Harajuku et al.

Jul.24.10 - 4:59p
This morning Tinlop and I were wide awake by 7:30a but didn't leave the hotel until 10:00a since nothing would be open before then. After a bit of persuasion, Tinlop finally agreed to go to the Meiji Jingu Shrine 明治神宮 again. So off we go into the steamy Tokyo sauna toward Harajuku 原宿. Halfway during the walk into the shrine, I was already dripping wet from the sweat and good thing the walk was tree-lined! We saw a Japanese marriage ceremony take place so I snapped some photos along with the other busloads of nosy tourists. The Shrine was in the middle of a lot of green stuff so after we were done there, we had no where to go but to retrace our steps back out the way we came in. In a nutshell, that just means grumpy Tinlop, LOL.

We stayed in Harajuku for some window shopping and decided to have ramen for lunch! We stumbled across a ramen chain called Kyuusyu Jangara 九州じゃんがら and I had a really savoury pork bone soup based ramen with egg, chasiu, pork belly and mentaiko! Yum! All the while they were playing 女子十二樂坊, haha, 好好 feel wor!

After lunch saw more window shopping at hippy teeny bopper type clothing stores, Adidas, Topman, Burberry, Dior, Emporio Armani, Louis Vuitton Men and my absolute first time in an adult store, Condomania! LOL, nothing special in there except the Okamoto 0.02 (I've only seen 0.03 so this must be new) which is pathetically overpriced. We left Harajuku at around 11:30a and headed toward Shimbashi 新橋 in search for a shopping mall called Caretta Shiodome　カレッタ汐留 but was rather disappointed to find that it's not really a shopping mall, but a very tall building with too many restaurants over 8 of the 47 storeys. The "mall" is the home of the first commercial museum so we walked briefly through the exhibits. While trying to find the damn mall, we passed by the Nippon TV building 日テレビル and walked through the 2010 Shiodome Expo, consisting a bunch of kids playing games at a bunch of booths. I was so dehydrated I decided to stop by a Starbucks (knew I should have brought my loaded SB card) and downed quite the expensive venti sized cup of Yuzu Green Tea Frappucino. Oh, it was soooo refreshing! Somehow JP venti doesn't look like our venti... somewhat smaller in my opinion!

After the morning of walking, both Tinlop and I were so tired we decided to go back to the hotel to rest up (and stay out of the heat) before heading out again for dinner. Just when we got off the subway, Tinlop was hungry so we decided to head to the higher end department store Isetan to check out their food level. WOW and OMG!! Larger than any other I've seen so far, the place was PACKED with numerous 師奶's buying prepared foods and desserts. Amongst the hundreds of booths, I managed to see a Pierre Hermé counter!! OMG, I told myself if I saw one in Tokyo, I'd go in and buy ONE macaron to see what the hype is about with his renowned French creation. Of course I couldn't resist and bought three (couldn't buy any more, they were expensive!!) and it came with a cute little Pierre Herme ice pack that when defrosted, is actually an antiseptic! How ingenious is that? I picked Citron, Envie (cassis) and Rose. After snapping a kazillion photos of them back at the hotel, I finally bit into two of them and is saving the third one for later. O-M-G, they ARE yummy! The shells tastes just like the ones I make but the buttercream is sooo good!! Now I wanna make macarons again!

Now that it's almost 6:00p, I think I should get ready to head out for dinner! (5:51p)