Kaitlyn Mah – Page 9 – Where to, Gumshoe?

Okinawa (Day 56): A Japanese American Day in Chatan

April 25, 2016

It was our first day in Okinawa and we didn’t have firm plans on what we were going to do. Last night, we narrowed down what we wanted to see and what we could see, given that we didn’t rent a car. Transportation outside of Naha (which is the main city in Okinawa and where we’re staying) is not very convenient or cheap so if you’re planning on coming to Okinawa and have a lot of plans to do activities outside of the Naha area, renting a car is recommended. We also looked into car rentals but they start at about $90 CAD a day, a bit too much considering our plans here.

Number one on both our lists for Okinawa was to just relax and visit the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium, which is now the second largest in the world (was first before Atlanta’s aquarium opened). After looking at ways to get to the aquarium, we discovered that a round trip bus fare from Naha to the aquarium (which is on the north end of the island and 90km away) would cost more than paying for a tour to take us there. So that’s what we’ll be doing tomorrow.

For today, we decided to head north up the coast of Okinawa to a town called, Chatan. It is about 15km north of Naha and is the most Americanized part of Okinawa (and likely Japan) due to the American military base in the area. There is even an area called “American Village” or Maihama which is an area full of restaurants and shops that are supposed to resemble an American outdoor mall. After reading about this area, it seemed interesting and not like any other place in Japan. In addition to sounding intriguing, it is also my old coworker’s hometown, so that was an added bonus.

We walked to Naha bus terminal and caught bus #28 that headed north on highway 58. Although it’s only about 15 km away, the bus ride felt really long. There is quite a bit of congestion getting out of Naha since it seems like the majority of its residents drive. For about 95% of our ride to Chatan, Tim and I were the only ones on the bus. When we weren’t alone, there was only one other person.

Along the way to Chatan, we passed by many Japanese fast food chain restaurants: Sukiya, Yoshinoya, Mos Burger, CoCo Ichibanya, etc. This time, all these were stand alone restaurants and the majority of them had drive throughs. After being in denser cities for a while, it was interesting to see all these places as restaurants that you would drive to. We also noticed that there were a ton of pachinko parlours and quite large ones at that (they look like casinos). Gambling for cash is illegal in Japan, but they have these pachinko parlours where people play for balls which can be exchanged for tokens at the parlour. The tokens then can be exchanged for cash at a locations outside or around the parlour (sounds complicated). Historically, these pachinko parlours were run by the yakuza and I think the majority still are.

Finally, we knew we had arrived in the Chatan area as we could see the military base along the other side of the road. After about 45 minutes on the bus, our fare was 680 JPY = $7.75 CAD each. Bus fare is determined by where you got on the bus. You take a ticket with a number when you get on, and a screen up front shows the fare corresponding to the number on the tickets so you know how much to pay (the bus driver doesn’t keep track so it’s all honour system). The prices go up as you continue further on the bus route.

We walked towards the American Village area and saw signs for A&W and decided to go there for lunch. A&W has a strong presence in Okinawa and has been here since 1963. Unlike the A&W in Canada, the A&Ws in Okinawa advertise free refills on their drinks. Refills on fountain drinks at fast food restaurants outside of North America is rare, so this was a nice surprise (especially for Tim, who guzzles drinks).

Everything tasted really good and familiar, except the fries were a bit different. After drinking the root beer, it occurred to us that we haven’t had root beer at all since being in Asia. The closest we got was drinking Sarsaparilla in Taiwan. Also, A&W root beer is only available in Okinawa and no other part of Japan. We went to a store that had an “only in Okinawa” souvenir section and cans of A&W were there. I have taken root beer, my favourite soda, for granted.

It was about 27 degrees today and humid. It was overcast for most of the day but when the sun came through the clouds every so often, it was really hot! It was the first time since Kenting that we were wearing shorts and t-shirts. We continued to walk through the American Village towards the coast to see the water and check out Sunset Beach.

We decided to keep walking north on the seawall to see what other beaches we would find. We ended up having to take a slight detour to a strip mall since the seawall didn’t connect the whole way. We spent a fair amount of time in the supermarket since it was the first actual supermarket we have been to in Japan. It felt like we were in a Japanese Safeway. Fruit is still not that cheap here, but avocados are cheap (~$1 CAD each).

Tim spent a lot of time in the instant noodle section and I spent most of my time in the deli (gawking at the cheap and delicious looking sushi) and the snack aisle. And of course, the majority of items are cheaper there than it is at convenience stores. The grocery store was filled with American Moms grocery shopping with their children. It was only until we got to this store that we saw a lot of Americans. (You mean they don’t just hang out in the American Village all the time?)

As we continued on the seawall north, we noticed a lot of Americans running along the seawall and Moms with a lot of children. It felt like we weren’t in Japan any more. Suddenly, while we were walking, a military fighter jet took off and passed by. It was so quick and very loud. We were too slow to take out our phones to get a picture but then three more jets followed suit. It was pretty cool to see how incredibly fast they go. We saw about eight jets in total during our walk, it was pretty awesome. I guess this is a common occurrence in Okinawa, especially in the Chatan area. It was really cool to see and hear. We have pretty good videos if anyone wants to see.

We walked for about two hours before going back to the American Village. We decided to have taco rice for dinner since it’s an Okinawan thing. I love making tacos at home, Tex-Mex/Old el Paso type of tacos. Usually when I make them we have a lot of leftovers so I started to make taco rice as our meal for the next day. So having taco rice in Okinawa felt like “home cooking” to me.

We both really enjoyed the taco rice. It “hit the spot” as Tim would say. It’s easy enough to make at home, but now we could modify ours and make omutaco rice too. My regular taco rice also had Dorito crumbs sprinkled on top. It was a nice touch and good for texture, I would definitely copy it if I had Doritos lying around. Most of the clientele at Taco Rice Cafe were Japanese tourists and Americans who probably lived on the base.

We planned on watching the sunset at Sunset Beach before we headed back to Naha. The sun sets in Okinawa at around 7pm, so we had a bit of time to spare. We walked to a mall close by called, Aeon. It was a store full of everything – groceries, cosmetics, clothes and toys. We spent a bunch of time perusing the merchandise.

Considering today was a very overcast day, the sun was shining really brightly through the clouds as it was setting. When we walked back to Sunset Beach, it seemed like a totally different place than the beach we visited earlier in the day. The tide was in and the sun was shining. It was an amazing sight to see (I love watching sunsets).

Finally, the sun went behind the clouds so we couldn’t see it go below the horizon. Before leaving for Naha, we wanted to try ice cream from “Blue Seal”. We saw a location when we first got off the bus and another one inside the American Village. Blue Seal is an American Okinawan ice cream company that was established in 1948, by an American based company. They built a factory inside a military base in order to supply the military with dairy products. In 1963, it moved out of the base and made its products available to Okinawans.

Tim and I shared a cone and picked the number one pick – “Okinawan salt cookies” (which was like vanilla with salted shortbread) and ube (taro). We sat outside on the balcony and ate our ice cream while staring at the lit up ferris wheel. It was a perfect way to end our day in Chatan.

We caught the back bus into town (this time from a stop further up) and it was 730 JPY = $8.30 CAD. The bus ride was about an hour long this time and we both fell asleep. It was a long day and the heat probably got to us a bit. Lucky we had a lot of water and drank Pocari Sweat.

I’m glad we visited Chatan. It was definitely an area that was very unique to Okinawa. We’re not American, but as Canadians, a lot of things that they get nostalgic over, we do too. For a bit, I did feel like I was in Hawaii with all the American stores, Americans, and Japanese tourists (basically the same thing, right?).

Tomorrow, we have to wake up earlier to get picked up for our tour to the aquarium. Looking forward to seeing the northern part of the island and finally getting to see a whale shark (we didn’t have any luck while we were the Maldives).

Steps today: 28,000

Tokyo/Okinawa (Day 55): A Warm Tropical Welcome

April 24, 2016

After a relatively late night of packing and getting things sorted, we woke up and were on our way out of the apartment by 11am (which was also our check out time). We were happy with our Airbnb experience in Tokyo and would be happy to stay in that apartment again.

We made our way to Shinjuku Station to take the train to Haneda Airport. It’s nice that we’re flying out of Haneda since it’s a lot closer to the city centre than Narita is. Our flight to Naha, Okinawa was at 2:45pm. We arrived at the domestic terminal at 12pm and took our time getting to the gate. While on the train, we were happy that our flight was on a Sunday, since maneuvering around the station and being on the train with our backpacks would be horrific during a weekday.

There are a quite a few stores in the public areas of the airport but once you cross security there isn’t much in the domestic terminal. We had lunch at Tenya (the same tempura don place we ate at in Osaka). Tim and I both agreed that we can eat cheaply in Japan and would be happy with it as we don’t seem to appreciate (Tim: the value proposition of) super expensive tempura. The jumbo prawn tempura I had in Roppongi Hills was the most expensive tempura I’ve eaten – at $12 for one piece (Tim: more than our entire meals combined at Tenya)!

