The Special Birthday Krispy Kreme Tower

It's the 15th of August, and it's Annalisa's birthday. Needless to say we've gone out to eat.

We are in Ebisu looking for the Monsoon Cafe...
It has lovely Moroccan looking lights and a dark wooden decor. Unfortunately, however, the entire restaurant is open out on the the street. This wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't so sticky and humid. But it's actually not too bad inside, their A/C must be on on full blast...stinks of inefficiency if you ask me...

Anyway, we get down to the important business of ordering the 1st round of food and beverages...then the second and third...and some more drinks please...

We then try and ask for a large plate from the waitress, who comes back with a small dish...errrr, we asked for a BIG plate...She heads back to 'have another look' then after a while she comes back and says they doesn't have one. We explain that anything flat and reasonably large will do, then try and point out that we want to build a tower out of the 2 dozen Krispy Kremes that Greg had to queue in the blazing sun for half an hour for at Shinjuku. The waitress looks a bit shifty and tells us that we can't eat things that we brought from a different shop in the restaurant. We're a bit deflated. But we persist, and eventually wrangle it out of her that if we pay a 'cakeage' fee (like corkage but for cake) we are allowed to have the KKs and eat them.

A CAKEAGE FEE?!?!?!? yeah...well...I thought it was a bit mean of them. It was a birthday for god's sake... Anyhoo, suspiciously, after we agree to pay the cakeage fee, they miraculously manage to produce an absolutely Ma-huuusive plate...dusty though it maybe, Greg immediately works on making it eat-off-able... we then start the construction of the KK tower...

Don't look! You'll spoil the 'surprise'...


ok... so Krispy Kremes are rather compressible...

...take a deep breath...


...hmm... I think we start eating them... it looks like it's going to fall over...even with the cunning chopstick reinforcement column in the center...


A very pleased looking birthday girl avec Krispy Kreme...

Krispy Kremes...

As far as I know, there is only ONE Krispy Kreme shop in Tokyo, let alone Japan, and it's in Shinjuku. It permanently has horrendous queues outside, and you can always tell you're close to the place, as there are increasingly more people carrying Boxes of the things away from the place...

Anyway, on fateful night, I met Annalisa and Rei in Shinjuku...and after some dinner we were craving some dessert...a meal just isn't complete with out it, and the restaurant we were at had a rather pitiful selection. But that's besides the point, we're in Shinjuku for once and so we totter off to Krispy Kremes...and it's already 10pm, but we're convinced it's still open because we can see a steady stream of people walking in the opposite direction with the boxes of a dozen of the things...so we power on...and sure enough when we get there there's a long and winding queue.

The following is the general gist of the conversation which followed:

'that's just ridiculous! who on earth would queue that long for a doughnut!?'

...' well we would'

hmmmm...'but it's just a doughnut!'

'but they're Krispy Kreeeemes'

'just LOOK at the queue!'

'But, KRISPY KREEEEEMES!!!!'

'good grief...look, people are being turned away by the guard!'

'noooooooo! it' can't be shut NOW!'

'hey... you know what, i could climb this railing... no problem...'

'go on then'

we skulk round into the shadows a little more and check that the guard isn't looking

[whispers] '...here, hold my bag will you?'

I leg it over the railing...and Rei follows...Annalisa due to her skirt decides it's better not to do a risque manoeuvre over the railing, takes our bags and waits for us on a wall nearby...Rei and I scoot to the back of the queue as subtly as possible while trying to stifle giggling.

in awe of our own cunningness, we have an increasingly loud and animated conversation mainly about doughnuts... we then slowly come to realise that the guard had actually been turning people away because the queue stretched back around the corner of the krispy kreme building...and was acting as a break in the queue not marking the end of it... so not only had we jumped a railing, but also a good section of a queue. But it's okay, because we already had the last free doughnut from lady giving them out to all the patiently waiting people...which i promptly ferried over to Annalisa...whilst the lady went to get more supplies for us and the people that we had unintentionally queue-jumper and were filling up the space behind us...

In the meantime we carried on our loud conversation to make a point that we were foreign...because the guard was glancing us evils at regular intervals...if they knew Rei was actually Japanese and fluent they would have been over like a flash to get us out of there. The gaijin ploy worked wonderfully.

The lady made it back with a full tray of glazed and gave us another doughnut, but we asked for another one, in English until she gave us one...all be it reluctantly. you're only meant to have one each apparently, but Rei did her amazingly convincing impression of an American on holiday with no Japanese ability and we got it.

there was then some contemplation of the benefits of waiting in the queue to get to the front to buy a dozen...weighed up with the fact we just had a free doughnut and were pretty much sorted...Sod it, we've had a FREE doughnut and we're good. So, we went to starbucks and had a coffee instead.