[Kirk in normal font. Elaine in bold font.]
Before the kids got up we took the train out to visit the Gotoku-ji Temple (lucky cat temple). It was really close to our hotel. We had to transfer to this cute little train that had cats drawn on the exterior and paw prints inside.
Went out to Nakano Broadway. I watched some YouTube videos about it. But, pretty much everything inside was closed for New Years, unfortunately.
Nakano Broadway was mostly closed. Mandrake was open and it had a ton of sub-shops - each with their own theme.
There were also some high end watch shops. Crazy to see, 39,000,000 yen (almost $400k) watch just sitting in a glass case in one of the stalls.
Sadly the Murakami store and gallery were closed. The gallery was behind a rollup door, so no photo ops either.
The neighbourhood of Koenji is just a train stop over. I had thought about staying there instead of Shimokitazawa. It's supposedly a hot bed for punk music and bands. Good thing we didn't choose it. Even less stuff was open.
We got off the train and tried to find any coffeeshop that was open and couldn't find one. In Shimokitazawa, 80% of the stores were closed for the holidays. In Koenji, it was 95% closed.
Walked a big loop and then just went back to Shibuya since we knew stuff would be open there.
A lot of influencers taking pics and videos everywhere. A lot of them sampling foods. Everyone was eating a chocolate dipped banana on a stick... so Kali tried one. Thumbs up!
Later on we had some baked sweet potatoes from a street vendor. He sold them by weight. Kids thought they tasted the same as what I've made before, but I disagree. I think the Japanese sweet potatoes are smoother and moister than either the Korean or North American sweet potatoes I've made.
Stopped in for some coffee and soft ice cream in the mall. The soft ice cream here is different than say DQ back home. It is smoother, creamier and sweeter. The milk is from Hokkaido and it just tastes different.
One last stop at Nintendo and Pokemon Center.
We wanted to have some sushi before leaving Japan. We had some in Nikko, but that was different. Most of the sushi places looked pretty fancy and we have recently realized that our family doesn't really do fancy. We are good with basic comfort food.
To get our sushi in, we lined up for a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. It is an excellent way to try different sushi and not over order food. We had a good view of the chefs preparing the food and a pretty good variety of dishes.