It hasn't stopped raining from Disneyland last night. We bought one of those clear umbrellas, very common in Japan, from a convenience store and a raincoat too, which wasn't very useful. Itinerary for today was supposed to be Ueno koen and Sensoji in Asakusa. However, due to the weather, we decided to still head to Ueno but to the Ameyoko market instead of the Ueno park. Ameyoko, which is short for Ameya Yokocho (candy store alley -as candies were traditionally sold there), was the site of a black market after WW2. Today it is a local market selling all sorts from clothes to bags to dried food. It was too wet to pull out my camera for shooting.
After Ameyoko, we proceeded to Shibuya. Pouring still. Somehow the Shibuya Crossing felt less grand and not as huge in real life compared to reel life. Anyhow, we are really here, at the famous Shibuya Crossing. This scramble crossing area was featured in the movie Lost in Translation
and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
. We had planned to set foot on the Adidas Rooftop Football Park and managed to find it on top of Shibuya 109 after some initial confusion. No photos allowed so...
Drenched, a bit of shopping and ramen for dinner later, we found ourselves 2 seats in the Starbucks, the one at the Shibuya Crossing. There are only limited seatings available but we managed. We sat at a round table, a bit further from the window seats and then we got lucky. Two guys finished and left their window seats and we hurried, with our bags and stuffs, over to the vacant window seats. WOW! It was lucky enough to get seats at this Starbucks outlet and now we are sitting at the window seats, overlooking the Shibuya Crossing and its activities. This is the highlight of the day. The view -
I'm impressed with the level of service in Japan. As soon as it started to rain, umbrella holders are brought out to the store entrance and most stores even make the effort to wrap a 'rain-cover' on shopping bags to protect their customers' purchases. How thoughtful. Can't find that sort of service in Australia or Malaysia. Not sure about other countries.
We took the train back to Shinjuku and went into Bic Camera to find sushi magnets. There was only a couple left and those weren't the shapes that i wanted. Hmmm...maybe there is no longer demand for these. I ended up purchasing some here.
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