Ginza, Akihabara and Linh

Ola, today I shall talk about our very first venture out into big city Tokyo which mainly consisted of trying to get familiar with central Tokyo and most importantly, to pick up our super cute travel mate Linh.

We were to pick her up at Tokyo Station, a huge complex of infinite escalators, trains, shinkansen and pretty damn good foods. We could have spend the entire day in Tokyo station no joke, but obviously we wanted to get out and explore as much as we could. So the closest walkable district first was Ginza, the ritzy district full of expensive designer names and high end restaurants.

We arrived around noonish so it was time to grab lunch somewhere, once we got lost in Ginza, it wasn’t hard to find the endless deep alleyways of restaurants and bakeries. We could not make a damn decision on where we wanted to eat…!

We wanted it to be budget friendly, which wasn’t a problem. There were plentiful restaurants offering a decent lunch special/combo around $9-12. I was being really stupid and kept wanting to walk around and see what were our options but our hunger was kicking in and we both were getting pretty hangry (hungry+angry).

Finally, we settled for some typical japanese diner styled place…I had no idea how we came to decide on this, so i’m going to guess we gave the “fuck it” and went on in.

The place was pretty full, we weren’t sure if there were any seats, but hurray! they had a basement floor with lots of space. They had a funny system of delivering the orders down to the lower level. It was basically a elevator box for food which was right behind Scott’s head.

We ordered some pretty standard stuff, I chose a curry type dish and Scott went with a beefy lunch option. It was good for what it was. We were full and satisfied, we asked for the bill and went to the front cashier to pay as we left.

Scott and I had a decent amount of time to kill still before we needed to pick up Linh. I think her scheduled arrival was around 5pm-ish? We chose Akihabara as our next destination as we thought it was one of the more interesting districts to check out, it was in hindsight a bad idea because once we settled in and got excited from the many things to see…our time there was cut short because we had other priorities after all.

Oh?? Whats this? MOCHI? I love this stuff, so soft and chewy filled with yummy shit…oh man, i busted out my wallet quickly and started to scan what I wanted…Ice cream filled?? Even better!

This place was right outside of the Akihabara JR station, it was really easy to spot and not too hard to miss either.

The display looks sooooooooooooo good right?? Of course it does.It’s plastic after all…the actual product compared to the display was a little off, the size was definitely not what I was expecting.

The cute sales lady was trying to ask me in Japanese if I was going to eat this NOW or LATER,  obviously…I had no idea what the hell she was saying but luckily she busted out some English and we said it would be for later and so she threw a cute mini ice pack in the bag,

I can’t remember all the flavours we got, but the one in this picture was a caramel pudding. Yes, it was delicious.

We saved some for linh of course :D

So we left the busy district to head back to Tokyo Station where we stressed the fuck out trying to find her.

That’ll be left for the next blog post la.

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Cute Foods in Japan: FairyCake Fair

Okay listen, listen really really well okay?

Japan has a lot of cute shit.

From desserts to toys to accessories, they have it all. They have mastered the art of visually enticing everything.

With a limit to my wallet plus my stomach, I could only buy so many desserts to eat, so I had to choose wisely…and from the multitude of dessert varieties it was really tough.

So Scott and I were going out for the day to bum around Tokyo, but more importantly to pick up our arriving friend Linh! We faced the wrath of travelling with 2 large luggages each, so we thought it would be better to pick her up and help her out because it was a long travel to where we were actually staying.

Our First stop was in Tokyo Station, this station was simply amazing. Huge and full of floors to explore, it was an all in one type building. From decadent bakeries, busy restaurants and lots of shopping, you can no doubt kill all day in this station .

The bottom floor was nothing BUT desserts and cafes, these major train stations all offer souvenir gifts, stalls upon stalls of different packaged varieties from classic Japanese desserts to individuality packaged French Macarons.

Fairy Cake really caught my eyes from a distance, I’ve never seen such cute little cupcakes ever.

Fairycake a , a quaint semi dim atmosphere, it offers drinks and limited seating.

I was really full from having lunch, and I couldn’t decide on just one…so we bought 4 and they put the cupcakes in a specially made box so the cakes wouldn’t get jostled around from our furious travels.

A hefty total of almost $4 each cake, It was all worth it to me.

