Day 3: Shimo-Kitazawa, Koishikawa Korakuen, Tokyo Dome City

Koishikawa-Korakuen

Shimo-Kitazawa (Shibuya)

We started the day with a bacon and egg cob at a Doutor near our hotel as we wanted familiar and safe, although you never quite get 100% familiar in Japan- my egg and bacon cob contained mayonnaise and salad..

After that we set off to an area of Shibuya called Shimo-Kitazawa to do some shopping. At the station I played my daily game of vending-machine roulette (pick a random funky drink and buy it, and hope it's nice!). The train didn't take long and it was nice to get out to see a different kind of area. If we had longer in Tokyo we would have visited other areas like that too, but we'd had to prioritise and Shimo-Kitazawa seemed the most up our street of all the smaller suburb-esque areas I'd read about.

A fairly artificial tasting tropical fruit flavoured drink with the cutest packaging! Vendo-roulette success!

It had a much more relaxed, smaller town, feel and far more alternative/skater type shops around so we felt more at home there than in the fashion central that is central Shibuya. So at home we accidentally spent far longer than intended there and had to rush to our next destination as we didn't want to miss out any of our plans!

Shimo-Kitazawa

We also had our first proper visit to an arcade there and discovered what was to be our favourite game in Japan there:

Taiko drum game

It was a bit like Samba De Amigo except hitting drums instead of shaking maracas. Some of the locals were so into it that they brought their own drumsticks instead of using the ones attached to the game... not a bad idea as the ones on the game had very chunky handles and I got a slight blister after a few games haha! Wandering around we spotted a slightly odd grabber machine....

French maid outfits in an arcade grabber machine?

And then got to tick another Japanese must do off my list: purikura! We found a comically named photo booth called 'Heroine Face' and just had to do it. It is a much more complex and time consuming process than I expected involving moving between two different booths and following instructions we didn't understand. At one stage we had to copy a series of poses clearly aimed at teenage girls (comical with a 30yr old man :D) which was very funny, and then at the end we couldn't figure out how to enter our email addresses or get our photos out which was disheartening, until, just as we were about to give up and walk away they appeared!

 

Koishikawa Korakuen

Next we went to Koishikawa Korakuen which is a traditional Japanese garden. We had a little trouble finding it as we left the station by the wrong exit, and then started walking purposefully in the wrong direction, but helpful locals to the rescue again (especially as we forgot, again, that we had a portable Wi-Fi!)

Walk to Koishikawa Korakuen

The garden was beautiful and it was nice to hear birdsong, and we saw huge carp, a heron, and a couple of turtles!!! The only slight drawback was that there was a baseball game on at Tokyo Dome nearby and it was sooo loud, it seemed like the garden should have been peaceful but not today! Still, it was cool to hear the atmosphere at the baseball game as we had heard they go mad for it! We had a little sushi picnic in the park that we'd picked up from the station, not entirely sure what we ate but it was tasty!

Sushi bought from a little stand at the station, it was delicious

One cool thing we spotted for the first time here was trees on crutches!

They put little wooden poles under the branches of wayward elderly pine trees to support them, it was very cute and it meant there were some very interesting looking pine trees around as it allowed them to continue growing out in any direction!
More photos of the garden are the bottom of this post...

Tokyo Dome City

Then it was over to Tokyo Dome City where we went on a log flume that started inside the shopping centre:

We also went on a ferris wheel that was really high and gave us our first proper view of the skytree and we watched the fountain lights show from it, and there was a playlist you could choose from so you could listen to j-pop in your carriage, and then Thunder Dolphin.

Thunder Dolphin was silent-scream-scary! Really steep drop, really fast inversions, lasted quite a long time, and we only had a lap bar which didnt seem all that safe! Search for a POV of Thunder Dolphin on youtube and you'll see what I mean! When we were in the queue we were confused by the fact that at the end of the ride the staff and the next riders give the returning car a round of applause... after we'd been on it we understood!

We had expected to see the cool outfits and stuff in Harajuku but Dome City seemed to be the place, so the people watching here was fun:

More photos of Koishikawa Korakuen

We got very excited to see a slider turtle coming out to say hello, we have a pet yellow-bellied slider but have never seen one out of captivity!

Cute no dogs sign spotted on the walk between Koishikawa Korakuen, that dog's expression really made me giggle- it looked like he knew he shouldn't be there.. "uh-oh"!

Next post: Day 4: Kiyosumi-tien, Akihabara, Tokyo Disneysea