Haneda is a nice airport, though the domestic terminal is kind of lacking in stores, I’m sure the international terminal is much better. Since we are flying ANA back home in July, we will be connecting through Haneda again for two hours before our final flight back to Vancouver. I was trying to scout out what stores are available on the international side (past security) so I know what I don’t need to buy until July.

While planning out Japan, one of the first two flights we booked was our flights to Okinawa and Sapporo. We knew we wanted to go to these two places but since they’re either not on the mainland or pretty far north, it wasn’t as easily accessible with the JR train pass. Luckily, I remembered my former manager talking about cheap domestic flights within Japan that are only available for foreigners. We did some research online and booked our two flights as soon as the flights for the spring and summer were available.

All domestic flights within Japan (regardless of how far) can be booked for 10,800 JPY = $120 CAD. This is a really good price and you also get the full amount of miles (Aeroplan points) for the discounted fare (Tim: I can’t remember the last time I got full miles on an Air Canada flight… you have to purchase Flex Fares which are close to double the price of their typically advertised Tango Fares.). All you have to do is provide your passport info as well as your booking number for your arrival and departure flights to Japan. You can book these discounted fares through the ANA’s Experience Japan Fare or through JAL’s Japan Explorer Pass (JAL seems to also have something called the Yokoso/Visit Japan Fare and Welcome to Japan Fare which seem to be similar promotions). We picked ANA mainly because it’s part of Star Alliance, so if you collect Aeroplan points, it’s best to fly ANA as JAL is part of One World (Cathay, British Airways, etc). When we looked to book the exact same flights as we wanted without the foreigner’s promotion, the price of the tickets were over $800 per person. A lot of people know about the JR pass but if you need to go between cities quickly or ones that aren’t as accessible, taking advantage of these cheap tickets is the way to go.

Our plane took about 20 minutes on the tarmac before taking off. They had to double check something on the plane. The flight to Okinawa was about 2.5 hours, and there was quite a bit of turbulence as we were getting closer to landing. The plane was a lot bigger than I thought it would be for a domestic flight (Tim: 777), but I guess Okinawa is a popular destination for a lot of Japanese people.

It was my first time flying ANA and I was actually surprised they only served us drinks for this flight, but I guess it was only a domestic flight. Drinks choices were green tea, apple juice, coffee and chicken consommé (?!).

As soon as we landed, you could tell it was super humid as the windows on the plane on the outside fogged up immediately. We were now closer to Taiwan than were to mainland Japan. When we got out of the plane, you could feel the warm tropical air and it was 27 degrees Celsius. Walking through the terminal, it felt like Hawaii in a sense. Everyone waiting for their flight out of Okinawa were in shorts and t-shirts and were slightly tanned or burned. And it seemed like the staff uniform for a lot of stores were floral printed shirts – very tropical looking.

We caught the monorail (which was only 2 cars long) to Asahibashi Station and walked about 8 minutes to our guest house. This was our first test walking with our backpacks in tropical weather and we both were sweating quite a bit. Are we going to die in Vietnam in June? (Tim: I’m pretty sure we won’t die since humans are pretty good at heat acclimatization).

When we we finally got to Villa Coast Nishimachi Guest House, we followed the instructions for the self-check in (the reception is only open until 6pm) which is pretty easy since they also sent me an email after we booked with instructions on how to get there and check in. We booked a double bed studio off Expedia after reading really good reviews about this place. When we got into the room, I was both very pleasantly surprised with the space and cleanliness for $62.44 CAD a night.

I realize that when posting these pictures for people back home, this doesn’t look very impressive but anything that’s extremely clean (Tim: not too hard to find in Japan), we’re happy with. And if it has a washer, even better! I see why this place has high ratings on TripAdvisor, there’s a guide for the room and even a list of suggested restaurants around the area that are favourites of the guest house managers. Although reception isn’t around 24 hours and it feels like we’re staying in an apartment rather than a hotel, you feel very supported.

We decided to pick a place from the suggested restaurants for dinner tonight and plan out our next three days in Okinawa. We went to an Izakaya restaurant called, Himitsu-Kichi, about a 3 minute walk away. The building looked a bit tiki-hut-ish and we were seated upstairs in our own private little booth. All the food was really good, and the drinks were very cheap (alcoholic cocktails were only like $3 CAD, too bad I don’t really drink). We ordered a salad, chicken skewers, grilled squid, an omurice with gravy, chicken karaage, an Orion Beer (an Okinawan Beer), and coke for 3,988 JPY = $45 CAD.

After a delicious first meal in Okinawa, we headed back to the guest house and bought some water along the way at Family Mart. It was now pouring rain (but still very warm) on our walk back. It’s rainy season right now, so hopefully it won’t be crazy rain all the time.

I first heard about Okinawa while working at my Aunt’s store in Stanley Park (Tim: and I first hear about Okinawa while watching The Karate Kid Part II… looking forward to witnessing some ice breaking, since that’s a thing right?). I used to work there each summer when I was younger and got to meet a lot of people from around the world. One of my coworkers was from Okinawa and I heard it was like the “Hawaii of Japan”. The way she described home sounded awesome. She’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, so when I think of Okinawans, I think of her. Since then, I’ve always wanted to visit.

The city of Naha is a very slow and quiet town from what we’ve seen so far. A totally different scene from Tokyo. It feels nice to take it down a notch after being in two large cities back to back.

Looking forward to exploring more of the island and seeing a very different part of Japan.

Steps today: 8,000

Tokyo (Day 54): Yoyogi, Harajuku, Shibuya

April 23, 2016

Today was our last full day in Tokyo. I can see how you can easily spend more than week in Tokyo really exploring the city. Even after a week I feel like we only scraped the surface, barely.

We planned on going to Yoyogi Park, Harajuku, and Shibuya today. The weather was a lot better than yesterday night so we decided to walk instead of taking the train. When we have the time (and I’m not carrying my 32 pound backpack), I prefer to walk to destinations rather than taking the subway (especially if we have to walk longer than 5 minutes to go to a station). In Tokyo, the train stations are very busy and there are usually multiple lines, so more often than not you have to travel deep underground to get to your train.

We left the apartment around noon and decided to go to a Japanese Italian restaurant chain called, Saizeriya. I know, this isn’t what most people eat when they come to Tokyo (Tim: their loss) but we had seen it in each city in Japan we’ve visited and they were always full of diners. There is a location down the street from our apartment so we decided to give it a shot. During weekdays, they have a good lunch special for 500 JPY, which includes salad, soup, an entrée and a drink (refillable fountain drinks (Tim: A rarity in Japan!)). Since this was a Saturday, we weren’t able to get that lunch special but after looking at the menu, everything was very cheap so we understood why it’s always busy.

I think eating at Saizeriya is equivalent to eating at the Olive Garden but cheaper. We ordered a side salad, a spaghetti carbonara and a baked dish called a “Doria”. The baked Doria dish had a “No.1” sign beside it so we decided to try it. When in Rome right? Except, I didn’t notice any Dorias while in Rome.

The salad was good (I really appreciate fresh vegetables and fruits while traveling), carbonara was good (though you could tell it is suited for Japanese tastes), but the star for us was the Doria. We ordered it with focaccia bread because we thought it was just a baked dish of tomato sauce and cheese, but when I dug my spoon into it, I found out there was rice. It reminded of Hong Kong style café baked rice dishes with tomato sauce. It was piping hot and very tasty. The focaccia bread was also very hot and you can tell they bake them fresh throughout the day.

I was pretty impressed by Saizeriya and I’m glad we gave it a shot. We were definitely the only tourists in the place. I know people don’t like eating in chain restaurants while they’re traveling (Tim: again, their loss), but more often than not, chain restaurants are where a lot of locals eat on a daily basis so if you want to experience a city like a local, sometimes it’s good to eat at chains.

Yoyogi Park was only about a 15-20 minute walk from our apartment and since Tokyo is very dense, there were things to see along the way. We waited to go to Yoyogi Park on a weekend because we wanted to see more locals out and about at the park. There are usually a lot of people dressed up in unique outfits and an abundance of street performers on Sundays. Unfortunately, Saturday wasn’t the same as Sunday with regards to the eccentric outfits, but there were still numerous street performers. We would have gone on a Sunday, but since we didn’t have a full Sunday in Tokyo, this was our only option.

Yoyogi Park is like Tokyo’s “Central Park” in that it’s a huge park in the middle of a large and dense city. We entered the park at the Meiji Shrine gates. That opened up to a beautiful tree lined path that lead to the Meiji Shrine. It was starting to get pretty warm out so being shaded by the trees was perfect.

When we got to the Meiji Temple area, there were multiple weddings going on. I always feel awkward for the couple and their family when hundreds of strangers are taking pictures of them and watching them during such a personal event. But at the same time, they are fully aware this will happen as the temple is a public place and isn’t booked out for private events. There was a family taking group wedding portraits in the forested area of the Meiji grounds and everyone was taking pictures of them. I tried to as well but by the time I was able to get a spot to take a picture they were starting to get up and leave.

