No Maps for These Territories

Breakfast!

This is a bento available from the bento shop in Ontakesan.  Note that for less than $4, you can have a complete, delicious, healthy meal.  Green beans, squash, salmon, egg, and rice.  The bentos from this place were phenomenal.  I’d kill for a place like this back home.

Rice hidden underneath the bento.

The shop in Ontakesan where they roast coffee to order.

Pimp your PSP!

There’s an absolutely amazing tonkatsu place in Shinjuku that Yuzo had shown me.  They have people walking around with baskets of pickles and cabbage to refill your plate, and you grind your own sesame seeds for the sauce.

Every department store in Japan has a basement completely full of delicious foods and desserts.

Look at all that tasty goodness.

This place did all kimchee and pickles.

A very cool tea store.

And of course, dessert cakes.

And pastries.

There’s a store called Ranking Ranqueen that cracks me up.  Every week, they have the top 3 products in a million different categories for sale.  That’s all they do, an aggregation of the top selling products in Japan.  Here’s the best selling milk coffees, teas, and lemon drinks.

Best selling snacks of every possible category.

The best selling bubble baths, based on your blood type!

Note that the best selling headphones look like M&Ms.

Best selling matchbooks have cat prints on them??

It was pouring rain that night,  but I went out to wander the streets of Shinjuku.

I had to stop at my favorite Indian joint.  This place is run by one single guy, and is open til 5am.  He cooks some of the tastiest curries and rice you’ll ever have, for a couple hundred yen.  I chatted him up for a bit, and he says that the company that runs the restaurant flew him from India, pays for all his meals, lodging, insurance, and pays $30k a year on top of that.  Pretty sweet gig.

And that’s a good end to the evening.

Full gallery of pics is here.  Today we check out our office for working remotely, and then head off to the famous Hanami (cherry blossom) festival in Ueno for utter chaos!

Hot and spicy noodles down the street from our hostel.  They’re so good, we all ordered them this time.

Kevin and Range chow down on noooodles.

You won’t believe this.  A fishing park in the middle of the city.  They stock it with fish, and you pay to sit and fish in the middle of metropolitan Tokyo.  I’m not sure if you actually get to take home what you catch, or if you have to just toss it back.

I LOVE these machines.  You insert your money, pick your meal, and give the ticket to the people inside.  I believe this comes from the buddhist concept of handling money being “unclean”.  No one inside ever has to touch cash.  And there’s no tipping in Japan, which is wonderful.

Closeup of the front of the happy food machine.

For some reason Japan is obsessed with Krispy Kreme.  Every single franchise has a line like this in the front.  This is the Shinjuku Krispy Kreme.

Our home away from home.  Here’s where we’ll be working.

They even have a game room with a bamboo floor!  Of course, I’ve never seen it in use.  It’s probably completely decorative.  Japanese would feel too weird about gaming during the day while their coworkers are toiling.

The view out the window in Shinjuku.  14th floor baby!

The inside of a coffee machine.  I couldn’t help myself, I’m an engineer.

Here’s the outside.  You can choose your levels of sugar, creme, and coffee strength.  So awesome.

Here’s what every train looks like.  Dead silent, everyone on their cell phone.

Except in our case, it’s Range and me towering above everyone, banging our heads on stuff.

Ah, Ueno.  We’re here for Hanami.  Look at those mountains of trash!  The Japanese do not mess around when they’re out drinking.  They’d been at it for HOURS by the time we arrive.

This is what the parties look like.  Tarps covered with beer, coworkers being forced to dress in maid outfits, everyone drunk as hell and having a blast.

Here’s what everyone is theoretically here for.  No one seemed to be looking at them but me.  Nice cherry blossoms.

Now that’s a lot of one cup sake.

The next few pictures are food porn.  Here’s all the awesome festival food they had available.  Oden…

Corn cobs

Grilled meat on sticks.

Not sure.  Takoyaki?  Dough balls?

Cabbage pancakes?  Okonomiyaki?

But there’s an EGG on it!  I should have tried one.

Aww yeah.  Hanami food.

The crew.

Bags like this were everywhere.  Enough to give every Japanese citizen a full facial flush.

Wow.  A McHotDog.  They should have sent a poet.

Kevin bought Death cigarettes.  Not because he smokes, but because they’re freaking awesome.

After this we all drank at the “Coffee and Beer” cafe down the street with some folks from the hostel from Sweden and Amsterdam.