Day 10: Tokyo 2: Ghibli + Akihabara

Breakfast: Bagel & Bagel


Location: Lumine 2, Shinjuku Station
Clara remembered this shop's food fondly from her last Japanese visit. (& you must admit, the name is quite amusing.... at least we thought so)
Food:
1. Dee's mayo-prawn on plain bagel & teriyaki chicken on pepper bagel
2. Rah's mentaiko-egg on cheese bagel & cream cheese on chocolate bagel
Final score: 3.5. Clara found her mentai-egg (ie. spicy cod roe + egg) bagel a bit strange "I don't think it belongs on a bagel...". But the bagels themselves were fantastic, just not the filling. We'd recommend probably going for unfilled bagels (of which there are 10+ varieties including green tea...)

Ghibli Museum
Location: Mitaka
For our ignorant readers, Ghibli studios produced such childhood animated classics as My Neighbour Totoro, Laputa, Kiki's Delivery Service, Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited Away, amongst many others. The content of the museum as well as the building and surrounding garden is awe-inspiring. If you've watched these as a child, or have any artistic talent, interest in animation or cartoons, you must visit this when next in Tokyo. Its both our second times to the museum and it's as every bit as good as the first.


Lunch on the Go
Japanese people are awfully busy metropolitan people.

Since we spent so much time at the museum, we thought we'd catch up by eating lunch on the train. One thing I LOVE about Japan is it's abundance of specialty shops. There are often shops only specialising in selling ONE food item. The only equivalent in Sydney is probably in its dessert department (eg. cupcakes on Pitt), or juice bars. But I digress.
We were SO lucky to come across two such stores in Mitaka station. As in, they ONLY sell one type of rice-things (denise wrote sushi - but onigiri is not sushi, so we changed it)! You know the food must be top quality, otherwise they'd never sell their one product.

"ENMUSUBI"
Location: Inside gates, Mitaka JR Station
Specialty: Onigiri
Food:
1. Salmon Onigiri
(Their #1 best seller, and for good reason too)
2. Prawn Tempura Onigiri
(First time i've seen this in any onigiri shop, and its amazing)
Rate: 9/10


"MAMEDA"
www.mameda.co.jp
Location: Outside gates, Mitaka JR Station
Specialty: Inarizushi
Food:
1. Inarizushi Sampler
(4 of the 5 types of traditional inari's they sell, with different skins and fillings. I particularly liked wasabi filling and a deep chocolate coloured sweet soya sauce marinated tofu skin)
2. 2X Mini Tako-Inarizushi
(Half the size of normal. They are meant to be inari-zushi versions of takoyaki, and are even in specially small 1-inch tofu pockets that I've never seen before! Complete with octopus and a bit of ginger inside)
Rate: 9/10
Must try if you're a fan of Inarizushi. This is the first inarizushi specialty shop i've seen in my 9 days + previous travel in Japan.


Akihabara
= the electronic capital of Tokyo.
Akihabara is to Japan as Mong Kok is to Hong Kong (it's more like Ap Liu Gai in certain elements, but denise refused to type that). Sort of anyway.


As we exited the station, we saw more caucasians than usual and one guy holding an LCD monitor packaged only in bubble wrap. We knew we were in the right place.
We spent our time wandering the streets, amusing ourselves with the variety of wireless mice, iPhone covers, USB sticks (imitating the shape of sushi, guitars, humping dogs and cute monkeys which you behead to reveal the USB stick bit). Anyway...

We also visited Tokyo Anime Centre, which was a bit of a let down.
Like Den-Den town of Osaka, there are a few anime specialty shops scattered amongst the electronics. It seems they share the same audience of male shoppers, but these appear of a younger age - maybe it's the time of day? The 6-floored "Animate" seems to be a good one to visit if you're into Anime.

Shinjuku
Dinner was at an Izakaya.
Izakaya are drinking places that offer a variety of small dishes, such as robata (grilled food), salads and finger food. It is probably the most popular restaurant type among the Japanese people. Izakaya tend to be informal, and the people at one table usually share all dishes, rather than ordering and eating individually.
(http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2036.html)

We ordered:

1. Chicken skewer with mentai topping (spicy cod roe)
   
2. Chicken-skin skewer
3. Chicken-cartilage karaage
   
4. Hot chips on a hot plate of 3 sausages
5. Rice cake & Tofu in stone pot
6. Udon-carbonara

Rating:7.5/10
Quite an unexpectedly filling meal, and all the dishes were quite nice. the Udon carbonara was surprisingly good & of course, chicken skewers always does the trick. It also helped that some lady passed us a 500yen-off voucher as we walked in the building. It was just quite unfortunate that the entire place smelled of smoke, luckily the couple that sat next to us did not smoke (there anyway).

After Dinner Shopping:
After that satisfying meal, we were off to Muji. If you don't know what Muji is, then you have likely been living under the preverbial rock that is Australia & have never ventured into an asian country.
Muji is a shop that sells EVERYTHING. "Muji is distinguished by its design minimalism, emphasis on recycling, avoidance of waste in production and packaging, and no-logo or "no-brand" policy." Unfortunately for them, Muji has become a brand in its own right.
Clara especially loves their pens & storage things. After getting kicked (politely) out of the store (as we stayed till closing-time), we wandered back to our hotel to write to you lovely ppl.... if anyone is actually reading this thing.