After walking through Meiji-Jingu, we headed towards the main park area of Yoyogi where Tim was hoping for me to see people decked out in their unique outfits. But to our slight disappointment, there was no one dressed up. Instead, the park was filled with families having picnics. I suppose Saturday is family day and Sunday is cosplay/entertainment day at Yoyogi. Throughout Japan we’ve noticed that any opportunity Japanese people get, they picnic. I guess a lot of it may have to do with the fact that many of them live in apartments and even if they do have a house, there aren’t many backyards to play in. We saw different groups of people dancing, playing badminton, playing soccer, and doing yoga (yogis in Yoyogi!)

We exited the park towards Harajuku. Harajuku is an area that’s popular among young people making it a more fashion forward/trendy area of Tokyo. You may also be familiar with it as Gwen Stefani had a song and album dedicated to “Harajuku Girls” in the early 2000s (Tim: which probably wouldn’t really feel very politically correct if done today). Because of Gwen Stefani, I first learned about Harajuku. But unlike her Harajuku Girls music video, we did not see anyone dressed up like a typical Harajuku Girl. The only ones that we saw dressed up were clearly tourists, which was a bit disappointing.

I think I had Harajuku hyped up in my head but instead, it was the most crowded area of tourists we went to in the city. The upside of Harajuku was seeing some pretty good live performances near the train station, before you enter Takeshita Street. The shopping in Harajuku reminded me a bit of Myeongdong-esque shopping with a lot of cute accessory stores, socks and they even had an Etude House (Korean cosmetic shop). The main different though was that these trendy/cheap accessories and clothes were a lot more expensive than the prices in Seoul. For example, I saw a pair of earrings I had bought in Seoul for 3 times the price, and it wasn’t like the quality was any different.

The Harajuku area was also very busy because there was a large group of people (many women) gathered outside Yoyogi National Stadium (which was built for the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 1964) for a concert. At first we weren’t sure what the large crowds were for, we just saw a huge billboard that said “Sexy Zone”. Later we put together that this was a boy (Tim: emphasis on “boy”) band from seeing thousands of girls (Tim: and women) with band memorabilia and tote bags with tour dates.

Once we got through the crowds, we were on our way towards Shibuya. But before we got there, we stumbled upon Tokyo’s Earth Day celebrations. We stopped in and listened to a live band play and browse around at all the organic food and observe all the Japanese hippies. It was interesting that we stopped by an Earth Day fair where their initiative is sustainability and zero waste on the way to one of the main consumerism centres of Tokyo.

Shibuya was crowded as always. We took our time and perused Muji, Disney, Shibuya 109, and some department stores. Shibuya 109 is a multi-level mall that has independent boutique stores on each floor (each floor has about 6-8 different shops). These stores are very popular among young women in Tokyo for being on the leading edge of most recent trends (Tim: or you might say they’re trendsetters). I walked around each floor of Shibuya 109 and saw some nice clothes, but a lot of it was not my style. Perhaps I’m not very trendy and maybe in a few years these trends will blow up in North America, but for now the styles are very Japanese.

I found that stores were either very cutesy – lots of floral and pastels with lots of ruffles, very street – think stereotypical Brooklyn (not the hipster part), very California – wannabe Hollister look, or very dark – lots of black and grey. I was looking for some nice/cute summer dresses but wasn’t able to find anything I liked. There were some items that I thought were long maxi dresses that I liked but then when I looked closer they were wide legged jump suits. I’ve also noticed that Japanese girls like to wear very very wide legged pants – like gaucho pants that were in 15 years ago in North America except in every form possible (eg: like the jump suits).

Another thing I noticed while browsing around Shibuya 109 was that the girls working in the stores were all very tall, leggy, and had dyed hair (usually blonde or a caramel colour) and had brown/orange tanned skin. Having tanned skin in Asian countries is usually not something you see, but according to Tim (and Google Image), I’ve basically described a “Shibuya Girl”.

After shopping, we went to the train station and stood inside on an overpass to take pictures and videos of the busy crossing just outside Shibuya station. It’s so crazy how many people are in Shibuya at one time as each time the light changes it’s like a new set of hundreds of people cross the street.

As it was our last meal in Tokyo, we weren’t sure what type of Japanese food we wanted. I was leaning towards sushi again and Tim wanted curry (he always wants curry). We decided to meet up with William for dinner back in Shinjuku and decided on going to CoCo Ichibanya (Tim’s favourite). But since I wanted a bit of sushi, Tim and I had a little snack in Shibuya at Sushizanmai first and ordered a few pieces of our favourites before heading to Shinjuku. I could probably eat sushi every day here. We were pretty much in and out of Sushizanmai within 15 minutes of sitting down.

We met William at the CoCo Curry near Shinjuku Station. This location is smaller than others and has a lot of foot traffic so we had to wait a bit before being seated. We sat at the counter and watched them prepare the dishes. I was actually pretty impressed that they cook each order’s curry in an individual pot. The curry was good and it hit the spot for Tim.

I can’t believe how fast a week went by in Tokyo. There’s so much to see in Tokyo as each neighbourhood is almost like visiting a different city. Luckily for Vancouverites, flying to Tokyo is not THAT far away and there’s multiple direct flights on several airlines making it very accessible to us. I would like to come back and see more as a week was definitely not long enough.

Steps today: 24,000

Tokyo (Day 53): Tsukiji, Ginza, Roppongi

April 22, 2016

We finally got our act together and woke up a bit earlier to go to Tsukiji Market. We didn’t attempt to try to go for the tuna auction, which only allows up to 120 people and you have to get there as early as 3am to try to snag a spot. Maybe if we’re in Tokyo again and we’re jetlagged (too bad we were in Taipei for the 4am wake ups), I would try to go. Another reason why we wanted to go to Tsukiji Market was because they’re moving to another location further away and more inconvenient in November. Tsukiji Market has been there since 1935 and the majority of vendors are against the move.

As soon as we got off the train at Tsukiji-Shijo Station we could smell the fish in the station. We met up with William and made our way to the wholesale market which only opens up to the public after 9am. We arrived a little later than we wanted to (around 9:30am) so a lot of the vendors were already in the middle of packing things up. But we did get to see large pieces of tuna and a man filleting a live sea eel (unagi), which was very cool. It was really neat to see all the wholesalers at work and seeing them cleaning up/chilling out after a long day’s work.

When you’re in the wholesale market you have to be vigilant at all times of the motorized mini trucks since they go really fast and don’t really care about the tourists around. Basically, tourists being there are more of a burden than a benefit since no one buys anything and are just in the way taking pictures. I get why there are no tourists allowed before 9am, since that’s when the real business happens. Along with tourist there were locals who were buying some items for their meals for the day (a pretty good place to buy it)

After going up and down the rows we decided to find some sushi for an early lunch. William left to go do his own thing and we said we could meet up again later. There are two main restaurants that have by far the longest line ups – Sushi Dai and Daiwa Sushi. For both these restaurants, people line up at 3am and wait 4 hours to get a seat. There was no way Tim and I were going to wait for 4 hours in the middle of the night to eat sushi at 7am (I don’t care how super fresh it is). Tim doesn’t even like to wait 30 minutes in line for food so this was not going to be an option.

When we passed by Sushi Dai at 10:30am, we thought the line up looked reasonable, about 15 people outside the front door so we lined up. The lady from the restaurant came out with her huge notepad and told us that the line up starts behind the building. We looked and said forget it, there were about 50 more people waiting there.

We ended up going to a place called Sushizanmai, which has multiple locations in Tokyo but its original is at Tsukiji. The owner, Kiyoshi Kimura, is known for going to the tuna auction and winning the bids on the most expensive tuna and selling it to his customers at a fraction of the price as his competitors. We only waited about 10 minutes to get a seat at the sushi bar. The prices here are very reasonable and the Bluefin fatty tuna was 398 JPY per piece vs. 520 JPY at Numakuzo (conveyor belt sushi place we went to in Shinjuku). We decided to order a la carte to get exactly what we wanted, although the combos and chirashi dons looked really good too. For our 15 pieces of nigiri and a cone, our bill was 3,503 JPY = $39.70 CAD, pretty good.

Each sushi chef behind the counter was in charge of a group of people. We sat down at a really good spot on the counter because we had the happiest guy in the restaurant. If we looked around at the other sushi chefs, they were all very serious and had no expressions. Our sushi chef was enthusiastic and super friendly so it made our experience at Sushizanmai a really good one. All the sushi was awesome and I would definitely go back there again. If you don’t want to wait (or value your time and sleep more) hours for Sushi Dai, I would recommend going here. I don’t think you can really go wrong with freshness at many of the restaurants that surround the market. Or maybe we’re missing out by not lining up at Sushi Dai. I’m okay not knowing what I’m missing out on.

After lunch, we decided to take a leisurely stroll towards Ginza and check out Roppongi Hills. William suggested that we go to the Tokyo City Views observation deck as it has the best views of Tokyo (and is the nicest observation deck) in his opinion and most importantly, it has a Sailor Moon exhibit going on for the next couple weeks.

