Sorry for the delay in posting, the days before and after New Years here have been crazy. I don’t quite remember everything I did in the last couple days, but I will try and put it together here so this may be a long post. The day before New years eve we went shopping at Ita Yokado, the one I previously went to last time I was here. I thought, it was busy last time I was here, but that day gave a new definition to being busy. There were so many people and special stands setup inside the building selling food for new years. This wasn’t festival food, but more like food you would eat at home for New Years. Afterwards we headed to Ginza to have tea and came back to Sayaka’s place to eat dinner.
The next day we spent all afternoon in Akihabara. I had been to Akihabara before, but only for an hour, so this was quite an experience for me. We got off at a station close to Akiba and walked in. Strait away we encountered a street filled with used computers, Mostly laptops. Every store had bins and bins of different types of computers parts. I hadn’t see a sight like this for a while, not since I was fixing computers at my old High School. There were so many ultracompact laptops there I was quite surprised. Most of these machines were 7 or 8 years old by my estimation, maybe newer. I didn’t spend too much time looking over to components or checking to see if they worked well, but I was quite tempted to by one of the small ones to use at school. Lugging around a 5lb laptop all day long may not seem that bad, but believe me it hurts after a while. As we walked towards Akiba station we saw oden being sold out of a vending machine, something that I was told is unique only to Akiba. I also saw some maid cafes along the way, but mostly electronic stores. What I didnt see were that many anime or manga stores around. I would think there would be easier to spot, but maybe they are off the main streets?
We ended up heading to two of the biggest stores there, the LLAOX store and Yodabashi Camera’s new Akiba store. LLAOX seemed okay, I wasn’t that thrilled about their prices, it seemed like other electronic stores that I had seen in other parts of Tokyo. However Yodabashi was a different beast all together. This store was ginormously huge. There are 8 floors filled with all manner of electronic goods, appliances, cameras, and other items. Each floor seemed about as large a Frys Electronics, each devoted to its own specific area. There was a lot of stuff there, but it didn’t seem like they had some things I was looking for, this could have been because I didn’t understand they way they were organizing the layout of the store, or the parts I was looking for are so specialized that they don’t carry that stuff. A little of both could be possible though.
That night was New Years Eve, Sayaka had to go somewhere so I went off exploring Tokyo alone. Before they left we headed out to do a traditional thing on New Years, eat soba. I hadn’t had soba in Japan so far so it was another nice experience for me. This was some great soba though, very delicious, and the sauce was great. It was probally better then 3/4th of all the soba I have had in the states. Afterwards we went our separate ways for the evening. Since there were many food stand out I took the oppertunity to walk around and look at each one. Most were serving things I like yakisoba, and takoyaki, but others were serving all kinds of interesting dishes that made me want to try them all. Around 22:00 I decided to head to Harajuku to see what is going on there. I got off at ometesando and walked towards Harajuku station. There were food standings liking the street up towards the Meji Shrine. There weren’t as many as there were around Monzen-Nakacho, but it quite impressive. It was so packed there, they closed off about 2 city blocks worth of roads just for New Years. It felt like everyone in Tokyo was converging onto the location.
The next day we made a trip to Akasaka and another shrine. This one was situated on a hill and we had to walk up a long flight of stairs to get to the top. They also had many food stands setup and it was quite fun to see the way that three different shrines handled it. The size of this one is about the same size as the one Asaksa, maybe slightly smaller. We performed the traditional prayer of the new year and headed over to Harajuku to do some shopping.
So now that I’ve finished giving a synopsis of the last three days lets get onto the midnight snacks for those days. The first night I tried lemon water, manju, and a mayo corn bread. I had lemon water before and It is by far one of my favorite drinks to get. The manju was very intresting, but also very bad too, so was the bread. I would have to rate the manju a 0 and the mayo corn bread a 1 neither of these things I would like to try again, at least from this brand. The next night I didn’t go to a conbini, but I did eat at the stands. I tried out a sausage stick, which wasn’t half bad, and some yakisoba which didn’t turn out to be that good it lacked the yakisoba sauce taste that I was expecting to get. I would rate both a 3 and 2 respectively. The third night I tried out some more stand food and more conbini food. I had Takoyaki, grilled ika, and potatos from the stands, as well as a unagi and wasabi onigiri, milk, grape soda, and tonkatsu burger. The gilled Ika was great, although it was kind of cold and chewy. The sauce on it was great though, and I would give it a 3.5, great effort but the chewiness and being cold made it somewhat hard to eat. The takoyaki was so so, not that flavorful, the same goest for the sauce they put on top, and it was sightly burnt too. I give this a 3, not bad, but not good either. I’m going to give the potatos a 3 also they lacked any other taste to them, and thats good in one respect, but for me I was expecting some type of flavor like salty. The onigiri was okay it definitely had a wasabi taste to it, but it was not overpowering. The unagi was bad though, not the soft tender food I usually have, but rather chewy. The sauce for the unagi wasn’t that bad though, and is what I think saved it from being a disaster. I would give it a 2.5 okay, but not something I would want to try again. The milk tasted like milk, and the grape soda tasted a little strange to me, both a 3. The tonkatsu buger was actually quite tasty and im giving it a 4.
So thats my brief review of the food I had. I might go back and do a more detailed review, but thats all I feel like writing right now. I’ll post pictures later, but they are already uploaded to my album, they are located at http://album.wagyuified.comÂ
