Great Finds

Local watering hole: I think our neighbourhood is now complete. We have officially found a pub (beer café zinc) that is only 2 blocks away and has a great atmosphere. The bartender is a sizable man with a braid that goes all the way down his back. He also has the warmest smile and exudes a very laid back vibe. Our favourite menu items so far are mussels and frites. The people who come to this bar are quite eclectic and my favourite part is when the bartender walks us to the front door, opens the door for us, and wishes us a good night. Love it!











Nakano peace/love graffiti: Right by our train station, on the way through a two-storey bike parking lot. Pretty much speaks for itself.






Ikebukuro: Kerwood treated me to a lovely walking tour of a never-before-explored neighbourhood for us. It was great to see Ikebukuro and spend the afternoon in the Sunshine City observatory located on the 60th floor of the second tallest building in Tokyo! What a spectacular view it had (we plan to go back for sunset and night views). Another amazing part of it was that the elevator ride that took us 226 meters to the top lasted only 35 seconds!?! The lights dimmed, they played ethereal music, and the walls/ceiling lit up with underwater images—oooh, aaah☺ Sunshine City 60 is obviously the tall building in the centre of the picture, however if you look at the building below it, one of the balconies looks like a grand piano. Kerwood fell in love with that one!

The Theatre: We thoroughly enjoyed our first movie-going experience in Tokyo. It’s quite expensive ($18 a person), however the theatres are very comfortable, you can drink beer while watching the movie, and the audience is so quiet you can hear a pin drop. At one point, I stopped eating my popcorn because I thought I was oafishly disrupting the silence....Very different from Edmonton/Calgary theatres! The other curious thing is that everyone stays in their seats until all of the credits are finished rolling. Oh, we saw Into the Wild. What a beautiful film—so much better than the book in terms of highlighting the ways in which Chris McCandless touched people’s lives and found his way to: “Happiness is only real when shared.”

Well, I'm off to work, so I'll have to write about a strangely disturbing discovery later....