the tall blond guy goes to japan

Money is Evil, So I Want to Get Rid of it All

Subway. The sandwich place.

Oh my goodness. They really are everywhere.

They all look the same

This is possibly the world's smallest Subway as well. It can't be more than 7 feet deep and 12 feet long. It does, however, have three floors.

In a kind of comforting way, it was exactly the same as all the other North American Subways I have been in. No, wait. There was one difference- the staff were much friendlier. I actually managed to speak more with the non-English-speaking staff in this Subway than I normally do with the non-English-speaking staff in Subways at home.

Even the sandwich stasted the same! That was kind of disgusting, actually. If anything, the tomatoes were a bit fresher. And the sandwiches themselves came in a kind of weird half-baggie thing. I tried unwrapping the sub like I do at home, and the thing ripped.

As you might have guessed from the title, I went shopping today. It started innocently enough, with a trip to my building again to get some brochures (everything in Japan has a corresponding brosure). To my disapointment, there weren't any really good pictures of the building itself, but I did learn a bit. The archetect is an American named Rafael Vinoly. There are four big halls, more than thirty conference rooms, and tonnes of nifty AV equipment.

Artist's Drawing of the Building.

Very nice, right, but I was talking about shopping. As I was wandering around getting lost, I found all kinds of big stores, and gathered that the neighborhood called "Ginza" is a big shopping area. Lots of big big stores. Here's a quick guide.

***Mitsukoshi: Crummy. Tiny toy section. Mostly clothes and smelly things. Unless you like that, this is a good one to stay away from.

***Sebu: A more expensive version of above. Lots of designer stuff. No toy section.

***Hankyu: This one was pretty nifty, especially the top floor. It's somhow connected to Sebu at the top, where all the cool little trinkets are. I bought some snacky-bread-with-raisins in the basement food area. Oh- all these places have little food thingers in the basement. Everyone yells all the time (especially in Mitsukoshi) and it smells really good in there.

***Sogo: The big one. I shopped in here alot when I was in Hong Kong, and the shopping was better in Hong Kong. Could have been that the Hong Kong-Causeway Bay store was bigger, but there really didn't seem to be much happening in this Sogo store. Nice toy section though. I bought some stuff here.

Underneath the bullet train tracks, they've cleverly built two stories of stores. A little mall type thing. That's where HMV is. That's where most of my money went. For those who don't know, I've got a terrible CD habit. Buy buy buy buy. Well, I think I bought more than Y10,000 of CDs. I'm not sure because I just handed them my American Express (which, for some reason, worked) and signed the little piece of paper.

Tourist Alert: Your credit cards will only work when you don't really want them to.

While I'm on the topic of touristy stuff, this bowing thing is starting to get annoying. It's still kinda cool, yeah yeah... but it can sometimes be very inconvenient for peripheral people. Two people engaged in a bowfest can effectively block several dozen people trying to make their way down a small subway tunnel, for example.