(Western) Tokyo

After 2 full days of lots of walking in both the disney worlds, we’ve decided to rest up and take it easy today. We started the day by heading to Tokyu Stay in Shimbashi via our hotel shuttle bus and the subway to drop our luggages before our Tokyo trip.

One of the best breakfast! We had the ‘gyun-yun’ (I remembered!) (gyu-nyu u mean?), very very delicious almond milk and the very very very delicious eggs! I missed those eggs too much and tried hunting for them again but I couldn’t get any 😭

And we are here!

Hi froggie!

This is the view from our hotel room. More pictures of the room at the end of this post.

Dropped our luggages, then it’s on towards our first stop – Harajuku. Harajuku is one of the many shopping districts in Tokyo, mainly the less branded, cheaper street fashion shops that caters for youth/teenagers. Most of these shops are along Takeshita Street. Might be because it was a Saturday, but Takeshita Street was crowded ….

… veeeery crowded! And yet (as with any other parts of Japan), it was crowded in a pretty organised way.  Shoppers naturally split into two “flows” along the street – the first “flow” of people keeps to the left of the street, moving forward at a certain pace. Vice versa for the opposite side with another “flow” of people walking towards. This makes it almost impossible to visit any shops on your right (as this means making your way through the crowd walking towards you). 

I found some of the shops here offered very trendy fashion at an affordable price. Lunch was at a hidden gem tucked away in a basement. Sorry I didn’t get the name of this restaurant, but their udon was one of the best I have had. One embarrassing thing is that we nearly forgot to place our trays back to the kitchen! 😅

Just in case you have not get enough of Disney.

A pharmacist stucked in a pharmacy (because there were simply too many things OMG 😳) (And because the pharmacist had no clue what those box labels even mean 😉).

Look what I found!!! Calbee!!! Those freshly made ones were amazing onnomnomnom. There were small tables upstairs for customers as Japanese considers it rude to eat on the streets while walking along the street; it’s alright to eat on the street but you should finish your food in front of the store that you bought your food from. We nearly did something embarrassing there hehehe ops 😀

Verdict: Freshly fried Calbee 10/10!!!

We noticed a long line few shops down from Calbee Plus. Of course I can’t miss that. It’s the Croquant Chou Zakuzaku Soft Cream.

Verdict: Zakuzaku Soft Cream 8/10. The ice cream was very creamy and milky. Dennis thought it was just average though. I think it would be better if we didn’t had to finish it under the hot sun before it melted.

They also had these croquant chou cream pastries but we didn’t try as we were too full. Talking about regrets…

Dennis said there was a surprise for me in Harajuku – if I spotted it. And of course I did! How can I miss the LINE store!

My favourite character – Brown! 😍

I want to contribute!

That’s my sketch of Brown on the left and Dennis’ on the right! You call that Brown?!

Dream home with honey Brown~ 

Brown~~ I wanna bring you home~~ But…………talking about another regret *sobs*!

Time to byebye Harajuku! I was surprised to see such a big multi-storey H&M and Forever 21 store, only to find out tomorrow that it was nothing…stay tuned for day 4!

Welcome to Shibuya! Let us zoom in on the crowd there oh man.

First destination – Shibuya 109. Read some sites which highly recommend this shopping place. Ended up only buying some fake lashes from Plaza though. We then ‘leisurely’ window shopped around the area and of course, subconsciously attracted to a pharmacy named Matsumoto Kiyoshi, and ‘casually’ bought Sekkisei which was on sale. LOL. It was such good deal that I solemnly swear I had to go to Tokyo again just to refill on these.

We accidentally stumbled upon Ichiran Ramen at Shibuya. Ichiran was high up on our ‘to-eat’ list but it was the one in Osaka that we planned to go. However we could not wait a few days more to try their tonkotsu ramen so we headed straight to level B1 as the sign suggested, only to find out that it was the staff entry! 😂

Access denied 😭

The main door was actually located on the other side of the building!

Found it! We made our initial order on the vending machine and then chose the finer preference later when we were seated. The staff were very friendly and handed us the English menu once they know we are tourists. You can’t see their faces though.

That’s the only part of the body you can see. Ahem. 😁

And if you peek like me you can see other customers hehe.

The seats were more like small individual cubicles but you can fold the dividers.

Verdict: Ichiran Ramen 10/10!!! 😍 Now that’s one of the most amazing thing I have tried in Japan. Yummylicious. Deliche. Foodgasm. Whatever bloggers called it. The broth was thick and rich and the noodles were cooked to perfection and the chashu was to die for. All I can say is, you have to try them! I had Ichiran twice in this trip myself hehehe. 🍜

The original plan was to head to Shinjuku, which is another huge shopping district in western Tokyo. However, we gave up on that plan and decided to head back to get an early rest for the day.

It was a very well-equipped room with washing machine and microwave, and cheaper compared to other hotels. Overall it was a very comfortable stay and I would highly recommend this place if you are going to Tokyo!