~ Side Note #15: The Pokémon Center Tokyo DX store that I was at is located in the Nihombashi Takashimaya S.C. (stands for shopping center) East Building. Nihombashi Takashimaya S.C. consists of three parts – Annex, Main Building, and East Building. Each section of the shopping center has a variety of things to shop and eat at (such as lifestyle wear / fashion, sports wear, restaurants, furniture, and kimonos!) ~
After both geeking out on all of the products around me and finally deciding on which merch to buy at the Pokémon Center Tokyo DX store, you’re probably thinking (most likely not haha I can say with 99% certainty) – “Hey Kev, since Pokémon Center Tokyo DX wasn’t the only store within the Nihombashi Takashimaya S.C. Buildings overall, how were the other stores in the other sections of Nihombashi Takashimaya S.C.?”
The answer: I was just focused on trying to get out of the Shopping Center and to the Nihombashi Station haha – I literally spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to get out of this ridiculous labyrinth. I have to give credit to the builders of this S.C. – if you want to get lost in a shopping center, you’ll be able to do that within seconds. NO JOKES HERE. my goodness…I gotta get better at navigating through these shopping centers!
Combined with the 20 minutes I spent just now + including spending time on the following:
- 20-25 minutes walking to the Nihombashi Station, taking the Ginza Line from there to Shibuya Station, walking about a minute to the department store area where my next stop (which was Katsu Midori Seibu for SUSHI! HELL YEAH SON.) was located via the Seibu Department Store.
- Another 5 minutes inside the Seibu Dept. Store, finding the information desk or anybody that looks like they work in the area to ask where Katsumidori Seibu was in my super basic Japanese (it was extremely conspicuous to the two ladies that I asked that I wasn’t from around the area, and that my knowledge of the Japanese language was quite limited since they gave me directions in Japanese to which I did not understand what they were saying at all hahah – they ended up speaking to me in a little bit of English to show me where to walk to get to the Elevator to where I could reach Katsu Midori Seibu)
After all of that (on the 8F, or 8th floor), I was able to see the conveyor belt sushi place (the one I’ve heard all about from two of my close friends (Tony + Eva), and from one of Paolo De Guzman’s youtube videos aka Paolo fromTokyo). I got there about 4:40pm ish (yeah I know it’s pretty damn early but I was getting hungry!).
Even when I got there at that time, there was a queue (or what we call a “line” here in the States) to sit down at the restaurant, but something was different about how they did queues here that I immediately noticed: instead of having people standing outside of the restaurant waiting, they had a decent number of chairs (about 14, 15 chairs) situated outside for people to sit and queue – also, say if someone gets called in to sit down at the restaurant, the people who are in the queue can move up the queue by sitting to the next chair going towards the entrance of the restaurant – Last In, First Out (like a Stack in Computer Science! 😀)
This isn’t that common in the States since I have been to restaurants before where they only have “waiting” chairs inside the restaurant and not both inside and outside. There are cases where there are at most a few chairs outside of the restaurant, but not 14, 15 of them. It makes more sense in this case since Katsu Midori Seibu was situated inside the department store where having chairs in such a setting is a viable option since the chairs were lined up against one of the wall of the restaurant itself.
Thankfully, there weren’t that many people in the queue (probably 8-9 at the most), the queue was already moving at a decent speed, and it didn’t feel long waiting in the queue since I struck up a conversation with a couple (from London, England) just making small talk about how our trips were going, how many days staying in Japan, and stuff done in Tokyo so far, etc etc.
HELL YEAH. I got a spot at the sushi bar (which is always nice since I get a peek of the sushi coming out of the kitchen and onto the conveyor belt!)
~ Side Note #16: For the record – I WAS RIDICULOUSLY TERRIBLE at conveyor belt sushi places hahah. I remember the first time I went to one of these Kaiten Sushi Style places back in Southern California with friends several years ago – I treated it like AYCE (all you can eat) since that’s what we were used to back then (paying a fixed price like anywhere from $20-$25 USD to eat as much sushi as you can). I kept at it with the seared sashimi (especially the salmon) plate after plate after plate. I was shooting lights out like in basketball with eating like no other….however, by the end of the night, I ended up paying a grand total of $51 USD (NOT INCLUDING TIP lmao)…since then, I’ve been able to keep my kaiten sushi sessions anywhere from $15-$20 max. ~
They say that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, and this is definitely the case with this seared salmon – scrumptious.
