Rice and Ramen

Sometimes it feels like Tokyo has more fashionable areas than you can shake a stick at (side note: where does that idiom even come from??). The most well-known, at least from an international perspective, is likely  Harajuku , the "kawaii capital" of Japan. But did you know that there is, in fact, a "second Harajuku" in Tokyo? Several stops north of Ikebukuro on the Yamanote Line is  Sugamo , an area colloquially known as the "Harajuku for grannies." Sugamo is a shopping district where everything moves at a slower pace. The main street is lined with stores, many of them specializing in things that, well, old people would need or want: specialty Japanese ingredients, visors, canes, and special red underwear. (I'll come back to that in a moment.) One really interesting thing I noticed walking up the street was how accessible each of the shops was. All of them were wheelchair and walker-friendly: there were no steps and the aisles were wide and...

When I told my coworkers that my Friday plans included going to Boroichi, I was met with blank stares. One or two people had sort of vaguely maybe heard of it. Most people had to google it themselves, quickly whipping out their phones behind the counter while no one else was looking. Boroichi (bless you) is a massive semi-annual flea market held every year in Setagaya on December 15-16 and again in January. It's known for its cheap prices and massive crowds--apparently over 200,000 people will come each year, crowding the narrow streets around the Setagaya and Kamimachi stations, on the hunt for a bargain. Fun fact: the word "boroboro" in Japanese is an onomatopoeia for "worn out" or "raggedy," and "ichi" is another word for market, so Boroichi (ボロ市) is a market for worn-out things.  I met up with Troy and his mom around 10:15am and already the crowds were intense. Stalls lined both sides of the street and you really had to fight for a...

Today was a proper, fall day--the sort that's half pleasant and half not. It was cool and windy, but the leaves won't really start changing here until November so all the trees and plants are still pretty green. But it gets dark around 4pm and the air just has that "fall" smell to it, if that makes sense. The not-pleasant part of the equation was the cold rain that fell for half the day and made walking home from the train station a bit of a soggy affair. And of course, since it was this sort of cold, rainy, fall day I decided to spend most of it walking around outside. Disclaimer: everything I did today was the result of picking my friend Frances's brain for stuff to do in the Meguro/ Naka-Meguro area because I knew she'd spent a lot of time here this summer. The first thing I did was a quick stroll through the Meguro Sky Garden. It's actually pretty hard to describe, and even harder to get a decent picture of. Basically it's this massive c...

Today after grabbing lunch (and a coffee) with a friend from Glee (yay Glove! I wish we'd remembered to take a picture...) I meandered around the Omotesando and Harajuku areas. Omotesando is a large main street lined on both sides with stores, cafes, and coffee shops. It's a shopper's paradise and would have been a more pleasant stroll if it weren't for the heat. As I walked down a side street, looking for The Roastery, I passed by a Shiseido pop-up promotion for their new line of lipsticks all themed around the color red. Inside, they offered to match you with your perfect shade of read through a weird "mind number" personality analysis. Here is a sample of what I walked away with (there were some advertisement pamphlets which I just tossed): a sheet that says what my Mind Number Red, my Inspiration Red, and my Counseling Red are, paper lips with the Shiseido logo, a one-page description of my personality and how to care for myself based on my Min...

I had meant to write this post yesterday while still in Tokyo instead of on a bullet train to Kanazawa, but I fell asleep on the floor at 8pm and didn't wake up until midnight so now will just have to do. (And thus this post lacks a creative title.)Yesterday Zoey and I had a full day of exploration in Tokyo--so the fact that we each woke up naturally around 6:30am didn't hurt in the slightest. We ended up grabbing breakfast at a nearby coffee shop where I had something called an "egg suratto" which, according to the menu, originated in Los Angeles. Go figure. It's a poached egg over mashed potatoes with some sort of beef gravy. It was actually delicious...it's hard to beat egg yolk and potato, really. Then Zoey and I successfully navigated the confusing Tokyo train system to make our way to the Tokyo Sky Tree (it involved several transfers from the Tokyo Metro train system to the JR train system and then some). It was cloudy, unfortunately, but ...