Bangkok Kitchen

The place we went to have our dinner was Bangkok Kitchen in Ginza.

The entrance to Bangkok Kitchen in Ginza.

It is a Thai restaurant, which also has branches in other parts of Tokyo like Shinjuku and Akasaka. We were introduced to this restaurant by WinD's classmate, Takashi Yamaguchi who works part-time in this restaurant. He is actually a half-Japanese-Thai because his Dad is a Japanese, while his Mom comes from Thailand.

However, one thing that made the three of us clicked almost immediately is the fact that the way he communicate is nowhere near a Japanese. In fact, he doesn't really like the way how Japanese who often tend to be over-courteous on a subject although it is just a very common thing.

Contemporary interior decoration in the restaurant.

A perfect ambiance to have a meal.

"When something tastes bad, just say it in a polite way; why should we still wanna lie about it and say it tastes great?", was one of his line that made me smiling silently, in agreement.

Since he works in this restaurant, we gave the responsibility of ordering the food to Takashi because we believed he knows what are the nice recommended food there. All the workers in the restaurant except the Japanese boss speak both Japanese and Thai. Listening to the native speaking in Thai is certainly different than listening to the local Thai speaker in Malaysia, because I notice the native Thai speak in a more polite and softer tone.

I wonder if the spoons in Thailand are bended like this.

I have listened to my grandma, Mom and aunts who speak Thai to each other occasionally since I was young, so I can roughly understand them. I took this chance to eavesdrop the conversation between Takashi and his co-workers and then translated it to WinD haha. To be honest, Takashi looked kinda impressed when he noticed that I translated his conversation correctly haha. While waiting for the food to be served, we chatted a little bit. Soon after wards, the restaurant was slowly packed with customers, mostly Japanese.

Okay, get ready for the orgasmic food pictures.

Paoh Peay Sod (Fresh spring rolls filled with shrimp, pork and herb, lettuce) - ￥950.

Pad Pakbung (Stir fried morning glory) - ￥1,050.

Tom Yam Kung (Spicy shrimp soup with coriander and herbs) - ￥1,600.

Poo Pad Phong Karee (Stir fried crab with yellow curry powder) - ￥1,350.

Since Takashi works in this restaurant, we were served a special desert which usually only available when we order a course meal. I am not very sure of its name but it is boiled sweet potato, topped with coconut milk.

Ohh, did I mention that this desert was a service and we weren't charged for it.

A very simple desert, but it tasted great.

Our group picture, taken by the waitress in the restaurant who counted "nueng, song, sam" (one, two, three) before pressing on the shutter haha.

But there is more to come. The workers who dine in the restaurant are given ten percent discount, which means the dinner for the three of us that night was less than ￥4,500. Take into account that the restaurant is located in the middle of Tokyo metropolitan, and it serves foreign dishes, I guess that is quite cheap for a dinner for three.

We left the restaurant at six to visit to one of the must-visit-spot in Tokyo. Where would that be?

Walkabout At Ginza

From Ice Bar Tokyo, our next stop was Ginza, since it is located just around that area.

Chiba Station, where we stopped to take the train to Tokyo.

That red dog, Chiba-khun is the mascot for the National Sports Festival that Chiba is hosting next year.

But first, we went to shop for new cloths earlier that day, as we are going to such a high class place like Ginza.

Haha, actually it wasn't true that we went to look for new cloths just because we are going to Ginza. It was just a random thing that in the end, we got ourselfs a pair of hoodie each.

Making payments at the cashier.

We are now ready to go to Ginza haha wtf.

Ginza is known as an upscale area of Tokyo with numerous department stores, boutiques, restaurants and coffeehouses. It is recognized as one of the most luxurious shopping districts in the world (a kin to New York City's Fifth Avenue). Many upscale western-fashion clothing flagship stores are located here. Prominent ones are Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci (taken from Wikipedia).

In other words, Ginza is the Petaling Street of Tokyo, minus the fake goods from Golok and of course, the pirated pornographic CDs.

It does not require an expert to tell you that you have stepped into Ginza because once you are there, you would notice the stores are just different than other parts of the city. One square meter of the brown building of Kyukyodo, dubbed as the most expensive land in Japan in Ginza 4-Chome can fetch up more than one million ringgit. Crazy, right? Another thing that distinguish the area from the rest is that there were so many luxurious cars - Mercedes and BMW are so common there; it is like you spotting Perodua Kancil in KL haha. I can say that for every hundred meters we walk, we would come across one of these cars.

I mean Mercedes and BMW, not Kancil-ler haha.

This is also an area where you would spot a lot of foreigners, whom mostly are tourists. It is no doubt that the stuff sold here are beyond normal people's standard. I am not saying the stuff here are for the abnormal people-lah, but you get what I mean, right? Nevertheless, I can proudly boast that I bought something from Ginza.

Red bean butter bun from a bakery.

It has red bean paste with sweet cream inside the crispy crust.

Haha, but actually I bought something else, and not just this bun. My belt has worn out for quite a while already, so I got a new belt and I confirmed with WinD a few times because I thought we saw the price wrongly. Who knows right, maybe we saw a few zero digits less, or the decimal point at the wrong place lol.

I only realise that I did not take much pictures of the stores in Ginza, because we spent more time snapping pictures away there haha.

Like camwhoring by a "no smoking" signboard haha.

In front of Kokichi Mikimoto face, a Japanese entrepreneur and adopter of the Mise/Nishikawa technique for production of spherical cultured pearls.

Or even on the street haha.

Okay-lah, enough of my vain pictures haha. Although I didn't get to buy the expensive goods there, taking picture at the place is still better than nothing, right? At least the pictures will cost more than usual haha. Back to some normal-looking pictures.

Halloween is around the corner; these pumpkins are imported from US.

Cute keychains made of leather, but too pricey >.<

When people do not have kids, they adopt dogs as their companion. These two dogs kept on barking at WinD when he went near them haha.

Even in such modern district, Japanese women in kimono can still be spotted.

It is just a steel cover for the fire hydrant, but they still cannot get away from their kawaii-ism.

Walking around Ginza alone took us almost three hours. Without realising it, we had skipped our lunch and by six, we decided to have an early dinner before heading to the next destination. WinD asked his Thai friend to join us for dinner at somewhere which I will reveal in the next post.

While waiting for his friend, who stays in Kanagawa, Tokyo, we went to a nearby convenience store to grab some snacks and that is when I was introduced to something new. It is actually nothing special, but I guess I was too jakun not to know about the existence of this thing until now haha. There is this machine that they call it multi-copy machine, where you can insert your memory card or thumb drive to it and print our photo instantly. Of course, it is possible to do other services like photocopying and scanning.

If I am not mistaken, such service is available in Malaysia too, although the places where you can do it are quite limited.

We made the photos printed as postcard to be sent back haha.

I am sure there will be still a lot of stuff to be discovered from now onwards, since I will be moving from a kampung to a city haha.