woke up pretty early in the morning and headed over to harajuku using the yamanote line. wow, their trains are speedy! if only trains in singapore are as fast... anyway they have announcements in both english and japanese, though the japanese announcement seemed way more informative than the english version on certain lines.reach harajuku pretty early and had breakfast at lotteria at the colorful entrance to takeshita dori. another flop attempt at using japanese. i simply couldn't understand the way the attendant pronounced "milk" in japanese.... and so while having breakfast, we saw harajuku stirred from slumber into life.
left: takeshita dori entrance;
right: interesting crepes (they were everywhere)
they have topman and a big h&m!
sort of explored around the area, and visited both the uniqlo and northface outlet. the uniqlo outlet was interesting and i bought a pair of nice jeans there. helped my fren to ask what is the difference between 2 jeans and at the end of the day, the reply was a long paragraph in japanese trying to tell me something about the jeans fabric and the thread and production process.this is simply out of the scope of my intermediate 1 japanese! wakarimasen!!
left: odd-shaped audi-building
right: a big burberry store of maybe a few storeys?
along the way, though my slight fever got worse, i still pushed on. fortunately the weather is great, and with the sun, i actually managed to perspire in my jacket. headed over to omotesando hills, and at a dolce & gabbana shop there, my friend got mistaken as prc national. i was stunned when the staff came over and asked me in japanese if my friend is from china haha.anyway harajuku is damn crowded. realized that the japanese have an even stronger passion for queueing. saw them queueing to meet a star, star audition, opening of a new restaurant and so on.
look at the long line of crowds...
satisfied with harajuku, we headed over to akihabara. took the yamanote line from harajuku, and transferred to the jr-sobu line at yoyogi station. anyway it seemed like every train station is an interchange somehow -- 面白いね。
once reached akihabara, look for the electric town exit. wow, their electric town is damn colorful and happening! a splash of bright pink here, a splash of sky blue there and so on... right outside the exit there was a free street performance. we stood there listening to the singing while consuming some snacks bought earlier. i gotta say their street performance are great! again, we couldn't find dustbins... dun the japanese have any litter to throw?
finding the way out
left: anti-communist propaganda in akihabara
right: distributing the area map
as we move towards the main road, we saw girls dressing up as maids distributing flyers (maid cosplay), but sadly they refused to be photographed. saw another maid distributing area map - great!! need to find where is the janggara ramen (a recommendation from some hwz member), which is a couple of blocks down.
left: entrance to janggara ramen, akihabara
right: the tasty ramen i had
the menu for our ramen, pasted on the wall
the janggara ramen shop is extremely small. i had never ate in such confined space in my entire life. nevertheless, the ramen is great! we ordered the 1000 yen ramen with all toppings, and viola, the serving is impressive. maybe because i wasn't feeling so well, i couldn't finish the whole bowl of ramen. by the way they have an english menu as well.
this is how big our table was...
went hunting for my wii console to pc monitor cable, but to no avail. in the end i decided to buy a sleek powerful converter instead for 6400 yen with 1-year warranty =(. good sales service. the staff at the shop i enquire actually help me made some calls and asked around for the item, and thereafter directed me to the shop to get it.
walked around akihabara for a while. the place seemed to be jam-packed with an assortment of foreigners. while walking along the main road, i managed to pick up malaysian accented-mandarin, prc accented-mandarin, cantonese, singlish, thai, tagalog, even indonesian! there were also quite a handful of indians. this gotta to be the place with the highest density of tourists haha...
hang around for a while and decided to head back to shinjuku. back in shinjuku we headed over to kinokuniya to look for some books and hang out. bought some snacks, had a quick dinner and headed back to hotel. i needed to rest...
No comments:
Post a Comment