~ Side Note #17: Whilst I was eating, I ended up striking a conversation with another random couple (from Australia) to the right of me – just like the previous couple from London, we were just making small talk about how our trips were going, how many days staying in Japan, and stuff done in Tokyo so far, etc etc. The one thing that differed with this couple was that they were talking about going to a really hyped up baseball game – If I recall correctly, they said that it was one of those MLB (Major League Baseball – the main baseball league here in the states) all-stars vs NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball – the main baseball league here in the land of the rising sun) all-stars game! That’s pretty dope. I’m personally not a big baseball person, but I am fully aware of how huge baseball is here in Japan. I remember watching a Detective Conan episode about how the best Japan high school teams duke it out in a Summer tournament known as “Summer Kōshien” (夏の甲子園, Natsu no Kōshien) – aka the Japanese High School Baseball Championship. It’s ridiculously hype, and it’s the largest amateur sports event in Japan.~
Given that the place was packed + taking only 8 minutes for my first round order to arrive, the sushi was just delicious and very good quality. CHYEAH.
This was exactly what I expected and a bit more – This is what conveyor belt sushi should be! I MEAN LOOK AT THAT SASHIMI TO RICE RATIO. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? YOOOOO CMON NOW. CMON STATES (although Saburo’s in South Portland comes somewhat close to this in terms of sashimi to rice ratio, but the quality right here just ends the conversation immediately).
Even the SUSHI RICE itself is just right – great taste, simplicity, beautiful. THIS IS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT. I’m so glad that I came here for sushi. I ended up paying around ¥2200 (which is not bad at all given the quality and the SASHIMI TO RICE RATIO. yeah i capitalized that for a reason. TRUST AND BELIEVE THAT.) I enjoyed every bit of the things I had here, and I would totally recommend this place to ANYONE who visits Tokyo.
After fully satisfied with the sushi at Katsu Midori Seibu, it was a three minute walk by a bridge that connects buildings within the Seibu Shibuya Department Store area to hit up my next most anticipated stop – SHIBUYA LOFT! (highly recommended by my close friend Eva – what a find!)
LOFT is one of the secret souvenir stores that not a lot of people talk about, and this particular SHIBUYA chain (they have these all over Japan apparently, and each of them have different stuff! HELL YEAH.) had a plethora of things – from Pokémon Terrarium and “Snoopy’s Balloon Journey – Where to Go in a Hot-air Balloon” mystery box packs, to a wide selection of stationary (which I’ll show pictures in a bit!). If you’re looking to get nice, unique gifts not only for yourself, but for others like friends and family, this is one of the BEST places to do that. Hands down. There’s even a very exclusive selection of MARVEL products (that are only sold in LOFT stores here in Japan). That is pretty legit.
~ Side Note #18: For those who don’t know, I’m a huge sucker for stationery in general – I’ve had phases where I went from using stationery from Poppin (which my cousin Grace introduced to me several years ago), Le Pen (which I’ve heard about from a coworker friend from one of my previous gigs shortly after I started using Poppin products, but I didn’t use their pens until a bit later), back to using Pentel (specifically via the ENERGEL series) and an old school favorite of mine that has been a timeless classic for me – the Pilot Dr. Grip Series. ~
(Bottom) Pilot Dr. Grip ACE (0.5) Lead Pencil
I’ve had the Soft Grip lead pencil one for 9 years now (bought it while I was at a Kinokuniya (Japanese Book Store) with college friends in Little Osaka (aka Japantown in San Francisco, CA)), and it’s still one of my favorite lead pencils I’ve ever owned. I’ve owned previous Pilot Dr. Grip lead pencils since I was a lot younger, and they’ve just been my top choice of lead pencils. They’re very comfortable and smooth to write with, and just the overall construction of this series of lead pencils over the years has just become my go-to for pencils in general.
