Sea Change Okinawa: Shopping

Asakusa, Tokyo - Sensoji Temple and Nakamise Shopping Street

This past weekend I was in Tokyo with some family who had come to visit. It was their first time to Japan, so of course I needed to show them the best of, in one short day! I managed to snap a lot of photos during the day at the various sites we went to so wanted to share them with you.

The weekend was really cold. Maximum 10 degrees celsius during the day, but at least it was beautiful and sunny! We started the day in Asakusa, to see Sensoji temple and do some souvenir shopping on Nakamise Street, which runs from the temple to Asakusa Station. We arrived at about 9:30am, which was before any of the shops opened, so headed straight to the temple. It was already busy with tourists and visitors. This temple is popular for a reason. It is the oldest in Tokyo, and the grounds are lovely. It's a buddhist temple built for the goddess Kannon and was completed in 645. Of course, as with many sites in Japan, it was destroyed during the war, so the current buildings are more recent reconstructions.

After we had finished looking at the temple and surrounds, we started our walk down Nakamise street. Although it's only about 200m long, we were shopping for about an hour because there are so many shops absolutely crammed with souvenirs such as fans, prints, keyrings, chopsticks, toys, masks, kimono etc. The family loved it!

View of Tokyo Skytree on the walk from Ueno to Asakusa

Shops shuttered before 10am

Cool art on the shutters

Koi Carp pond and Japanese garden on the Sensoji grounds

Sensoji Temple

Looking down from the temple to the temple gate

View of the pagoda from the temple

People lighting incense at the entrance to the temple

View of Tokyo Skytree from Sensoji

Weeping Cherry Blossom

Me and the boys in front of Sensoji temple

Me and the kids!

My favourite stall on Nakamise Street - selling deep friend manju

Of course I got the sakura (cherry blossom) flavour!

View of Sensoji temple from Nakamise street

View of Sensoji from Nakamise street

Senbei shop

Boys snacking on some senbei

pretty dangly things

Sensoji and Nakamise Street are a short (2 minute) walk from Asakusa station, served by the Ginza Subway Line, the Asakusa Subway Line and the Tobu railway.
Entrance to the temple is free and it is open all year round.

21:44
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Naha Stay-cation part 2

Naha

After our night and morning in at the Hyatt Regency Naha, we headed out to explore the town. Firstly, we wanted to treat our child for being such an amazingly behaved child at our late night dinner, so we took him for a ride on the monorail. Anyone who knows G, knows that he loves all forms of transport. He was pretty damn happy to get to ride on a new form of transport.

After the monorail, we hopped off at Kencho-mae station next to the Ryubo shopping mall. We had a look around at all the lovely expensive things there as well as Muji then headed out to wander up Kokusai-dori. Kokusai-dori is the main street in Naha, where there are a heap of shops and restaurants. I'd say 80% of the shops are souvenir places, so we didn't really look in any of them, but it was nice to just wander.

Eventually we were hungry for lunch, and decided to go back to Ukishima Garden again because it was so amazing the night before, we wanted to try their lunch menu. I will be doing a separate post about this restaurant in a couple of days because it was just so good.

We spent the rest of our time in Naha wandering the shops and alleyways until we were all exhausted and made the drive back home. Now having finally spent some time in Naha, we will definitely be back again for some more getaways, when we need some time away from our sleepy village.

So many shops packed with souvenirs

Tropical fruits

Kokusai Dori

Walking to the monorail station

Pretty building

Waiting for the monrail

This guy was pretty excited to tick another mode of transport off the list.

Don't catch your fingers in the door!

More souvenirs

spotted in an alleyway

One of the many covered side alleys

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Treat yo' self Okinawa

Okinawa

Last week, I used one of my last summer leave days to have a bit of a solo pamper day, or as I like to call it, "Treat yo' self". I haven't had a haircut since before moving to Okinawa, so it's coming up to a year. I have been basically just wearing my hair up every day since then because it just didn't look good at all....

Anyway, I finally got up the guts to try out a hair salon here in Okinawa, and it was awesome! I went to Earth in Chatan after reading some decent reviews online and loved it. My stylist was Take, and I would definitely recommend him. He speaks some English and really put effort into getting my cut right. Helen went to see him a week later and her hair is also looking HOT. I'm so glad to have a good stylist again.

New hair!

After the haircut I decided to see if I could also get in for a pedicure at Cocok, which was a short drive away and I have been wanting to do for ages. Luckily there was someone free so I got into the super comfortable recliner for the next hour while someone pampered my feet. By the end of it I was so relaxed and had crazy awesome toe nail art! I will definitely go back.

