Ginza

Today we visited Ginza, a district of Tokyo we haven’t been to before. Ginza is arguably the most famous shopping area on the planet, and it’s easy to see why. Every high-end clothing label is represented there, either in its own store or in one of the several posh department stores. Prada, for example, occupies four floors of a skyscraper. There is lots to buy besides clothing, though; there are also flagship stores for Sony and Yamaha’s musical-instruments division (complete with a concert hall that occupies three floors and a recording studio in the basement), a Mont Blanc store, and so on. We ended up spending most of the time in a six-storey toy store and the housewares floor of one of the department stores. A young saleswoman made my day by telling me, “your Japanese is beautiful!” (And no, she wasn’t trying to sell me anything at the time.)

We had to cut the visit short, though, because of the weather turning wetter than we were equipped to deal with. We retreated to our hotel and were surprised to find our friend Rafael waiting in the lobby. We went to Ippudo for dinner, makers of excellent ramen and the best gyoza I’ve ever had.