Day 81: Dogs, Terrace House Spotting And... 3am Bowling?!

Well today had it all – cute dogs, Mizuki from Terrace House, all you can drink wine and bowling.

It was a nice day so we decided to walk to Yoyogi Park from our apartment. It's a bit of a walk but it's nice to check out other areas and stalk cute dogs sitting outside supermarkets. 

Like this sad looking fellow.

And this guy!

I love going to Yoyogi Park. It's kind of like a Tokyo version of Centennial Park in Sydney.

We just so happened to come across a dog park. Here they divide the sections into dog sizes so that dogs of the same weight can play with each other. And, as hoped for, most of the dogs were wearing clothes.

Like this little jerk who tried to pee on my shoes.

Everyone was out enjoying the sunshine. I am trying to forget that winter is just around the corner. *shudder*

After the park we tried to go to Afuri in Harajuku but the line was stupidly long. I don't understand why it was so long considering there are quite a few other Afuri branches around Tokyo now. We decided to skip Afuri and try and find something else for lunch. 

Which led us to...

Lattest in Omotesando! I'd just watched the Terrace House episode that showed where Mizuki worked and we completely by chance happened to walk past it while we were trying to find me some lunch. We acted like we were interested in the coffee and peeked our heads in to see if she was working. SHE WAS!!! So in we went and ordered coffee from Mizuki (in the green). I was fanning out but tried to play it cool.

I'm not sure how good a job we were doing at playing it cool.

Here is a ginger latte that Mizuki made JUST FOR ME.

I decided to wait until I was finished before embarrassing myself and asking for a photo with her. She seemed completely unfazed by the whole thing and even had lipstick on hand for the photo. Now that's a pro. 

And look at my dorky, overexcited face. Ugh. And to think that was the best of about 12 photos Adam took.

We had plans to meet or friends So and his girlfriend Tiia for drinks in Yoyogi Uehara and we had some time to kill so wandered slowly from Omotesando to dinner. If you look closely at this picture you can see a crazy cute dog in the window looking thoughtfully out of the window. What are you thinking about, little guy?

Adam now goes into every liquor store in search of whisky. I find these large bottles of whisky scary and incredible.

We walked past a fugu restaurant. I enjoy how mindless they look.

We had plans to eat at a gyoza restaurant in Yoyogi Uehara but the wait was too long so we went to this kushikatsu restaurant to line our stomachs before all you can drink wine.

This kushikatsu restaurant is a whole lot of fun and super cheap. And when you order a highball they give you some die to throw and if you get a particular number you get your highball for free or half price. The place is called Kushikatsu Tanaka and it's a whole bunch of fun.

Believe it or not, this place is family friendly. There was a family next to us where the kids where pouring chocolate sauce all over their banana kushikatsu.

So and Tiia, the dangerous duo.

Team kushikatsu!

And this is why we were in Yoyogi Uehara. Esola does all you can drink wine for ¥2000 with no time limit. You go up and pour your own wine from a selection of apparently 50 (though I didn't see 50 when I went up there). It's a wonderfully dangerous place. 

There was a group of Japanese people next to us who were so excited about us being foreigners. After a few wines the girl most excited about us got the confidence to talk to us and said she really wanted to meet foreigners but she didn't know how to. We told her to get on Tinder! 

A taste of Australia in the 90s. Sweet chilli and sour cream.

Pacing ourselves.

We thought that Esola was open until 3am or thereabouts but we made a mistake and they closed at 12am which meant that we spent so much time pacing ourselves that we ended up only drinking a couple of glasses of wine each! We have to go back and make up for it.

When we were ejected from the bar we decided to fulfil Adam's goal of going bowling in Japan. It was about 2am and bowling was well and truly still going. It's one of the things I love about Japan – things are open late and you can do something silly like go bowling at any time of the day.

I suck at bowling. I just can't seem to get the hang of it which is super frustrating. 

Tiia and So probably giving me encouragement because I was so terrible at the sport.

After we finished bowling (yes, I lost by far) we needed some ramen to complete the night. We ended up at a place down the road which did some pretty fantastic ramen.

Ramen makes everything better.

Whew lawdy, what a big day. It was time to sleep for about 24 hours.