Japan & its epic no. of museums

Today i've decided to recap my memories of Japan not in my usual Day 1-Day 2 format but by remembering its countless number of MUSEUMS. Well, ok some aren't exactly museum museums, but i'm just putting it in my list coz such an excessive collection of the same thing within a single building/place deserves at least a credit mention or some kind of acknowledgement/applause.

Within that 8 days in Tokyo the museums we visited are of as follows in order:

1) Gyoza
2) Ice cream
3) Uniqlo/Abercrombie - collection of hot dudes
4) Takopachi
5) Cup Noodles
6) Ramen
7) Anime/porn/anime porn (ok more like street than museum haha)
8) And CHIBI-CATCHERS! Which are found around the whole of Tokyo actually.

Yup of course I wasn't talking about ART museums, we had enough of that in Rome to last a lifetime! :)

Namja Town @ Sunshine City, Ikebukuro

Was a weird little indoor 'theme park' combining the Gyoza musuem and Ice Cream City, among some other things. We weren't able to read most stuff so we only went straight for the food section and pointed at the food we wanted..haha.

Enter Gyoza Town!

The indoor street looks chui but..

It houses tons of delicious Gyozas in all shapes and sizes!!

We chose a cheese-stuffed Gyoza first..

Yums!! Why doesn't SG have cheese Gyozas??

The 2nd batch of Gyozas BLEW OUR MINDS AWAY.

Gyoza covered with mozzarella cheese and Mentaiko sauce!!! OMG salivating now just thinking of it! That mentaiko-cheese gyoza is definitely the BEST gyoza i've ever had. I'm never looking at gyozas the same way again.

We (actually I) really really wanted another helping of the awesome gyozas, but we knew better than to stuff ourselves with one type of food as there was ICE CREAM CITY beckoning us just 1 floor above Gyoza Town!!

Ice Cream City

The first icecream crepe we bought which looked better than it tasted - didn't see the sign saying it was soft-serve!

This was also where I caught my first prize from a Chibi-catcher machine! Ok i don't think its called a chibi-catcher but that's what YW called it during those days when i was on A Block 3rd floor. YW had this mini-prize catcher machine called Chibi-catcher and you could catch tiny balls inside it.

It was a cute black cat plushie with a bee on it. Caught it in one attempt!

And this sparked off our chain of chibi-catching throughout Tokyo. It's super addictive once you've won something. This first attempt was too easy as the cats were roundish and positioned near the edge. All you need is a small tilt of its butt. All chibi-prizes are always positioned to look easy to catch, but sometimes it really is easy if you're lucky to spot one.

Ok actually nothing very fantastic about Ice Cream City already, besides one forgettable display wall of cup ice cream.

Everything was in jap so this was really just a courtesy photo haha.

Ginza - UniQlo & Abercrombie

Naturally, Uniqlo dotted Tokyo city like Giordano in SG during the late 90s. Being our cheapo selves,  that was one of the key stores in Japan that we popped by most as its the most affordable place and clothes were definitely much cheaper than the branches in SG.

But the Ginza branch literally took our breath away - because we had to climb its 12 stories worth of Uniqlo clothes. i don't know how they managed to occupy 12 floors worth of basics, but they did. After a while we gave up sightseeing each floor and skipped floors to head straight to the sections which were relevant. 

Uniqlo is present at every major street

On the 1st floor, there is a row of mannequins indicating the type of clothes found on each level.

 

An entire section dedicated to One Piece and other popular cartoons

Next on Ginza street we passed by a familiar overpowering male scent in the air followed by the sight of 2 hunky guys...Abercrombie & Fitch! We entered the place for fun (okay, to check out the eye candy) and we weren't disappointed. Too bad we were too paiseh to take photos, but it was TWELVE FLOORS OF HOT HUNKS & BABES! Every floor had a couple who looked as if they belonged to the beach, and not from Japan of course but Abercrombie American/mixed style. Damn shuai/chio dunno where they get so many good lookers to work there...

