Japantown

Before race day we decided to take mom to some shopping and food.  We visited Japantown and spent a good bit of time wandering the area, checking out the shops and finding some yummy food.

The concrete Peace Pagoda designed by Yoshiro Taniguchi was presented to San Francisco by the people of Osaka, Japan.

Arcade are inside of the Japantown Center.

I am not much for spending a lot of time shopping so I escaped a few times from mom and Lily to play games.  I failed at the UFO Colon (seriously it say's colon check the bottom left photo in the collage) games, I was never good at them.  Damn those colons!!!  I was the only one there and I think it was probably because I was there mid-day when kids were probably in school.

FOOD PORN!

For lunch we stopped by Tanpopo to have some ramen to warm up our cold, hungry bodies.  While waiting to be seated I saw a bookcase filled with what looked like Shonen Jump magazines.  So I grabbed one to page through while I waited.  I can't read kanji but I figured I would look at the art styles.  Two seconds after trying to page through it I was trying to quickly stuff it back into the bookcase, looking around, hoping no one saw me.  Their waiting area had volumes of seijin manga @_@.  Nope, not gonna page through that sitting next to mom, she probably would have smacked me and exclaimed, "Cochina!"  

Anyways back to the food; I heard through the grapevine that they serve takoyaki but they didn't have it on the menu.  So I asked for an order if they had it available.  The waitress got down close to eye level and with a knowing look, smiled and said, "Oh yes, takoyaki."  I successfully ordered a secret menu item woohoo!  I was happy because I actually got to try takoyaki for the first time.  It was really yummy, I will have to share a warning though: HOT LAVA!!!!  They didn't look to be very hot or have steam coming off of them so I popped a whole one in my mouth.  The center was piping hot, my taste buds hated me for a while.  While at Tanpopo I was dismayed to find out my little sister is allergic to octopus.  I was really bummed she didn't get to try it.  My mom liked it but my mom loves sea food, I knew she would like it.

Making my crepe dessert.

 After our meal, as customary in my family we had to have a little something sweet.  So we stopped at Belly Good Cafe & Crepes.  I snapped the picture above and then thought I would video the construction of the crepe.  So check it out below.... and no I did not have a problem stuffing my face with cute food.  It's cute face did not make me feel sorry for the fact that I was going to stab it with a fork and eat it.

Being silly tourists

 The last time I was in Japantown there were 2 different wooden cut outs you could stick your head through and take a picture.  I looked for them but wasn't able to find them.  I liked the old ones better but we still stuck our heads through these and snapped some photos.  My mom was a bit on the short side so she had problems sticking her head through.  Yet another reason I liked the old ones better.  They were cute too!

Photos taken around Japantown.

Shopping Loot

 I got mostly snacks and some stuff for my mister since he wasn't able to join us for our shopping adventure.  I also shopped for my sister Sylvia since she was gracious enough to watch my fur babies while we were out of town.  I got her a new tea cup, some candy and mochi snacks from Nippon-Ya.

Looking for feedback.  This is the first time I tried to edit a video by dropping the ambient noise and adding music.  What do you think?  Also, photo collage should I keep doing them or do you guys like the full photo better?  Don't worry Tom, I promise not to collage the building shots I got.

On an unrelated note, today is Wednesday... that is two whole days before Black Friday.  Here is a picture a friend of mine took this morning and it's not even 10:00 am yet!  Yes, that is the beginnings of a tent city growing outside of Best Buy.

Shall I bother posting another video of sick, sad, humans at their worst?  I kind of wonder to myself how many people are actually going to go out this Friday just to take video of the madness happening.  I don't know if it has gotten worse or if Black Friday has always been this crazy.  But since most phones now have the ability to capture video, I know it is now something that can be witnessed by people who do not participate in Black Friday.  I hope these people end up lining up in an orderly fashion.  I would hate to hear that someone got hurt because of this:

My Spidey sense tells me to stay away from stampeding humans.

If I had the video editing skills this would be fun to mash up with the stampede in The Lion King.