There is something to be said about traveling to a different country. Every morning you can expect something different from your norm and in this case, it was a visit to Roppongi.
Part of Roppongi is known for the redlight district of Tokyo, but we are just going to show the daytime view of it.
We walked back from our hostel to the JR station across the bridge and catch a train to the Roppongi hill area. Before we actually get inside the Roppongi Hill area, we got hungry and decided to have breakfast at Tully's.
We actually started up a chat with one of the server who claims he likes to travel as well. (well, my friend did the chatting, I just catch piece of information here and there because the conversation was in Japanese)
After the short breakfast, we started walking again and head toward the general direction of Roppongi Hill. The first part of it we encounter was a mall.
I do not know about my friend, but I definitely did not realize at the time that at the time we went they were having a small fair or as the photo above mention, "ART NIGHT". We simply keep wondering around for the experience of it and found a pleasant and tastebud rewarding surprise as you will see in the photos below.
As we transverse from the mall to its adjacent park, we caught sight of booths setup in the park. Not knowing the pleasant surprise we were about to head into, we walked on.
To my surprise at the time, we found outselves in the middle of some kind of celebration with entertainments, displays and DELICIOUS FOODS of all sort setup all around.
I LOVE to eat and I cannot possibly express the joy of finding myself surrounded by freshly cooked seafood of all kinds. One of the major difference I count between the US and Japan is that the Japanese take food to a higher level in general than the US. Everything I tried over there tasted much better in my opinion and that includes the cheap fast food meal like Gyu-don from Yoshinoya's.
Yeah, I ate those items of the two photos above and they were DELICIOUS!!
My friend tried their claim chowder breadbowl and said they were really good too.
And we have Shin-chan here advertising its new movie. I wish I could see that movie, it looked hilarious.
For those who knows don't know this character, it is Kintaro from Salary man Kintaro.
After having some nice seafood and enjoyed a relaxing atmosphere, we head toward a bridge where lots of cosplayers supposedly gathers on weekend. Due to time constrain, we were only there during weekday, but we still manage to catch sight of some cosplayers.
Next to the bridge was a park that leads to a temple, and along the way we see barrels of sake donated to the temple I believe as an offering of sort.
Since I am a Catholic, one of God's command is "Thou shall have no other god before me." I did not practice the praying to local gods that Japanese are so fond of, but I at least perform the cleaning ritual each time I enter a temple out of respect for cleanliness.
Lets face it, even modern day wooden temple would still have electricity outlet.
Here people pay for a wooden board and you write your wish on it then post it up for all to see. Maybe the local deity will grant it.
After wondering some more from the temple, we ended up at Yoyogi park and saw some small trinkets sellers and food stands supplying the local need to have a good time. There is no law with drinking in public so one of my other friend's favorite pass time when he was in Japan was to drink beer in the park.
Could this be cherry blosom? Have I finally caught sight of it before the end of my trip?
We departed from the park through the same route and saw another group of cosplayers at the bridge.
A snack at a nearby MacDonald as we head toward the JUMP store in the area.
JUMP is a popular comic publishing with famous serious such as Naruto and One Piece. There are only limited stores throughout Japan, so my friend thought it was worth stopping by as part of the trip in this area. Of course being a One Piece fan myself, I bought the wanted poster set and a DVD movie for keepsake.
After Dome City, we head back to Odaiba to check out the Las Vegas imitation as well as the Toyota showroom.
If you have an international driver license, I would suggest you make reservation ahead of time cause at the showroom, you can test drive some of their latest cars. Reserve at least 2 weeks if not more in advance.
They have a reaction test to see how fast you can respond to sudden events. I am not going to mention my score here.
After leaving the Toyota showroom, we continued toward the imitation Las Vegas.
We would have liked to had dinner there but we arrived too late and everything closed down already. Once again a cultural reminder of the difference in lifestyle.
Good old Yoshinoya was still open at least.
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