I had 9 days off during the summer, from 8th to the 16th. There were a couple of open campus events at colleges my daughter Ulan is interested in attending in the Tokyo area. For the first weekend, we drove to Yokohama. The car navi took us through the Tokyo area. I’ve always been scared of driving Tokyo’s Shutokou (首都高) expressway system in Tokyo because it’s complicated like a spider web, like concentric circles with spokes. I made one mistake and took an exit instead of merging onto an interchange ramp. The car navi recalculated how to get back onto the expressway. We ended up drive past the imperial palace and Tokyo Station in the Ginza area before getting back on.
In Yokohama, we parked the car in a big parking garage in the Minato Mirai 21 area. Mayu and Ulan went to the college campus nearby while I took the subway up to Yokohama Station. I went to Yellow Submarine, a hobby store. There are actually two locations, but the first one is just card games and Warhammer stuff. At the second location I bought some neat supplies.
I saw these Evangelion figure model kits by Blokees for the first time. They also had several Hasegawa resin anime figure garage kits. (Click the pictures for close-up views.)
Lots of Macross model kits there too!
I went to a pizza place called Shakey’s. They had a buffet for lunch, so it was all-you-can-eat food and all-you-can-drink booze. I had macaroni and cheese with plenty of pizza slices, plus some beers and gin and sodas. Pretty nice.
When I met back up with the two lunatics, we went to the Cup Noodle museum. That was pretty interesting. Admission is only about 500 yen.
There are walls of noodle products, featuring so many limited edition versions. Here are some Hokuto no Ken (Fist of the North Star) cup ramen products.
After this, you watch an animated documentary about Momofuku Ando, the inventor of instant ramen. He went from being a down-on-his-luck inventor to becoming world-famous. I didn’t know this, but Chicken Ramen was his first invention. He created instant ramen by frying the noodles (and I assume freeze drying them). Later while visiting America, he got the suggestion from Americans to put the instant ramen into a cup because they put it into cups and eat it with forks. Thus, Cup Noodle was invented. Before he died, he invented space ramen for astronauts to enjoy.
Ramen-inspired modern art. Pretty wild.
So here is Mr. Ando, pictured with geniuses like Plato, Beethoven, Charlie Chaplain (?), that SOB Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein. OK, so where is Nikolai Tesla? They have that rotten bastard Edison but no Tesla? Ridonk.
After that, we went across the street to Yokohama World Porters. When I first visited World Porters 26 years ago, the first floor was a giant import foods grocery store. It’s now a multinational food court with Indian curry, Vietnamese pho, and so on. I had a Hawaiian style avocado hamburger.
The floors upstairs consist of a typical shopping mall. There’s a Village Vanguard there! (I madea post about Village Vanguard on my Greg’s Life section.) Look at the neat video game stuff! And as always, there are handmade displays made by employees. Thus, each of these stores have their own unique displays. I bought a Pac-Man keychain for my car.
So after shopping and eating, we decided to head home. Here is Landmark Tower, standing tall in the early evening sky. It was a nice day.
