22nd day - my most important POI

Today I started off early to go check out THE place I would like to see – Subaru Headquarters in Shinjuku. I Google-mapped it, and sort of knew where it approximately was. It was a block to the west of the most Northern part of the Shinjuku JR station. I walked out of the station and started wandering around the streets wondering where it was. I walked probable about 2 miles around the tall buildings but still wasn’t able to find it. I knew that the Subaru building wasn’t too tall, maybe less than 10 stories. I even walked up the pedestrian bridge to get a better view but still couldn’t find it although I was able to take a few nice pictures. Then I focused and circled around the area. I even checked out a map on the street but that didn’t help. Then as I walked across the street from the map, I saw it! I was so excited! It wasn’t a big flashy place with glass surrounding the showroom so people can see it on the street. It was sort of discreet, covered by the metal designed walls. There was only one small door which led to the showroom, or you can enter through the main entrance of the building. I walked through the main entrance and they had a red Impreza displayed on the left and a blue Forester on the right.
Even the escalator down had the Subaru logo on the railing.
I then looked at the directory and the main offices were from the 4th to 9th floor. So I went up to the 4th floor. There was nothing but the office there, as there wasn’t even a reception area. Since I didn’t know what to say to what to tell them or if the told me something I wouldn’t understand it, I decided not to disturb the people working there. I went downstairs and exited through the other side of the building which was connected to the train station. I walked up the station and was hungry for ramen of some sort. After walking for a while I came across this ramen place Tenkaippin and decided to give it a try. I couldn’t read the menu and randomly pointed on the one with 2 halves of an egg. The waitress was nice enough to explain that you can choose between a mild or spicy soup base. You all might know by now which one I would pick. The noodles were very good and so was the soup base. It’s great to be able to slurp your noodles here in Japan as everyone else next to me was doing the same. I then went to many different shops including but not limited to Agnes B. I then walked towards Isetan and found a café there and decided to sit there and rest a little. It was pretty busy and but I was able to sit in a comfortable corner. I ordered a Green Tea Waffle that was served with green tea ice-cream, whipped cream, peeled grapes and slices of pears topped with green tea powder.
I also ordered my favorite Iced Lemon Tea.
Afterwards I spent a few minutes at the Isetan Men’s Shop. You aren’t allowed to take pictures, but I was able to take a quick shot of the store. You may be able to tell that it’s pretty nicely designed.
Afterwards I went to meet my friend at Shibuya to have dinner. We walked around the streets for a while not knowing what we wanted to eat. The more we walked, the hungrier we got.
When we decided we couldn’t wait no more, we went back to the top floor of Seibu to check out our options. We came across this Japanese restaurant that looked interesting, so we decided to give it a try. Apart from very Japanese Japanese food, they mainly served hot pot, but I was too hot to cook at that point, so we both decided to order very Japanese Japanese food. I ordered this set that came with soba, tempura, a few small slices of sashimi and some other things. My friend ordered this set that included tempura, fried rice, hot udon in soup, and 6 small assorted dishes which looked very colorful and appetizing. The food was pretty good but not too filling which was ok because I had a late lunch and a decent size waffle only a couple hours ago.
When we took the train back, I was finally able to snap this shot of 4 people in a row standing and fumbling with their mobile phones. I will definitely write more about the nice phones they have here in Japan some other time.

21 day - slowing down a bit

This morning I woke up real late because I was real tired from the plane ride. It was about 2pm when I was up and I was hungry as usual, so I walked over to the train station to look for food. I walked by this fast food place Sukiya many times before, and it was always crowded during lunch time, so now since everyone was back at work, I was able to easily find a seat. I sat at the bar where I could have a better view of the restaurant and the kitchen. I sat down and looked at the huge and colorful menu. There could easily be over 300 items on the menu. Their specialty seemed to be the beef bowl so I ordered a medium sized bowl. As you can tell that I like taking pictures of the table etc, and right after I ordered I took 1 quick shot of the table for you and as I was placing my camera into my pocket (about a 3 second time lapse between me ordering, taking the pic and putting my camera into my pocket) my beef bowl landed in front of me! OMG that’s the fastest service I’ve gotten since I’ve been here!!! It tasted very good and for only 450 Yen, it’s well worth it! I went home afterwards to finish my blogs from days ago and at night we went to Shibuya. There was this little hole-in-the-wall place that’s pretty cool and it’s a place where “salary-men” hang out after work to go drinking. It was up on the 3rd floor of a building and they served pretty authentic Japanese appetizers.
While we were there, there was this one customer who picked up a Japanese guitar and starting singing something like an old Japanese folk-song thing and later on the waiter joined him with another guitar like thing and everyone started singing… We were still hungry afterwards so we dropped by Wendy’s before we headed home.