What I also found super cool was they offered an mini ice pack to keep your desserts cool, it took a while of finger pointing and explaining in Japanese (which I obviously didn’t understand) to ask me whether the cakes were for eating now or later, hence offering the ice pack.

Yes it was very delicious.  We ended up choosing 4 cakes, green tea, cheesecake, caramel and the strawberry one.

http://www.fairycake.jp/andmilktea/

Grand Electric, A taco fiesta with a hipster twist.

My buddy David has been dying to check out this new place since it opened…reviews have been good and apparently line ups are pretty intense if you don’t arrive before 7pm, otherwise it can potentially be a very long 2hr waiting list.

Bff and I decided to meet up around 4ish to grab some Nadege and then make our way over to Grand Electric to grab seats. Just as we were beginning our journey it was side tracked via shitty TTC as one street cart broke down,  meaning we weren’t going to be able to ride the cart to where we needed to go. So we decided to walk as far as we could…our starting point was from Osgoode subway station to far Queen West.

With wind chills hitting our faces at -12, we never looked more Chinese in our lives, with our mouths cringing and eyes squinting at the bitter cold…the walk seemed pretty damn impossible, but my encouraging words (not really) gave Jackie hope and so our frozen toes trekked onward.

It was pretty hilarious, the adventure took forever, roughly every 5-7 minutes we couldn’t stand the cold and ran into whatever store was in sight…to absorb as much heat as we could and went back outside to continue. We did check out some stores we never been to before so the walk wasn’t too too bad, though when the street carts were finally running back up, temptation to catch the cart struck our cold brains pretty often.

We finally made it to Nadege, like 1.5 hours later…we grabbed a pepito croissant (delicious) and some mini madelines  and walked onward to find the next Starbucks to get a latte.

Finally, it was time to head out to the restaurant and yes we took the street cart our toes couldn’t take it anymore, we had enough…we saw the street cart and waved that driver down like it we were on the sinking Titanic and he was our savior.

The place is very small, I don’t think it can even hold any more than 30 patrons…it has a very thrown together design but it seemed to work, very hipstery but alas I am in their territory, at least me and Jackie mesh in with everyone else me thinks.

Luckily for us, we did get the last big table situated right by the window. It was a nice spot until people start opening doors…

While we were waiting for the boys to arrive, we ordered Guacamole & chips, delicious and simple a good app to start.

Dave ordered some beer and a weird egg white bourbon sour cocktail, it was really strong otherwise tasty.

Let us move onto the main event…tacos!!! Grand electric sells fancy tacos for a very reasonable and good price. $3.50 each or 3 for $10. We ordered 3 of each off the menu :)

Fish taco

Pork and pineapple

Beef cheek

Spicy chicken

I’m not going to review each taco on their own because well…they are all fantastic..!!! I have no complaints what so ever with any of the tacos, all the meats were nicely flavoured, juicy and tender. These 3-4 bite (for a girl) tacos are sooooo delicious, I will definitely return for just the tacos.

The tacos are a bit small, but it will add up if you have one of each 4 tacos can definitely fill my tummy and easy on my wallet.

Shrimp Tostada, a citrus and creamy the shrimp is raw-ish and fresh so it leaves you without a fishy aftertaste.

Tuna Cheviche a tuna tartar dish where the raw fish is soaked in a vinegary lime juice that cooks it slightly. While we were having those spicy chicken tacos, we cooled down our palettes with this refreshing dish.

Pozole Rojo $12
So far everything is fantastic, no complaints…except this dish. The soup was bland and had no interesting kick to it, kinda reminded me of a watered down korean kamjatang, which while I was having this soup…really made me craved for some pork bone soup. I would not order this dish again.

This little pie in a jar was the finisher to our meal, of course it was a lime themed dessert, very refreshing and sweet, we were way too full to have our own individual desserts and having one spoonful each was perfect.

The bill for the night was very reasonable, we had our fill and the staff were all very friendly. The food came quickly and music was all over the place but it suited the place anyway.

Oh a funny of the night, since we were right by the window, we were graced with watching the many patrons struggle and be baffled by the door entrance. The door is a PUSH in, but trickery lies in the design as it has a long vertical bar that people will naturally assume it would be a pull to open. So after a few frustrated pulls, people think the restaurant might even be closed…but eventually their brain starts working and they decide to try another option and push their way through. haha.

Anyways, I want to go back already…I really wish they had lunch hours :(