Tochigi City ~Shopping March 27, 2012

Picking up Valarie and Kencho this morning to take a road trip with us to Tochigi City to do some shopping.  Again they are waiting outside for our arrival.  When they get in the car we all say our good mornings and start off chatting about our day.  Teresa wants to go to some of her favorite places to shop and mine too.

 As I catch up with the rest of my friends Kencho stops me and reads this sign to me.  No dogs allowed to poop in sidewalk. Now only in Japan would I expect to see a sign like this. LOL

 Teresa directed us to her favorite shop where we were greeted with free cups of fresh made cups of coffee for each of us.  Poor Valarie didn't get to enjoy shopping here as she was fighting her allergies.  Her eyes were swollen an she had the sniffles, along with feeling sick.

Kencho is hungry and so are the rest of us.  Teresa has a card for a new place to eat in Tochigi City called Warabi. Ric and Teresa had eaten there and liked it.   So we are on our way to find this restaurant.

After walking to where we thought the place should be and not finding it we stopped two school girls and showed them the card.  They seemed to know where the place was and walked us all the way to the new place.  Only in Japan would someone go totally out of their way to take time out of their schedule to make sure we all got there.  Thanks to those wonderful girls for being so kind.

I love the designs of animals used to hold up barriers.

We are at the new place to eat and we all took our shoes off and decided to eat in the private rooms that has Japanese seating. We each take our place at the table and the waiter comes and gets our drink orders and explains whats on the menu because it is all written in Japanese. 

Our lunch was delicious.  First we were served steamed vegetables and our drink orders. I had ordered iced coffee and liked the tin glasses that the coffee was served in.

Basil Risotto 

Pumpkin Risotto 

Apple pie and vanilla icecream 

When we were done eating and paid for our food the owner comes out and gives us each a big bag of green olives that are soaking in olive oil.  He told us to let them soak for at least 3 hours. One of the waitresses remembered Teresa from an earlier visit.  She walked us outside and took our picture and then we added her to the photo.  This was absolutely a delicious place to eat.

We are on our way to do some more shopping in Tochigi City.  I still have several things on my list to buy for special people.

I see a shop that sells the samurai boys day dolls.  Once inside the shop my mouth fell to the floor.  Wow lots of very nice boys 
day samurai dolls to look at.  Before I came to Japan for vacation I was wanting to buy boy and girl dolls.  Boy's Day is May 5th so there are stores displaying boys dolls, I think girls day dolls are going to be difficult to find. Japanese display samurai armor inside house to hope that child will grow up strongly like a samurai !!

   

I finally find one I can afford and ask owner to purchase.  He told me it was already sold.  I was very disappointed. He then showed me another doll that looked just like the one I wanted but was bigger.  He told me he would sell to me for almost same price as smaller one.  I told him yes I would buy it for that price.  :-)  He packaged the doll up with very protective material to keep it from breaking during shipment.  Here is a picture of the boy doll I got.

 As we were getting ready to leave store the owner stops us and tells Kencho he can go pick out a carp flag fish that was in a basket.  Kencho ended up picking  the bright orange one which I liked.

  We took the big boxed up samurai doll to the car and started off down the street to another one of our favorite shops. This shop sells handmade baskets and brooms.  I bought a large handmade basket with nice handles for $1800 yen, wow what a great bargain.
I used to basket to carry the rest of the purchases I made that day. 

Only in Japan can you find a drink machine on every corner even in the country.


We are looking for a coffee house to sit down and relax but so far we are not having good luck.  We did find an interesting shop that sold antique furniture.  Boy there were several items I looked at that I just loved.

We have not found a good coffee house so when we finished looking in the antique furniture store we decided on our way home we would stop at Lawsons and get something to drink. I liked this so am sharing with my blog followers.

Later that evening when Teresa dropped me off at Kazue's house I rested then it was time for dinner.  Ate and visited with my host family.  Later Shushumo and brought home a bottle of Japanese wine and together we drank the bottle and talked in English.  What a perfect ending to a perfect day.