There’s a big painting of geisha in the Starbucks Cafe…
They sell “kimono” in the souvenir shop.
You’re being served by staff wearing a mask…
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It couldn’t possibly be a blog about Japan if there was no post about Japanese toilets!
At the airport, as I entered the ladies room (or “make up room” as they call over here), I had three choices: squatting toilets, standard toilets and Japanese futuristic toilets. I really wondered who would choose the other two when you have Japanese futuristic toilets as an option!
Love the little symbol for the Japanese toilets: bum and spray!
In the toilet room, they actually had instructions of how to use the toilets, translated into English as “Equipment to cleansing the buttocks with warm water”.
When I first saw those vegetable juices in supermarkets, I wasn’t sure what to think. Were they soups? Salty or sweet? And the list of veg in them was incredibly long and not really appetizing! However, when we moved to Tokyo, as we stayed in short term accommodation for a while, we ate out a lot and found it hard to have our quota of fruits and veg per day. So, we tried these veg juices and they turned out pretty ok after a while! I even started to buy some for home after we moved into our long term rental place.
Today, on our way to Hokkaido, as the trolley lady walked by and the choices were so so, I went for a veg juice for old times sake!
The list of veg: carrot, pepper, broccoli, celery, green beans, lettuce, pumpkin, asparagus, cabbage, radish, spinach and some fruits to sweeten the whole thing!
I should really stop reading those Japanese scary stories… not only is it bad for my vocabulary knowledge, but it also makes my writing sound dramatically corny! Seriously, who would name a blog post “shadow in the dark”… Haha! Anyway, I was on my way back from a meeting yesterday, when I saw this strange shadow effect. It’s from the local Hawaiian restaurant’s flamingo statue. I thought it was kind of cool looking! It usually doesn’t that… In any case, it made me notice the restaurant for the first time! Who knows, I might even go…
Today, I joined a culinary adventure tour organised by Nippon Go! They took us to the famous Kappabashi district in Tawaramachi, where you can find everything from tableware and cooking pots to restaurant signs and fake food made of resin for restaurant displays. It used to be a place where only restaurants and professionals used to get their supplies but it’s now hugely popular with regular people, both locals and visitors.
Today, our tour organisers took us to various shops starting with a lovely traditional tableware and pottery shop.
Then, we stopped in one of the shops where they sell fake food. It’s crazy how real the food looks. I’ve been living in Japan quite a while now, and I am still amazed by those!
Even the beer looks real!
And the craziest food. I mean, is there a restaurant in Tokyo that sells such burgers?
After the plastic-made food shop, we went to a few shops where you can find all sorts of kitchen utensils. Impressive, really!
Finally, we had lunch in a famous okonomiyaki place. It was an old wooden house serving superb okonomiyaki of all sorts!
After, the delicious dinner, we did a workshop, where we made a tie dye handkerchief! It was fun but I wasn’t really good at it though…
At the end of the day, I unpacked my bag and was delighted with my purchases!
At the weekend, we had another cooking class with the Nippon Go! group. We prepared food for a bento box. Now, let me be honest, it was a lot of work for a bento box! I mean if you have to prepare this for your family’s lunch, you need to wake up at something like 5am! No thank you!
However, it was absolutely delicious!!! We prepare ginger flavored rice that we put in tofu pockets, mushroom and pork rolls and some other veg. It was delicious and healthy!
I was taking a walk near Asakusa with some friends when one of us spotted fish drying in a basket outside someone’s house! Now, if I were a cat …
Outside the gym near us (a females-only gym), they are advertising the arrival of a new teacher, a sexy teacher. Without any shame, they are pleased to inform their members that they hired a new good-looking man! Go Japan!
On the way to my Japanese class, I was waiting at the Harajuku metro station for my train to arrive, when I spotted that girl, in her kyudo uniform. Kyudo is Japanese archery that’s been practiced since the samurai time. I sometimes see Kyudo students on that line and I always think that it must be an amazing type of art to practice, but the bow isn’t exactly the handiest thing to carry around in the subway. As always, I was drawn by the contrast of her traditional uniform (minus the backpack) with the modern metro station.
After a great dinner in an izakaya, on Friday night, we had an hour or two before the last train and felt like doing a karaoke! As always, it was so much fun, but it’s even more fun when you have the maracas and the tambourine… and with the crazy cats… The crazy cats come from a Japanese app I downloaded. Unfortunately they weren’t at the karaoke with us