Tsukiji is a relatively short walk to Ginza. It was a nicer day yesterday than the time we went there previously. It made for a much more pleasant experience. We didn’t go into Uniqlo this time but went to the large Mitsukoshi department store (in Taiwan they’re called Shin Kong Mitsukoshi) and went through each floor. Japanese department stores are all really nice and large. They have a great selection of brands (a lot of luxury brands if you’re into that sort of thing) and the interior is well put together. I like how there’s nicer restaurants on the top floors and the basements are always full of great take out food and desserts. If only Vancouver had a department store like this, it would put Nordstrom and Holts to shame, but we don’t have the population to support multiple stores like these.

I enjoyed my time at Mitsukoshi looking at all the pretty things while Tim found a chair to sit on and played on his phone. Being decked out in Lululemon clothes, runners and a backpack, I definitely did not fit in (I don’t fit in dressed like this in Japan, period). We have a few weddings to go to in the summer so I was browsing around to see if there were any dresses that caught my eye. I went to the formal dress section of the store and it was basically all black; black dresses, pants, blazers, purses, hats. I guess black is the only formal colour in Japanese culture. It looked more like a funeral wear to me.

Before coming to Japan, I knew that there was a popular dessert that was a cake made up of layers of crepe with whip cream in between each layer. The cake is called a crepe mille-feuille. I was on the hunt for these since I know New York has a store called Lady M that specializes in these yummy looking cakes. There is a café chain in Tokyo called, Doutor, that had it on their menu so we planned on going to one eventually when we felt like we wanted to sit down and try it. Being in Ginza wandering around, we spotted a Café Doutor (a fancier looking version of Doutor) and decided to sit down and get one there. We spent a good hour in the café resting and watching the crowds in Ginza. It was 500 JPY ($5.65 CAD) well spent and the cake was delicious too. Later on we found out that a regular Doutor’s millefeuille is only 360 JPY = $4 CAD. So we paid a premium to sit in the Ginza location, oh well.

We also visited the large Sony showroom in Ginza, which has 6 floors of products that you can try (Tim had fun in this store). The store is also a good escape from the crowds as their first floor lounge is labeled as a rest and free wifi area. It has cushioned benches and couches for people to sit on.

We walked from Ginza towards the Minato area, which is closer to Tokyo Tower and Roppongi Hills. We stopped by Tokyo Tower to take some photos of it and found a beautiful park beside it which felt like we were in the middle of a forest, not in the middle of Tokyo. We continued along towards Roppongi Hills as we were meeting William at around sunset to go up to the top of the viewing deck.

Roppongi is a very nice area in Tokyo. It’s an area that has large hotel chains and restaurants by celebrity chefs (like Jean Georges and Joel Robuchon). The area looks very modern and is filled with restaurants that you would find in trendy areas of New York. You also notice a lot more ex-pats in this area and Caucasian children in day cares. We saw a day care wheeling around 10 toddlers like a crate of puppies. It was quite cute.

We arrived in the area well before we had to meet William so we decided to check out a book store called Tatsuya, which had a fancy Starbucks downstairs. The place was packed with people drinking coffee and on their Macbooks. Tatsuya had a good selection of books and magazines, a lot of which were English publications. The top floor of Tatsuya is full of DVDs and after looking closely, we discovered they’re rentals. Since Blockbuster is no longer around, I haven’t seen a store this size full of rentals for a while. They had all the popular American TV series like “House of Cards”, “Suits”, “Game of Thrones” – anything you can think of.

While in Japan, I noticed that Starbucks was promoting a new cantaloupe frappuccino (not sure if it’s a limited time item). It looked interesting and I only saw it in Japan so I wanted to try. I thought it would be a perfect time to try it since Tim was happy reading and I could get the drink and find a seat and surf the net. The frappuccino only comes in one size, a tall. It was actually quite expensive, at 680 JPY = $7.80 CAD because it contains real cantaloupe and not just syrup. The drink was really good, it had mushed up chunks of cantaloupe and some sort of jelly in it. I would order it again if it were half the price or less (Tim: so I guess you won’t be ordering it again).

We met up with William at Mori Tower, and decided to have dinner before going up since the weather changed and there was no longer visible sun to have a sunset. Finding food around this area was a bit tough since a lot of the restaurants are pretty swanky and there are fewer cheaper options.

After doing a bit of research on our phones, we decided on a soba noodle place close by, called Sarashina Horii, that had very good reviews. They make their soba in house and have four different types. When we arrived at the restaurant it was almost full. They had a lot of tables with reserved signs on them. We all ordered soba and a side of tempura. The tempura was actually more expensive than the actual soba. I thought everything was good but I wouldn’t go back again unless the price was half of what we paid. Looking around this was a very popular spot for locals and we appeared to be the only tourists there.

After dinner we made our way back to Mori Tower and went up to the top of the observatory. It costs 1,800 JPY to go up but William told us we could buy discounted tickets at Lawson’s for 1,500 JPY. We stopped by a Lawson’s during our walk from Ginza and the cashier helped us with the kiosk, which was all in Japanese so we were lucky he did everything for us. Normally I’m not too keen on paying for observatory decks but since they did have a Sailor Moon exhibit as well, I was intrigued.

When we got to the top, the Sailor Moon exhibit was pretty prominent and they even had a themed café, which had a line up of women outside. The views of the city at night were nice. Tokyo Tower was only lit half-way up in purple, which we’re guessing was in honour of Prince. The exhibit was actually a lot better than I thought it would be. They had original comic books, sketches, costumes and a lot of memorabilia and toys displayed. The gift shop was full of overpriced items but Japanese women and men were going crazy and dropping things into their baskets like they were $1.

After a long day of a lot of walking and wandering, we made our way back to our apartment. While taking the train back, it was actually very crowded, and I was pushed from all angles. It was Friday night and everyone was in good spirits since the work week was over. We saw some very drunk businessmen passed out on sidewalks sleeping on top of their briefcases with their cell phones very exposed (they aren’t worried about theft here). We even saw one on the ground throwing up at Shinjuku Station. We also noticed that on Friday nights, people cross the smaller streets even when the lights are red (generally no one crosses in Japan). It’s like since it’s the weekend, rules are broken.

Total steps today: 28,000

Tokyo (Day 52): Tatsunoya, Asakusa, and Shinagawa

April 21, 2016

After a long day at DisneySea the day before, we struggled to wake up early to meet William at Tsukiji Market. As we were snoozing our alarms, William messaged and said he was going to be late because he slept in. I took this opportunity to reschedule to Friday since Tim didn’t look like he was going to be waking up any time soon.

Since we no longer had set plans for today, we decided to try a ramen place that is down the street from our apartment that constantly has a line up out the door and on the sidewalk. After using Google Maps, we found out the name of the restaurant is Tatsunoya.

Tatsunoya opens each day at 11am, so we made sure we got there right when it opened. When we arrived, there was a group of four businessmen (or just men in suits) ahead of us as they opened the doors (Tim: flashier suits (by Japanese standards), vests, and flamboyant pocket squares made me think they weren’t your regular salary men…). We tried to watch the four men order on the ticket machine to see what they were getting. There is no English on the menu but they have small pictures. We couldn’t really tell what the difference between the black and red bowl were from the small pictures so we ordered one of each (Tim ordered a bowl with more meat).

On the table they had jars of seasoned bean sprouts, pickled greens and pickled ginger for you to snack on or add to your ramen. The waitress came by and presented me with a box of individually packaged hair ties and asked if I wanted one (my hair was down). I said sure and tied up my hair. I thought that was a nice touch and it was the first time I’ve had that offered to me at a noodle soup restaurant. It’s also nice because hair ties in Japan are very pricey. Even at Daiso, you only get two hair ties for 100 JPY and Muji you get one for 300 JPY.

The ramen arrived and it looked really good. The broth is a tonkotsu broth similar to Ippudo and Ichiran. What Tatsunoya is known for is their very tender pork. The pork was very fatty (which usually bothers me more) but when I ate it, it basically melted in my mouth and tasted really delicious. I can see why there is a line up for this place. I later found out that Tatsunoya has a couple of restaurants around LA.

We left feeling satisfied and happy that we got there when we did as the line up was starting to build up. After lunch, we headed to Asakusa to visit the Senso-ji Temple.

We took the train to Ueno Station (which is the closest JR line train to the temple). We walked about 20 minutes to the temple and found massive crowds and a shopping street of souvenirs that lead to the shrine. Although there were a lot of people, it was fairly calm (Tim: I didn’t think it was that calm, but I guess it was okay considering how crowded it was).

We took our time around the temple area and slowly made our way back to Ueno Station. The Asakusa area (away from the temple) is very quiet and seems more residential than other parts of Tokyo. When we were walking back we saw a lot of girls that looked like they’re 5 or 6 walking home from school alone. I’ve noticed that Asian kids are very independent here. They walk and take the subway home by themselves. We saw this a lot in Taiwan and now Japan.