The ACE lead pencil (since I was curious about what the Pilot Dr. Grip series has been offering as of late) was something I bought at the stationery section (1st Floor) in LOFT along with the following:
Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos of the stationery floor at LOFT, but you can imagine that there were just a myriad of options to choose from (from different kinds of journal notebooks to the wide variety of pens and pencils available for people to choose from…the selection is insane). I shouldn’t be surprised at the number of options, but I still am since there were just so many brands of notebooks, pens, and pencils that I’ve never seen before (especially the notebooks…damn).
I honestly spent about a good 1 – 1.5 hours just browsing all of SHIBUYA LOFT to figure out what to get (whether it be for myself, or for others back in the states). I was just overwhelmed (in a good way I guess?) at the many things they had to offer here. I was tempted to buy quite a lot of small gifts here, but I told myself that I should just get just enough to be satisfied, and save my money for other places/shops that I’ll be visiting in the upcoming days.
In terms of non-stationery stuff, I ended up getting these for myself. These make for awesome desk toys / decorations (seeing that I’m a big fan of both Pokémon and the Peanuts Series (in this case, Snoopy and Woodstock!)) Something that was new to me was the Smiski, which are described as strange, little creatures that live in corners. It gave off this very trolly, derpy, simple, and aesthetically pleasing vibe all at the same time. OH, did I mention that these glow in the dark? 😀
~ Side Note #19: I don’t know if it’s me (or just by pure coincidence), but when I got these figures from their respective mystery box packs (given the fact that you don’t know what you’re going to get from these mystery box packs until you open them + there’s multiple units per series that you can possibly get (e.g. for the Pokémon Terrarium Collection 4 series, there are a possible six units)), I ended up getting the ones from the front display of each of the box mystery packs (what are the chances?!)… I would think that I would get one of the other possible units (that they show on the side of the package rather than what’s on the front display side of the package). Not entirely sure if I’m explaining this clearly, but you know what I mean? It makes it seem like what I see on the front display of the mystery box pack is what I’m going to get (even though what you get is supposed to be truly random – as a mystery.)…Could just be a big coincidence. I’ll just go with that haha. Let me know if y’all had a similar experience with these sort of random mystery box packs. ~
Next destination – Niku Yokocho (translated as “Meat Side Street” + mentioned from Paolo fromTokyo’s “Top 10 Things to DO in SHIBUYA Tokyo | WATCH BEFORE YOU GO” youtube vid). It was only a 2 minute walk from LOFT.
I zoomed in on which place I wanted to hit up (which you see in the picture just above), and I’ve heard quite a bit about this area (not just from Paolo himself). This was the ideal place to go out with your friends on a casual night out for alcohol and yakitori!
When I got to the 2nd Floor, I was greeted with a lot of people trying to get me to eat at their izakaya (a type of informal Japanese bar that serves both snacks and alcoholic beverages); however, I suddenly had this uneasy feeling of anxiety that just came up on me right when I sat down (after being directed left and right from different employees/proprietors and finding an izakaya that I think might be the one that I was trying to get to earlier). For some reason, the attitude + body language that I was getting from the izakaya owner when he asked me what I wanted to order (I think that’s what he said in Japanese but I wasn’t too sure…) felt too direct, too informal and threw me off completely – what the hell is going on?
There were no english menus on the table, and I felt intimidated to ask for an english menu and just didn’t know what to say or do at that time (granted, I could’ve just relaxed a bit, take a couple deep breaths, and figure out what I want and try to communicate with the employees running the izakaya that I was sitting at…but at that moment, I was getting extremely nervous around my surroundings and it felt very strange to be here…like I just didn’t belong you know? I was just getting paranoid by the second (it felt like someone or some people were watching me from afar, why is this happening?!)…which is very uncharacteristic of me given both my audacity and confidence to travel solo, and just usually being very thick-skinned and tough about my surroundings and not letting anything or anybody get to me in an uncomfortable, intimidating type of way – standing my ground).
