Ginza 「銀座」

Today's destination: Ginza.
Weather: Pouring rain.

So today we had plans to run off to Ginza and play for the day. Check out the Sony Building, suss out the market in Tsukiji (a place right near Ginza), and go for a stroll around Hamarikyū-teien (garden) and Hibiya-Kōen (park).

But, a passing typhoon meant that instead of galavanting happily around Ginza's parks and gardens, we had to seek shelter and stay indoors, so we pretty much only saw the Sony Building.

The Sony Building is owned by... Sony. Here they showcase a lot of their newer/new/soon-to-be-released goods, promote themselves and let you fiddle around and play with basically everything, which is pretty neat.

I've found the television I want-- a 100-inch HD Sony Bravia Plasma television. Which means I should start saving now, because along with bloody amazing picture quality, it had this annoying price tag of 4,000,000yen. Which is around $40,000 dollars. Ouch.

Besides the TV, we tried out some digital cameras, some SLR cameras (well, Ben did...), fiddled with the Playstation 3 and were treated to an insano-crazy demonstration of what our home-theatre system could sound like. Also saw a new mp3/speaker-type gizmo Sony is releasing very soon. It's called Rolly, and is pretty cool-looking, but essentially useless.

Youtube it. You load mp3s onto it, and it plays them, with special horizontal speakers with little cup-flap things on each end that move and "dance" to the music, supposedly enhancing the sound and giving the listener superior sound quality. It lights up and flashes and moves around abit while your music plays, and is pretty much a gimmick. It's cool, but unless you have money lying around to waste, then I can think of much better ways to spend $400-500.

After wasting a couple of hours at the Sony Building, we got sick of loudmouth Americans trying to hog to PS3, so we decided to go find this nice like restaurant called Sakata, recommended to us by Lonely Planet. They claim it sold "sublime tempura udon". Well, we hunted high and low for it, in the torrential rain, eventually walking into a convenience store near this supposed restaurant. They informed us that it closed down. Closed down.. boo-hiss!

We thanked the staff, bought some umbrellas to avoid getting even more water-logged and continued our quest for something not-too-expensive-but-good to eat. Though Lonely Planet had failed us already today, we decided to rely upon it's information once more, and head to a place called Torigin Honten. The specialty here is yakitori 「焼き鳥」--chicken on a stick. Until we came here, I had no idea there were so many varieties of chicken-on-a-stick!

Ben and I each ordered the same thing-- a "yakitori sample plate", with 5 skewers of yakitori, each a different variety. It came out not long after we ordered, and it looked pretty damn good. I bit into my first skewer and thought "hey... this chicken tastes odd". Not rotten odd, more like... "this isn't chicken I'm used to eating". It didn't taste bad, so I kept eating. I studied the menu to see what it could've been-- a-ha, found it!

I was eating chicken gizzards. Ben had already finished his and was like "I thought it tasted weird". Needless to say I left the remainder of my chicken innards aside and continued eating the more delectable skewers, which were good, but not as good as the Lonely Planet made them out to be.

I was still a bit hungry after my 4.5 chicken sticks, so when we came across a cake shop I was inside before you could look twice. Cake shops in Japan are cute. Attention to detail and aesthetics are all very important. I decided to get a slice of Strawberry Torte (because it looked cool). It was everything I ever wanted in a Strawberry Torte, and more! Best 450-yen I'd spent yet!

After cake, we figured the unrelenting rain wasn't going to disappear, so we'd have to come back to frolic in the park another day. On our way back to the station we walked down these cool stairs. Every step down you took, a piano note played-- the lower the step, the lower the note. It was pretty cool, and kept us occupied for five minutes or so.

We'll have to head back to Ginza next week when the weather is better (read: back to it's regular thirty-something degrees with 80% humidity).

Sorry about the lack of photos-- I'm paranoid about getting my new camera wet, so it stayed in my bag, away from the elements. Plus, no photography in the Sony Building, so that was a bit of a downer. But, more shall come.