This morning we did some house keeping and exchanged our JR tickets for JR passes and got tickets for the bus to Fiju-Q at Shinjuku station. The station was an eye opener, it was the biggest and busiest station I've ever seen by far, so overwhelming!
After passing by a Hooters, and me chickening out after wanting to go in, our next stop was Mohumohu Owl Cafe, which took us a little bit to find because it was on level 5 of a building and wasn't easily visible from the street. Our first impression when we walked in and as we were paying ($1500 + $200 for feeding each) was a bit upsetting because the owls were chained by their feet to their posts. But after speaking with the host, feeding and getting to know the owls it was pretty clear that they were quite happy.
The host really loved the owls (he taught us the word Kawaii which means cute), and was quite excited to watch us feed them, and giggled every time they did something cute. He was really gentle with them and the owls seemed pretty chilled with him.
Feeding them was really fun but I got a bit grossed out by what they were eating which was mystery bits of chicken. We used tweezers to pick bits appropriately sized to the owl we were currently feeding which meant looking through the bits and breaking them up if they needed to be smaller. I'm actually getting a bit queazy even thinking about it, but it was just so cute watching the owls gently take the meat from the tweezers that it was definitely worth the gross out factor! The grossest bit was something that looked like cherry tomatoes but clearly wasn't (gag).
The host made it a really fun experience, and ramped things up for us as we were there for longer. At first we patted the owls (with one finger, gently, only on the head), then we got to feed them, then we got to hold them on our hands, then our shoulders, and then he demonstrated them flying.
Lastly we got to pick our favourite owl by placing a sticker from the top of our included drink on their photo. My favourite was the older, chilled, big owl. He was just so cool with everything, and would fall asleep when you patted his head.
We stopped for some frozen yoghurt (happiest moment of Amy's life) on the way to the beautiful Isetan shopping center. Being the theme of our experience in Tokyo, it was the biggest and most luxurious shopping center I've ever seen. We tried looking up what local brands might be interesting, but got lost in the sea of international designers so we gave up pretty quickly and grabbed lunch at the level 7 food court.
Andrew and I headed out on our own at night time to the Tokyo metropolitan government building to check out the (free) views from the level 45 observation deck, and on the way back we got some relatively healthy bibimbap from a Korean place close to our apartment.
What an amazing city! Tomorrow we have a busy day starting off with the fish markets.
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