Category Archive for ‘Japan Things’ at Mochimochi Blog

I had underestimated the traditional ryokan we’re staying at in Kyoto. Free wireless internet for all!

To get here, we took the bullet train, the highlight of which was bento boxes. Here is Bonney with hers before digging in. (I haven’t gotten her permission to use this photo, but I’m going to anyway because I think it’s great.)

shinkansen_bento

We could identify about half of its contents before she ate it, and two-thirds after. (Mine was a vegetable bento, and much less mysterious.)

Once in Kyoto, we reached our ryokan by cab. The driver turned out to be a plush toy lover!

plushcab

He was an older man, and hard of hearing, and that made the plush fandom even more endearing.

The place we’re staying is within walking distance of Maruyama Koen and Kiyomizudera, so that was our outing for the day. Both are extremely popular destinations, and the crowds were pretty incredible. But we had much fun browsing the souvenir shops that lined the steep streets heading up to the temple. For myself, I picked up the most adorable mousey!

nezumi

It’s made from kimono fabric, though I can’t recall what this type of craft is called. (Any help?) There were lots of reeeally cute toys like these, and it was hard to resist buying more. There’s a whole museum/shop devoted to them somewhere in the city that I stumbled upon once. I’m not having any luck locating it again, so I guess I’ll just hope that I’ll have the good fortune to find it by chance.

Maybe a pic or two of the hundreds of temples and shrines in this city will make it into my post tomorrow.

Hellooo from Japan!

Today was our first full day here. We had planned to do both Shibuya and Harajuku, but the former proved to be more than enough for us.

We spent a good part of the day in Loft, browsing the latest in stylishly cute housewares and zakka. Then we ogled delicious food at Shibuya station.

Kewpie dolls continue to be all the rage in the cute department. Here they are advertising a new TV show:

kewpiead

I love love love this ad! Each Kewpie is dressed up as a food or animal or other thing of Japan. Wouldn’t it have been fun to make all these outfits? They’re also selling cell phone straps of Kewpies incognito as various foods and animals—I picked up a Kewpie beer and a Kewpie mushroom today. So cute!

Here’s Kewpie dressed up as the horse character Rody.

kewpie_rody

If you look closely and can read Japanese, you’ll see that this particular crane game has a sign proclaiming it the “second most popular!” What a crowning achievement.

The “Kapibara” character is still going strong too, with a few new varieties added to the mix. Do these guys remind you of someone?

kapibara_wig

Perhaps a certain toupee-wearing mouse?

Now for edibles. We came across a counter with the most gorgeous, exotic varieties of honey.

hachimitsu

Yuzu, lemon, thyme.. those are the ones I can remember, but there were dozens of flavors. I think we could have gotten samples, but we were too busy buying them up to think to ask.

Finally, yummy bright green sweets.

akebono