Eating and Food shopping in Ginza and Asakusa

Today I was all around Tokyo. When I had the chance to taste something or buy edible stuff for later, I used the time well.

Since people here are not very comfortable using English language, they often help themselfs with printed cards because not everywhere are menus in English available. The good old way of communicating with hands and feet mostly gets good results, sometimes a bit of surprises.
You have to get used to the not countable selfservice automats all over the place. One thing for sure, as long as you have cash you wont die of thurst or hunger. I wonder what they do with billions of plastic bottles and cans. You can choose hot or cold beverages from the same machine. And they are tasty! As long as there is a machine that sells beverages, you have a chance to get rid of all your empty bottles or cans. All other trash needs to stay with you until you reach your hotel. No waste baskets on streets.
Now for the food. In the hip and trendy Ginza city part of Tokyo, I was there during lunch time. So many eateries are presenting food from all parts of the world. But I was looking for a bit more traditional way and went off the main road into one if the smaller streets. I found a tiny kitchen with seats for just 10 people, they had several soup dishes on the Japanese menu. No English menu and no tourist in sight.  Fun is, you must order and pay your order at a machine that gives you a ticket, which you give to the waitperson/cook. The machine is Japanese only, the soup that I ordered was super tasty and I got lucky.

After lunch I went into a big department store and into the lower basement and thought I was in heaven, foodwise.
I bought a couple of great sweet and savoury things and finished with the chocolate ice cream.

This Matcha tea soft ice cream was from a Matcha tea shop in Asakusa. Just off the temple. Now I know what is wrong with my homemade matcha ice cream, I was too stingy to use enough of the tea powder.