Since our JR passes expired today, we figured we’d do a full loop of the Yamanote line and go to Shinagawa. By the time we got to Shinagawa, it was pouring rain (and it poured for the rest of the day). Our plan in this area was to visit the Sengaku-Ji Temple and to just explore the tiny alleys around the taller office buildings in the area. You see even more black suits in Shinagawa than you do in Shinjuku since it’s more of a business district.

Sengaku-Ji Temple is where the famous 47 Ronin (samurais without a leader) are buried, who had avenged the death of their master and committed honorary suicide as a result. This story is popular with Japanese people as the ronins showed considerable loyalty. This is a pretty interesting story, but involves a lot of suicide. The graves of the samurais are found at Sengaku-Ji. When we got there around 5pm, the buildings which likely have more English information and a running video were closed. Unfortunately none of the signage is translated into English so we had to wait until later to read the full story. The Wikipedia article that’s linked has a really detailed story.

After the temple, we walked back towards the train station and walked towards the office towers. It was about 6pm and a lot of people were getting off work. Tim wanted me to see all the taller office buildings and see how narrow the alleys are around them (alleys full of restaurants). We only stayed a short while as the rain was picking up. We decided to head back to Shinjuku for dinner and go back to the apartment earlier tonight.

I guess we timed it a bit badly since we ended up going back to Shinjuku during rush hour.

Tim was craving Japanese hamburger steak so we wandered around Shinjuku trying to find one. The one we had looked up on the train ended up being permanently closed. We found a place around the corner that looked promising so we decided to try it. It’s basically like a Pepper Lunch type of place where they serve the food on a sizzling teppan with paper around it so the oil doesn’t splatter.

The hamburger steaks came with rice and soup that we could help ourselves to. Overall it was okay good because it was extremely oily. If you want a good hamburger steak in Vancouver, try Cafe de L’Orangerie near the Arthur Laing Bridge. They make a really good hamburger steak as well as delicious Japanese pastas and home made desserts (one of our favourite restaurants).

It was still raining hard so we decided to check out the shopping close by – Takashimaya and another mall. I got excited because I saw a “Flying Tiger” store in one of the malls. This store is from Copenhagen and the first time I went to one was in Cambridge, UK. I thought it was a really neat store (feels Ikea-esque because it’s Scandinavian and cheap) that carried pretty random things – everything from arts and crafts to dishes. It’s where I got my carrot sharpener/peeler.

We headed back to the apartment fairly early and did some much needed laundry. Staying in Airbnbs have allowed us to do laundry while we stay here but in Asia you need to hang dry everything, so basically we can’t wash everything because then we’ll have no dry clothes for the next day.

Steps today: 24,000

Tokyo Disney (Day 51): Tokyo DisneySea

April 20, 2016

Today we woke up pretty excited. We were going to Tokyo Disney! When Tim and I first met, we discovered during our first date that we both had a very soft spot for anything Disney, and in particular, Disneyland.

My love for Disney started at an early age, it was a popular summer vacation spot for my family (Tim: How magical!) and by the time I was 12, I had been to Disneyland six times. I loved everything about those trips. But as my sister and I got older, the Disneyland trips ended and we went on family trips to more “mature places” – like Europe and China.

Tim has been to more Disney theme parks as an adult more than anyone I know (besides people who live in a city with a Disneyland or have an annual pass). As I got to know Tim, I was so excited to have found someone who shared the same enthusiasm for Disneyland that I had. One of our first trips together in April 2013 was going to Disneyland Park in California. We only spent one day at the Disneyland and California Adventures but it brought back so many good memories of my childhood. Having someone who was just as giddy about being there as me was awesome.

Now back to this morning, we woke up early eager to get going. We did a bit of research online about Tokyo Disney and found out they had two parks – Disneyland and DisneySea. Disneyland is said to be very similar to Disneyland Park in California (except a bit smaller) and DisneySea is unique to Tokyo. We read countless rave reviews about DisneySea and since it was only in Tokyo, we decided to spend our day there.

We left our apartment around 7:45am and made our way towards Shinjuku Station. It was my first time experiencing Tokyo rush hour. Let’s just say I’ve never been that squished from all directions in my life.

Once we got to Tokyo Station, we had to transfer to the Keiyo Line to get to Disneyland. The Keiyo Line at Tokyo Station seems like it is the farthest line away from the Chuo line. We walked about 8 minutes and walked down and up multiple sets of stairs to reach the platform. After 15 minutes on the train, we finally made it to Tokyo Disney Resort!

When we arrived, we still had to walk about 10 minutes to DisneySea’s entrance gates. There is a Disney train but the ride costed 240 JPY = $2.75 CAD per person, so we just walked.

When we arrived at the gate, we bought our tickets for the day. Recommendations online tell you to try to get tickets beforehand (either online or from a Disney Store) in order to skip the long queues and avoid tickets selling out for the day (I didn’t know that happened). Luckily, we didn’t have any issues and waited less than 5 minutes to buy our tickets. The day pass for DisneySea (same for Disneyland) is 7,400 JPY = $86 CAD per person. This is cheaper than Disneyland in California as their one day pass is $93 USD = $118 CAD. Unfortunately there’s no “one day hopper” like in California, so we had to choose one park only (Tim: which was fine, having never been to DisneySea before, I wanted to spend the whole day there). There is, however, cheap entrance after 6pm at both parks for 4,200 JPY = $48 CAD. I guess that’s good if you lived close by.

There are seven different themed areas within DisneySea:

Mediterranean Harbor
This area looks like you’re in Italy (sort of). There’s a gondola ride through the canals which was really nice. We didn’t get a chance to go on the gondola since they stop the rides when there are water shows in the main pond.

The sky is real, not like the Venetian Hotel in Vegas

Gondola rides through the canals with a view of the “Mysterious Island” volcano/which is also a ride (Tim: Journey to the Center of the Earth)

We watched the “Crystal Wishes Journey” which was a water and boat show. The kites were being flown by passengers on the back of jet skis. We watched from the side of the Mediterranean Harbor. People camp out for 2 hours before the show starts to get good seats front and center. For the prime seating areas, you are only allowed to sit on the ground (they provide mats for you to sit on).
American Waterfront
Disney wouldn’t feel right without something American. This area has New York City streets, Tower of Terror, Toy Story Mania, Cape Cod and a huge steam boat called the “SS Columbia”. This area is also one of the largest parts of the park, so naturally we spent a lot of time here.

Tim in “NYC”

Broadway Theatre.

We watched “Big Band Beat” at the Broadway theatre. It was reviewed as the best show in all of DisneySea, and it lives up to its claim. It’s a live jazz show with a full band and live singing and dancing (like a Broadway show). All the songs for this are in English and the show lasts for about 30 minutes. To get tickets you have to scan your ticket for a lottery or else you have to wait in the stand by line. We got the show we wanted (there are 5 shows a day), but I think in the summer or high season tickets are harder to get in the lottery.

Tower of Terror. We did this near the end of the night and it was the only ride we had to wait over an hour for (we fast passed everything else, but the fast passes were out by the time we wanted to fast pass Tower of Terror).

My screams were genuine. I’m always reminded why I don’t like this ride.

Toy Story Mania was pretty, all lit up at night. We ended our night here playing the Toy Story Mania game (our fast pass return time wasn’t until 9:20pm!)
Port Discovery
This is more of the “futuristic” part of the park. We didn’t spend too much time in this area since it was one of the smallest parts of the park. One of the last rides we went on was the StormRider, which unexpectedly gets you wet! A guy we saw in a suit (this was not an uncommon sight) took out a towel and put it on his lap before the ride started. I guess he’s a regular.

Aquatopia. At night, there on blinking lights on the boats and around the water.
Arabian Coast
It is what it sounds like – think of Aladdin. This area was pretty with smells of Indian curry coming from the restaurants. We went on Sinbad’s Storybook Voyage which was sort of the park’s equivalent to “It’s a Small World”. (Tim: in the sense that you’re on a boat going through rooms with scenes set up using a bunch of moving robots… so sort of like Pirates of the Carribean as well)

Arabian Coast

Arabian Coast’s pretty carousel

Riding on “Jasmine’s Magic Carpet Ride” which was like Dumbo

5. Lost River Delta
This area is supposed to be in the remote areas of Central American jungles and ruins of an ancient civilization. We seemed to have spent a lot of time here since there were a couple of good rides here: Indiana Jones and a roller coaster called, Raging Spirits.

Raging Spirits roller coaster. It felt a bit like the corkscrew at Playland since it had a 360 loop. The ride was 1 minute and 38 seconds, but felt much shorter!

Indiana Jones was just like California’s. We rode this twice!

6. Mysterious Island
This area is fairly small and we only spent a short period of time here. The area looked pretty cool with the volcano (Journey to the Centre of the Earth ride).

Waiting to go to the centre of the earth in Mysterious Island

Mysterious Island’s water submarine ride

7. Mermaid’s Lagoon
We spent the least amount of time in this area since it was filled with little kid rides and theatre shows.

