been that hot, which is strange, but good I guess. Assuming winter doesn’t become super cold.
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| We also spent quite some time trying to get a picture of this bird. |
When we drank in enough of the view, we got up and started walking around Tokyo. There are tons of interesting buildings around Tokyo Station, including Tokyo Station:
Since my cousin asked me to keep an eye out for buildings (Hi YAKK!), I actually opened my eyes to the design. Ok, he asked me for Shibuya, but I wasn’t there, and what better place than the one you’re in? Simone and I both found this really cool one, although we’re not quite sure what building this is.
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| The glass caught our attention. |
Since we still weren’t hungry, we decided to check out the KITTE building, full of expensive goods we can’t afford. But when we went there, we found out they were having a sumo exhibition!!
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| The inside, I love the ceiling! |
It’s really weird, at first, I only saw the flags, and was wondering what it was about. It was only when we were part way through looking at the various sumo-stuff that I realised that below the flags was the ring. Ooops. So much for opening my eyes :p
What we took away from the exhibit is that sumos consume a lot more than us. For example, this is the amount of salt they use in the match (I can’t remember if it’s one day or one match, but since salt is used as a purifying method, I suppose it could be for a match?)
And then, we looked at how much they ate. The bowl of rice on the left is how much the sumo wrestlers eat, and the bowl on the right is how much a normal person eats. And if you can see the pieces of papers on the right, the long, long one is about how much 4 sumo wrestlers eat at a yakiniku restaurant, while the right (shorter) one is for four normal guys. Basically, the cost was about 4 times more.
They even had a bean-bag like thing that was 207kg, the weight of a particular wrestler. It was impossible to move. Simone tried to do this running start-method, but it didn’t work.
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| Kyaaaaa – oof. |
Now sufficiently hungry, we headed over to Tokyo station’s Ramen street for Ramen! According to Google, the ramen street was on the other side of the station from the KITTE building, and after about 20 minutes of walking about, we finally found it. And boy, were the queues long. I think the guide book was actually accurate about this one.
We got the Tokyo Station-edition Ramen. The stock (which I think is the speciality of the store), was made from a combination of animal stock and seafood. IT IS AMAZING.
The taste is totally different from normal ramen, even my tonkotsu, and it’s surprisingly light. I actually wanted to finish the soup, which is different from the usual “the soup tastes good but if I drink the whole thing I might go into a food coma”
After we went ate, we went back to Harajuku. But first, a stop for purikura! Simone told me about Takeshita street, which was cool, but really, really crowded.
But you know, we finally managed to take purikura! You might have seen the ones on Google+, but then, I managed to get one more! So here it is (hopefully I don’t end up posting the same picture twice)
I’m terrible at purikura. I didn’t even know that you had to edit all the photos, not just the one that popped up on the screen. Oops. Good thing Simone was there.
Our next, and last stop, was Magnolia bakery, which is another really famous bakery from America. It’s famous for its cupcakes, but that wasn’t what I was after. No, Wenxi told me that the banana pudding here (mentioned briefly in the article), was awesome, and I had to try it. But I also saw some summer-limited edition red velvet ice-cream whoopie and had to get it too.
The Whoopie was really good, but the banana pudding is AMAZING! I want them to open a banana pudding store in Fukuoka, so I can have it whenever I want. I really, really love the banana pudding there. It’s amazing.
The shop itself is really welcoming too. I’d have liked to stay there longer, but we finished the food, and we had some other stuff going on.
And that is the end of how Simone and I decided to stuff ourselves with sweets (and ramen). There are actually a few other stores I wish I could visit, but if I ever go back to Tokyo, I’m going back for more banana pudding. And the cookie shot, if it’s possible.