Thursday, April 25, 2013

A trip to Ginza and picnic


I went to Ginza recently to see a student's art show at a small gallery there. It was a pretty small show, but some of the art was pretty cool. I think this student is going to show in Paris soon as well. After the show, we walked around Ginza a little bit. Ginza is the super upscale district of Tokyo. Everywhere you turn there are luxury brand stores, and even regular stores have a Ginza makeover.


These pictures are from Uniqlo in Ginza. Uniqlo is like the Gap or Old Navy; inexpensive, basic clothes for everyone. Normally their store designs aren't anything special, but they had a really fancy store in Ginza. Electronic displays, spinning mannequins, super-modern store design. It was pretty awesome actually, but I don't need to take a trip to Ginza to buy Uniqlo clothes. There's a Uniqlo right in Shimokitazawa! 3 stories of totally plain store, but the clothes are the same.

That weekend we also went to Mogusaen for a picnic. This is the entranceway to Mogusaen park on the Keio line. It took a while to find it, since the stop is super local and there's no handy signposts leading the way. Then, when we finally got there, a park worker kindly informed us that the park was closed!! So we went to a bus stop across the street and ate our picnic lunch there.

We packed this awesome little homemade lunchbox. Fish, asparagus, and shumai (Chinese dumplings)! Delicious!

My outfit for the day. It wasn't too cold during the day, although it was really windy and at night I wished I had dressed a bit warmer. Notice my awesome new shoes!

The entrance to Mogusaen. I want to go back to this park sometime, it looked super cool from the little we saw of it at the entrance.

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Birthday shenanigans

I went to a Mexican place in Shimokitazawa for my birthday with my coworkers. I'd never even seen it before even though I bike past the building every day on my way to and from work! It's on the 3rd floor, a teeny tiny place that apparently sometimes has live music as well. We ordered nachos, enchiladas, tacos, and paella (even though paella is Spanish). The enchiladas and tacos were super good, but the nachos didn't hold a candle to the homemade nachos I made with my friend recently. Then my coworkers sang me happy birthday, and the owner brought over a burrito with a candle in it, lol! She did it on her own, we didn't even order it. We were all actually really full at that point and could barely eat it. I got a margarita too, and it was good although it was tiny and there was a LOT of salt around the rim. The owner made it herself and strained it into my glass right at the table.