After work on Friday I met minusbat & godgirl in Ginza, where our first stop was the musical staircase leading down to the tubestation – quite disconcerting if you don’t know what its about, but quite fun when you’ve figured it out…though observation of some of the locals suggested it needed a lighter trigger on at least some of the steps.
Then upstairs to the Sony showroom where we got waylaid by the Aibos just inside the door. I want one, but I think 85k is a bit much, maybe later in the year if I’m feeling rich. They’re very cute and quite silly, but definintely an indication of where things are heading – electric sheep.
Of course the Sony showroom is full of tech toys, fine laptops, network webcams, TVs with free-hanging LEDs, DVD writers, nearly wireless TVs, remote controls with more processing power than the space shuttle and scared looking assistants running around checking all the machines after we’d been near…oops. They threw us out as it got to closing time, off to find some food…
After a bit of wrestling with the block numbering scheme, a brief look at a shiny glass building and a chopstick shop with an authentic turn-of-the-century German polyphonic music box, we arrived at a little resturant, descended into the basement to be confronted with a ‘traditional’ Japanese pancake resturant (theres a name for them but I’ve forgotten it). Time to take off the shoes before shuffling over to the table, one with a hotplate in the middle. When you order here you get a bowl of ingredients and have to cook them yourself on the plate. Since I’m not keen on eggy pancakes I went for the watery variant instead, which would be more acurately be described as beef and cabbage in sauce.
Yum, next its time for coffee and cakes again – we find an appropriate place (after a little roaming around, surely Ginza has got some more of these kinds of places?) and they let us in despite Petes assault on the Milky Boy on the way in. Even better, this place has real ice cream, not like Ducky Duck which served a perfectly textured ice cream substitute at room temperature.
Yesterday we ascended one of the government towers to the viewing platform (nearly) at the top – what a beautiful view over the city, looking down on all those flashing red aircraft warning lights (the inspiration for the ‘Lightbulbs I wouldn’t like to change’ photoalbum coming to a bookshop near you soon). Unfortunately the stadium lights were on so I couldn’t spot my flat from there. The place was nearly empty, which seemed odd given the beautiful view and the fact that its free to get in, if you can handle the elevator ride (which disconcertingly has buttons only for 1, 2 and 45). Theres a coffee shop and a giftshop and it seems they put on shows and concerts up there – what a fabulous setting.
Again, time for food, this time we’re (I’m) feeling a bit more adventurous, so we find a little local place. After a little negotiation about the menu we arrive at an agreement where they’ll provide us with one of everything on the menu (with the caveats that I’ll not eat fish and no meat for Marge). The food is basically fried battered stuff on a stick. Good stuff! There were a couple of things that were not to my taste (lotus friut which seems like eating polystyrene and chicken stuffed with chestnuts) but nearly everything else was great – the surprise of the evening was some nice asparagus, wrapped in bacon with a mustardy sauce. Its not so much that I don’t like the food here, more that I don’t understand the menu enough to know what I’m going to be getting and I’m not yet able to ask about things.
We ended up being the last people left in the place, so time to head off back into the hustle and bustle of Shinjuku proper. Time for a quick scoot around the red light district – this goes on for miles, way bigger than Soho and in some ways way sleazier, but it doesn’t have that feeling of danger you get in Soho. Tucked away in the middle of this we found a little rock bar playing some good music on their little speaker outside, so we descend into…the smallest bar you’ve ever seen, there were six customers in there already and there was no space for the three of us.
So we decide its time for coffee and cakes again, and head down a little green pathway that loops back round toward the station. This path, if it were in London, would be the scene of many rapes and murders, and would be closed at dusk with a big nasty iron gate. Here, there are young women (not /that/ kind of young woman, they’re all on the street that runs parallel to this path) walking along casually talking on their mobile phones taking little notice of what is going on around them.
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