Sushizanmai – Where to, Gumshoe?

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