This is only 2 pages from the book full of designs to choose from!

End result!

After the pampering, I took myself to the new Rycom mall for some shopping. Basically i've been dieting like a mofo for the past month to lose some of the love weight i've put on in the last couple of years. I'm finally seeing results so was so glad to be able to try one some clothes that fit in Japanese stores!

Trying on clothes - I bought this outfit.

Lastly, that evening I met up with some of my lovely blogger friends for Thai. It's always great to catch up with these ladies and i'm so glad we've finally set up regular get togethers.

Shirokuma Thai

Blogger Meet-up!

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36 Hours in Tokyo (part 2)

Japan

Even though we didn't get to bed until 3am, we were still up and ready to get out by around 9am. We made a special trip to Tokyo station to try T's Tantan, a vegan restaurant, specialising in ramen. This was a must for us because H is a vegetarian, and therefore, has never tried ramen. I did a bit of research and heard that T's Tantan was the best. It really didn't dissapoint, and for any vegetarians in Tokyo, I highly recommend this place. Another bonus is the fact that they are open from 7am, so you can get ramen for breakfast! Follow the signs for the Keiyo Line and you will find T's Tantan.

After filling up on Ramen we caught the train one stop to Yurakucho to go to the Muji flagship store. I LOVE Muji and the ones in Okinawa are very small in comparison. They had so much stuff on sale and we managed to get bed linen at 50% off to fit our bed, as well as new curtains to replace the old, ugly orange ones that came with the house. Shopping win!

After Muji, we headed back to Shibuya, so I could introduce H to my favourite store in the world, Loft. No trip to Tokyo is complete without a visit to Loft. We spent lots of time exploring, but actually only bought a few small things (unlike Muji, which we needed a whole extra bag to carry).

After Loft, we went to Uobei, for a little sushi snack. Mostly because I love the flying plates. There is no conveyor belt, so all the sushi is made to order and then comes out to you on this flying plate, all for only 100¥ a piece! I put up a little video of the flying sushi on Instagram, if you feel like taking a look https://instagram.com/rachiebee/

T's Tantan in Tokyo Station (in the Keiyo Street shopping area)

The tantan ramen

The shoyu ramen

The Muji flagship store in Yurakucho

Our haul - new bed linen and curtains

My favourite train - the Yamanote Line

Uobei flying sushi

Lunch beer

Crispy salmon skin nigiri

Shibuya lovers

16:45
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Mondays

Daiso

Once again, the weekend wasn't long enough, but I did get to spend a decent amount of time relaxing.

Last Saturday we resolved to spend the day at home, around our neighbourhood, having some quality family time. Since we moved here, we have spent at least half a day of every day on the weekends at the shops. It's like we have a never-ending list of things we still need to purchase, and because Japanese shops have everything you could ever think of, we go for one thing, but 3 hours later come back with much more. I LOVE SHOPPING HERE! However, Saturday was spent making waffles, taking the puppy for a walk around the neighbourhood, playing with the little human, napping and snacking. Perfect.

Home made waffles for breakfast

Sunday I managed to convince the family that we needed to venture to the Tokyu Hands store in Ginowan, which we did, and it was awesome. I picked up some little gifts for one of my best friend's new baby and his big brother, as well as more random household items from the never-ending list we have. I also purchased myself a 1000pc Totoro puzzle, which will take over my life until i've finished it. There's something about puzzles that are so incredibly addictive to me, and once I start them, I realise why I can't let myself do them more than once a year. No matter how sore my back gets from hunching over the box of pieces, to how many hours pass without me realising, I just can't stop! Argh!

The puzzle's beginnings

Next weekend i'm hoping for some nice weather (for a tropical location, so far the weather has been average at best) so we can go and explore some of the nature and scenery around here rather than the inside of shopping centres!

One fantastic and cheap thing I discovered while shopping was that Daiso (one of the 100 yen shops) stocks battery powered shinkansen train sets that you can piece together however you like. We bought one for the little man and he's played with it consistently for weeks, and cost under 1000yen (around $11) for all the pieces

One great thing I love about working at OIST, is that , not only is the cafe cheap, healthy and amazing, but they also have visiting food vendors in the afternoons most days of the week. For example, there's a guy selling fresh made cheese every Tuesday afternoon, and last Friday there was a man selling dutch baked treats. I bought a tasty spicy dutch waffle for afternoon tea to have with a sweet can of hot coffee. Mmm

Also, i'm very excited because we finalised plans for some of our besties who are coming to visit us during Golden Week (end of April - first week of March). I cannot wait to show some people around our new place!