Our Travels In Japan (and other places): Walking around Shinjuku and Asakusa

We found that the flagship Tokyu Hands is no more. Tokyu Hands was bought by some larger hardware company and rebranded as "Hands" and has a smaller footprint in the remaining stores. On the one hand, not having to experience Ikebukuro' Sunshine City on a Saturday makes me happy, but Tokyu Hands Ikebukuro was kind of a landmark in the area with Nekobukuro, a pet store/cat appreciation place on the top floor. Alas, tempus fugit.

There was a still one of the larger stores in Shinjuku, so we got up at the crack of 9:30 and headed to Ueno Station for breakfast at Anderson's, then hopped on the Yamanote line to get to Shinjuku. Along the way, we made a stop

A giant Hello Kitty flipping you off?

Fortuna...I mean sadly they were closed when we got there, so we didn't do any shopping. In Shinjuku we were going to check out a flea market set up at a local temple that we hadn't seen before. Well, turns out the flea market is tomorrow, so no shopping there either, but we got to see a nice temple hidden among the buildings in Shinjuku.

It was an Inari Shrine, meaning lots of smaller torii

So we turned around at headed to Tokyu Hands were a little shopping actually occurred.

A clear sign that stuff here is tourist crap

An entire corner dedicated to nothing but stickers

And a variety of board and card games

We didn't buy much. Sumi picked up some magnets and a case for her computer cables and I get a few small box Oink games (Japanese publisher). I did get to try out a $130 pen. It wrote about as well as the 5 pack for $10 pens, just heavier. Now the Dr. Grip mechanical pencils on the other hand were pretty awesome.That said, all my stuff needs to be written in pen, so I passed.

Getting hungry, we took the train up to Ikebukuro and stopped at Ten-Ya, a tempura chain that has a pure vegetarian set. It is very cheap, like ¥650 for tempura and rice (about $4), but the tempura was quite good: light and not oily with fresh-tasting vegetables.

After lunch we walked a ways west to a Book Off Plus, a used book store that has "plus", usually clothes and other similar stuff, on a second floor. We didn't find anything in particular we wanted, but it's always fun to browse through a Book Off. It was pretty sunny and warm today (and humid. Storm is coming tomorrow) so we decided to take the train all the way back to Asakusa to do the last bit of shopping. Sumi needs a new change purse. As near as we can tell she left it outside the last convenience store we visited on our trip. She also left her AirPods at our hotel in Kessenmura, but they found them and shipped them to our current hotel. Honestly, with all the moving around we do and all the different hotels and stores we were in over two weeks, I'm surprised that's all we lost.

Anyway, down in the Kanamecho subway station we found a few things of interest. The first is a grand piano they have set up for anyone to sit down and play

The second is a vending machine for fresh squeezed orange juice

For ¥350, you watch the four oranges hit the conveyor belt and roll to their deaths. The juice is squeezed out of sight to avoid showing the slaughter of innocent fruit. The cup is sealed and a straw is available in one of the compartments on the right. It takes 45 seconds and is delicious.

We had to transfer to the Ginza line in Ginza, and when we came up from the station, we saw the entire street was blocked off to cars and there were tables scattered throughout the main road in Ginza's high-end shopping district. People were waiting in line to get into the stores and we kind of figured there was something special going on. Nope. This is just a thing the Ginza Neighborhood Association does to drum up business. Standing in line to get into a store is a very Japanese thing. I firmly believe that waiting in line is one of the favorite pastimes of the Japanese people. There's no other sane reason to stand in line outside a Gucci shop.

Back in Asakusa, it was getting late so most of the tourists would be trying to find dinner and not take selfies in the middle of the busy shopping street. We took a walk down the shopping road outside Sensouji and eventually found a sufficiently cute coin purse of the correct size. This was serious business.

I present to you, Tama-chan

After a day of walking around in the sun and a very light lunch, dessert was in order. We walked to the local Cafe Gusto, basically a Japanese Denny's. The food is not great, but the desserts are solid.