Motto Shimokitazawa

Another look at the cool area Shimokitazawa

the omnipresent power cables and transformers and watnot

Hiroko and some dude. Hiroko is my only buddy that can hang out with me because she does kind of freelance work also so doesn't have to work 12 hrs a day like most Japanese people.

a store where people rent the little boxes and sell their products. cool idea

lots of fast food places dont have a cash register and only have these ticket vending machines, you pick what you want to eat pop the money in and out pops a ticket that you give to the people inside. that way there is no skimming from the register and no human accounting errors i guess, probably faster too. but its kind of hard to flirt with a meal ticket machine, but that hasn't stopped me in past. anyway this is the first time i've seen one of the Korean variety. There were real Koreans behind the counter too, and an ajuma was making kimchi too, the kimchi i had was so fresh it tasted it was made 5 minutes ago, which made it not like kimchi at all, its supposed to be fermented a lil bit at least!

Sai Baba. did i post about this guy before? this is the second time ive seen sai baba stuff in japan. He is a prophet or something in india and apparently is able to materialize physical things out of the air. The kung fu teacher at FIT spent half a class telling us about him and Sai Baba once. he said Sai Baba came to him in a dream on night and said next week you will recieve the means to come see me. sure enough the next week he recieved $1000 in the mail! he and his two friends went to india to see Sai Baba. he said Sai baba materialized a tray of Dunkin Donuts and coffee before their very eyes, yes the brand dunkin' donuts! he said he also materilized a be-jeweled necklace for the female friend. The FIT kung fu teacher was dead serious. I could not believe what i just heard. anyway i looked up sai baba later on and it says he is marred with scandal, accused of molesting boys and women that come to have their futures/prophecies told numerous times. Anyway the Japanese are not immune to being all day suckers either.

this is for Karol munoz, who just moved to Chile, land of alpaca llamas.

a t-shirt vending machine.

more cool handpainted sign action

the smallest bar i've seen. i dont know what you call this kind of place in japanese. there were like 7 chairs when we went in. by the time we left it had filled up to the point where the guy had to pull out to extra chairs from behind the bar so these 2 could sin in the lane. we were the only 2 there for about 5 min.

inside the smallest bar. a few days later i would see more bars of this size in Golden Gai in Kabukicho. im sure there are tons this size all over japan. anyway i like these kind of bars, we met a jazz loving art director who is currently working on tv commercials for T-Fal (cookingware), a guy that just got divorced and is looking for a new apartment (later a woman came to meet him, who knows maybe she is the reason for the divorce or the guy is just really fast, but interesting stuff!). Can't wait to go to more places like this, especially if there is one near where i will end up living.

people waiting for the train crossing thing to go up

2 of the biggest vending machines i've ever seen in some hotel in shibuya, oh yea its the shibuya mark hotel. it is serviced by that keypad on the right, and then a huge and fast arm comes out and grabs your stuff, not some little twirly metal spiral thing, a big robot arm! like at that huge mega library in chicago or somewhere.

next we went to shibuya, but to a less explored side opposite from center gai which is the main area. here i saw the best bar tenders ive ever seen. i dont mean fire eating, bottle spinning tom cruise waiters, i mean these guys made tons of drinks constantly but they made each one with the utmost care. they would even spin the balls of ice for whisky on the rocks until they were the perfect size and then serve it.

lesser known shibuya

you cant tell from the picture but these are huuuuge bottles of shochu, which is kind of like soju. you could really have a party with a couple of these bad boys.