The park is pretty big and I can see why they don’t do a one day hopper here. Tim was really good at organizing our day and scheduling out all our FastPasses with the most popular rides. There’s a live app that tells you the wait times for each ride and the FastPass times available. We went on every ride we wanted to and even got to go on Indiana Jones twice (had two FPs during the day). For April, the park was fairly busy and even stayed busy until closing. In California during down season, at night you can go on rides over and over again (especially during the fireworks) since there’s no line up – but not in Tokyo.

What did we eat?
For the most part, there wasn’t much Japanese food in the park. There was a fancy Japanese restaurant, but all the food was still mostly American-“esque” theme park food. We tried to find items that seemed unique and then found some Disney favourites. Here’s some pictures of what we had (we shared everything so we could try more). The only thing that we missed getting were green mochi balls that were supposed to look like the aliens from Toy Story. By the time we got back to the area the stand had already closed. Oh well, next time!

What we found most interesting about the popcorn wasn’t the popcorn flavours themselves, it was the different popcorn buckets that each stand had. Each stand had a different popcorn bucket and apparently they change them all the time (so people actually collect them all). I would estimate that 70% of people we saw had popcorn buckets around their necks of were carrying them cross-body like a purse (Tim: I would estimate 15%).

Overall, everything felt the same (in terms of that magical Disney feel) as Disney in North America. It makes me really happy to see how much Japanese people love Disney. There were more people decked out in Disney gear than I’d ever seen in the American parks. People would even carry stuffed animals they brought from home to the park, I guess so their stuffed animal could experience a fun day at Disney (Tim: apparently it’s a thing to bring your stuffed toys to take pictures with around the park in Tokyo). Dressing up and wearing Disney accessories doesn’t stop at little kids and women, guys do it too, and they do it proudly.

The crowd at Tokyo DisneySea seemed like it was 90% Japanese and 10% Foreigners. Of the 90%, I’m sure a lot of them are from outside the Tokyo area (Tim: I’m sure some of them are, not sure about 90% though). In the evening, we saw a lot of men with black suits on. It seems like some people go to Disney after work is over to just spend the evening.

We stayed at the park until closing (which was at 10pm) and made our way back to Tokyo. Considering it was close to 11pm when we were heading home there was a lot of businessmen on the train. They were all going home either from work or from dinner/drinks with coworkers. The amount of people on the train was like 6pm on the Canada Line for us.

It was a long day, we spent around 13 hours inside the park and about 2 hours of round trip travel time door to door. Although it was a long day, it was an awesome one. It was nice to experience something new and unique. I can see how it’s been reviewed as one of the best Disney Parks in the world as the detailing and themes are all very well done. Next time we come to Tokyo, I want to visit the Tokyo Disneyland. Although it’s nice to see new things, Disney is Disneyland to me because of the nostalgia and warm fuzzy feeling you get when you hear “When you Wish Upon a Star”.

Steps today: 36,000! (No wonder our legs are tired)

(Tim: And with the 36,000 steps today, we reached 1,000,000 steps on our trip so far! Couldn’t have been a better day for us to reach that milestone.)

Tokyo (Day 50): City Views and Shibuya

April 19, 2016

I guess we were really tired last night because we went to bed relatively early and slept in. Being on the go is very tiring, so it’s nice to have a day to just relax. I feel like we haven’t had a day where we kind of just did nothing since Taipei.

Before getting to Tokyo, we planned on doing a couple of day trips out of the city, to Mount Fuji and Yokohama, to maximize our JR Pass before it expired on April 21st. Now, we both agreed that we’re going to scrap those plans and just take it easy in Tokyo. There’s so much to see and so many different neighbourhoods to explore, I think I’ll enjoy that more on this trip. It’s my first time in Tokyo (Tim’s 5th time), and I don’t want to feel rushed. If we don’t see everything (which we won’t), it’s not a big deal. I know we’ll have other opportunities in the future to come back.

That being said, our morning/early afternoon was spent at the apartment working on our blog posts and catching up with things we haven’t had much time for. We started to get hungry and headed out for a late lunch. Tim was craving curry again (when isn’t he?) and wanted to try another Japanese chain called “Go!Go! Curry” that we’ve seen and heard about. Go! Go! Curry is named after a former Japanese baseball player, Hideki Matsui, whose jersey number was 55. The number 5 in Japanese is “Go”, so that’s why it’s called “Go! Go!”. Their hours are also a bit weird too, opening at 10:55 – 21:55 and their birthday is May 5th. They love the 5 theme. Go!Go! Curry has a few locations in NYC as well (what doesn’t NYC have?).

We walked to the Shinjuku location for lunch and had a pork cutlet and chicken cutlet curry (680 JPY $7.90 CAD each). Their curry was a bit different than CoCo’s. The curry was much darker and it had a bit more spice than CoCo’s. Overall, we both enjoyed it and I liked how they give you cabbage. Tim felt like he was cheating on CoCo a bit, especially when we passed by a CoCo close to our apartment on our way home from lunch.

After lunch we headed back to the apartment to finish up our posts. We decided to check out the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (TMGB) observatory and go to Shibuya. We didn’t end up heading back out until close to 5pm.

We walked to the TMGB which is about a 10 minute walk from our apartment. The observatory on the 45th floor of the building is free for visitors and gives pretty decent views of Tokyo. When we got to the building, there was a line up to go on the elevator. We waited about 10 minutes before taking the elevator up. When we got to the 45th floor, the floor was filled with souvenir stands and a restaurant took up almost half the floor (which blocked one side of the building’s views).

We arrived at a good time since the sun was started to go behind the mountains and we stayed and watched the sun set. While walking around, I spotted a familiar face. It was William! Even though the observatory is a popular tourist sight, what are the chances of running into him in such a large city like Tokyo. We ended up making dinner plans with him and left the observatory once dusk fell on the city.

After taking pictures, we made our way towards Shinjuku Station and headed to Shibuya. The plan was to go to Ippudo for Ramen since Tim and Will were both craving it. According to Google, there were a couple of locations around Shibuya so it was perfect because I wanted to go see the famous Shibuya crossing and see the statute of Hachiko.

When we arrived in Shibuya, the place was crazy busy. It was filled with tourists but it was also rush hour so there were black suits everywhere! Right outside Shibuya Station is a statue of a dog named, Hachiko. His story is that he waited for his owner each day outside of Shibuya Station, and even after his owner passed away, he would still go every day for the next 9 years. This story makes me tear up…

As many of you know, I really wanted a dog while growing up and when I was younger I knew a lot about all the different breeds. SoftBank has a company mascot of a dog that Tim thinks is a good looking dog. I told him that it’s a Japanese dog called an Akita. After reading about Hachiko, it turns out he’s an Akita too. Maybe if we get a dog in the future, it’ll be an Akita and we’ll have to name it Hachiko.

We walked through the crossing twice on our search for the Ippudo in Shibuya. After two failed attempts (thanks, Google Maps), we decided to go to the Ippudo in Ebisu. This is the first Ippudo both Tim and William had ever been to. It’s the location that changed Tim’s life (Tim: hardly Kait: You said it did!). We’ll have to go back to Shibuya to spend more time and look around the stores.

We took the Yamanote line to Ebisu Station (one station from Shibuya) and walked a few minutes to Ippudo. The neighbourhood around Ippudo seemed very residential and quiet and lucky for us there was no line up. Our dinner was nostalgic for both Tim and William and it definitely hit the spot. I really enjoyed the gyoza and the soft boiled egg was cooked perfectly and was really good in the soup. In Fukuoka we got a stamp card because Tim thought we’d be going back to Ippudo more to claim our free bowl of ramen before leaving Japan. I’m not sure if that will actually happen.

After dinner we thought about going back to Shibuya to spend more time, but decided to just save that for another night since it started to get really windy and the breeze was quite cold. We planned on seeing William again on Thursday, when we’ll go to Tsukiji Fish Market in the morning.

We took the train back to the apartment and started planning on going to Tokyo Disneyland tomorrow! This is the only trip “outside of Tokyo” that we kept in our schedule. We both really love Disney, so it’ll be a good day tomorrow.

Steps today: 14,000

Tokyo (Day 49): Akihabara & Ginza

April 18, 2016

Today was our first full day in Tokyo and I was ready to explore. We decided to go to Akihabara, the Imperial Palace, and Ginza. We took our time waking up and getting ready. It was a sunny and warm morning in Tokyo, so it was nice to just sit and have breakfast at the apartment before heading out.

For lunch we decided to go to a place around the corner from our apartment. We had passed by yesterday and it looked like Marukame Udon in Honolulu (one of my family’s favourite restaurants). There was no English signage but everything inside looked exactly the same (after googling, it turns out it is a Marugame Udon but in the US they call it Marukame). They make their udon fresh in house and also serve tempura, onigiris (no spam masubis here), and inari cafeteria style.

After we sat down, I looked down at my tray and looked around. I had way more tempura on my plate than any of the other Japanese men in the restaurant. Most people only had their bowl of udon and one piece of tempura. I loaded my plate North American style.

After lunch we made our way to Akihabara, which is an area most known for their many electronic stores. But more recently, it’s also become a place where die-hard anime, manga and gaming fans congregate.

