I set out for a little single malt shop in Mejiro, only to find it is closed on Sundays. There was a bottle I wanted to pick up before the consumption tax hike.. Anyway, so I promptly changed my destination to Chocolatier Inamura Shozo in Nippori.
The shopping street in Yanaka
I should have gotten off at Nippori, but maybe still rattled by the Mejiro shock, I got off at Nishi-Nippori. On the walk to Nippori I came across a pretty lively shopping street. Lots of people and all kinds of events going on, but I just walked on through.
Chocolatier Inamura Shozo
From the outside, not much seems to have changed.
Since I came alone, I kept it light and ordered a cup of hot chocolate and a slice of cake.
Namida no Shizuku (teardrop)
A cake with a pretty shape and a fun name. The chocolate itself was fine, but they add a bit of black tea as the flavor accent, which makes it a little different from your usual chocolate cake. Personally, I preferred the Dome Chocolat with its fresher, tangy taste.
Chocolat chaud
Not too rich, with a smooth, mellow taste. It went nicely with the cake.
The cake was a miss, but I consoled myself that at least my curiosity was settled, and headed to Akihabara.
The streets of Akihabara in spring
The maid touts seemed to have thinned out a bit and more restaurants seemed to have opened up, but other than that not much had changed.
A back street
There were really a lot of people out. I could feel that spring had arrived.
And an impulse buy..
A 250GB SSD that normally goes for around 200,000 won was selling for around 130,000 won with the spacer included, so I snapped it up. My hard drive has been running out of space lately and I really needed it, so it was a great shopping opportunity. It turns out Samsung had just started cutting prices aggressively worldwide, and Akihabara was quick to start the discount. Two or three days later it went on sale on Amazon US, and not long after that the price dropped in Korea too. There were bigger SSDs as well, but the price of gear like this crashes over time, so the smart buy is only as much capacity as you need, when you need it. Besides, there still is not a decent portable Thunderbolt enclosure out there, so there is not much of a way to manage a large drive efficiently anyway.
Now that I have a fast external drive, I can play the big games that were hard to install on the laptop, but with less time for games these days, the whole reason I bought it has kind of evaporated, which is a bit of a shame. I have already given up on Diablo, and I should at least play some Hearthstone, but there is no time.
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