Today we decided to go to the World Festa Yokohama 2007 which was pretty much an international food fair in a park along the coast. When we got out of the station, standing in front of me was a Lexus dealership with a VW dealership alongside, so I had to snap a couple shots. 
We walked about 3 minutes and arrived at the festival. There were quite a few people, many children and foreigners. In the middle there were chairs and tables with people either eating there or eating on the grass. On the sides were mainly stalls from different countries like USA, Indonesia, China, Korea, Germany, Nepal etc offering food from their respective countries. 
We saw a long line at the Indonesian stall so since I couldn’t decide what I wanted, I’d just went for the one with the longest line. The Indonesian stall actually had 2 lines. The line I was standing in was the ling for shaved ice which Japanese love – no wonder there was such a long line. When we realized that, my friend went over to the regular food line and ordered:
Indonesian Fried Noodles
and Indonesian Fried Rice. My line took a long time, so when he had gotten the food, I was still waiting for the:
Mango and Strawberry shaved ice.
Both the noodles and the rice were very tasty, so we quickly finished it and moved on to the shaved ice. It turned out to be a pretty nice and warm day so the shaved ice was perfect. We came across a Toyota stand where they had 3 cars on display:
The Ist is basically the Scion xA, and the display is of the new version of it.
The Vanguard is basically a RAV4. At first I thought it was a new model, but then I realized the inside is exactly the same as a RAV4, and the only difference is that this had a Camry grill. Maybe this is a preview of the redesign?
Then there was the Estima which isn’t available in the US maybe because it’s too small. It does come in a Hybrid version in the US though.
We walked around a little more but since there were mainly food stalls, we left soon after we finished eating. 
We then headed out to Ginza by the Tokyo Metro to meet my friend’s coworkers. We got off on the Mistsukoshi exit and we went to the Sony Building together. There were a little over 100 small display stalls but most of them were current products and nothing inspiring. 
There was the world’s first OLED (Organic LED) monitor on display which will go on sale in November. What’s so special about it is that it not only is very power efficient, but also super thin. It’s about 3mm thin. The largest one is only about 10” though. 
Then we saw Rolly, Sony’s new egg that has caused a lot of media attention in Japan. Rolly is only available in Japan and is an MP3 egg that could dance along with the music. It was launched in September and sells for about 40,000 yen. 
Then we saw the world’s largest 70” LCD TV.
Afterwards we walked around Ginza. It’s a nice area and it’s pretty classy. What I noticed is that despite the streets having many people and cars, it’s very quiet. People hardly talk and you don’t hear cars honking their horns. Weird.
Each name brand shop seemed to have their own building.
Gucci Building
Dior Building.
We walked by the Manneken Belgian Waffle shop and there was a long line outside. I wanted some so my friend and I stood in line for about 20 minutes. In order to make our wait worthwhile, we decided to buy 10 of them. Yes, there are no pictures because we ate them very quickly. 
Then we went to visit the Nissan Display Hall which had the new Skyline (a.k.a. Infiniti G37 Coupe). There was nothing special and I’m sure I’ll see a bunch of them on the street in the US. It’s pretty expensive here because the car has a big engine and cars in Japan are based on displacement.
We then walked down the streets and visited Uniqlo,
walked by Prada,
looked at Zara which had a whole building to themselves,
went into Burberry which had both the Black and Blue Label.
Fujitsu phones!!!
Then we took the Tokyo Metro home. We were standing in the front of the train, so we were able to see the driver and see what it’s like to be shotgun!
That night we went to the beef bowl place Sukiya to have diner. We did take out as we were quite exhausted from all the walking that day.
Afterwards, I went back to Shibuya to look around a bit more and realized it was pretty late and I hadn’t had lunch yet. I saw a McDonald’s and realized that I haven’t really had McDonald’s in Japan and I wanted to compare it to the US.
I ordered a Filet-O-Fish meal and received the most number of “thank-you”s I have ever gotten in a McDonalds or maybe even in any restaurant in the US. The fish in the burger itself somehow tasted better as it may have been more fresh? The fries were a bit harder though, so I didn’t like them as much. They had iced-lemon tea and you use that little container to add the lemon flavor and sugar. Cool!
What was weird though was that in Japan they separate all their garbage, you can say they are quite eco friendly in this way. After you eat, you have to even separate the lid of your drink from the cup itself. And you have to pour the remaining of your drink and/or ice into this little bowl-shaped sink. However since they use so many things to pack things and produce a lot more garbage, I think separating the garbage is the least they can do.
We went to the food court downstairs as we were sort of running out of time, and I quickly decided on a hot dog from Premium Kitchen. It was a pretty big one and I really liked the thick fries just like those in the US. 
My friend ordered a seafood pasta from the pasta place there. It tasted a little bland. While I was waiting, I realized that there were over 40 restaurants and cafes in the Kawasaki Lazona Plaza alone! (Just to remind you that this is where they have a Loft, Muji, had a Bic Camera store and where we went to CPK before.) 
After we ate we rushed over to the 109 Cinemas to watch the movie. But just like the US, they ran promotional clips of other movies for a good 15 minutes before they start, so we could have taken our time. We were probably the last ones to be seated and I was surprised that the cinema was over half full considering this movie has been aired for over a month.
The movie, as I found out from my research and after seeing it, is basically a simplified and slightly re-written version of the original episodes and movies so that it could be more easily understandable by non-fans. They will come out with a total of 4 movies that will basically keep the original story line but change certain minor things. In addition to that, they have added new scenes and a lot more CG effects to enhance the movie. This first part of the movie is probably 3-5 episodes in one. Fans MUST SEE.
I have walked by this sushi place many times, but every time there would be a whole line of people, so I was never able to try it out. This was perfect timing as it was late and there was no line at all. I was seated at the bar in front of the sushi chefs. I ordered this sushi set with a piece of huge I think eel? It was grilled with sauce on it, and underneath it, was a piece of sushi rice, so I think it was meant to be a piece of huge sushi. 
After lunch I walked around and saw the promotional doll for the new Gundam 00 series. I used to collect lots of Gundam models and now seeing them in the toy stores brings back lots of good memories.
I also visited one of the huge “Camera” stores nearby where they had all sorts of electronics, wasting a lot of my free time hahaha…
It came and since the whole dish was baked, the bowl was very hot. I had to wait a while before I could eat it. It was not as salty as I anticipated it to be, and there was quite a bit of crab in it, and what was nice was that they didn’t cheat and use Japanese rice as you can see in this zoom-in picture of the rice.
I wandered around until my friend got off work and we met at Shibuya to have dinner. We walked around for a long time (as usual) and finally I wanted to have ramen, but there were 2 ramen places right next to each other, so we decided on the one with less people so that we could sit down.
The shop was located in the basement and they were emphasizing the golden-yellow egg yolk and the soup base made from salt (???)… It was one of those places where you place the order at the machine, and then you get to pick the kind of noodle you wanted. I picked the regular egg noodle as that was my favorite.
Soon after we got there the place started to fill up. We also got our food pretty quickly. The soup base looked clear but was very good. At first I thought the eggs were like the Chinese preserved salted eggs, but it turned out to taste the same. Maybe the yolk was a little less grainy/powdery if you know what I mean…
