The Takoyaki Museum in Odaiba opened recently to the public last Saturday, and since I absolutely love Takoyaki as well as having a free afternoon I decided to give it a visit. 

As with any place being the opening day in Japan you can expect there to be a crowd. I managed to get there around 11:30am but there were already lines at the five Takoyaki stalls. There were also several news crews shooting, no doubt for day time TV. Apart from the five stalls there was a souvenir shop as well as exhibitions dotted around the place introducing the history and tools used.

Since it was the opening day there were doing a special whereby if you visit four of the stalls you get a free lot at the fifth store. But with the queues being long (around 30 min per stall) I only managed to try two of them before giving up. Each stall had a ticket dispenser where you would choose what you want and pass the ticket over the staff.

All of the Takoyaki shops are from Osaka and you can definitely tell the difference in the taste. Takoyaki from Osaka always wins hands down.

Just a random collection of the food in Japan

Noodles

 

Food at festivals

Seafood

Random

Japan's summers are hot and humid, and I rarely go out before 3pm for fear of melting. But that aside summer hosts a wide variety of festivals and fireworks festivals. Festivals and the build up to the fireworks usually start from the late afternoon and as you can imagine they can get pretty crowded.

The Mitama Festival in Yasukuni Shrine, which is similar to Obon where the dead are honored. Each of the lanterns shown were bought by either an individual or by companies which act as the donation to the festival. The small ones cost about 3,000 yen while bigger ones were about 12,000 yen.

The types of food you get at the festival. Definitely have to have Tako Yaki (たこ焼き) and some Okonomiyaki (お好み焼き) whenever I go.

A Japanese House of Horrors

A popular game to try at festivals is to catch goldfish. You're given a paper scoop and you need to scoop up as many goldfish as you can before the paper breaks.

Start if the fireworks festival in Yokohama. You usually have to arrive early to reserve your spot. People just place down sheets or tarps then wander around nearby until the fireworks start.

Face fireworks!

Every now and again I get invited to a Photowalk by Jonny Li. Last week, the Geeks On A Plane stopped over in Tokyo so it was a prime opportunity to get together. Originally, Jonny and Pietro had planned to start off in Asakusa and make our way down to Yurakucho but we ended up in Shinjuku.

A side street next to the Uniqlo store in Palette. There are a lot of Yaki Tori shops here which always seem to be bustling with salary men. None of the shops seem to have toilets and everyone uses the public toilet outside.

Palette, which houses a 5 story Uniqlo and a lot of restaurants. 

Thanks to this guy (Jonny Li) I've met lots of wonderful and interesting people. This guy really knows how to network and is currently working for http://tokyo.japantimes.co.jp. Check it out for some interesting and up to date posts on Japan.

The photowalk ended rather abruptly as no sooner had we started we decided to have dinner. After dinner, which was amazingly cheap for the amount of food we had, decided to stop over at one of my favorite watering holes, the Hub. Yes I know it's not the best of places, but the drinks are cheap and you meet an interesting crowd there.

Recently I've been ranting to anyone who would listen about an Ice Cream bar in Ginza. A friend and his troupe took me there around 3 years ago when I had first moved to Kawasaki. At the time I'd had a bit to drink so I wasn't 100% sure if the place was real or not. But after some research I managed to track down the place again.

View Larger Map

 Located off the main streets and near the Sony Building; "Hokkaido ミルク村" was definitely the place I'd been to 3 years ago.

For 1,500円 you get a mug of Hokkaido ice cream and a choice of 3 types of liquor. My choice for the night: Absinthe, Spiritus and Coffee Cream (they were out of both Kahula and Baileys). Absinthe and the Coffee Cream were a good choice. I don't know what I was thinking about getting the Spiritus (90 proof vodka) one though.

The whole idea was to add a spoonful of your chosen liquor onto the ice cream. A different way of eating ice cream, but a lot tastier than 'Wasabi' falvoured ice cream!

You're spoilt for choice as the bar stocks a large selection of domestic and international liquors.

There were also these 2 fruit based liquors in glass shaped slipper bottles.

You also get a coffee at the end. Maybe this was to get rid of the taste of alcohol or to wake you up a bit? All the coffees came in ornament mugs and mine came as a snowman.

 

Limited editions of FFXIII elixir drinks on sale at a Family Mart. Just in time for the actual release of the game here in Japan (Dec 17).

Brilliant artwork but not impressed about the taste which is somewhat a mixture of grape and lemon.

more info (Japanese) http://suntory.jp/ff13/

While making my way through Akihabara station I noticed a Docomo booth
displaying their new data cards. The data cards use the FOMA network
allowing for "high-speed packet transmission in both the uplink and
downlink at a maximum rate of 384 kbps". After
taking a pic of the human sized 鉄人28号 on display I decided to take a
look at the cards themselves.

No sooner had I stepped within a meter of the nearest one was I
approached by one of the staff and before you can say 'Bob's your
uncle' was asked if I knew about the data cards and if I would like to
try it out.

The trying out was actually the staff displaying me a preloaded screen
with three questions which she would go on to ask. The first 2
questions were about the data service while the last was about 鉄人28号,
which I'm ashamed to say got wrong. Finally, I had to fill up a
questionnaire. For my troubles all I got were a couple of snaps of the
booth, a pack of tissues, a pamphlet and a portable screen cleaner.
I'm still wondering what would've happened if I managed to get all 3
questions right.

Link to Docomo CM featuring 鉄人28号: http://bit.ly/8FcUhL

A welcome slice of home. Since moving to Japan the only ways to get anything from the UK was either to have a package sent or visit any of the marked up import stores such as 'Kaldi'. Now, I can happily pop in to my local Tesco's and get my UK fix, although still slim. Interestingly enough Tesco has actually been in Japan since 2003 after acquiring 78 discount supermarkets. It's only recently that they've started to re-brand those stores and open new Tesco Express stores; even managing to recently release locally produced and  branded Tesco goods. Never again will I have to crave for ginger nut biscuits.