The first evening we walked from Aoyama down into Roppongi, the most foreign (ie American/European) of the neighborhoods of Tokyo. We walked around looking at restaurants, trying to find somewhere we wanted to eat at - passed a lot of places, did a lot of wandering, but ended up just wanting cheap burgers and going to Wendy's. Ana managed to find one of the very few Coldstone Creameries (upscale ice cream place - they mix things like nuts and candies into different flavors to order to make you custom cones and sundaes) in Japan without knowing where it was, but sadly they didn't have her flavors of ice cream or her fillings, so she couldn't make the monstrous concoction she normally orders in America. I felt relieved and ordered a mango sundae which was good but would have been better if I wasn't eating it outside at night in January where it was in fact cold.
Tokyo has buildings.
The next day we went shopping. Shopping for yarn. Which meant I followed her around to make sure she didn't get in trouble, and occasionally to offer judgment on whether such a color was appropriate for such an item. Apparently several of the places we visited are major knitting and crafting centers, famous amongst those who understand such things. We visited the yarn and fiber district (they have one) and also the fabric district (distinctly different). Unfortunately, it being the day before New Year's, most of the smaller places were closed, and Ana was not able to complete her pilgrimages to several of the famous stores she wished to visit. This did not deter her from purchasing more yarn than she could carry - about seven miles worth for various planned projects. I read a Robert Heinlein I hadn't read before cover to cover while we traveled from place to place and she shopped.
Gate to the yarn district
I don't know what they kept behind this door, but she didn't get to see it this time.
The picture doesn't really do the quantity of yarn justice.
One thing I should mention is that this trip revealed Ana's superpower. She has an uncanny ability to find craft stores (and fast food places) without directions, which is odd because her sense of direction the rest of the time is not strong. All the information she had on finding a few of these places was the subway or train-line stop, and one more than one occasion we walked unerringly, with several turns and no errors, directly to the front door of the crafting shop she was seeking. I was very surprised that we managed to find all the places we were looking for so easily, as finding anything in Tokyo can be painfully difficult due to the lack of street names and the rather obtuse address system.
You try finding something in this mess.
After her thirst for fiber had been slaked, due to not being able to carry any more, we went to the legendary Akihabara technology district to look around some more and so that I could try out some of the fancy office chairs I've been thinking about purchasing. I liked some of the chairs but not the prices - all about double the price in the US, a pretty standard increase for specialty goods here.
Continuing on with the shopping, we went out to Hiro-o where we ate dinner at the Mexican place we go to (sooo good to have good non-Japanese food) and then went shopping at the National Azabu supermarket there where otherwise unobtainable luxuries like molasses and sweet potato chips could be had.
We passed a Ferrari / Lamborghini dealership...and two Aston Martin ones.
The next day was New Year's, so we went out shopping early and then napped during the afternoon so as to be more alive for the evening. We went to Tokyo Tower for midnight, which apparently mostly foreigners do, probably because the Japanese spend New Year's at home in the countryside. Another American KTC teacher, Bolaji was staying at the apartment and joined up with us for this expedition. It was definitely a bit chaotic and raucous in the streets, with a lot of gaijin making us look bad, but at the base of the tower itself things were pretty calm, and not as crowded as you might think. The tower was lit up and there were moving lights on it, but strangely it didn't count down, just flashed the sign saying "2010" on when it was midnight, which made for a bit of an anticlimax.
Tokyo tower, shortly after midnight, January 1st 2010
After midnight, I was the only one who'd thought about what came next, so my plan carried the day and we headed to a Scottish bar I'd read about online. This lead to a really good demonstration that Ana's superpower for finding yarn shops and fast food was in fact aberrational; Bolaji and Ana said they knew which way to go and so I followed them around for at least ninety minutes before they conceded that we were not in fact at the destination, nor did we have compelling evidence of even making progress. So we took the subway and then used my carefully prepared turn-by-turn directions which worked much better than guess-and-check.
Thankfully, the bar turned out to be worth the trip, with outstanding fish-and-chips and other pub food, to accompany the mind-boggling selection of rare whiskey. They had some imported beers (which Bolaji started testing) and ciders (which Ana had and I can certify as wonderful) but clearly for me the draw was whiskey. I know that very few in the audience care, but just to put it out there this is definitely in the top 50 places in the world for whiskey, maybe higher, based on what I saw there. They had some of the best amongst the common single-malts on tap (on tap!) but their real focus was on extremely old, aged, rare, or unusual whiskeys, of which they offered over 300 kinds. I tested one inexpensive kind and two that were specials of the evening. Both of the specials were unobtainable bottles and the price was quite fair. They were both, I'm happy to report, good. I'm planning to go back next time we're in Tokyo, as the regular (as opposed to after-hours) menu looked good and they still have the other 297 kinds of whiskey to try. We stayed at that bar until about four before heading back to the apartment, where we slept until well past noon.
The bartender spoke whiskey in English. This is less than half the whiskey.
Not going to find that just anywhere. One of 281 bottles, laid down in the 70's.
In the middle of the day, we paused to celebrate New Year's again as the ball dropped in NYC - we had cheap champagne and some other junk food from the foreign supermarket so we made a bit of another party of it, though the internet available at the condo is inexplicably slow so our video feed from Times Square was a bit suspect.
This was our last full day in Tokyo, and we had one big thing left to do, which was go see Avatar in 3D IMAX. Ana managed to buy tickets online, but we had to pick the late show as the rest were sold out, which was fine. It turned out that the theater was in the absolute middle of nowhere, so it took a lot longer getting there than we thought it would, and we had to postpone dinner (I was starving) until after the three hour long movie. The movie itself turned out to be stunning, and the 3D effect was wholly worthwhile. For most movies I don't think it would contribute much, but in this case it really brought you into the scene and made it feel solid, though the effect does seem to cause a slight blurriness on the parts of the screen that aren't in focus. Mom - it would probably make you throw up, so if you go to see the movie do non-3D. Everyone else, I strongly recommend you give it a try - this movie will not be the same at home, and it is well worth going to see in theaters. After the movie we caught the last train back to civilization and ate at a restaurant that I would describe as kind of like a Friendly's, but with smaller portions, that was still open despite the late hour.
The next day we went back to Kanazawa, which was pretty unremarkable aside from seeing a whole bunch of snow from the trains going back.
The snow was at least four feet deep in the mountains.
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