With only 3 days left in the trip, we were in a rush to get all the goodies that are only available in Japan. Today was our first shopping day. Of course, we had to go to Shibuya again. I went to the lingerie/pajama store on Takeshita street and picked out this pink fuzzy onesie. Then we went looking for a suyasan jacket for Masa. We bought a panda bomber jacket for $300, and a panda shirt for him because he loves pandas. I also bought a fuzzy panda jacket at a fun shop on Takeshita street. After blowing $500 on clothing, we were hungry.
We decided to go to this tempura restaurant called Tendon Tenya that was right on one of the most busy corners in Shibuya. The wait was long, but worth it.
Our next destination was Meguro city, which is known to have a shopping area focused on jeans. By this time, it was already 3 or 4 PM due the detours we took to find lunch. We visited the EVISU shop there and it was not nearly as lit as the Osaka location. There were a lot of new year deals going on, but we didn’t find anything we wanted to buy. It was quite beautiful there, though, and much less crowded which made it feel very quaint.
Then, we took the train to Shinjuku for dinner. We ended up at this yakiniku place called Dondon. It was awesome. Instead of being a grill inset in the tabletop, the restaurant provided more traditional grills. It’s always fun to try new foods, so we ordered many orders of beef with a bit of every kind of sauce they had.
They also had sukiyaki beef on the menu. Usually this means beef with the sukiyaki broth, so we were curious as to how they’d do this for yakiniku. The presentation was really cool and the taste was unexpectedly very similar to how it would taste in a hot pot.
Then we found this magic bar called Bar Cuore. It looked closed, but after we knocked and heard no response, we were startled by the guy opening the door. He was like, are you here for magic show? And we were like yeah. So we went in and he seated us at the bar. I felt like we had walked into a garage owned by a superfan of Supreme. There was supreme artwork, Supreme suitcases, clothing, shoes, boxes, all piled haphazardly on the side of the bar. I ordered a cassis drink and Masa ordered a glass of whiskey neat. We saw an assistant but she slinked to the back at some point. There was a real stuffed exotic cat in a dry terrarium with a bunch of other fake or taxidermied pets, next to the door. Then he started the magic show. The first part was talking to us and showing us the tricks over the bar counter, and the second half was a one-man show right behind our seats, on the side of the bar. The performance was really unexpected, and it felt like a singing, dancing, comedy, magic, one-man-show extravaganza. It was really funny and a great way to spend the evening. After the show, I asked to play with one of his pets on top of the bar. We were surprised with the bill, but you gotta do what you gotta do to keep up your Supreme habit I guess. If you do ever want to check it out, I’d recommend booking it online instead of walking in, because it is 5x cheaper that way. Then we left the kooky magician and went back to the elevator. He walked us down the hallway to the elevator and did his last magic trick: “levitating” where the front foot is going up and down, but the back foot is the one doing the lifting. He waved us goodbye, and we took the train home.
