After lunch we decided to explore the nearby Omotesando and Harajuku area. Instead of taking the Tokyo Metro, we decided to walk from Shake Shack to Harajuku right through the middle of Omotesando.
The walk was pleasant and you'll definitely notice that you've walked into Omotesando when you come across flagship stores of these massive brandnames. Knowing that I couldn't afford anything, I spearheaded for Takeshita-dori in Harajuku.
Holy! At first I though Omotesando was relatively crowded, with constant streams of people walking up and down the street that you'd actually have to take care walking down the main street. But seeing Harajuku....so this is where everyone is!
One reason I think for the popularity of this place is that Takeshita Street directly faces the JR Harajuku Station, making it convenient for both locals and foreigners.
First stop - crepes. Crepes is what everyone must try in Harajuku. It's hard when you're bombarded with the many walls of crepe displays. The biggest problem there is which one to get??!! Having just had lunch and other shops to explore, I decided to share one with Jellybao. We chose a strange one - the FLAMINGO. Why? Because we didn't know what it was.
The crepe consisted of cherry flavoured ice cream, whipped cream, strawberries and chocolate sauce. I think the name "Flamingo" comes from the pink colour of the cherry ice cream. Not a big fan of cherry ice cream I think it would be better if it was strawberry ice cream.
Next time I go, I'll try another flavour! My parents said the red bean flavoured one was really good...should have been more conservative in my order decisions.
Next stop - Calbee Plus.
We came for the freshly fried potato chips mainly to see if there is a difference from the regular bags of crisps we buy from the supermarket. Equally as crispy, I didn't taste any particular difference. Matched with milk soft serve... I still prefer the Macca's chips and soft serve combination :P
Overwhelmed by the small shop and the abundance of people in the shop, we demolished our chips and ice cream outside the store.
Another really popular thing in Harajuku bubble tea, but having no space for it, we decided to head back to Ueno for dinner.
The one shop that we saw a lot of was Isomaru Suisan -- a DIY grilled seafood place that's open 24/7 and is pretty average price. Our hotel is located in between 2 identical stores (which really throws me off when trying to find my way back to the hotel).
Trust me to forget to take photos of everything about the restaurant except the actual food that we were served (and only part of it)...
The kani miso is the most popular item on their menu, so obviously we had to get it. the creaminess of the kani miso would go really well with rice...and that brings us to the next item.
We didn't see a bowl of plain rice on the menu so we got a seafood rice bowl just for the sake of getting rice. The seafood was alright, it was fresh, but not Tsukiji fresh - pretty worth the price in my opinion.
We also ordered a variety of shellfish off the menu. We even ordered some random unknown shellfish and had no idea how to cook it. The instructions was entirely in Japanese so we only understood about 50-60% of it. Regardless, we still managed to fully cook our shellfish and not get food poisoning.
Overall, this restaurant is still quite foreigner-friendly. The ordering system is entirely via iPad, which has a variety of languages. In addition, every menu item has a accompanying photo so you can see every mysterious shellfish there is. We did come into a slight hiccup as their system crashed and our orders had to be taken manually. There was a little trouble when settling our bill at the end as it was linked up with their iPad system.
Pricing-wise it is average as I said before. Our entire meal cost a bit over ¥10,000 and we were actually quite full at the end of our meal (we had a lot more than what is picture above).
Do give it try if you come across one of the hundreds of stores they have around Japan!
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