Saturday, December 17, 2011

Ameyoko and then some

I haven't been to Tokyo in a while, and it was partly because I went on a trip to Taiwan. But living in the small city makes me really bored on weekends, so my friend and me went to Tokyo today.


 I bought some CD's in Ochanomizu, but my friend wanted to buy new shoes. So we came to Ameyoko where you can buy rarely seen shoes for less money than online. You can reach the Ameyoko street from Okachimachi station.

 This is the signboard of the street "Ameyoko". It's short for "Ameya Yokochou". Though I'm Japanese I don't know its meaning. 

 In December this street gets really crowded, because people come here to buy foods for New Years Day. This shop was selling "Kazunoko", which is herring roe. We eat it because it's the symbol of prosperity of our descendants. "Kazu" in this case means "a number of...". 

 You can buy clothes very cheaply as well. As you can see the fleece was sold for 891 yen or about 11 us dollars. Isn't it cheap? The Katakana reads, "London Spor(ts)".

And this is the shoe shop where my friend bought a pair. I think this "ABC-MART" is the most well-known shoe shop in Japan, and it has many outlets in my city as well, but like I said if you want rare shoes, you should visit the ones in Ameyoko. 

These are some examples of the shoes on sale. 

After the shopping, we wanted to have a break. So we had coffees at this Doutor, which we happened to find in Ameyoko. 

It was really cold, but I was sweating from moving around in Tokyo. So I had this iced coffee. We left this shop soon because there were too many smokers. 

After visiting Ameyoko, we came back to Akihabara to have dinner. It seems the third season for "Shakugan no Shana (灼眼のシャナ) " is going to be available as DVD's. 
 
I don't mind spending much money for dinner, but you can have a good meal for a little money in Akihabara. This restaurant "Katsuya" sells a Katsudon for only 490 yen, or 6.3 us dollars. You can click this link to see what Katsudon is.

The one I ordered was "Katsu Curry". It's a pork cutlet with curry poured over it. It comes with rice as well. This was only 590 yen. You might not notice how cheap it is, but basically dinner usually costs more than 1,000 yen at Japanese restaurants.