Day 11 - Tokyo - I've had elbow room in my mind

W: The plan today is to split up and do our own thing. For me, record shopping and for Tony, general fun shopping.

Started the day with our Lotteria breakfast again - of course!

The waitress forgot the plastic forks and breathlessly raced up the stairs in a panic to give them to us. It was like that Jennifer Saunders "croutons" crisis in the old French & Saunders skit.

Then coffee and postcard writing at Starbucks overlooking Shibuya crossing.

T: It looks like everyone else has been out all night. Cool Shibuya guys and glamourous girls. The people here are amazingly stylish.

I headed to Ikebukero on the Yamanote line past Shinjuku - Ikebukero means "bag shaped pond" but it must have long disappeared under the concrete - where two of Tokyo's biggest department stores fight it out on opposite sides of the Yamanote tracks.

Seibu has three huge 12-storey buildings joined together, plus Loft (a bit like Tokyu Hands), Wave for records, and a huge Parco store with young fashion.

Across the tracks is Tobu which is even bigger, but I found it surprisingly daggy. After lingering a while I headed back to Seibu, started at Wave on the 12th floor and worked my way down through Loft and the main stores to the basement food halls.

There are 4 floors of Loft in the Seibu building with thousands of cute and/or stylish stationery, graphics and arty crafty stuff. Picked up some nice graphic cards, then later some very beautiful ceramic bowls - modern but still capturing the feel of traditional Japanese pottery.

As I walked around the stores scoring more loot the shop assistants gave me ever larger carry bags to put everything in, like Russian dolls. The Japanese make even the smallest purchase seem like something very special.

You could easily spend the whole day in a Japanese department store and I almost did. At about 2.00 I headed back to Shinjuku. Found a cheap stand-up noodle cafe - no tables and chairs, just benches looking into the steamy kitchen - and bought an enormous soba and tempura/rice lunch set. I could barely finish half of it. The cafe was almost next to the "Green Peas" building. Then off to meet Wayne.

W: I scored some more Kahimi Karie and Pizzicato 5 CDs and also some unexpected finds such as the soundtrack to Quadrille, a Marden Hill album, and, best of all, the CD of the 60's band Inner Dialogue which I knew existed but doubted I'd ever find (me of little faith - I did find a vinyl copy many years ago in a bargain bin in Melbourne for 50 cents).

For a change of pace I had an Indian curry lunch, then headed to meet Tony. We went to the Shinjuku Loft store, yet more wonderfully designed cute stuff. I needed some lip balm so we checked the phrase book and asked for some rippu ba-mu.

Then off to Tokyu Hands at Shinjuku Times Square, seven floors of handcraft and just wonderfully designed stuff, then checked the Christmas lights on the promenade overlooking the train tracks.

Tony wanted to show me the beautiful Takashimaya poster, then back to Shibuya for green tea, rice crackers and a bath.

Walked back to Shibuya for dinner. A Japanese man stops to ask Tony (in Japanese) how to get to the station and he's able to tell him (in Japanese!). With thousands of other Japanese people around I wonder why he decided to ask us?

Bought some books at Book 1st, then went to Three Minutes of Happiness (sort of a better quality Reject Shop, but a million times more stylish and funky) then walked back to the Fukudaya.

I bought what I thought was prune juice but turned out to be blueberry drinking yoghurt. Welcome to Japan.

Next > Day 12 - Tokyo - Sumimasen, Darling