Super tall models and pan-asian! *sizzle*

The entire building of A&F - stacked with hot stuff on every floor! :)

Odaiba - Diver City, Aqua City, Palette Town & Monotagari Onzen

That evening, after walking the whole stretch of Ginza we headed to Odaiba which was a collection of more shopping malls but outlet types.

Diver City was one of the more fun ones with plenty of food and souvenir shops (by souvenir i mean all the yummylicious looking treats for tourists to dabao home). Its famous for its iconic super-huge Gundam statue, and also the back of the mall faces a huge lake where a road-bridge has been built across, just like the San Francisco Golden Gate bridge.

Life-sized Gundam Statue @ Diver City!

On the top floor of Diver City there's a huge arcade and that's where we caught our most expensive prize of the trip. The pinch of sunk cost is so hard to ignore and walk away from!

This One Piece Gunner plushie cost us 2600Yen or S$45

I couldn't bear to look when WL was doing the catching. Damn scary knowing you're an inch away to getting the prize. There are various tricks to each type of chibi-catcher - some rounded toys (usually the small ones) are easy to tip and roll into the hole. But most of the better prizes like the one above are anchored among 3 other toys and you have to jab it with one of the catcher arms until it drops into the hole. Obviously this Gunner toy had a disadvantage due to its huge hat but we couldn't walk away after throwing in more than $30 for it! :S

Looks like the USA except that Golden Gate is in SF and Statue of Liberty is in NYC!

 As we rounded the back of the mall to head to Aqua City, we spotted the scenic view of the road bridge across the Odaiba lake, and a mini-version of the Statue of Liberty facing us before the 'Golden Gate' bridge! The japs sure have a sense of humour! But still, the scenery was breath-taking.

At Aqua City there was the Takopachi museum. The entrance was quirky with old-school stores selling random toys and souvenirs and when we reached the place it was a mini-collection of takopachi stalls.

Entrance of Takopachi town

A brochure we picked up showing all the types they have

haha a cute boat structure filled with Takopachi!!

One of the menus from a stall. You have to order through a vending machine!  

#1: Takopachi with egg and mayo..YUMS



#2: Mixed set - ok only..

The takopachis here were pretty normal i guess, the best Takopachi we had in Tokyo was still the HUGE ONE we found at Harajuku area.

i'm thinking the banner says Extra Large Gindako!

Bigger-than-fist-sized!!

Awesome shit covered in Mentaiko cream and seaweed and stuffed with octopus bits and thick creamy veg!!

I totally just salivated just writing that caption. Maybe one day i shall set up a HUGE Gindako + Cheese Gyoza stall in SG. Seriously why hasn't anyone done that!

Haha ok that's all i shall cover for this post which is extremely overloaded and took me 2 days to write! But the upcoming cupnoodle museum was my favourite one of all, i will definitely make time for it!!! :)

National Night 2012!

Didn't get to watch NDP live this year (coz we didn't opt for sponsorship so no tix) but managed to catch the fireworks from MBS and boy was it good this year!

Haha actually i think its good every year - fireworks never cease to bring joy to people! But this year there was like 5 bursts of fireworks and we left after the 4th one, thinking it was the finale coz the explosions were just spectacularly crazy, bursting one after another non-stop. But just as we went back inside MBS, there was a final series of booms which we caught from the glass ceilings of MBS - so that's what those are for - and it seems the NDP team still manages to outdo their previous year's performance again.

Recently there's been avid rumours about (the end of) LKY's longevity, but then i heard he was at NDP today. Really hope he hangs on and stays strong for a longer time! Can't imagine what SG's like without our living icon. Of course life will go on blah blah..but i think it's just depressing if that happens.

Ok anw i wanted to post a funky NDP song here which i really impressed me - haven't heard one for the longest time. Kudos to Mentos-the freshmaker for its originality!!!  :)