Ippudo – Where to, Gumshoe?

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

April 5, 2016

Our flight to Fukuoka, Japan, was at 2:05pm from Incheon Airport. Instead of taking the airport bus that we had taken from Incheon into Seoul, we planned to take the airport express train (AREX) from Seoul Station. I had read about the AREX, but our hotel as well as other travel bloggers recommended taking the airport bus into the Myeongdong area because you didn’t have to transfer from the AREX to Seoul’s subway lines. But considering we were only one subway stop away from Seoul Station, the process was painless and the journey to the airport was a lot more enjoyable than the airport bus. The only issue I see with taking the subway to get to Seoul Station is that their subway stations have a lot of stairs and not many elevators or even escalators (which is probably why the hotel recommended the bus for most travellers with suitcases). Thank goodness (Tim: or thank practical packing and planning) we both have backpacks or it would have been a very painful walk through the stations.

Once we made it to Seoul Station, we went to buy our airport express tickets. Like Hong Kong Station, you can check into your flight and check in your luggage at the train station (such an awesome system). This is only available for Korean Air, Asiana and Jeju Airlines though. If you are flying on any of these three airlines you get a discount on your train ticket (6,900 KRW = $7.80 CAD instead of 8,000 KRW = $9.00 CAD). But another added perk of checking in at Seoul Station is that there’s also an immigration office which lets you bypass the regular line up when you arrive at Incheon! The other benefits of taking the AREX was that it was shorter than the bus ride by 30 minutes (40 minutes instead of 70 minutes) and there’s free wifi on the train.

Before leaving Seoul, we had our subway cards which had a balance of 800 KRW on it. Since we had gone farther away from our hotel yesterday, it messed with our cost per ride. We weren’t able to just add 200 KRW (a short ride is 1,250 KRW and we had 1,050 KRW balance) as the minimum deposit amount to your card is 1,000 KRW (it’s silly that they don’t let you add any amount you want) (Tim: even the Seoul Subway employee thought we could add 200KRW… he went to try at the machine, as we had already done, and realized he couldn’t). So long story short we both had 800 KRW on our card and didn’t want to get a refund (because there is a 500KRW fee to get the remaining balance refunded). You can use the subway card (“T Money” card) at participating stores and restaurants though (similar to a lot of cities). We ended up going to McDonald’s and each buying a chocolate dipped vanilla cone (for “breakfast”) for 800 KRW (yay!). Tim will have a more detailed blog post about this at some point.

We got to Incheon around 12pm and headed through security and to our gate. We still had to go through customs but we were able to go into a quicker line for both security and customs which was much quicker (Tim: the same line as pilots, flight attendants, etc). Korea has tax free shopping at their stores if you make a purchase of over 30,000 KRW. Since I bought a bunch of stuff from Missha, I had one receipt that qualified (that was stamped at the store). If you ever had to deal with getting your VAT tax back in Europe, getting your tax refund back in Korea is much easier. We found a tax free kiosk, the lady took my receipt, scanned the barcode, scanned my passport and my refund in cash was dispensed. I got back 3,500 KRW for a 57,000 KRW purchase (around 6%, you can get up to 8% depending on what you buy). If you have more expensive items, you need to have the items in your carry on to show them.

When we arrived at our gate, we noticed that it seemed like the average age of passengers flying to Fukuoka from Seoul was around 50 years old.

The flight to Fukuoka was only an hour and twenty minutes, so basically we were in the air for a bit less than an hour. I tried to write my blog post from yesterday on the plane but was only able to write a couple of paragraphs before they brought out a meal (chicken sandwich that wasn’t very appetizing, Tim thought it was tuna and said it was fine to him), cleaned up and then it was time to land.

Fukuoka is one of the closest Japanese cities to South Korea (there are ferries that go between Busan and Fukuoka), which has made it a popular destination for Koreans and Chinese tourists. To be honest, the first time I heard of Fukuoka was on our last trip to Asia, when we were at the Taipei airport and a flight just got in from Fukuoka. When I googled it, it seemed like an interesting, more laid back, Japanese city and it is the birth place of a lot of famous ramen restaurants such as Ippudo and Ichiran.

The Fukuoka airport is quite small. The international and domestic terminals are not connected, but there’s a free shuttle bus that goes between the two terminals. Once we got to the train station (which is at the domestic terminal), we bought our subway cards and loaded some Yen on to it and headed to our hotel.

We’re staying at Hotel MyStays Fukuoka Tenjin, which is about a 3 minute walk from Tenjin Station. The hotel’s location is very convenient – close to the train station as well as a lot of shopping and restaurants. The room itself is small but very clean. We booked this hotel through Expedia and are paying $56 CAD/night. Fukuoka is a lot cheaper than the rest of Japan!

Finally! It was time for our first meal in Japan. Since Fukuoka was our first stop, it was a no brainer that we were having ramen at Ippudo. Ippudo has many international locations, one being in New York City. Up until today, I had only been to the East Village location and thought the ramen was good but it was pricey – at around $16 USD (plus tax and tip) a bowl. The one in New York is a lot fancier with a lot of other menu options besides ramen. Tim’s been to Ippudo in Tokyo and has always said how it was the most amazing ramen he’s ever had (Tim: what I actually say is that I wasn’t the biggest fan of ramen until I tried Ippudo in Tokyo, but the first time I had Ippudo in Tokyo definitely put Ramen on the noodle soup map for me.).

The ramen was delicious and the servers were friendly and courteous. (I love Japan!) We’re not the biggest fans of Korean food in general (Tim: or I have certain body parts that aren’t the biggest fans of Korean food), so eating a bowl of ramen made us so glad we’re finally in Japan.

After dinner we walked around towards the river and canals. Fukuoka is filled with canals and open air food stalls called a “yatais”. I read that yatais were very popular in Japan historically but now they only really exist in Fukuoka. We passed by a row of them but since we had just eaten, we just looked. Most of them served either yakitori (grilled skewers), oden (boiled items), or ramen.

Fukuoka seems to be a very laid back and calm city and is apparently a stark comparison to Tokyo (it’s a nice change of pace from Seoul as well). It’s my first time in Japan and I’m really excited to discover more of it. I love Japanese food and can’t wait to eat my way through Japan (and prepare to starve when we go to Australia) (Tim: we’re not going to starve). While walking through the streets and looking at the different sushi places, I had to stop myself from thinking, “Is this a good place? Are they actually Japanese?” like I would in Vancouver. Looking forward to our time in Japan!

Steps today: 16,000

Tag: Ippudo

Tokyo (Day 50): City Views and Shibuya

Seoul/Fukuoka (Day 36): Welcome to Japan!