The day has come. I am going to share my Shibuya experience now. This day felt like the culmination of all the bad things waiting to happen. First, I think we were both tired from the back to back Disney trips which included all day walking so we weren’t ready for this day. Well, at least I wasn’t ready. I also wore the wrong shoes which made for an even worse shopping trip, my feet hurt from early in the day which put me in a bad mood. No separate food post, all in one post – I apologize ahead of time for all the pics all at once.
Breakfast was from a cute little bakery.
I had a Pesto Shrimp with Cheese Toast with a cup of Iced Coffee. I like Japan’s iced coffee, they serve it with liquid sugar and cream, we should have more liquid sugar here to use.
After breakfast, we did some dollar shopping at Daiso and CanDo. You know me and dollar stores, now I had bags of stuff to lug around from the morning. Then we decided to grab some lunch and found a Genki Sushi. I just had to see what the Japan version had to offer! No regrets here. Very efficient service and everyone single seat has their own ordering screen. Their menu is way cheaper than ours (no spicy tuna, sorry guys) and very clean!
4 Different Preparations of Squid – delicious!
Uni – not good.
Of course I always order the weird thing at each restaurant. They had a cheeseburger nigiri…lol. I mean the burger patty doesn’t even fit on the rice. It was delicious!
Famous Hachiko Statue. I wish this statue was situated in a better place. I get that it needs to be near the subway station he used to wait at but I wish it wasn’t placed in the smoking area. Just doesn’t do him justice, you know? Get plenty people trying to take pictures…and plenty of smokers. I think you can imagine the chaos.
Don Quijote in Japan. Hahaha very crowded and very narrow aisles.
Are these not the cutest?? They were selling these at Loft and I was SO tempted to buy one. But I knew I would never be able to put this together myself so I decided to save my money. I would buy this ready-made, for sure.
So here comes the worst part of the day. We had to grab dinner and I looked up various places on Yelp and decided on Ton-Chang. It took a while to find them because they are hidden in a big building upstairs but we finally did! We walked up the stairs and was greeted by a host in front behind this little counter. I asked if they had an English menu. They did. We got seated and there were only two ladies dining in the entire restaurant. They kept talking to us saying something but we didn’t quite get it, we finally understood that the chairs were barrels that opened up for our bags. Nifty.
So we sit down and start looking through the menu and they start setting up all the sides and the grill. We decide to order a pork set to share. Oh by the way, this is one of those Korean BBQ joints. As we’re waiting, I hear the wait staff talking to one another in Korean. So…the staff are all Korean people. She comes over and bends down in front of me and takes our order, speaking only in Japanese. Okay fine, we point to the set and figure that’s it. She then asks us a question which we both don’t understand. We both say we don’t understand and this girl doesn’t even try to help us understand. As a person who worked in customer service, I would always attempt to help a customer understand. She could have easily pointed to something in the ENGLISH menu to help us understand but she just kneeled there, staring at us. Her face was emotionless but rude, it’s so hard to explain. Finally she excuses herself and decides to help the other table to cook.
It’s funny because the things she says to us in Japanese are definitely in the polite format but with the rudest and coldest tone. As she’s helping the other table, I watched as a girl comes into the restaurant and returns something to the manager behind the counter (previously mentioned him as a host) and well, he’s Korean too because brada starts yelling AND swearing at her in Korean. Seriously. I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears. The girl looks taken aback by it but I think she might have been a worker, who knows. It was all so uncomfortable. Then the waitress comes back to our table and kneels down again and asks the same dang question again. Kneels there and stares at us as we say we don’t understand. I ask if anyone knows English. She makes an X with her arms and says no. What were our options then? I was STEAMING mad. I just felt like all her actions were so deliberate and since she refused to help us, we just left. She was completely fine with that. She turned off the stove and grabbed the food to put back (which I can only assume they would serve again). I don’t think I have ever wanted to slap someone as much as I did with her. If you sat there and experienced her purposefully rude behavior, you would never want to go there. The fact that they have an English version of their menu shows that they should have been able to service us. What is the point otherwise? God, that was the single most terrible restaurant experience I have ever had. So glad to write this one last time and get it over with. I did end up writing an e-mail to their company, no response, of course. So I would highly recommend NOT going there. Here’s the dinner I ended up with after a long terrible day.
Yes, cup noodle. Curry cup noodles and it was delicious. Even Japan’s cup noodle is premium, the cheese and meat look and taste fresh – not obviously dehydrated. Day 6 is coming up! Started up kind of junk but definitely brightened up afterwards! Have a good one folks.
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Bright and early in our neighborhood…heading to the station. Crows still cawing away.
View from my train seat. Lots of business men on the train headed for work, I felt a bit bad for them having to commute for hours each day to and from work.
I’m still going to do a separate food post for Kyoto but the bento pictures should go with the train rides! I went with a Chinese bento (of course I did) and it was delicious! It would have been better warmed up but I didn’t have that option. I’m kind of surprised they sell it cold.
Check this shot out! I’m so lucky. I was watching the other side in envy because they had the window closest to Mount Fuji. Then suddenly, I saw that I had my chance and took the picture. Magnificent…
Fushimi Inari Shrine – this is a shrine that’s famous for it’s path lined with hundreds of traditional gates. It’s so beautiful. We didn’t make it to the top. Can you tell by this last picture how many people there were? It was madness. There were also a lot of selfie sticks which I really didn’t appreciate, they would just stop suddenly in the middle of the path, swing out that stick and start taking pictures. The path is crowded enough! And gosh, there were so MANY Chinese tourists! Their loud yelling kind of took away from the quiet environment.
Before you enter the shrine, there is a long street filled with different gift shops and food stands. That was fun and neat to check out. Here’s a picture between the street shops, it was pretty neat.
I wish I took pictures of the mochi I bought! I love Kyoto mochi. It looks like a won ton pi mochi folded over the filling. The mochi is kind of thin so you can see the filling. It’s delicious. I love the black sesame flavor. Check out this blog, she took a picture of the mochi I’m talking about!
Dinner Bentos for the train ride back to Tokyo. Tasted good! Kind of funny that both our full meals were train station bentos. Hmm…food post coming soon!
