Took some time out to visit an outlet mall in Machida called Grandberry Mall. Have only been to one outlet mall on my previous visit to Los Angeles and was my first time to visit one in Japan.
Zooming ahead in time in late afternoon to have some yummy Cold Stone Creamery made by a rather yummy young lady who asked her comrades to sing for us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypJkq63Ihrs
Zooming back in time - making our way by car to Machida. About a 40 min drive - took the Tomei highway.
Arrival at Grandberry. The mall was located on a hill which had a nice view of the surrounding mountains - forgot to take a pic.
Some folks singing at the entrance.
Reminds me of a shopping district in Santa Monica(?) LA.
This chap was doing a robot dance for a few hours.
Very peaceful sunny Sunday afternoon.
I don't think I've seen so many dogs in one place - there were dogs everywhere!
The mall was filled with dogs of all shapes and sizes with all sorts of clothing and styling.
Folks traveling by train can get off at Minami Machida on the Denen Toshi line - you can get there directly from Shibuya.
A dog guards its masters belongings - or maybe a bag filled with its own poo.
Some green curry for lunch - 2,300 yen for the both of us.
I remember there being a MontBell in Seattle as was pleasantly surprised to find one in the mall - will be getting our sporting stuff from there from now on.
Some cool time pieces. Been looking for a time piece that I can stick on my armor as I loose track of time without my wrist watch.
This is FrancFranc - a Zakka [雑貨] store that sells life style bits n pieces - necessities around the house and items to enrich ones life. One of wifey's dream is to have her own Zakka store.
A lot of what FrancFranc have in stock has been imported from outside of Japan and this is what my wife wants to do too. Many Japanese folks love stuff thats been imported - just like Kaldi that I talked about the other day.
Some interesting room corner shelves that may make nice figure displays. Would look nice in glass with a light at the top.
And this is what that lovely young lady made for us - 600 yen.
Comme Ca Du Mode is one of the largest apparel chain stores in Japan who do a load of cool black stuff similar to what you may find in ZARA.
I just tried to look for their official site and learned that the CEO of the Comme Ca Du Mode is against having an official website and up until this day they don't have a web presence.
Comme Ca Du Mode have of late also been doing a load of Zakka too. Here we see the different color variations of the popular Japanese transparent brolly.
Mirror cunningly disguised as a block of poo.
Stocking up on some clothes from Comme Ca - thought I'd try black for a change again.
There is a store dedicated to dogs at the mall. Here we see some k9ers getting some grooming treatments.
This dog was so cute!
Dog t-shirts.
A buyer about to make a choice.
And here are the prices of the puppies - the girls in pink, boys in blue. The most expensive being the girl costing 378,000 yen (4942 USD). Our neighbors got a dog recently and told us of how they needed to take it for an operation costing something like 300,000 yen - which meant that their plans to get a new wide screen TV went out the window.
Does buying/owning a dog in your neck of the woods cost an arm and a few toes?
There is a poll embedded in this article.
There is a poll embedded in this article.
No figure stores though.
Filling up on some Vietnamese food before heading back home.
Chicken Pho.
Dinner for two at 3,000 yen.
Stopping off at Gap on the way.
In a move to get people out n about to spend their money, discounts are in effect for using the highways. What would usually cost us 700 yen today cost only 500 yen. There are other discounts including the 1,000 yen to use as much as you want in a day - meaning that you can drive from Tokyo to Osaka and it will only cost 1,000 yen which would have cost much more before.
This is where you go "Oh Sheeeeee-it" if you take the wrong turn.
The curved sound barrier thingys line a lot of the highway when it passes through residential areas.
Stuck in traffic for a bit.
And our loot for the day. 3 black tops for me and a change of style with brown trousers n t-shirt. Wifey nabs cute training stuff from the Adidas store.
That reminds me - many moons ago I was given a bootleg bag that had the Adidas logo with the word "Adidang" on it.
