Tokyo Redux
Trip Start
Aug 24, 2010
1
6
Trip End
Sep 01, 2010
Tokyo, Kanto, Japan
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
After we gathered our bag from luggage storage at Tokyo station and checked in to the hotel, we decided to check out Roppongi, which I guess used to be one of the seedier areas of Tokyo, but as undergone something of a Renaissance. Before I left, one of my co-workers who is on exchange from Tokyo had given me some restaurant recommendations, complete with maps and specific menu items to order, which was awesome of him. One of these was in Roppongi, so we checked it out. It was an Udon noodle joint, and it was awesome. The noodles came in bowls the size of football helmet. I got the curry noodles with a pork cutlet and Munro got the regular miso noodles without meat. They were both fantastic, and we really enjoyed it.
After that we went to a bar near the subway station for a drink. After searching fruitlessly for another recommended bar for 45 minutes and really working up a good sweat (Tokyo is so hot.), we gave up on the Lonely Planet map and headed home to get some sleep. The LP book has really led us some good places, but its maps are very frustrating to use. Hardly any of the streets have street names, so it's like orienteering or something to try to find where your going. Add to that many streets in Tokyo aren't marked in English anyway, and it can be very challenging to find your way.
Tuesday we headed out to see a bunch of Tokyo highlights that we hadn't hit up yet. We started at Meiji Jingu, which is a huge shrine built to honor Emperor Meiji and his Empress, who ruled at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th and had a lot to do with bringing Japan into the modern age. After that we walked through Harajuku, which had a lot of cool shopping streets and some really cool architecture. Then we went to Ginza, where we walked through the Sony showroom, which is a super-high tech spot where they show off stuff that's not even for sale yet. They had a lot of 3D tv's, which we tried out and which were pretty amazing. They were all showing nature shows, which looked amazing, but I think I might really enjoy watching a live sporting event in 3D. But I'm not sure it would be so easy to get used to wearing 3D glasses in your house. I'm assuming there's enough marketing muscle and R&D behind 3D TV that it will eventually catch on, but it's not as much of a leap forward as HD was. We also saw the Tokyo convention center, designed by Rafeal Vinoly, who is a famous architect with a design studio in NYC. It was really cool, though a little empty on this Tuesday afternoon. After that Munro had a Gooodness Burger (vegi burger), which was delicious. Japan has at least two burger chains that we noted whose main products are burgers and coffee. To me, these things are not natural partners, but both Mos Burger (motto: Japanese Fine Burger and Coffee) and Freshness seem to be doing well.
That night we headed to Shinjuku to eventually check out the Golden Gai, which is a cool area of tiny streets and tiny bars. But first we had to get dinner. We wandered around the bustle and lights of Shinjuku looking for a place we could agree on. There is such a wide variety of Japanese food, and so much of it is completely foreign to us, like we've never seen it before, that it can be hard to find a place when you are very hungry. We were scheduled to meet up with some of Munro's friends at 845, so around 8 we got desperate, and I just forced us to go into a place that had little mesh grills on the tables in front of each pair of dinners that I thought looked cool.
This may not have been the best choice, as when we got inside and I took a closer look at the menu we realized that they specialized in offal (a word I learned on Top Chef that, according to wikipedia is "a culinary term used to refer to the entrails and internal organs of a butchered animal"). The menu included the first, third, and fourth cow's stomachs (curiously not the second, though - I guess that would be gross), cow's large and small intestines, pig intestines, chicken hearts, and even pig rectum. They also had some normal stuff like chicken and steak. In order to make sure I'd have something I could eat and to have an adventure, I ordered the chicken and the 3rd cow stomach, which both came out raw for me to cook on the grill. Munro ordered cabbage, cucumbers and edamame.
I put the first piece of 3rd cow's stomach on the grill and let it cook up. It came out marinated in a sauce. When I was sure it was good and cooked, I popped it in my mouth. Initially, as I chewed the sauce out of it, it tasted good. The sauce was sweet and peppery. However, the cow's 3rd stomach is extremely chewy, so after a while, the sauce was all gone, but the 3rd stomach was still very much in my mouth. And it started to taste a little like a barnyard smells. But I continued to chew until it was macerated enough to swallow. Let's just saw that 3rd cow's stomach is not my favorite. I only could take down two pieces. The chicken, however, was incredible - juicy and delicious. Munro enjoyed grilling her cabbage, as well.
After that we met up with Rachel and her sister Adrienne. Meeting up with someone in a strange city without a cell phone is a minor miracle anytime you pull it off, so we were pretty happy about that. Then we wandered around for another 15 minutes looking for the Golden Gai, which we finally found. It was really awesome. A series of tiny alleys with very small buildings on either side with bars on two floors, generally. Each bar was tiny. Some could seat maybe 2 or 3 people. The largest could not fit 10 at once. They all had different cover charges and different rules. Some will not serve anyone who is not a regular and others welcomed in tourists. We found a cool one that had three older Japanese people at the bar and we sat along the back wall (about 2 feet behind the people at the bar). We had a few beers there and talked to the regulars, who all seemed surprised that we would want to come to Japan. After that we found another bar and started talking to a couple there who we had previously seen walk into the random offal restaurant we were at. Turns out that Rachel and Adrienne had previously seen them getting a drink at the Park Hyatt and they live about 14 blocks from us in the city and are Columbia/Barnard graduates. It was quite a coincidence. They gave us some tips about going to the fish market and we gave them our Kyoto map with our notes on it, which will hopefully be helpful to them.
We stayed out past when the subway closed, so we took an expensive cab back to the hotel around 2ish. We got up at 6am Wednesday to go to the fish market, kicking off the longest day ever that ended when we arrived home about 10pm NYC time, some 29 hours later. The fish market was cool. We saw a lot of things we had never seen before - giant oysters, clams, octopi, eels, sections of 300 lbs tuna. Munro was mainly concentrating on not getting splashed with any fish juices, which was no easy task. Especially when you wore flip flops like she did. All of the workers were wearing knee high rubber boots. It was quite an experience. After that we walked around the Imperial Gardens (got all sweaty again), and then headed to the airport.
On the plane, I has used my miles to get a business class ticket, because it was all that was left, but Munro was back in coach. So we agreed that we would switch halfway through the 12 hour flight. I had never flown international business before, but let me tell you, it is the only way to fly. We had delicious menu options, a wine list, champagne before take-off, extensive movie and tv choices, and, most importantly, a seat that went all the way flat for sleeping.
After enjoying a delicious dinner, a few glasses of wine, and Iron Man 2, I went to sleep for a while. I woke up after about five hours of the flight and told the flight attendant, who I had been speaking with every time she came by, that I was going to head to the back and let my fiance have my seat for the rest of the flight. As I packed my stuff up, she came up to me and told me to just bring her up and we could both stay up there. I asked her if she was sure, and she said yes, so I grabbed Munro and we both enjoyed business the rest of the way, which was sweet and a great way to end an awesome trip. Now we start saving for the next one.
