Overdue! Japan Trip: Day 3 :)
Day 3
We had walked so much that Drew's shoes exploded, so we went back to Tokyu Hands and got Drew some fancy shoes. It was a different Tokyu Hands so of course we had to revisit every floor. Drew appreciated the full service shoe shopping! And there were even more cute things! And a weird face-mask simulator...
I wanted the tiny one but figured it'd be hard to get into my luggage :)
Looking for lunch,,we were tempted by this place with adorable pig banners, but we ended up getting Mexican, instead. They made their own tortillas, so that was impressive, but the rice was so strange for a mexican dish! :) It was fluffy and tacky...the right color, but not the right texture for Mexican! Still tasty, though.
Then we went to Harajuku -- we walked the famous crazy street full of ridiculous teenagers and we debated buying things but Drew was cautioning me that more cutes were coming, at the end of the line. Turns out he was not kidding...but I did find a Sanrio store and go a little crazy with the Gudetama merch.
Tokyo Cold Stone is so much fancier than anything we've got...
It took a lot not to buy the flying cat/t-rex shirt...
Harajuku panda pants.
This was not even the Sanrio store or Kiddy Land, just...random Gudetama :)
Then we went to a character cafe to get a rice omelet character bear thing. The face was a transfer which seems like cheating, but it had a cream-sauce blanket and it was adorable. And tasty.
We kept seeing stores with adorable orbular characters on the wall, and we would get excited but they were just hipster clothing stores.
Then we got a Santa Monica crepe! Drew picked creme brulee banana with chocolate sauce and ice cream. There were only a few jillion combinations to pick from :)
About 1/6 of the selection wall...
So much smaller than a typical American dessert!
It was interesting to see tourists from other parts of Japan, there. There was a gaggle of teen bros with their rollerbags, taking selfies with their selfie sticks, planning their poses and pulling selfie faces like American girls. Drew photobombed them and blew their minds. They snapped the picture, pulled the selfie stick back in close, peered at the picture, and then whipped around to be like WHAAAT. Then they cracked up and and made him take more pics with them. They're gonna have amazing stories for their friends about the old mustachioed American dude they found in Harajuku.
Then we got coffee at a Starbucks. There was an American there who made us sad to be Americans. He had to get a friend to help him order...inexplicably. You just point at a picture and say the size, but somehow he was still struggling and being a whiny douche about it. We found an amazing store with sequined platform boots in the window and bought a tiny bear faced macaroon to split. We also found the Line Friends store! Kids these days...
We tried to go to Oriental Bazaar but it was closed on Thursdays, turns out, so we carried on. We finally arrived at the cute mecca Drew had promised me: Kiddy Land. Drew practically bought me the entire store. I have Gudetama themed EVERYTHING now. We checked out on three separate floors. We were seriously like "Screw clothes, we can buy clothes in SFO. Need more luggage space for souveniers!" I also learned that Sumikko Gurashi characters are freakin' adorable...the green penguin is my favorite. (From Wikipedia: Sumikkogurashi - a group of animals with personality issues that like corners). I was so overwhelmed I didn't even take any pictures. They wouldn't have done it justice, anyway. I did snap some pics of the bathroom :D The toilet options were even fancier than the one at the hotel, but mainly it was just the paint job...
After Kiddy Land we had a lot of STUFF, so Drew ran stuff back to the room. We went to back to Shinjuku again for the Robot Cabaret but...it was not really like burlesque. It was like "Variety Show" cabaret.
We did not understand how to get food or drink, so we just didn't. The bathrooms and hallways were amazing levels of tacky, like...floor to ceiling, including the floor and the ceiling. The lounge had nautilus chairs made of gold, and the whole wall was a screen, and there were LEDs and mirrors and gemstones everywhere, and there were sexy ladies belting out some song, with a robot-dressed guy wailing on a guitar.
Tackiest room ever...Vegas has nothing on this!
Now that's a ceiling fan...
Then they announced the show was starting, so we all filed down 3 flights of glowing disco-floor stairs. There were rhinestone encrusted sea creatures and skulls and lots of cleavage...it was even trippier than the lounge.
We get into this narrow hall that's kind of stark, with a warehouse feel. The walls were screens full of trippy kaleidoscope videos...
The show got underway with some musical acts and some dancing Chinese dragon action...nothing too crazy, right?...
Then there was a musical interlude with some weird things happening on the LED walls...
Then it got tribal...
Something something something, jungle creatures...
Pandas ride cows in the jungle all the time. Duh.
Then the ladies came back, riding crazy creatures... They were like "Watch your heads" and people literally had to duck to avoid being hit with a big mechanical snake or a robot arm. Animals vs robots... It was like live-action Power Rangers. There were lots of pyrotechnics and fireworks and the club dance beat never let up.
At some point, a gorilla ziplined across.
The rare forest shark.
Then there were clowns. Naturally!
From there, we had no idea when the show was going to actually end. Singing and dancing happened. They gave us light sticks to wave around and more craziness went down...another huge snake came out, there was a robot dance party, then some guys in EI wire danced. We sang and yelled and even bigger robots came out to dance.
We eventually were dismissed and stumbled back out into the street. We stopped in for what we thought was shabu and teppanyaki...and it was tasty beef, don't get me wrong, but there's no way to specify no rice or no noodles. They kept filling up my shabu pot with things I didn't want, so they just boiled to death.
Cool placemats...
Then we made our way back to the hotel!