Roppongi (Roo-pong-ee)

Today I spent mid-morning to mid-afternoon in Roppongi. It is the area next to where we live in Akasaka. Roppongi is best described as a very Westernized area, with American restaurants such as TGI Friday's, Outback, and Hard Rock. For those of you who know Houston, it can also be described as driving down Richmond outside the loop, where there are nice apartments/restaurants on one corner and a strip club across the street. This place is literally like night and day and different depending on when you go. During the day, it looks like any other area, but at night all the lights get turned on and people are trying to harass you into going into their club. I'll post some pictures of it later.

I just walked around trying to find my way and see what I could find. I went into Tokyo Midtown, which is like a mini shopping area with different restaurants, an art museum and music hall. I found a great place to have lunch, Chowders. I had their special soup of the week, Asiago cheese soup with tomato rice. The soup was amazing and the tomato rice is exactly like Mexican rice without the flavor, but it was good. I finished my bowl. I left to see what else I could find and stopped for some Tokyo Ice Ocha (tea) or what looked like ice cream. I got the little cup which allows you to pick 3 flavors. I picked green tea, an orange one, and a vanilla one that had what looked like nuts. Turns out, the green tea was not as good as I remember and quite bitter, which means I think they forgot the sugar. The orange one tasted like mango/lemon and was yummy. The other one was definitely vanilla with some dried fruit?, definitely not nuts, but yummy as well.


After this, I started my trek home and stopped by Don Quixote, a 6 story building that has everything you can imagine. The 2nd floor is all liquor, 6th floor is clothes, and the 5th floor is home appliances, which is where I was headed. I needed to find new vacuum bags since ours is full. I looked around and found the vacuum cleaners, but also found 5 different options of the same bag that I could buy. Once again I couldn't read what they said, so I picked the bag that was yellow and on the back had alot of style numbers (I assumed that is what they were and our vacuum would fall into that category). I continued around the floor and found pre-paid phone cards, which is something I have been trying to find. Got one of those as well. In the back corner near the phones, was a side of an aisle that looked like it had female creams and lotions and what not. So I start to look and turn around to find a glass case full of vibrators. Yes, vibrators. Not what I expected, so I turned around and didn't go down the full aisle. As I turned around, some man was trying to get past me into the aisle and on the other side, a man was coming out. Don't want to know what they have in store for tonight or this weekend. I bought my items and left. this is a good store and apparently you can get everything here, from liquor, to clothes, to appliances, to porn. What's not to like!
My tally continues:
Japanese language - 3
Amanda - 1