Installment 12: All Good Things Must Come To an End...

Installment 12: All Good Things Must Come To an End...

Today is my last full day in Tokyo with Mellers! T___T Tomorrow I leave for the 6:08pm flight to Chicago and then Chicago to Toronto, to arrive around 10:55pm.

SLEPT IN & FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Mellers was supposed to attend classes in the morning, but for some reason, none of her three alarms went off. >)____(< So she missed two classes...oops. We ate lunch at Matsuya. By the way, for any of you who will visit Tokyo one day, Matsuya and Yoshinoda have good food at cheap prices...ranging from around 300 yen to 700 yen, if I recall. Also if you have eaten instant noodles (ramen), you have not really eaten ramen. Oh my gosh ramen here is so delicious. The noodles are amazing and it's much more substance than what the packaged bowls/cups have led us to believe. My ramen last night was delicious! Noodles, broth, meat, green onions, I believe there were some snow pea leaves in there too. It was really great. So big bowl of ramen, rice, gyoza for around 600yen. I'd say that's really cheap, wouldn't you? Most of the sets will come with miso soup, plus a big bowl of food, so you won't go hungry. Even the pre-made bentos in places like 7/11 are really good. That's where I got my cold soba/udon for aroun 400 yen and it was really good.

So the best things I ate here (in no particular order):
-zaru soba (cold soba noodles and shrimp tempura)
-ramen (noodle soup)
-onigiri (chicken & mayonaise riceball and salmon riceball)
-sushi... sooo good
-omurice (rice wrapped in an omelet) with curry
-yakiniku (bbq meat)
-takoyaki (octopus balls)
-oden (soup with various items)
-tons of other stuff that I don't even know the name of.. it was in the pictures...

DETERMINED TO SHOP
I bought some black converse sneakers! yay! and I got my calendar! Woohoo! Determination pays off. I found the Kinokuniya bookstore in Shinjuku (with Mellers directions and help from other people) and was able to grab that calendar. Finally. Now I don't have to pay 4000 yen in shipping!

SHINJUKU SCORE!!!
Yes, I must admit to you that I saw some arcades in Shinjuku. I did go in and spend money, because I am soooo competitive. That bear rikamaru (sp?) bear really doesn't want to come to Canada. I spent like 1000+ trying, but alas, I have resigned. I did however, just spend 100 yen and won something on the first shot of that ufo game. A MINI MP3 PLAYER!! OH yeah SCORE! I also won a bunch of little cute toys in this game where I use a claw to pull this string and it empties all the goodies out. They are actually really cute and weird at the same time.

RAIN, RAIN GO AWAYYYY!
It started to rain, so that kind of put a damper on things. I was supposed to go to the Meiji Shrine, but I guess I'll leave that to next year, unless I superrush it tomorrow morning... we'll see... I also wasn't able to go back to Harajuku really quickly to get Mellers the skirt and do some last minute stuff, but that's ok. There's always October!

I am proud to say I found/bought everything on my list! SCORE! And of course, more... Thank heavens I made a budget for this trip! Thank goodness I saved! Thank you Parkdale for giving me extra hours.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAYU CELEBRATION
I totally forgot to bring Mayu's gift again. I'm such a dummy. We met her at Shinjuku and we ate at Asian Kitchen. It has a really nice atmosphere and we ate soooo much! It was crazy and the Happy Birthday dessert was crazy big and good. Pics of that will come laterrrrr... We talked a lot and had so much fun. They were correcting my Japanese and verifying stuff for me. We took a lot of pictures too. Mellers and I were also gonna go to the public bath, but we were too late. I guess next time...

This was such an awesome trip.

*correction: In the previous installment, I said kendamas were wooden TOES, I meant TOYS!

originally written: Apr 11, 2007