The Ginza district at first seemed similar to Shinjuku with it's department stores, restaurants, and bars. But that was quickly dismissed upon entering our first department store underground via the rail station. Two floors of the most beautiful dishes imaginable from various vendors. This is not the food courts like back home AT ALL with your choice of Olive Garden Express, California Pizza Kitchen, McDonald's or Manchu Wok. This is the Mecca of food which they called the FOOD GARDEN. Here vendors only specialized in certain food items be it plates of lacey tempura shrimp, fish and vegetables; bentos of sashimi; roasted duck; barbecue; vegetables; butcher meats and an artery clogging selection of pastries, cakes, chocolates and other sweets. EVERYTHING was amazing. People shuffled up and down aisles of counters sampling everything. I broke down and bought us a snack of tempura and desserts from Giotto's of Mango Tart and a gold dusted chocolate mousse cake. INCREDIBLE. We're coming back here for sure.
The rest of Ginza is every high end boutique you've ever heard of - Burberry's, Gucci, Prada, Armani - and the latest cars on display, computer equipment. A couple we met later in Hakone from Palms Springs told us of 29" flat panel tv's at Sony for only $200. Our Aquos for the master bedroom at home cost $500 for a 15". I gotta go back to see if this is true. Voltage here is similar to U.S. with about 10 cycles less, but it should still be US compliable, Hmmmm...souvenir anyone?
Around 9:30 we were beat up pretty good and decided t hit the rail back to Shinjuku to pack for our trip to Mt. Fuji and Hakone via motorcoach. The typhoon is almost here so it'll be heads or tails of what kind of weather to expect tomorrow on the mountain.
We had dinner tonight down the street from the hotel at a local pub/eatery. Our rule of thumb has been is if it's packed with locals, eat there. This was a prime example. We had no problem getting a table we just had to share it with 3 other groups - two couples and a set of three older businesswomen who obviously were not amused by our presence. After a quick nod hello to them they immediately asked for another smaller, more intimate table. This on some instances has been the normal attitude from the older generation. Even at our hotel, which apparently caters to businessmen we were often given very short, undetailed answers to our questions. On the other hand, the younger staff went out of their way to explain things or give directions and make sure we did not get lost. I've read that slowly the older generation is becoming more receptive to western culture, but SL-O-O-OWLY.
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That deal on the Sony TV sounds great! But make sure that the settings are compatible... US TVs uses NTSC, I think Japan does too (make sure it isn't PAL). There are step-up transformers which you could purchase cheap (in Japan or RadioShack here) that would take care of the voltage cycle discrepancies... Hmmm, nice souvenir indeed!
Yeah I think that woman didn't know what she was talking about. There's no way that a Sony TV would be that cheap even if it was made there. As a general rule of thumb EVERYTHING is more expensive so it really doesn't make sense. I didn't get to check it out but $2000 vs $200 makes more sense to me. She probably forgot and extra "0" somewhere. The husband did say it was US compatible.
Lek
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