The secret life of the lane ways

May 20

We visited the Ginza area today, filled with high-end stores and offices on the main streets. We started our journey with a stop at the Sony Building with a few floors of the latest in technologies and products from Sony with a store at the end where you could products. The challenges in buying electronic products in Tokyo include trying to get English or bilingual products (keys, internal instructions), an English manual, and a warranty that is international vs. just in Japan. And if a product is international vs. just Japanese, the price is usually a lot more.

When you venture into the busy lane ways off of the main streets there always seems to be another life. In Ginza, this was especially true with a lot of the usual restaurants and cafes (I hear that there are over 80,000 eating places in Tokyo and you can definitely believe this with somewhere to eat every few steps usually or fewer as buildings on main streets like in Shibuya are thin and high with several stories of restaurants, cafes, bars and stores) mixed with traditional hostess bars and restaurants (they make conversation with men and most are well educated and sophisticated in order to be able to cover the topics of some top businessmen clientele), thus there were many women in kimono walking quickly in the streets to their jobs, traditional stores selling everything from Japanese pastries, kimonos and accessories, and sake shops with tasting bars. We stopped at all of the above.

First stop at a Japanese pastry shop to sample some products and buy some gifts or omeyage to take back home. Japan is just one big omeyage store, everywhere there are stores with items that would make perfect gifts for people, and omeyage is such an ingrained part of Japanese life, giving small nicely wrapped gifts to people when you visit them or meet them. We went into the store and tasted some things and then Dave sat down at one of the seats they had to wait for me. Next thing, they were presenting him with some tea and sweets while he waited. How civilized. When I was buying my sweets, the women in the shop were so helpful and nice, confirming what I had ordered, telling me what they were doing at every step, ensuring I had everything I needed and if I needed the products gift wrapped individually or not, and thanking me all the time for my business, all with a some bows and smiles. Some service staff here could certainly use some lessons from service staff in Tokyo... imagine that happening in a Canadian Tire store??

Next stop a beautiful sake store and tasting bar from the Fukumitsuya Sake Brewery, founded in the Edo period in 1625. There were hundreds of different sakes and different products made from sake, such as liqueurs, cooking ingredients and skincare products. We sat at the bar and
tasted a few sakes, and selected one to bring home.

Afterwards, we stopped at a kimono store, there were many, to look at what they had and in particular we were looking for obidome, which is jewellery for the obi and the kimono as very limited jewellery is worn when wearing the kimono. Dave's mom had seen these on the Antique Roadshow and has been fascinated with them ever since. The prices for these were in the thousands but when we explained that this was not to be worn with a obi but a gift for Dave's mom, then a woman in the store came out with a tray with different obidome that was more in our price range and we choose one.

In the evening, we went to an izakaya pub we found in the Shibuya area, a beautiful large restaurant where it seemed like you could get a variety of food options and we could make our way through the menu with my broken Japanese and there were some pictures. Apparently these pubs are usually large and open until at least 5 am because the subways close at 12 and many people hang out at these pubs after a late night and wait for the subways to start running again around 5 am.