Tokyo Day 3

The first thing I did after deciding to go to Japan was to purchase tickets to the Ghibli Museum. I think there is a limit to the number of tickets being sold each day, so I had to send JTB USA an email detailing my order exactly three months before my travel date. So, on day 3, we hopped on the train and a local Ghibli studio bus to the museum. We exchanged our vouchers for actual tickets. The ticket we got was a film strip from one of the ghibli studio films. You can view this film strip in one of the sections of the museum. Mine had a boat on it. I'm not exactly sure which film it's from. While there were so many interesting and fun things to see at the museum, my favorite part was being able to see a special short film. I caught myself reminiscing about watching Totoro with my siblings when we were kids or watching Grave of the Fireflies in high school with my batchmates when we were studying about WWII.

Outside the Ghibli Museum

Robot on the roof of the Ghibli Museum

We didn't really have a proper breakfast, so we started getting hungry and decided it was time to head to our next destination for lunch. The next item on our itinerary was Asakusa and we were thinking about going to Daikokuya for some tempura. And surprise surprise, there was a long line outside the restaurant. I stood in line, while MM went and got us some sort of beef ball fried katsu style we didn't know the name of. It was soooo delicious we wanted to go back there on our last day, if only it weren't so out of the way.



No name fried beef patty



Interior of Daikokuya



My Tendon where the tempura is fried in batter with the sauce already mixed in - genius!

After lunch, we shopped around Asakusa, bought some trinkets, ate some ice cream and drank some sweet green tea as we walked towards the Sensoji temple.

The Sensoji temple was nice. We took some pictures, but we were too excited to shop some more that we didn't really spend a lot of time at the temple.

On the way back to the station, we spotted a shop selling pudding in these cute little jars. The packaging was so nice, we couldn't resist buying one. Plus, our feet were getting sore again, so we needed the break 😃

Green Tea pudding

After Asakusa, we didn't really have anything else on our list, so we went to the Tokyo station to look for different flavors of Pocky and KitKat. If you went to Tokyo for Pocky and KitKat, the Tokyo station is THE place to go. For the past couple of days, we've been unsuccessful in finding unique Japan-only flavors of Pocky ad KitKat. We'd grown tired of entering every convenience store we saw to look for these snacks. Most stores only carry chocolate and strawberry. Where's the green tea and all the other flavors we keep hearing about??? After much frustration, I googled it and people in travel forums pointed me to the Tokyo station where there's a glico store and a souvenir shop selling Kitkat from all over Japan. Jackpot!!!! Sadly, I don't have pictures. My hands were too busy carrying the heavy bags of Pocky and KitKat.

We went back to the Shibuya Station and visited more department stores. The Shibuya Hikarie was a good discovery as it had Pierre Herme and Sadaharu Aoki. Pierre Herme macarons, I came to learn, taste even better when eaten fresh!!! We also walked around the vicinity of our hotel where there is a good selection of shops and restaurants. Walking back to our hotel, we always passed by Pablo, a shop selling cheesecake. We were always drawn to the smell - it just smelled sooooo delicious!!! MM got us a whole cheesecake to eat for dinner.



Mouth watering cheesecake with really flaky crust!!!!
 

Sadly, we didn't end up finishing our cheesecake because we never really had time to eat it before Kyoto.