First full day: Shibuya and Shinjuku

Morning in Shibuya

Not really knowing where to start looking for breakfast we roamed Shibuya looking in windows in  the hope of spotting something vaguely breakfasty looking in the cool plastic food displays. We weren't adverse to the idea of a Japanesey breakfast, but feeling a bit delicate from jetlag we wanted something easy to start off with. As luck had it we stumbled across a random pancake place on the 8th floor of a building, Mee's Pancakes. Seriously delicious fluffy pancakes, a cute interior, and friendly service.

Set up for the day we attempted shopping in Shibuya but didn't do too well (actually only bought some measuring cups, oops!) however we had fun wandering around Shibuya 109 and Shibuya 109 mens, Don Quijote and a Tokyu department store. I was excited to be in the places I'd read about, and the 109 stores were as cool as anticipated (a bit too cool for us haha) and more fun because some of the shop assistants wanted to try out their English on us and were quite chatty. Don Quijote was massive and ridiculous much as expected, a real mix of literally anything you might want to buy (and tons of stuff you'd never want to buy), in no apparent order, and generally quite cheap! We ended up visiting Don Quijotes nearly everywhere we went, I was a bit hooked and they were great for interesting kitkat flavours. I was a bit underwhelmed by the department store, the food basement was quite cool but otherwise it was just like a massive John Lewis.

My suica card, like an Oyster card but cuter!

An afternoon and evening in Shinjuku

We then went over to Shinjuku (after finally cracking the suica vending machine!) and in the station met a nice random old man who saw us consulting a map, and pulled out his camera to show us a picture of the giant Godzilla head which is on the side of the Gracery Hotel and asked us if we'd seen it! We said we wanted to and asked him where it was, and he proceeded to give us the most confusing set of hand-gesture directions I've ever seen. Eventually we decided to do the metropolitan government building first and then used google maps to get us over to the Gracery!

Gracery Hotel with added Godzilla

Shinjuku metropolitan government building

This was where we learnt about the enormity of stations in Japan and the importance of picking the right exit (we would proceed to make this mistake on a fairly regular basis though!) After rather a long walk we found the impressive government building and after wandering around the outside hopped in a lift and shot up to the free observatory floor of the south tower. The view was pretty obscured by fog but it was still interesting. It looked a bit post apocalyptic, like in zombie films when nature starts to take over abandoned cities, because it was a sea of concrete broken up by occasional expanses of trees! (One of the big expanses of green was actually Yoyogi park which we later visited).

View from the government building

We then made it to the Gracery, and went up to the cafe so we could meet Godzilla up close! Also got quite a good view of the Shinjuku lights from up there even though we were only on the 8th floor. Shinjuku is crazily bright and in your face, it makes Shibuya look tame in comparison!

Gojira!

We then went for our first real Japanese meal (an udon restaurant), Aaron struggled with the chopsticks and I had dipping udon which left me with the confusing dillema at the end- to drink the broth or not drink the broth! Fortunately google came to my assistance again and it was to drink! I highly recommend getting a portable wifi, worth their weight in gold for navigation purposes as well as answering random questions like that one!

We got nabbed by a random flyer-er on the street who gave us a free drink voucher for an izakaya, and then when his English and our Japanese were both insufficient to get directions he just took us there (fortunate as it was a fair walk and on the 5th floor so we would never have found it!). It was a shoes off kind of place, and very smokey, we only stayed for one drink before heading off and even then we hadn't actually got our free drink as we had accidentally ordered drinks not in the offer. Hey ho, it confirms my long held belief that you should never go anywhere that bribes you in with a free drink!

Bar Mother

We then had a wander around, keeping an eye out for a bar called Bar Mother that I'd read about on a blog. Found it, loved it, drank far too much. It was a tiny rock bar with about 6 seats at the bar and a couple behind, mostly foreign patrons from all over the world and a v.friendly girl behind the bar. The menu had drinks at the front and a long list of artists at the back, on arrival we were handed a little torch (it was pretty dark in there!) and a menu and if you asked for an artist you were given a stack of CDs by that artist to choose a song from, and they had a pretty comprehensive selection!

My song choice didn't go down with my new friend haha

After a few too many, we headed off to Shinjuku station to catch the last yamanote train back to Shibuya, only to arrive at the station and realise that we had neither my phone nor Aaron's wallet. Against the odds given the maze that is Shinjuku, our inebriation, and the obscurity of the bar, we managed to find our way back there (with a lot of help from club touts) and walked in to a cheer and our stuff handed over to us that we had just abandoned on the bar- apparently we had made ourselves too at home there! Thankfully we still made it back to the station in time for the last train!

Next post: Day 2: Harajuku and Nagomi visit