Shibuya appears to have changed in small ways since September. Very, very small. Some things remain the same, i.e. it’s really hard to find a public restroom, which is bad news when you’ve had four hours of sleep in the past 48 hours and are fueled almost entirely by tons of canned coffee. But I noticed a few new sites along Center-gai:
Has anyone let the Danish consulate know about this? I can’t decide whether Cafe Danmark is a well-intended but ultimately botched attempt at tribute to the nation that brought the world the cream cheesiest pastries ever, or a strange case of slightly changing a proper noun to avoid trademark infringement. I’m pretty sure the copy protection on Denmark(TM) has been up for years, though.
Meanwhile, fricking awesome curry joint Little Spoon has been replaced by a craptacular-looking ramen joint. That kills like half my reasons to ever come back to this country right there.
I’ve uploaded real photos to my Flickr account, if for some reason you want to see pictures of today’s tourist gauntlet. Which I really think would be of no interest to anyone but the parties involved. Said gauntlet consisted of arriving at dawn at the Tsukiji fish market to eat the best sushi on earth — seriously, this stuff was alive a few hours before we consumed it (and in one case, a few seconds) and it’s really impossible to appreciate just how big a difference that much freshness makes until you experience it. It was quite a breakfast. Uh, also, we went to Ginza and Shibuya, but only after wandering the fish and vegetable market. So don’t click if severed fish bits bother you. Dead tuna heads everywhere.
“Danmark” (with an “a”) is the proper spelling of their country in the Danish language. “Denmark” (with an “e”) is the English spelling.
Unlike many signs in the good ‘ol USA, this one’s actually not a typo.
But “cafe” isn’t Danish, so it’s still weird.
Actually, “café” is a proper word in Swedish, so I’m willing to bet that it is in Danish too.
Is Café Danmark really new? I know I saw it when I was there in October, but I guess it might have been newly opened. I don’t remember it being that conspicuous either.
Also, there’s a Little Spoon in Shinjuku. Follow the directions to Sakura House’s office, ( http://www.sakura-house.com/english/office.htm ) and you’ll find it on the left side of the same street, walking north.
I am in love with this wonderfully obscure section of town where the ATMs shun me as coldly as the locals. After getting off at the Kiyosumi-Shirakawa station, by way of Oshiage, I walked for over two hours looking for a cash machine that would accept my offensive plastic. No luck. Looks like it’s complimentary coffee for dinner.
I’m going to check out Akihabara tomorrow; hopefully, by that time, I won’t have stolen one of the ubiquitous bicycles littering the streets — it’s not like they’re locked, or anything.
Now want to line my studio with giant sandwiches wallpaper. I think it would really improve my productivity.
Josh, find a Citibank ATM. They’re very reliable for foreign cards. Here’s a locator:
click me
(If that doesn’t work, go to citibank.com and look up locations directly.)
Thanks. I’ll be fine. I was fresh off the plane and a little tired.
Your pictures are extremely motivating; not that they’re for me, but I still appreciate them. I did find the directions to Ichiran and a little instruction on how to order without getting overwhelmed. I’m looking forward to it. Cheers.
LITTLE SPOON NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
So where is the section of town that Yakuza took place in. I know they used a different name in the game but I could of sworn it was based off of Shibuya. Ah Yakuza, so far my game of the year 2008 haha.
Yeah, we call a café a cafe in Danish :P.