On Tuesday, we didn't have any lessons because we had an excursion to Shibuya, somewhere I've already been to since I've been in Japan, but it was interesting nonetheless. We were told to meet at the statue of Hachiko at 10am, and we were given a worksheet to complete during the day. Sadly, my camera ran out of batteries so I don't really have any pictures of the day.
We started off by going into 109, a big department store for mostly ladies clothing. It had about 10 floors, and our task was to look round the shops and find our favourite shop, item of clothing, and find out the most popular item of that store. Personally, it was a little dull walking around all the shops because there wasn't even the interest of people wanting to buy things, as everything was so expensive. We walked around for about 45 minutes, and my favourite store ended up being the food store called Plaza at the bottom (it had pringles, walkers shortbread... clearly my kind of place). It also sold snoopy items, as snoopy seems to be incredibly popular in Japan.
After we'd completed our tour of 109, we went to Labi - another big department store, but one that sold quite a large number of different items such as video games, household machinery, tech gadgets etc. Naturally, Kelsie, Asya and I went straight up to the games floor to have a look round and see what was there. Kelsie ended up buying the newest Pokémon game, but apart from that not much happened. We had to write down what was on each floor, and also write some sentences on our favourite product.
After that, we went to a restaurant, which wasn't actually open when we arrived but we only had to wait 5 minutes. We ascended to the top floor where we all sat down in tables of 4 and were asked if we wanted any drinks. We paid 400 yen each to try some Japanese Okonomiyaki - Japanese style pancakes. They're made mostly of cabbage and egg, with a sauce and a filling that you mix together and put on a grill. The filling can be things like prawns, squid, bacon etc. They arrive in a bowl with the filling on top, and an egg on the side. You mix it all together, and put it on the grill. After a couple of minutes, you check the bottom to see if it's held together and crispy like a pancake. If it is, you turn it over and cook the other side, when they're cooked we split them into 3 (as Asya wasn't eating any) and atee them. We paid 400yen and got 6 bowls of mixture, when they were around 600-800 yen each so it was a really good deal and they were all really tasty. Once everyone had finished eating we were allowed to leave.
I'd mentioned during dinner that Kelsie and I had found a tiny animal store, and quite a few people wanted to go so we decided to take them. We went as a big group to try and find it, stopping in a nike store on the way for people to buy some very expensive Japanese football shirts. We wandered around for a little while before we actually found the shop, then once everybody's cute meter was satisfied, the group split up. Kelsie, Asya, Cho and I deciding to go to a department store called Loft that sold a variety of items. Asya bought some moustache and some llama stickers for herself and for a friend, and we had a browse around the soap section smelling all the different soaps. Afterwards, Kelsie and I decided to go to a card store and have a browse, and then we went home. In the evening, I played my board game - Settlers of Catan - with Michael. Kelsie had a headache and so didn't play, but I taught him the rules and we played a couple of games.
That weekend we went to Akihabara. Akihabara is a very popular area of Tokyo for foreigners because of its number of arcades, anime and manga stores and maid café's. Kelsie and I weren't particularly interested in these but we thought it would be an interesting day trip. We arrived in the afternoon and made our way around towards some arcades, looking at some of the machines before going into a department store. The theme of Akihabara is that there are some very dodgy stores and you have to be careful where you go into as you're not quite sure what you might find. We didn't really find anything particularly interesting, so after that we found a building with several interesting shops so we went inside. On one of the floors we found a shop that had shelves of manga. There was newer manga towards the back, but as you entered the store there was a big row of shelves with back issues of Shonen Jump, a weekly volume that releases a chapter of popular mangas.
We found some electrical stores, and Kelsie went in to try and find a charger for a DS, as she was borrowing my spare but I didn't have an extra charger. She eventually found a cheap one for 90 yen (about 80p). We went past a number of maids handing out fliers for their café's, before we ended up at a 100 yen store. We didn't buy anything, but it's always interesting to browse around as they have different cheap items in each store and they're usually very good value for money and not that bad quality either.
Finally we went into a big arcade just to have a look around. It had 5 or 6 floors of games, with a different theme on each floor. When we got to the music floor, it was so loud we couldn't hear anything, it was a wonder anyone could tell which was their own game from the mass of noise. When we'd had a look around, we decided that there wasn't much left to do so we got back on the train and went home.
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