The first large building you see from the train station is Yodobashi Camera, which basically sells everything and anything electronic. We spent around an hour there circling each floor to see what they had. If you’re looking for a tripod, they probably have every tripod ever made for you to choose from. Sometimes I think with so much selection in Japan, it makes shopping a lot more difficult (Tim: see “The Paradox of Choice“, by Barry Schwartz). How many choices of electric shavers do you need?

Along with being the electronic area in Tokyo, it’s also referred to as the “hobby” area. We found a store called Mandarake, which is a 7 floor building filled with anime, comics, and toys – both new and second hand. We started on the top floor and worked our way down. There was quite a collection of expensive vintage toys that were interesting to see.

After browsing around for a couple of hours, we made our way towards the Imperial Palace. The Imperial Palace Park is near Tokyo Station in the Chiyoda District and its total area is 3.41 square kilometres. The park is made up of large gravel walkways and green grass patches with perfectly manicured trees. Unfortunately, you aren’t allowed to go on the grass, which makes this park a “no fun park” in my opinion.

After walking through the park we made our way to Ginza, a shopping district. It is home to many high end brands, department stores, and more importantly, the world’s largest Uniqlo (its flagship store). The streets were busier with tourists, some very loud and obnoxious ones (I had to push and shove a bit). Once we found the Uniqlo, we realized that groups of tour buses drop off bus loads of people right in front of Uniqlo (great…).

After going through each floor, we ended up just buying small umbrellas. Most of the clothing we had seen in our many trips to Uniqlos in the last 48 days (Tim: who would have though different Uniqlo locations sell the same thing?) and their sales sections were severely over picked since there’s obviously more people who shop at this location.

When we left Uniqlo, it was raining so we made our way back to Shinjuku for dinner. While lining up for sushi last night, Tim noticed a yakitori (grilled skewer) place beside it with fairly decent prices. We decided to give it a try since we hadn’t had yakiori on this trip yet. The restaurant was on the 2nd floor of the building beside Numakuzo, and when we entered we were surprised to see that the restaurant was quite large inside and full of (mainly) Japanese people.

We ordered a variety of yakitoris: chicken & leek, pork belly, chicken skin, and quail eggs. Besides the skewers, two dishes that I thought were very well done were the “Yokohoma croquette”, which was a mixture of beef and potato (180 JPY each = $2.10 CAD) and their chicken karaage, which was very tender and the batter was very light (380 JPY = $4.45 CAD) . I didn’t take pictures of a lot of our food because the skewers just came as they were cooked and we were really hungry.

We ordered quite a bit of food and everything was delicious. I would go back again if we have a chance. For two drinks, chicken karaage, 2 croquettes, yaki soba and 16 skewers, the bill came to 4,122 JPY after tax ($48 CAD).

After dinner we walked back to the apartment using a different route than usual and ended up walking through where a bunch of clubs and host bars are in Shinjuku. If you’ve watched Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown Tokyo episode, you will probably recognize some of the sights. We passed by the Robot Show which is supposed to be really interesting and very random. But the price per ticket is 8,000 JPY = $93 CAD, which is higher than what we would value watching that show. I think I would watch it for $20 CAD. We also walked past a lot of male host bars with their pictures all over the front of the buildings. Male hosts in Tokyo basically just sit and talk/flatter you while you’re eating dinner or having a drink.

We saw a lot more signage like the ones above on our way home. Tim asked if I learned anything about Tokyo today. I said I didn’t learn anything new because these were all things that I had heard about before coming here. But of course it’s different seeing it first hand. From the octopus porn anime (and other questionable comic books) to countless male host bars, I don’t understand Tokyo’s culture. I feel like if you put a male host bar in Vancouver with similar signage, people would see it as a joke and not take it seriously, but here it’s normal. The first word that comes to mind when I see all these things is that it’s so “weird”, but Tim corrects me and says it’s not weird, it’s just different (Tim’s the culturally empathetic one in our relationship). But to me, different is having to take off your shoes when you try clothes on at a store. Weird/wrong is having multiple comic books entitled “Rape All Girls” in stores (there is no apparent translation error).

Japan’s culture is just different and I don’t think I’ll ever understand it. Specifically, the fact that they have a whole other underbelly of anime porn, lots of prostitution, and hundreds of host bars makes it seem a bit counterintuitive as they want to present you with a certain polite image.

I think most westerners visiting Japan will tell you that Japanese people are extremely polite, everything is orderly and clean. But I also feel like everything is very surface level. A blog Tim reads regularly, called Wait But Why, talks about his experience in Japan (he just stayed in Tokyo) and how as a foreigner (or basically anyone not of 100% Japanese ancestry), there’s an impenetrable wall you can’t get past. Tim showed his cousin, who lived in Tokyo for 7 years this article and he agreed with it. We’ve only been here for 2 weeks and although people are super “nice” and polite, it does feel a bit empty. We both feel that people in Thailand were genuinely nicer and it wasn’t just surface level like it is here. Sure, not everyone in Thailand is super nice but that feels a bit more real, doesn’t it? Not everyone is happy 24/7. They took interest in you as a foreigner and it felt genuine. I guess that’s why Thailand is called “the land of smiles”.

But don’t get me wrong, I’m really enjoying my time in Japan, I appreciate how pleasant everything is, which makes visiting nice. Japan is very nice and pleasant.

Steps today: 22, 500

Osaka/Tokyo (Day 48): Konnichiwa, Tokyo!

April 17, 2016

This morning we woke up earlier to finish packing and to check out of our hotel. I’ll miss all the comforts of that hotel room for the rest of our trip. We were spoiled!

7 Yi-Ma met us in the lobby at 10am to bring us to her church for Sunday Service. The church that 7 Yi-Ma goes to is called Osaka Chinese Presbyterian Church. The congregation is 80% Taiwanese people living in Osaka and the rest are mostly Japanese people. The service is an hour and 45 minutes (a lot longer than a Catholic Mass), and is said in Mandarin and Japanese. It’s no wonder the service is long, because everything has to be repeated twice.

When we walked into the church, the greeter asked 7 Yi-Ma to write down our names and where we’re from so they could introduce us to the congregation at the end of the service. Tim was able to understand the majority of the service and translated bits and pieces of it to me on the spot. It was nice to be part of the service, even though I didn’t understand anything, I’m glad 7 Yi-Ma took us to her church. It felt like a very good community to be a part of and I’m glad that she has that in Osaka. We sat beside Tim’s extended relatives, they are 7 Yi-Ma’s oldest brother’s son. I know, a bit confusing, but they’re related to Tim (Tim: my first cousin, once removed, or more specifically, the oldest brother of my paternal grandma’s second son). Tim’s Dad’s side of the family is quite extensive and seem to be all over the globe.

After church we took the subway back to our hotel since we left our bags there. On the way to the restaurant for lunch, I noticed a cookie counter that Tim mentioned he really liked at Takashimaya, called Yoku Moku. I pointed to it to show him. 7 Yi-Ma saw me pointing to it and Tim told her that I recognized the brand because he told me about it yesterday. Then she b-lined it to their counter and bought us a variety of cookies to take with us home and for our train ride. That was very nice of her, but we also felt bad for pointing it out since she’s already been so generous to us during our time in Osaka.

The cookies are really good. I can see why Tim enjoys them. I just googled Yoku Moku and it looks like you can get them at Neiman Marcus and Shirokiya in Hawaii, so I won’t feel too bad if we eat them all before we get home (Tim: because we go to Hawaii all the time?).

For lunch, 7 Yi-Ma treated us to an unagi lunch. We went to the same restaurant as we did the first night we arrived in Osaka since that restaurant specializes in unagi. The unagi here ranged from 1,500 JPY = $17 CAD to 3,100 JPY = $36 CAD. As Tim mentioned before, 7 Yi-Ma takes her unagi seriously and ordered the three of us the 3,100 JPY box. The set was presented in a square box and was delicious. She told us that you don’t have to eat all the rice, but we both did. We liked to pour more unagi sauce over the rice. They could probably tell we weren’t Japanese when we did that. It’s like people pouring soy sauce over their white rice (Tim: nothing wrong with that :P).

After lunch, we took the subway towards Shin-Osaka Station, our Shinkansen (high speed rail) to Tokyo was leaving at 3:16pm. 7 Yi-Ma took the train with us until we had to transfer. I felt sad saying goodbye to her as we waved goodbye from the train. I think having to say goodbye to family on this trip has made me very emotional.

We got to Shin-Osaka with about 45 minutes to spare before our train left for Tokyo. I walked around the station looking at the bento box counter, which serves really good looking train food. Unfortunately, we were really full from lunch and we had cookies to eat so we didn’t get a bento. William had mentioned these specific boxes because there is a set that comes with a ceramic bowl that you can keep.

Our train ride was just under 3 hours because our train made quite a few stops along the way. It went by quickly since I got to watch the Amazing Race and the Mindy Project. Then as usual, I fell asleep until we got to Tokyo Station.

