After a most enjoyable lunch, Ly and I decided to visit a relatively new department store - Yodobashi Camera. It's a big chain in Japan - and man, it has virtually EVERYTHING for electronics and other goodies. Future Shop and Best Buy has NOTHING on Yodobashi Camera. Each floor has something dedicated to some electronic-related or cool items (and each floor covers a lot of area). Here's a list - I think this is correct:
Ly and I spent most of the afternoon in this one place - screw visiting any other famous attractions! :P
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Welcome to Yodobashi Camera - the is the cell phone floor. Look how crowded it is... |
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On the home appliances floor. As you can see, Ly is enjoying the comforts of a massage chair. |
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Me playing around with the most expensive massage chair available. Anyways, massage chairs are HUGE in Japan - these machines are the perfect item for the hard-working Japanese worker to rest up for a while. It's very common to find a Japanese worker to come to a store like Yodobashi Camera and use the demo model for a good massage and rest. Also, it's very common to see people fall asleep on these machines - some will sleep for at least a good half-hour (I count myself into this group), and others can sleep more than an hour long! But the workers do not care if you hog up all the time on the chairs - as long as you enjoy it, it's all good and it gives the mentality that the customer might be more inclined to purchase the item since the chair gave the customer a real good rest! Therefore, during my shopping experience at Yodobashi Camera that day, I spent over an hour combined just resting up on the massage chairs. Finally, during the relaxation periods, I ended up memorizing the tune of Yodobashi Camera that the building played over its speakers. Ahhh... |
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Ly's not practicing to become the next horse jockey - she's actually riding on a saddle machine that is designed to tone your ass and surrounding area. |
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"Thank you for calling Yodobashi Camera! How may I help you?" Actually, this machine Ly is using a breathing machine that is designed to let you breathe better quality oxygen. At the time of this pic, Ly and I were trying out similar products, but my oxygen breather cost less than the one she was trying out; therefore, Ly decided to add a quirky remark, "Ha ha! You're breathing poor quality air!" |
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Me playing a Godzilla-sized Nintendo DS. |
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A life-size statue of Solid Snake of Metal Gear Solid fame. |
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Now, this is just crazy - this is a PS2 game for Yoshinoya restaurant. Yoshinoya is a HUGE chain of fast food restaurants - its most famous dish is a beef rice bowl for 420 Yen - cheap, yet very tasty! However, as of late, many Yoshinoya restaurants has switched over to pork rice bowls as the main item because of the mad cow scare. But all in all, I'm just very surprised that there is a video game dedicated to this fast food chain. |
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Outside in Osaka looking at one of the many shopping streets. |
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This is the ultra-shocker - a store that sells hockey equipment!!! |
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There it is - a hockey visor made by the great people of Oakley *bows down to the corporation* that's tinted BLUE (it's the face shield on the right if you are colour blind). I've never seen a blue hockey visor in my life in hockey-mad Canada, and yet, in all places around the world, I find this visor in Osaka, Japan. DAMN... I wanted it so bad, but the problems were that it was pretty pricey - 8,500 Yen (over $100 Cdn), and I might feel odd to be the only player in Victoria to wear a visor like this (I'm pretty sure no one else in Victoria had a blue-coloured visor before I came back), so I was wondering if I would end up being checked harder or whatever because I have a unique visor. But still - it was BLUE!!! In the end, I didn't get it... Ly suggested that it's pretty expensive and if I was crazy enough to buy it, I should save up money first and see if I could cover the expenses for the rest of the trip before I can think about the purchase. Therefore, for the rest of the night (as well as the next couple of days), I was really thinking about BLUE... |
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The big red ferris wheel at night. |
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Inside another shopping mall, where red whales were going to come down and devour me for eating its relatives back in Shibuya. |
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A super blurry pic of the Yodobashi Camera building. |
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To top another adventurous day off, Ly and I went to a local restaurant near her home. One of the things I ate was this dish - chicken tataki. It's basically RAW chicken. I am not kidding you - the meat is pure raw; they cook the edge of the chicken (which is the poisonous part) - it was very tasty! |
