Parmesan Cheese

The days are flying by and the trip is officially half over. Boo hiss boo. We wandered over to a different train station where we stumbled upon a tv set! Okay, to be honest, I don’t know if it was a tv set or a movie set. I’m assuming tv set cuz there weren’t THAT many people around, but who can say? Seems like I don’t know a lot because I had no clue who the guy they were filming was either… I just remember Ro taking pictures and the man on the set formed a big X with his arms (to which we had already discovered days ago means no, stop, you can’t, etc. – seems to be a common action toward foreigners). After that, we scuttled into the train station for shelter and found our way to Ginza!

In Ginza, we went to a mall that smelled of parmesan cheese – very strongly. What an unusual place indeed. The top floor had a special section called Sanrio World where we let Rochelle mingle with the children and shop Hello Kitty to her hearts content. As I wandered into one of the children stores, I realized that they were playing the unedited version of Eminem & Rihanna’s Love the Way You Lie. I guess it’s a good thing that most people out here don’t understand English. However, it seemed to strange to see children running around as the music played…

For lunch, we went to some very Japanese place where we had to take our shoes off upon arrival and store them in a locker until our meal was over. I don’t even know if the restaurant had an English name, I just remember the kanji for chicken being in the title…. And in the menu, the only meat seemed to be chicken, so I guess it makes sense.

We wandered around the pedestrian-only streets of Ginza and looked around a bit before realizing that the entire area was insanely expensive. So we resorted to the next best thing – a café! I also got to experience using a “squatter” for the first time (in Japan). For those of you that don’t know what that is, I’ll give you a hint – this type of restroom is quite popular in Africa; however, the versions in Africa were pretty much just a hole that was dug in the ground. Oh the memories… thank goodness they have toilet paper in the Japanese versions! Too much information? My bad...

Louis Vuitton staircase

Louis Vuitton elevator

After wandering some more, Rochelle got another migraine so we found our way to the Fujiya building to join Peko-chan (see below) for another delicious meal. Our plans were to visit Tokyo Tower after, but due to the sickly sister, Erin and I opted for some karaoke fun in Akasaka while Ro rested. However, it ended up being horribly expensive after we misunderstood many things... What we thought was an hourly price, turned into a half hourly price. And then what we thought was a free drink, turned into a non-free drink… so for one hour of fun, we ended up paying nearly $20 dollars due to the horrible exchange rate... I really need to study; constant misunderstandings are seriously frustrating. So after that, we topped the evening off with some rest and relaxation before we experienced quite possibly the hottest day of our vacation.