There were people around me that were pretty loud and even though that’s quite normal in such an informal, casual setting, I was just flat out not comfortable being there on my own. I literally had a table for myself, with a menu that I couldn’t read, and the loudness, constant noise, and ongoing activity in the background affected my ability to relax tremendously. Unfortunately, I had this tightness in my chest that wouldn’t go away while I was there for the next few minutes.
Before an employee came over to see what I wanted to order, I just bounced – I walked as fast as I could out of the 2nd floor, went downstairs and exited the building as quickly as I could. The tightness in my chest was immediately gone, and I felt extremely relieved. I think it would’ve been much better if I had someone there where with me at Niku Yokocho – in all of my travels so far in my life, I’ve never had this ever happen to me before. I took a few deep breaths, calmed down a bit, and then just decided to go to a different place to eat that I originally didn’t intend to go to in the first place.
I ended up changing my schedule to hit up this ramen gem – Ramen Kindenmaru Shibuya Honten (featured on Paolo fromTokyo’s “Top 5 Must-Try TOKYO RAMEN | Shibuya” youtube vid) This is one of Paolo’s favorite ramen spots in all of Shibuya, and this was what I needed – in terms of the courtesy and welcome from the employees that made feel more comfortable and at ease after my situation that occurred earlier at Niku Yokocho… (not to mention, I’m totally down to eating more ramen! HELL YEAH.)
The ramen shop has the same setup as the previous two ramen shops I had eaten at in Shinjuku last night – where you order from the menu machine, and once you select what you want and pay, the machine spits out a ticket that you give to one of the employees.
The slight difference here is that I’m also given the opportunity to choose the the hardness of the noodle (soft, normal, or strong), the strength of the ramen flavor (light, normal, or strong), and the amount of oil (less, normal, more) for my ramen. This was really nice too because the employee I gave my meal ticket to was able to communicate to me in some basic English that explained to me these options.
I ended up getting their most popular #1 option – Tokumaru (¥880). It has a pork-based broth with a nice chunk of pork! CHYEAH. Even though it looks heavy and oily, it was surprisingly light and refreshing. The noodles had the firm hardness that I prefer, and the broth had the right amount of strength that I desired. I thoroughly enjoyed this, and like the other two ramen shops I went to in Shinjuku, I wish they had this kind of quality (especially for the price, wow) back in the states (especially in Portland). I was tempted to get extra noodles for ¥100, which is a great deal; however, my stomach said “nanananananananana” lol. I’ve finally reached maximum stomach capacity for the night.
I finished eating and leaving the restaurant at around 7:40pm – even though the Shibuya Station was very close to Kindenmaru (where I just had ramen), I decided to just walk around a bit and take in the busy streets of Shibuya to walk off both my early and regular time dinners haha.
There’s something about Shibuya that just makes me want to do more throughout the night – the liveliness and the ongoing activity of people going place to place (along with the famous Shibuya Crossing); however, after 15-20 minutes of walking around the area, I was finally too exhausted to continue exploring Shibuya – I decided to go back to my AirBnb through taking the Yamanote Line from the nearby Shibuya Station to Shin-Ōkubo Station + followed by a 9 minute walk.
A nice, hot shower never felt more relaxing. Shortly after, I wrote down stuff about what happened today (I started falling asleep halfway through as I recollected what happened today; despite that, I was somehow able to get all of the key notes and certain details I need to be able to write up this post along with the previous 5 posts about Day 2 of my trip).
Man…what a day 2 huh? Hahaha here we are. I know I know… you’re definitely thinking “FINALLY KEVIN, took you long enough…after SIX separate posts of ONE WHOLE DAY.” 😅 what a ride so far though! Such a jam-packed day 2.
For my post(s) in Day 3 (I’m most likely going to split Day 3 up into at least two parts – so at least two posts for day 3), I’ll be talking about the following:
- A few things that I did in Shinjuku in the morning, including hitting up Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden.
- My experience in taking the Shinkansen from Tokyo to my next city stop in Japan – Shizuoka! HELL YEAH.
- The early afternoon + nighttime during my first day in Shizuoka. Super dope and I can’t wait to share this day with y’all in my next post(s).
Have a great rest of the weekend y’all, and until then – deuces for now!
Cheers / Wave
Listen to what you see. 