spacious cars                              

 no street signs

In addition to being the road to the Meiji Shrine, the road has some of the most amazing contemporary architecture almost all for high end fashion houses.

                                                              

 the critic

                                                   

                              

                                    

                                                 

a department store

                    

                             

sashimi

                             grilled fish    

 fish stew

                         

                                   

Everyone was photographing this little girl being taught how to pray at a Shinto Shrine:

                                                          

Then it was off to do some shopping for Christmas. There were a lot of decorations even though Christmas isn’t a holiday in Japan.

Queuing for the women’s washroom is the same everywhere it appears. This took 20 minutes out of my life, not to mention the tolerance of my bladder!

                                          

                                    

More architectually interesting buildings for fashion and jewellery shops:

                                

                                              

We walked to Midtown Mall for more shopping and more sights along the way:

Robin, Allie and Sidney shopped for gifts while Scott and I shopped for groceries at a store that had a lot of stuff you’d never see in Calgary:

like whole squid

A closer view of the Santa tree:

We were getting too tired to wander for a restaurant, so we ate at the mall where there was a partial view of the light display in the gardens:

Dinner was one of the more expensive we’ve had with draft beer at $8 and rice, miso soup and tsukemono needing to be ordered separately at $8 each, but the other protein dishes were also around $8. You could have a reasonable meal for $24 along with a good view, but we managed to spend more. Some people had a lot of birru, but not me, I didn’t want to get into another wait for the bathroom, or toire, as they call them here.

amuse of cucumber and miso

 thick miso soup

chicken karaage 

 salmon

another chicken dish

 pork stew

eggplant and pork fried as a sandwich

Returned to the apartment to wrap gifts and make Christmas Morning Lifesaver (also known as Best of Bridge’s Christmas Morning Wife Saver, but I changed the sexist expection that the wife is doing all the cooking). Robin and Allie put the dish together. It goes in the fridge overnight and gets cooked in the morning. One of the ingredients below, for which you need no translation: