Hanabi means firework, literally the kanji means "fire flower". Pretty appropriate don't you think? Taikai means "big meeting" or in this case a "Hanabi Taikai" is a Fireworks Display Festival.

I had been wanting to have a real Japanese Hanabi Taikai experience for a while but you have to plan ahead.  I had been twice before but both times I got their late or the people I was going with didn't want to deal with the crowds and so I had either a far far view, like more than a mile away, or I just barely had a view at all. So, this year I was determined to try to do it right.

Kristen McQuillin has put up a project celebrating the Yamanote Line which is the main train that runs around Tokyo.

Looking for a Chinese food fix and don't mind paying for it check out Bai Wan Zhu Kuai Lou.

My friend invited me to this little out of the way place.

We had the 7 course dinner which I think was only around 3500yen, a typical price for dinner in Tokyo

It's a kind of new style Japanese cuisine, all of it good.

I've been searching Tokyo for some decent Boba tea (zen zhu nai cha) for 3 years now and I've finally found some. It's just off Takeshita Dori in Harajuku. If you walk down Takeshita Dori almost all the way to Meiji Dori there is a little side area on the right with about 25 very small, hardly more than a window, shops. It's inside there called HelloTea. Order a milk tea and make sure you ask for tapioca to complete it. 330 yen.

When I was going to school in Shinokubo, the Korean town of Tokyo, the teachers seemed to pretty much eat at Incheon, a Korean restaurant nearly every single day.

Good and not good noodles.

Until recently I didn't really make a whole lot of food at home here in Japan. I mostly ate out or bought take home (a bento is only 500yen). Normally I generally only cook when it's for someone else but now that I'm between jobs I've been trying to save money and one way is to make my own meals. And so, even though I've see these places around I never really paid attention but now I've finally had a reason to notice that if you need cheap groceries then you should find your nearest Niku no Hanamasa.

A few months ago a new building, the Marunouchi Building, opened to much fanfare. But, looking at what was there I wasn't much interested.  It's a building directly outside Tokyo Station.  It has 5 floors of shopping and 4 floors of restaurants but from what I could tell it was not all that different from any other shopping center.  The building itself is not impressive unlike say the buildings at Roppongi Hills or Shiodome. But, they have this wicked cool exhibit that a friend told me I must see so we went over and he showed me.