For today Rhonja had planned for us to go visit Kappabashi. This is a long shopping street dedicated to kitchen goods and plastic food. It also turned out to be the street where Marcel bought his fancy knives last time. We were looking to see if we could find some pretty bento boxes, or maybe fun chopsticks, but in the end we found some very pretty teacups featuring tanuki. They reminded us of Animal Crossing games, so that along with them looking adorable made us get them instead!
We also visited a fun looking shop dedicated to plastic food. It was especially fun because they had displays featuring the creation process of plastic food from mold making to airbrushing on the finishing touches!
After we finished looking around there we decided to pay a visit to the nearby Senso-ji temple. We managed to take a side-entrance so it seemed quite peaceful for such a well-known location. Until we rounded a corner and were met with a lot of tourists and Japanese alike! Senso-Ji has very large and well kept temple grounds and it’s definitely a pretty one to visit. But you do notice it’s a bit commercialized in its own way. Usually temples sell a few different talismans in one location, but Senso-ji had a lot of talismans for sale all over the place!
Right outside Senso-ji was also a street rumoured to be a very good shopping place for traditional Japanese souvenirs. This seemed like a lot of fun! But unfortunately it was so crowded we didn’t really feel like browsing and just walked on instead.
In the afternoon we made a quick stop at Kabukicho. This area is most known for being the more “rough” part of Tokyo (were apparently the Yakuza resides). It was fun to visit, since once of the games Marcel plays takes place in an almost exact copy of this area. We even spotted Godzilla there!
For we went to visit Marcel’s cousin, who lives in Shibuya. We caught up a bit at her home with some drinks and snacks, and afterwards went out for dinner. For appetizers we started with a meatplatter, as a main dish we choose the grilled Tuna steak, and ended with Macha dessert. Was great seeing her again and the place she took us to was superb! Hopefully we can meet again on our next trip!