Day 70: Coin Game Addiction

Now that we've settled a bit in Tokyo, elements of this thing called "real life" are starting to seep into our holiday lives. I've spent the last few days working on my CV and have been actively trawling LinkedIn and Seek looking for that perfect job. But dinner must be had so we headed out with our Sydney friends to Kokera in Shimokitazawa (the place we went to after all you can drink champagne) for a whole lot of seafood.

The menu was all in Japanese and Google Translate wasn't going to help us this time, but fortunately a waiter there spoke English and when we just asked him to order for us, he couldn't have gotten it more right.

First up, fried fish bones. Could be seen as terrifying and a little creepy but these are amazing. Like seafoody chips with (probably) a whole lot of calcium in them, so they are kind of healthy, right?

Sashimi platter with some kinds of fish I'd never had before.

Asparagus topped with cheese and mushrooms. I appreciate things covered in cheese.

Grilled eggplant – I need to start making this at home.

Avocado with salmon and ikura. Aaaand probably a whole heap of calories thanks to the mayonnaise sauce. Load it onto some crackers and I'm happy.

Deep fried mentaiko to finish. 

Our waiter chose really well. Turns out he was so panicked when we asked him to choose because he was worried we would not eat a lot of the dishes, but we're all pretty open minded and it ended up being awesome. As we were leaving, he asked us where we were from and he was so excited when we said we were from Sydney because he used to live there. In Surry Hills. On Campbell Street. Ha! He used to work at Fujiyama Izakaya for a couple of years. So there you go, small world or something like that.

And now onto my coin game addiction...

I've been playing these god forsaken games for years. If you go into any Japanese gaming centre chances are you'll see a variation of this game. Basically you shoot coins down a slot onto a platform and hope that they will push coins off the bottom platform and into your cup. And that's about it. It's strangely addictive and I managed to recruit some more coin game junkies.

Look at them. Addicted. 

After we dragged ourselves away from the game (also known as "we lost all our money") we headdd downstairs for some classic whack-a-mole themed activities. And with that, we were spent.