{"id":12933,"date":"2024-07-07T19:45:21","date_gmt":"2024-07-08T01:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/?p=12933"},"modified":"2024-07-10T08:48:25","modified_gmt":"2024-07-10T14:48:25","slug":"japan-day-2-continued-shinjuku-kobukicho-shin-okobu-ginza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/2024\/07\/07\/japan-day-2-continued-shinjuku-kobukicho-shin-okobu-ginza\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan Day 2 continued – Shinjuku, Kabukicho, Shin-okobu, Ginza"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After the Seventeen Cafe we took the train to Shinjuku, where I found more idols! NCT Dream were plastered all over the station shopping mall to promote their tour. We stepped outside and saw the adorable cat billboard<\/a>. It was just as cute in person! I didn’t know it made noises<\/a>, somewhere between meows and baby-talk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There were SO many pictures of these guys here<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Latest NCT Dream MV was a Japanese song, and played on the billboard between cats.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Just across the street we entered the real life streets of Ben’s beloved Yakuza game series. He seriously knew his way around the whole neighborhood because of those games! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Godzilla sculpture<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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He had to play (and lose) ONE crane game.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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My main objective was a proper, icy diet soda. I navigated us to a McDonald’s for Coke Zero drinks (they don’t have diet coke in Japan). It was cold and sort of coke-like, neither as sharp as a Diet Coke nor as rich as the US Coke Zero. Their “L” is slightly smaller than our US medium. Good think I ordered two! It satisfied well enough and bought us time in an air conditioned dining room. My “be prepared” motto paid off when they served me terrible, thick paper straws – ha Ha! I had a plastic straw from home! Yeah, I love diet coke, and I have strong preferences for how I imbibe. Those first few sips are the best part of every day. I missed it in Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A little beyond Kabukicho is the neighborhood Shin-okobu, aka Korea-town. You could tell right away when the writing all switched to Hangul and we heard k-pop pouring out of every store. I could have spent a lot longer browsing the shops here, but it had been a LONG day by this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tanghulu strawberries! I bought this again later, but this first one was the best!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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In line for hotteok, a traditional Korean pancake with honey and peanut filling.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Our first time ordering food with a ticket machine!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Delicious, but absolutely MOLTEN hot. We had a hard time eating this in the hot muggy street, even with a vending machine beverage to cool. One of many times I wished we could have walked and slowly enjoyed our snacks on the go.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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OMG you guys, it’s Seungkwan!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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And DK! They had 2\/3 of BSS!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We took the train back to the hotel to rest and refresh. We decided to split up a little. I wanted to check out the mega flagship store of Uniqlo. Ben wanted to see a shrine on top of the nearby department store\/mall. After admiring the stranger walking his cat through Ginza, we split. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Uniqlo was crazy crowded. I got slightly lost when I crossed over a suspended pedestrian bridge for a Uniqlo extension that blended into the designer shop Dover Street Market. I got sorted out and met Ben for dinner at a nearby noodle shop filled with salarymen. We walked by the Kabuki theater, beautifully lit for the evening, and went to another konbini for a sweet finish. Remarkably, Ben knew of a park bench where I could SIT and enjoy my shaved ice at my leisure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After the Seventeen Cafe we took the train to Shinjuku, where I found more idols! NCT Dream were plastered all over the station shopping mall to promote their tour. We stepped outside and saw the adorable cat billboard. It was just as cute in person! I didn’t know it made noises, somewhere between meows and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12933"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13101,"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12933\/revisions\/13101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eaumaison.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}