Wednesday was pencilled in as our Yokohama day trip, but we woke up to sub-ten-degree temperatures, wind and rain. Given that most of the day trip plans involved outdoor activities, we made a quick reshuffle, and created an indoors-as-much-as-possible itinerary. Unfortunately, the weather precluded me from getting out my beloved LX3 for fear of water damage (or dropping it due to the numbness of my hands).
So we jumped on the Yamanote Line at Nippori – which is so much simpler to do this time round, thanks to the Suica – and headed down to Tokyo Station. First stop, the Rilakkuma store. Rilakkuma is one of those cutesy, cartoonish Japanese characters along a similar vein to Hello Kitty; they serve no real purpose – they’re not a mascot for a brand or a club, or part of a manga or anime series – and seem to exist solely to be kawaii. Rilakkuma does it well. So well that some money might very well have been spent. Ahem.
Tokyo station has an underground shopping ‘street’ full of character stores like those for Kitty and Rilakkuma, and the merchandise therein is a testament to mindless consumerism – character-branded hand towels and toilet seat covers, lunch boxes, birth date mugs, stickers, headphones, aprons, pedometers, netbooks and more – a hundred percent about want and zero products that we really need. It’d make an interesting thesis topic, if it hasn’t been done already.
From there, completely unaided by a map and relying on my hazy memory, we moved on to the Meiji Chocolate Cafe. I first read about it here, and somehow got the impression that it was standard-cafe-sized. This was not the case. There are three or four benches, plus a bench seat built in to the front window. The place probably couldn’t hold much more than a dozen people. Having said that, the dark wood and low lighting of the minimalist fitout was very nice, especially on a cold, drizzly morning. We both got the cake set (Mum, you’d be proud), though in hindsight it was more like a cupcake set – the tiny chocolatey morsels were even smaller than the usual modest portion sizes you get here. They tasted pretty good, though, as did the very rich hot chocolate that accompanied them. As an added bonus, out set came with a piece of the chocolate of the day. Yum!
Sometime after morning tea, Gem realised that the almost constant rain had started to find its way into the worn-down parts of her boots, sending us on an impromptu shoe hunt in Shibuya. Correction – an impromptu sock hunt, because shoes were too big a commitment. I could make comments about deckchairs on the Titanic, but Gem’s heard them already, and no-one else needs it. My descent from the earlier sugar high probably didn’t help the situation, though this was remedied by a bowl of ramen at a place purporting to sell soba (seriously, the sign outside said soba, but the only options inside were ramen and onigiri). Socks were eventually purchased at GAP, and I believe we were back to square one (squelch-wise) by the time we’d headed down the road to Tower Records. As a side note, I now have the latest albums from いきものがかり (ikimonogakari) and サカナクション (sakanaction). Yes, I recommend both of them. Here, have an awesome video clip:
サカナクション – アルキアラウンド (It would be nice if I could embed the video, but WordPress is being a *****, so for the moment a link will have to suffice.)
The wet-foot situation was now becoming a noticeable problem again, so we set off for Ikebukuro’s Sunshine City complex in search of shelter and footwear. The latter was found before we even got through the centre’s entrance, in the form of black sparkly gumboots at ABC Mart. Sunshine City itself presented us with variations on the fashion themes of Shibuya and Harajuku, as well as a hotel, a gyoza theme park, and an aquarium (which we couldn’t find at the time, but further research has suggested that it’s in the World Import Mart building, which we had skipped).
After copious amounts of window shopping, we headed back out into the cold in search of food, which we found in a side street cafe. We took up residence at the window of the (mercifully smoke-free) second floor and people-watched for a while. Actually, we umbrella-watched, given the height of our vantage point and the continuing rain, and I could draw only one conclusion: despite the reputation of Tokyo as being at the cutting edge of fashion, people here still favour black and navy umbrellas, just like Sydneysiders. The people who don’t are the the ones who were caught short without shelter, and were forced to buy one of the funky see-though ones from a convenience store.
Eventually, we packed ourselves up, jumped back on the Yamanote line and made our way back to Nippori.
[N.B. Re the day's step count - because I was cheap and bough the $30 pedometer rather than the $50 one, I fell victim to the accidentally-reset-it-by-leaning-against-something problem. However, it was just over 25K at 7pm, and nearly at 2K when we got home for the night. Hence, I gather we were somewhere around the 27K mark...]