Ramen – Where to, Gumshoe?

Sapporo (Day 60): Ramen, Sapporo Beer, and Sushi

April 29, 2016

We’ve been away from home for 2 months now. Time sure does fly! It was our first full day in Sapporo and we were ready to head out and explore the city. The forecast for today was rainy, cold, and windy. It made for a perfect ramen day.

Tim did a bit of ramen research before we left the hotel and there was a ramen restaurant called, Aji No Tokedai, that was fairly close to us and in the direction we planned on spending part of the day. It’s a Hokkaido ramen chain that has locations all around Sapporo. We ordered gyozas, miso ramen with corn, and a Hokkaido special ramen (with butter, corn and scallops). The ramen with butter started off pretty tasty but soon became a bit too rich for me. I wasn’t able to finish my bowl (which was a lot larger than I thought it would be).

Feeling pretty bloated and lethargic after lunch, we continued our walk around Sapporo. It was raining quite hard outside and we didn’t see too many people walking around. We initially thought it was just because it was rainy out and that Sapporo is a smaller city, so naturally there’s less people out. But then, we went down to Sapporo’s underground walkway and discovered that’s where all the people were.

We exited the underground to find Sapporo TV Tower, and walked briefly down Odori Park. Odori Park is a long park that extends 1.5km down the middle of the city running east to west. We came across a block that appeared to be a fish market. There were a couple of streets of vendors that sold Hokkaido crab (a lot of king crab and hairy crabs) and other various seafood. We later learned that this fish market is mainly for tourists, while the actual Sapporo Fish Market is not as central.

We made our way towards the shopping area of Odori and went to a department store called, PARCO. While in Tokyo, I was looking at Issey Miyake’s line of bags and purses called, BaoBao (I think the name sounds cute). Issey Miyake items are around 30-40% cheaper in Japan than they are in the States (you also save 8% on tax-free shopping). I couldn’t really decide on one in Tokyo and I saw that Sapporo had a location so I waited until we got here to possibly buy something. Since I hadn’t bought much of anything on this trip, I wanted a souvenir from Japan that wouldn’t be consumed within a few months (like the snacks and sunscreen). After staring at the different options for a while and messaging my sister asking her for her advice, I ended up getting a black clutch (converts into a cross body bag). I didn’t know much about Issey Miyake and then I read about him on Wikipedia and found out that apparently he was friends with Steve Jobs and produced his favourite black turtlenecks.

After shopping, we walked about 15 minutes towards the Sapporo Beer Museum. The museum is in a nice red-brick building and had free admission. The museum wasn’t that extensive but it’s set up very nicely inside. At the end of the museum, you can pay for samples of different types of Sapporo Beer. Tim had a 3 glass sampler (600 JPY = $7 CAD) and I had Sapporo’s Ribbon brand’s grapefruit juice (100 JPY = $1.13 CAD). The grounds of the Sapporo Beer Museum are quite nice. They have a restaurant, store, and beer garden as well.

We quickly walked back to the hotel because my parent’s friends, Auntie Mary and Uncle Reg, were picking us up for dinner. They had moved to Sapporo temporarily to work as missionaries while running a guest house. We got in touch with them when we got to Japan and had planned to meet while we were here. For dinner we ate closer to their neighbourhood, about 6km from the city centre. They took us for sushi at a restaurant (I think it was called Torimon) that had about a 20 minute wait at 5:30pm. It was clearly a popular restaurant with the locals. It was nice to get out of the city core and see where the locals lived and ate.

We had a great meal with good conversation about our travel stories. They have been to so many places in Asia and were telling us their favourite and least favourite places they’ve visited. After dinner, they brought us to the house that they are living in and showed us the B&B rooms. It was all really nice and spacious and all the pictures and knick-knacks felt like a real home. We sat and chatted a bit longer while eating some freshly cut fruit (we missed having fresh fruit while being in Japan, so this was the perfect end to the night). They drove us back to our hotel and we said our goodbyes. I think I’ve stressed before how nice it is to meet with family and friends while traveling and tonight just reaffirmed my feelings.

Steps today: 13,000

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 (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