Roppongi: Dazzling Lights, Magical Girls and an Infamous Restaurant

After getting back from Studio Ghibli Museum, we still had time to kill and our friend, Kevin Vuong did suggest we visit Roppongi Hills, so we did! First stop was the Mori Tower, a 54 story building built by the building real estate tycoon, Minoru Mori. It's one of the tallest buildings in Tokyo. The tower has Sky Deck, where for a fee of 1,500 yen (roughly USD $15) you get to see a breath taking of Tokyo, best viewed at night. 

I snapped this one where you can see the Tokyo Tower (that resembles Eiffel Tower), where we went on our first day here. 

I hope Godzilla never destroys this city.

Just a couple of hungry and weary gaijins (foreigners) feasting on the view instead...

The fee will always include the entrance fee for whatever exhibit. We were fortunate that this exhibit was of Puella Magi Madoka Magica Reproduced Key Animation Exhibition. This coincided with the release of Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie (Shinpen) and Hangyaku no Monogatari (Rebellion Story). We couldn't take photos of the exhibit, of course which showcased the whole animation process, stills from the movies Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie Part 1 and Hajimari no Monogatari and Eine no Monogatari (Pat 2). There was also a section of some of the inspiration used to create the backgrounds. If you have seen Madoka Magica, you can very well see how different it is from other magical girl anime from the use of their very bizarre trippy backgrounds.  

This is the only part of the exhibit where you can take photos 

of the 1:1 scale of the character Homura, the one who started it all. 

The other 1:1 figures of the Puella Magis were on a make shift stage in the cafe.

I should've brought and worn my own magical girl costume. I already have the anime hair for it. 

We grabbed a couple of literature on the way out. 

As much as I wanted to get some merch from the exhibit gift shop, I knew that they'd be better priced

somewhere in Akihabara's anime manga shops. I opted to just try my luck to get a small keychain from the blind gashapon capsule and luckily, I did get Madoka Kaname! 

When I first read about the artist Takashi Murakami from Wired magazine way back in early 2000s, I fell in love with his work and characters. When Roppongi Hills opened in 2003, Murakami created characters for Roppongi Hills. I mistakenly thought at that time Murakami had an exihibit so while we were on the way there, I was musing about how too many years too late I was to ever get anything Murakami from the gift shop. Lo and behold, they still do carry Murakami merch!!! My heart somersaulted. I finally got the flower cushion for a fairly decent price when they're about $160 to $200 online. Some, you can't even tell if they're genuine. I also bought postcards that I'm hoping to frame.

 Time for some grub! Kevin reminded me months before this trip that we have to go to the Gonpachi restaurant. The restaurant that Quentin Tarantino got the inspiration for the Uma Thurman's character in Kill Bill, Beatrix Kiddo fight scene with the Crazy 88s and Lucy Liu's character, Oren-Ishi-i. The restaurant in the movie was called House of Blue Leaves. 

The place was packed, full of gaijins! It was very lively too. When a customer appears and sits by the waiting area (where I took this photo), all the staff would yell "Irishaimase!" (means "Welcome!") While waiting for our table, they gave us a non-alcoholic welcome drink which was supposed to be a lemonade of some sort except it tasted waaaay better. 

                                                                  The menu cover

This was the view from our seats. We were seated by the bar, where you can see 

your food being prepped.

Gaaah, this was probably one of the best foods I've had in Japan. I didn't expect a whole lot out of this restaurant because I really just wanted to experience coming here to the famous Kill Bill restaurant but the food was surprisingly good. Very good. I am salivating just thinking about it...doesn't help that I'm also looking at this photo...Prices weren't that bad either. For mine and Thad, our bill was about $34.00  oh and most of the servers here speak English which was a welcome change ^_^ 

                                                          Gochisou sama deshita!

  (that's the phrase you say to someone who just served you food, gave you food, treated you to food)

So now we're headed back to our hotel which is about 20 minutes by train from Roppongi.
Till next time, holly up!