Seiyu & Oko-nomi-yaki

Feeling a little jet lagged. Went up the road to the local Seiyu supermarket, which is now open 24 hours, to buy the things I didn't pack (saving luggage space & weight) such as shampoo, conditioner. They have a nice collection of Pocky products, so I grabbed some "mens pocky". Pocky is a Japanese snack food, which is basically long straight pretzels covered in chocolate, they are suprisingly morish. other flavours are available such as banana flavoured "desert" pocky, the Mens pocky has dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate.




Walked around the local park, a smallish dirt area surrounding the baseball enclosure. It looks much nicer now with the cherry blossoms out.

Back to the appartment for a nap, before going out to den-den town (giant electronics shopping precinct), basically a shopping area for geeks. Lots of gadgets and hobby & model shops. Looking for Gigantor figurines for Gillian, we found a 6ft tall model of him in a shop, and took the obligatory photos. (ask permission before doing this, not all places welcome this kind of behaviour in their stores)

Found a really good boardgame shop called "Yellow Submarine" they had a good collection of Euro games (German editions) with Japanese rule translations included. Found "Modern Art" game cheap, so picked it up also convinced Bob to buy Carcassonne. Carcassonne has got a lot of play in the spare time waiting for shops to open ... in Japan most shops don't open until 10:30am, and I am still waking up at first light 6am.

Yukiko met us in town and we went to an Oko-nomi-yaki restaurant. Oko-nomi-yaki, basically "how you like it", a versitile cabbage pancake, which has as many optional inclusions as pizza. The basic is cabbage, flour, egg, water, red ginger and sliced meat (thinly sliced pork or seafood). They are very delicious, filling and (relatively) cheap, in this restaurant, the center of the table is the hotplate, and the pancake is kept warm on it while you eat it. I have been to another place where it is cooked on the hotplate at front of you. Extremely delicious.

Got back and booked accomodation for our Kanazawa and Takayama trip next week. 3500 to 5500 a night per person (no extra for single rooms vs twin share)