Friday, August 23, 2013

Japan - Shibuya, Tokyo

Shibuya, Tokyo is definitely a hip and happening place. I always like to compare metropolitan cities that I visit with Hong Kong cities. Shibuya reminds me of Causeway Bay in Hong Kong. People are trendy and there's lots of nightlife going on - bars, restaurants, dessert shops and more.

Filmmakers tend to shoot their scenes in Shibuya. I recognized some of the streets and shops in Fast & Furious 6

Shibuya crossing is claimed to be the busiest intersection in the world. All vehicles are stopped in all directions to let pedestrians cross. Pedestrians are coming from any and all directions - east, west, south, north, northeast! - you get the drift. Living in a suburban city in Los Angeles, this is such a rare occurrence. Downtown Los Angeles isn't even crowded during working hours. Even when I was in Hong Kong, there wasn't as much people at there were here.

Shibuya Crossing
Shibuya Crossing
Shibuya Crossing
As you can see, lots of people waiting to cross. And this was only one direction out of six!

Shibuya Crossing
Shibuya Crossing
We crossed the intersections many times and stood at different directions.

Shibuya Crossing
I think the picture above is a good depiction of the swarms of people crossing the streets.

Shibuya Crossing
Here we are at a different direction again. Lots of people waiting!

Here, I thought I'd give the photographer some credit :)

Shibuya Crossing - Shibuya 109 pictured
At another direction of Shibuya crossing, where we captured Shibuya 109. Shibuya 109 is a large department store that sells primarily women's clothing and accessories. Clothes are usually very trendy. I remember visiting it back in 2008 - I felt excited because I had read so much about the different shops located in Shibuya 109. And there were many choices to choose from - that's actually not good for me because I tend to get indecisive when given too many choices - anyway, back then, I did do some shopping at Shibuya 109. This time around, I opted to spare my man the boredom (and also my wallet!).

Inside streets of Shibuya
So finally, we left the Shibuya Crossing and did some exploring. It's a pity that our Japanese sucks. There were many restaurants that we wanted to try, but the language barrier was too difficult to overcome.

Our Tokyo Guide Book brought us to this building that was filled with izakayas. Izakaya is a restaurant that serves alcohol and Japanese styled tapas. When we reached the building, we had to take the elevator to the third floor. Upon exiting, we entered izakaya heaven. Unfortunately for us, everyone there only spoke Japanese. No English was spoken. No picture menus were available. All of the foods listed on the menu were in Japanese. With our limited Japanese, we tried to order by pointing at the dishes of people next to us, but our server only smiled and said something we couldn't interpret. After exchanging lots of smiles and hand gestures to no avail, we gave up and left. In retrospect, I wish we had tried harder. :(

Inside streets of Shibuya 
No worries, even though we didn't do izakaya in izakaya heaven, but we still did izakya and enjoyed the next favorite thing on our list - ramen!

Yummy ramen noodles
As previously mentioned, I really like ramen noodles. My Boyfriend loves ramen noodles. We each had a bowl everyday - no joke. My Boyfriend claims that we wouldn't be able to enjoy such a delicious bowl in Los Angeles. It's true - Los Angeles has its popular ramen establishments, but the ramen in Japan is tastier. From the soup, to the firmness of the noodle, to its fatty pork - it's not easy to cook a perfect bowl of ramen noodles!

Anyway, it's been a little over a week since my last post. Hope y'all are still holding tight for my updates - my goal is to blog a couple times a week or at least once a week... so until next time :)

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