Skyberries and Voidmelons or Voidberries and Skymelons

Inside Sunshine City, in a corner of Namjatown, exists Ice-cream City. Strange flavours of ice-cream are stacked up in freezer cabinets, and these are the weird flavours you read about. fluffymark tried the shark fin soup and Dracula garlic flavours, where as I stuck to cherry blossom flavour.

Later that evening, just before sunset, we headed up the Tokyo Tower, which looks a bit like the Eiffel Tower, but is slightly taller and more colourful. From there, we could see skyscrapers glistening in the sunshine, and then as the sun disappeared behind the smog, we drank glasses of wine and watched the buildings, bridges and ferris wheels light up as it got dark.

The day after that, I wandered around Shinjuku, and then Harajuku, looking for cosplayers, and ended up at the Meiji Jingu Shrine, where there were many dolls, as well as a tree that had been impressively overtaken with cobwebs.

Soon after that, I left Japan and travelled to New Zealand.

More photos on Flickr: Japan.

fluffymark has also written more detailed descriptions: Japan - Part 1, Japan - Part 2.

Ginza's shops range from the pink pock-marked Mikimoto building (selling pearls) to buildings that are strangely curved to those that look like they have a spaceship landed on the roof to wonderful toyshops that sell giant Totoros, Cat Bus purses, Princess Mononoke playing cards, Neon Genesis Evangelion ears, Pacman key-fobs, Monchhichis (Chicaboo), Moomins, dancing plants and cool little robots.

After wandering through Marunouchi, and seeing strangely decorated cows on random street corners, we headed to the Imperial Palace Gardens. It rained that day and women who passed me exclaimed "kawaii!" when they saw my frog umbrella.

That evening in Shibuya, we were curious to see if HMV stocked Merzbow CDs, so browsed the Japanese loud and punk section and found that they did. I listened to some random Japanese punk bands there, but the listening section did not seem to be playing any noise. I also listened to some pop music - YMCK - "8-bit Nintendo meets jazz and pops!"

Nagi Shokudo, a vegan restaurant in Shibuya, was where we ate dinner that night. The food was fairly cheap and tasty, and did not contain shark fins.