Build-A-Bear… In Japan!

For Annie’s birthday, we took a trip about 15 miles away for our home to Yokohama, which is a city that has the Cup Noodle Museum, an amusement park, and an assortment of malls and shopping centers. Although Yokohama has so much to offer, we hopped in the car and drove out there for one main reason: Build-A-Bear. Annie and I have loved Build-A-Bear since our very first trip and now that it came to Tokyo, we had to go and see it. It is like how they have always been, you pick a bear, you stuff the bear, you dress the bear, name it, and take it home. This process is slightly harder in a foreign language but we managed to make it through and get sheeps, since it is the year of the sheep. The Build-A-Bears in Japan are exactly like the ones in the U.S., from the Stuff Me machines to the Name Me kiosks. They even use the same Heart-Warming ritual. I love Build-A-Bear and how it reminds me that I’m not too old to still get things like Build-A-Bears.

Electric Town

About a 30 minute train ride away is Akihabara, also know as “Electric Town.” This part of the city is more of a local area, but quite fun for all types of visitors.

Shortly after WWII, Akihabara became known as a major shopping area for household electronic good and the post-war black market. Today it has evolved into the center for computers, mobile phones, used camera lenses, vintage video games, and, of course, anime and manga. Very Tokyo.

We did some shopping up in the Akihabara district last weekend.
No major purchases, just some phone accessories.

In the Neighborhood

Cute little shop about 4 blocks away:

IKEA

A great place to shop for furniture no matter what country you are in is Ikea. You have to build the furniture yourself, so the price is inexpensive and they have pretty good stuff. What you did not expect them to have is amazing food! Today we decided to look for a few items for the house and went to Ikea. By the time we got there it was lunch time so why not eat at the restaurant inside the store? When we got there we saw these food carts. They were just like standard shopping trolleys but they had slots for trays instead of a basket for products. There were three shelves for food trays. The food was really good too! As Ikea is a Swedish store, they had meatballs and pie, as it is in Japan they had rice and curry, as American food is good they had fries. The combination of cultures in food really worked. And in all places, Ikea!

Don Quijote

Busy day of errands here, and one of our stops was at the Don Quijote in Roppongi. Don Quijote is a discount chain store and usually a good first stop if you need beauty products, household goods, small electronics, phone accessories, unique import food items (best price on Spam in the city), and more! it’s somewhere between WalMart and Big Lots, but vertical (6 floors).

Unique to the Roppongi location is a half-pike roller coaster on the roof. Built in 2005, it has never opened due to neighbor concerns about noise and added spectacle to the area. It was still up there today, SBNO–standing but not operating.

However, the most memorable feature of this chain is the theme song entitled Miracle Shopping. Snappy tune. Enjoy.

Stair Climb

Tokyu Hands is a popular store chain, kinda like Target meets Ace Hardware meets Michaels. As is often the case in Tokyo, the store is far more vertical than horizontal; and, they use this in an interesting way. They put their cafe on the top floor and then labeled each of the steps with the number of calories burned off on the way up. It’s just little depressing that 7 floors is only worth 20 calories.

The Costco Experience

Today was National Foundation Day, Mike had the day off, girls went to school as they follow a more American-ish calendar.

So, we went to Costco. By car. Our car. Mike drove. It’s about a 45 minute drive to the east and then around the bay a bit. (The top left picture is of the Rainbow Bridge.) Costco itself is a 6 story building, floor 1 is food–packaged and fresh. Floor 2 has the rest of the stuff Costco sells, including inflatable swimming pools. Floors 3-6 are for parking. We got there 30 minutes before the posted opening and managed to find a parking space on the 5th floor. Shopping carts are available at every parking entrance and the wheels are configured to grip the escalators as you travel up and down the building. (Top right photo.) After a quick stop for the Costco lunch special for ¥180, which, btw, tastes just like the one in the US, we went home. Everything fit into the Prius! Now, to get it to our apartment, we used a couple of carts that are stored in the basement for just such an occasion. (Bottom left photo.) We took them right into the apartment for unloading! (Bottom right photo.) So easy.

Another excellent shopping victory. After all of our discoveries these past three days, we all agree that we are going to be able to manage the fundamentals of living here. We can find clothing, international foods, the local farmers market on Saturday, Bento box items, and wine. Life is good.

In other news, the vet called and said that Xeno is “perfect.” Or his blood test results were, at least. He can come to Japan after July 16th.

Grocery Discovery

First, to set the stage, grocery stores in Tokyo are quite different than those in the US…smaller, limited in selection and English labelling, and varied in price. To date, we had visited all the local ones (walking distance and/or within a few train stops) or so we thought. While driving to work a couple days ago (white knuckled with one eye on the GPS and one riveted to the road) periferal vision (in the eye dedicated to the GPS) picked up a sign that appeared to contain the word “onion”: indicating the possibility of a previously undiscovered local grocery store. So, today we ventured out to find the store. While wrong about the name (it is “union”, not “onion”) that was a fortunate mistake: since I might not have equated the correct name to a grocery store and, therefore, might not have ventured out that direction.

Ok, so why all the rambling? Good question…and there really isn’t a good answer other than now it is harder to go back and delete all that then to just move on.

Anyway, all that really needed to be said was that we found a new grocery store that we really like. It is within walking distance and has the best overall combination of products and prices we have yet to find.

Pen Personalization

Today we went out shopping to many stores in a magical place called Ginza. We went to many recommended stores including two inexpensively priced daily wear stores with really comfy and cute clothes. There was also this one store called “Loft” which sold a huge variety of products, one if which was located in the middle of the store; Style Fit. Basically, it is a station where you create your own multiple color pen. You first select the actual pen, with either three or five spots for ink. They had many choices to choose from; the basic and slick silver, black, or blue, and also the more fun polka dots and even multiple Disney styles. Then you select the changeable colors. They had about four shades of pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and one shade of black and brown, and two shades of grey. The colors also came in different sizes; .5, or .38. The inks came is slick cases shown in the picture. It was a great ending to our extraordinary day of shopping in the city.

Small Victories

So, we are off to a slow start on this whole adventure thing…just as someone gets better around here, another one goes down. Today, Meg was out sick with a high fever and we are waiting out our 24 hours to pass. Annie has a horrible cough and is still managing to drag herself to school. The good news is that we are waiting to hear if tomorrow is a snow day or not. We’ll get the call (email, actually) by 5:30 am tomorrow morning to see what the school officials decide.

Even with our various set-backs, there have been a few sucesses:

1. I am not sick any more. (Most exciting for me, I know.) However, my knee is now pretty torn up, but all I want to say about that is don’t text and walk on the uneven roads. (Mom: Mike asked for help at work to find the right medical supplies. I’m ok.)

2. We started our own amazon.co.jp account, and managed to place an order, which included correctly imputing our Tokyo address (not as straight forward as you would think) AND managing to correctly register our Florida billing address. Get this– if you place an order by 10 am local time, it will be delivered to your home THE NEXT DAY. And it was! Delivered right to the door. (After clearing the 17 security checkpoints that you need to pass in order to get to our apartment. Side note: something is up at one of embassies this week, security guards are everywhere.)

3. Finally, I managed to find a new-to-me International Market and get there without out making ANY MISTAKES! This included finding the market on the internet without remembering the name from November, taking the correct subway line from the nearest station, using the correct subway exit and selecting the right street (5 options avaiable) on which the market was located. Woot.

Just celebrating the little things.