Japan 2010, Day 5

We got our wires crossed with friends, so instead of going to a festival in town we ran around and did other things.

We saw the Lucie Rie retrospective at the National Art Center, which was fabulous.

I went in search of the Comme des Garcons store and bought more of my favorite perfume (Incense Jaisalmer) and a bottle of a new favorite (Incense Kyoto).

Before we went to Japan I looked at my parents' old Japan 1984 travel guide. It listed a print shop called Yoseido Gallery. I looked it up, and we went to visit. They have a nice selection of prints on display and when I saw a man looking through a portfolio of unframed prints, I knew what to do. I asked to see all of their prints by Hashimoto. They kindly brought out two thick portfolios of prints, and we spent about twenty minutes looking at all of them. Several were ones that we'd only seen on the Web. We also saw examples of prints we own. Most, however, were prints we'd never seen. One of them "spoke to" mrguy and we bought it.

I caused the family to nearly starve to death in the streets of Ginza after that. Have you ever been so hungry that you can't make up your mind about where to eat? That was me. We found soba because I chickened out about a place whose plastic food looked like slop. I want to know what's in my slop before I eat it. The soba hit the spot.

Since we were still in the Ginza, we went to the Sony store and looked at cameras. Food blogging is so popular that the Sony store has a fake cafe with fake food in it that you can photograph.

Then we went to Akibahara an enormous electronics store that was louder than loud. The cacophony included people enticing you to buy things and the sound of thundering commercials, including one that featured the melody of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. We found the televisions and surprised some locals watching the last few sumo matches of the day when we started rooting for Tochinoshin by name.

mrguy made a total score that night: a Nintendo card that lets you compose electronic music on your DS. He was hoping to find it because it is only available in Japan. Happy boy.

After we got back to Akasaka, we padded down the street toward a Hawaiian restaurant we'd heard about (o.k. it was recommended by Akebono on his blog), called Ogo Ono-Loa Hawaiian. At this point in our vacation it was nice to chill, drink a few Kona Longboards and eat poke. The teri poke was delicious. A little heavy on the shoyu, but it was incredible. Small chunks of diced apple add an interesting twist to their version of the dish. And their guacamole was also delish.

Mrguy could not wait to start playing with his new toy. I fell asleep that night and many others during the trip to mrguy making me bleeps and bloops on his DS.