Japan Day 3: Let's get lost together

today was a pretty laidback day. 

christine and i woke up and left for tokyo station to try this soba restaurant for brunch.  On the way, we saw this elderly Japanese man sporting a nice shirt --

we ended up there very early and explored the japanese supermarket.  everything in japan is small, cute and neatly packaged.  drinks come in a variety of types and shapes and pre-packaged food ranges from onigiri to bento boxes with veggies and meat.  love the assortment of strange combinations in candies and sweets like green tea and cookies ice cream and orange m&ms.  apparently they make green tea m&ms too so christine is searching for that :D  Green tea Kit-Kat bar, actually.  i found a bag of "instant eggrolls" with vietnamese writing lol bought a bag and will try them with my cousins when i get back to cali lol  We also found some pretty sakura tea in these cute boxes :3  And some really weird ice cream flavors that I didn't know Haagen Dazs made o__o;

with plenty of time left before the soba shop opened, we did what the best people do---eat dessert first lol we had green tea and mango milk drinks at a little cafe.  it was really good :D the drinks had soft serve ice cream and appropriately flavored ice cubes lol

we visited the soba shop after.  for anyone unfamiliar with japanese cuisine, soba is a buckwheat noodle dish that can be eat hot-style or cold-style.  christine and i both got hot versions.  the noodles and toppings are dipped into a separate soup bowl and slurped loudly :P the bowls were huge! even though i eat a lot, i just couldn't eat fast enough.  the japanese are just so quick and efficient. you walk in and pay up front. food comes out quickly, you eat fast and leave. there were these small women and businessmen that came in after christine and i started eating and left way way before lol i sort of felt bad because the restaurants were bar style with limited seating. speaking of efficiency, the japanese also recycle. at the restaurant, the free tea was made of some type of grain... to me it tasted like burnt sesame lol (I thought it kind of tasted like the Korean barley tea, except with some weird other flavor.) and the hot drink given to us at the end was the water used to boil the soba noodles. 

left after for our ghibli museum tour, which was AWESOME :D hayao miyazaki is a genius. the museum itself was whimsical and fun, with hidden hints from all his movies.  the stained glass was gorgeous and the short film they showed was very cute.  i really enjoyed seeing the studio's reference books, character sketches and background designs...there was even an artist there painting the background scenes! if i ever go to japan again, i would definitely go back there and spend more time exploring.

Yep, the Ghibli Museum is definitely worth a trip.  You should go.  It's so worth it, in fact, that I would totally fly back to Japan just to see it again XD  We were allowed to take pictures outside, but not inside.  But I took some anyways XD  

Our tour group consisted of 17 people, with this adorable tour guide lady named Yukie.  She was very sweet, super cute, and actually she looked kind of like Monica but more petite.  The first group of our tour were the kids, 13-18, or anyone under 20.  Don't ask, it didn't make sense to me when they said it that way, either.  Our group had an American teacher and her group of 6 or so students, assumedly late high school or early college kids, one older couple from Hawaii, one Asian couple from Singapore, one younger couple(?) who I think were from America, and one Finnish father and his daughter.  The kids got a tour first while the others of us (we are so old, wth TT___TT) got some free time.  

The first thing we did was watch one of the studio's original films that weren't released (I think).  There are about 7 original movies, from 2002 to 2010.  I forgot some of them, but the most notable were a spin-off of Totoro that's about the younger sister and a baby nekobasu, one about a water spider that falls in love with a female water spider, a story about a young man who looks like Howl from Howl's Moving Castle who buys a seed for a star and grows it, one about a little doggie running around the city, and one about sumo wrestling mice.  The one about the dog was the one that we got to watch.  It's called ｺﾛの大さんぽ (Koro no oo sanpo), which is roughly translated as "Koro's Big Day Out," but literally translated as "Koro's Big Walk."  Probably the most memorably funny part of that movie was when they showed this old dog eating out of a bowl that said "My name is DOGGI" on it.  Tiffy and I cracked up XD

After that, we had a tour of the museum, which exhibits every step of the animation process.  I was amazed by the books of reference pictures and sketches of each scene from each movie.  The most beautiful parts were the 3-D boxes, the spinning exhibition room, and the one guy who was just sitting there painting with watercolors.  They are so pro!!  It just comes out of their head and onto the paper and it's gorgeous and so cool.  I'm going to marry an artist one day XD  <~ That's the thought that was in my head briefly, haha.

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Ghibli bus :3

giant totoro greeted us :D

 Lookie, the ticket was a film strip~

One of the pretty 3-D boxes.  It's made of painted panes of glass... it's soo cool, right???  I want one~

Big statue thing on the roof.  I'm really not sure what it is, but it was cool and big.

On the way back, as we rode the JR subway, we were standing next to this middle school (or so I guess) boy who was... totally decked out in Hatsune Miku from Vocaloid.  First, Tiffy saw his cell phone charm, a large pillow or something like that image of Hatsune Miku.  Then, we saw the sticker on his cell phone of Hatsune Miku.  Then we noticed his bag... which was peppered with images and general paraphernalia of Hatsune Miku ALL OVER.  It was actually kind of funny... but we don't get it, what's the obsession with her/Vocaloid?

the day ended as we headed back to tokyo station.  we briefly explored daimaru dept. store and its amazing confectionary floor and then had red bean and green tea shaved ice at another pastry shop.  

another day tomorrow.  we're going to give akiba another chance now that we know where to go and perhaps explore sensoji temple.  supposed to hang out with jerry tomorrow too but we'll see :D ja mata!