Day 20: Bread Festival

Today, I decided to head to Setagaya, southwest of Shibuya, to check out the Setagaya Bread Festival. In the first place, how could I not check out a celebration of bread when I eat so many pastries. But there was also the provacative flyer, in English for some reason.

Originally from https://setagaya-panmatsuri.com/

The festival itself was pretty nice even though it was a little rainy. Some of the stands had pretty crazy lines but the majority were pretty manageable! There was also a section for coffee, a section for bread-themed goods, and a live band performing!

I ended up getting an apple tart, a melonpan, and a curry/cheese puff. When I checked the expiration date, I realized I had to eat them all by tomorrow. Oh the tragedy of having to eat pastries today!

One other kinf of interesting thing I saw while there was that there were a couple of guys who had the job of like soaking up the standing water on the ground with giant sponges and then bucketing the water away. Really useful even though it seems like it would be not so fun as a job.

After checking out the festival, I decided to head to Shibuya to check out a few things on my todo list. I ended up riding the bus a few stops which was way easier than I expected and even had the buttons to push to make sure that the bus stopped. Once I got off the bus, I stumbled onto a fun tunnel that had a bunch of anti-graffiti signs up. But ironically, the only places in the entire tunnel that were marked up were the signs themselves!

Eventually, I got to Shibuya and headed to Miyashita Park. I had first heard about it in a YouTube video by an architect and they had said it was their favorite rooftop park in Tokyo. While I did think it was cool, I think I've definitely been to others that I prefer (IDR the names but if interested I can try to figure it out later).

The park itself was situated on top of a mall, which seems pretty common to me. But what was uncommon was that the park had interesting sculptures and even a climbing wall!

Setting this up is probably a real hassle

Since it was raining, the climbing wall was closed. I'm actually unsure if it's normally open or if it's one of those things that they have to say they have it but then it's never operational?

There is padding, so I'm inclined to believe it does get used

Before leaving, I also made sure to do a little train watching. Who doesn't like to see a couple of J-TREC E235 series trains chugging along? Just kidding, I didn't know that until I looked it up just now and that might still be wrong.

But the top train is a Yamanote line train at least, so E235 could be right

After that, I had intended to check out LOST, a bar ran by Youtuber "Abroad in Japan". There was obviously a line when I got there, and I decided that I didn't want to wait since the line seemed kind of long and I'm not a socializing at a bar type in the first place. It's nice to see that his bar is doing well though!

Since it was raining, I decided I would just go home. I had almost decided to go play some crane games, but managed to stave off the temptation this time.