Tokyo Station wasn’t as crazy as I imagined it to be. Maybe my expectations of the crowds here are very high so when we got there it was manageable, and I suppose it was a Sunday, and not a weekday. We transferred to the Chuo Line to get to Shinjuku Station. We booked an apartment on Airbnb that is about a 7 minute walk from Shinjuku Station. We followed the host’s instructions and didn’t have any problems finding the place. It’s amazing that you can go from an area with thousands of people to an area where it’s clearly more residential and is very quiet within a couple of blocks.

When we got into the apartment, everything was exactly like the pictures and it is very clean. The location is really central considering we are only paying $85 CAD/night (before taxes and fees, the list price seems to be around $110 CAD/night normally, but we booked last minute and the room was still available so the price probably dropped). Most hotels in central Tokyo are closer to $200/night. The apartment also has a washing machine, which is great. We won’t have to hand wash while we’re here. The host also provided a portable cellular wif hotspot, which we can bring around with us while in Tokyo. (Tim: Speeds aren’t so great though).

We settled in and I looked up some sushi restaurants in the Shinjuku area. Since coming to Japan, we haven’t really had much sushi since there’s so many other options. I felt like having sushi today and wanted to try a conveyor belt restaurant. Unlike North American conveyor belt sushi restaurants, the ones in Japan seem very popular amongst locals and they serve quality sushi.

We headed out towards the part of Shinjuku where all the action is and searched for Numakuzo. When we found the restaurant, there was a line up (it was around 8:30pm), we waited about 10 minutes before being seated. I actually don’t think I’ve been to a conveyor belt sushi place before. I only remember that Daimatsu (where Ebisu is now) in Richmond used to have one a long time ago.

The restaurant was filled with Japanese people and tourists (I see that it’s been listed in Lonely Planet). When we sat down, there weren’t that many plates going around as I guess we came at a really busy time so the sushi chefs weren’t keeping up. If you don’t see something you like you can order it directly from the sushi chef. After you’re done, the waitress comes and counts the number of plates you have. Overall, I thought the sushi was really good. My favourite was the Bluefin Otoro (fatty tuna) which melted in our mouths. It was our most expensive piece at 520 JPY = $6 CAD. You can get this at some restaurants in Vancouver for about $12-$15 per piece.

We ate more than I expected and it worked out to be about $53 CAD, which isn’t too bad considering we had some pretty special pieces of fish, like the Bluefin Otoro. We walked back towards the apartment and stopped by Lawson’s to buy some yogurt for breakfast tomorrow morning.

My first impression of Tokyo is that the city is huge – taller buildings, bright lights, super wide cross walks and lots of people. I feel very insignificant in a city like this. Even though Shinjuku was very busy (around the few streets that we walked through), it didn’t bother me as much as I thought. I think it’s because it’s like an organized chaos and there’s no one pushing you out of the way to get past you (like in Hong Kong). We’ll see how I feel tomorrow, maybe we’ll see more tour groups.

Steps today: 10,500

Osaka (Day 47): Shopping & Okonomiyaki

April 16, 2016

Today was our last day in Osaka and we didn’t have any day trips planned. We decided to take it easy, go shopping, and have okonomiyaki (since we tried Hiroshima’s style already) for dinner. The morning started off with us watching the news about the effects of the 7.3 magnitude earthquake in Kumamoto. They showed the area on the map where the active fault is and it stretched north to Beppu, where we were last week. We’re very lucky!

We headed out and went for a casual lunch at a restaurant that I had seen around other cities, called Nakau. There was one right across the street from our hotel. It was a casual and inexpensive restaurant that serves rice and noodle dishes. Similar to a lot of other casual restaurants in Japan, you have to order and pay at the kiosk and print your ticket out to give to the waitress when you sit down. The food was good. I would go back to Nakau again. While eating, we were talking about how eating in Japan can be very inexpensive if you go to places like this. No wonder there were so many school aged boys here. It’s cheaper than eating at McDonald’s.

After our lunch, we stumbled upon Kuromon Ichiba Market, which is fairly close to Namba Station. This market is mainly a food market full of fresh seafood and fruit stalls. Since we just ate lunch, we just browsed and observed some of the prices for sushi and gawked at the crazy prices of fruit. Although I really like Japanese food, I don’t know if I could live in Japan and not have access to cheaper fresh fruit. We have been in normal grocery stores (vs. just the high end department stores) and their apples are still about $2.50 CAD each and bananas are around $1.50 CAD each (those were the cheapest prices I saw).

After going through the market, we started to make our way towards Shinsaibashi. On our way there, we came across a large department store near Namba Station called, Takashimaya. The exterior of the building looked very nice so we decided to go inside.

Before leaving the hotel, I was looking online to see if there were any Osaka specific items to buy. I found out that Glico (the company that makes Pocky (Tim: and delicious curry)) has a high end line of Pocky sticks called, Baton d’or (which means “Golden Stick” in French, but obviously it sounds fancier if it’s said in French). They are only sold in two department stores in Osaka. (I later found out they have a location in Kyoto and Fukuoka now… at least they don’t have any in Tokyo (Tim: why is that a good thing?)). I wasn’t going to actively go out of my way to search for them but when we came across Takashimaya, I remembered they sold them there so I wanted to check it out.

I love B1 (Basement floor) in every train station and department store in Japan because it’s full of delicious food. They always have a great selection of take out food as well as perfect looking desserts and goodies. If I were going home from Japan this trip, I think I would buy a lot of my souvenirs from here. But since that’s not the case, we just browsed. While we browsed, we found Baton d’or! There was a line up of mostly Japanese customers buying basket full of them. When we got closer, we saw that each box of 20 sticks were 500 JPY = $5.90 CAD. For the price of a normal box of Pocky here (which is usually around 100-120 JPY), it’s about 5 times the price.

Being a Pocky enthusiast, I felt like it was my duty to try at least one box. We lined up at a good time since the line up only continued to snake around the corner after we got in the line. We (I) decided to try three flavours: Strawberry, Uji matcha and Sicilian lemon. So why are they so special? Apparently the ingredients they use to make these pocky are all fresh ingredients (as they have a fairly short expiry, about a month) and they use real butter. Oh, and their flavours are seasonal and location specific (Asians love exclusivity, and I guess I’m a sucker for it as well).

We walked around and shopped for the next couple of hours before dinner time. We went into a store called, Tokyu Hands, which is a store that I’ve seen throughout Japan and even in Taipei. The Osaka location had 7 levels and we went to each floor to check things out. They have a full range of items, from fancy backpacks to home hardware tools to stationery.

Before finding the restaurant, we walked past the arcade to see if there were any men dancing on the Dance Evolution machine. William showed us a video of a man (who appeared to be in his 50’s) dancing really well and even doing the moves while facing the opposite way (so obviously he had them memorized). We didn’t have any luck seeing any dancers yesterday, but today there were about 3-4 men lined up to dance. These men had backpacks and towels with them. It was sort of like they just danced there to get a workout. We went back a couple of times and watched different guys. The guy who could do the moves without looking at the screen was sitting waiting for his turn, but we must have missed him because when we went back after dinner he was gone. Tim took some videos of them, they were all really good. I guess you have to be dancing in “master mode” if you want to dance in front of a crowd (there’s circle of people watching outside).

William recommended a place tucked away in one of the side streets in the area, which was a good suggestion because so many restaurants on the main drag had long line ups (Saturday night!). After admiring the dancers, we found the okonomiyaki restaurant. We got a seat right away and ordered two okonomiyakis – pork and octopus (800 JPY each = $9.45 CAD). They were smaller than the ones in Hiroshima which is why we felt like we could each have our own this time.

I enjoyed this okonomiyaki more than I did in Hiroshima. There’s less frills to this one and I liked how everything is mixed in and not separate layers. But perhaps I’m just used to eating more Osaka style okonomiyakis since that’s what they would make in Vancouver at Japanese restaurants that serve okonomiyaki.

After dinner, we had one last look at the arcade to watch the dancers and we made our way back to the hotel. We had to pack tonight as we’re heading to Tokyo tomorrow. It was nice being able to stay in one (very comfortable) place for 7 nights. Hopefully our Airbnb is a good one. It should be based on the reviews (*fingers crossed*).

I packed up my backpack and it’s looking pretty full. We’ll have to come back to Japan on another trip so I can bring home all the yummy snacks and skin care products (Tim: or buy them at home/order them online). My cousin, who is living in Melbourne (who knows her cosmetics), asked me to look for a Biore UV sunscreen (it won a cosmetic award in Japan in 2014). Ever since Taiwan, I’ve been looking at the product to compare prices every where we went (I didn’t see it in Seoul). Since this particular cream is made in Japan, it’s slightly cheaper here than in Taiwan. Basically, every time we went shopping I’ve stared at their line of sun screen products and analyzed how much I should buy for myself and if I could fit it in my bag. I think Tim officially hates this product (but is also an expert in the whole product line) because of how many time I’ve gone into a drugstore to look for it (Tim: easily 20+). Having bought all the requested products and a few for myself and my sister, I will (try to) stop looking at them and comparing prices (seems to fluctuate a lot).

Steps today: 16,600