Tokyo – Where to, Gumshoe?

Saigon/Hong Kong/Tokyo/Vancouver (Day 139): Our Long Journey Home

July 17, 2016

Our long travel day began when our alarms went off at 2:30am, Saigon time. We tried to go to sleep earlier but didn’t really fall asleep until 10pm. We woke up, brushed our teeth, and went downstairs to check out. When we went downstairs, the 24-hour reception turned out to be two guys who were sleeping in the lobby on the couch and a cot. The lights were all off and they didn’t hear us standing there until we dropped our bags (not that subtlety). We eventually checked out and our car was waiting outside (the driver was also sleeping too). With no traffic at 3am, we got to the airport in only about 15 minutes!

We were flying to Hong Kong on United for our first flight of the day. There were a lot of people already at the airport checking in for the flight. The majority of people on our flight were connecting to other North American cities – our flight actually continued on to Newark (different plane, same flight number). At such an early hour there was only a cafe and one souvenir stand open (surprisingly). The plane ride went smoothly and 2.5 hours later, we arrived in Hong Kong.

When we landed in Hong Kong and walked through the HSBC sponsored gangways into the terminal, we already felt like we were back in a first world country. I went to the washroom and felt thankful that it was so clean AND had soap. I’ve been to Hong Kong four times in my life and three of them have been with Tim (first time was a family trip). They were usually just layover trips (2-3 days) on our way to somewhere else in Asia. We both have friends in Hong Kong so those trips are mainly just to visit. We had a 5 hour layover in Hong Kong so our plan was to train into Central HK, have lunch with a couple of friends, and come back for our second flight to Tokyo.

When we passed through customs and went to buy our train ticket into town it felt like we were just there because it’s been less than a year since our last time in Hong Kong enroute to the Maldives for our honeymoon. Since we were coming back to the airport in a couple of hours, we bought the same day return trip ticket for 100 HKD = $16.75 CAD. The same day return train ticket is the same price as a one way ticket. The Hong Kong train into town is one of the best and most efficient airport transfers. Hong Kong Station is around 35km away from the airport on Hong Kong Island and the train only takes 24 minutes. I wish all cities had something so efficient, especially if the airport is far from the city centre.

We got to Hong Kong Station shortly after 10am, a lot quicker than we anticipated. We were meeting at Crystal Jade in IFC Mall (which is literally above Hong Kong Station) for lunch, so we didn’t even have to walk outside if we didn’t want to. One of our favourite dim sum places is Tim Ho Wan, which has a location just above the Airport Express Hall in Hong Kong Station, but it’s more of a quick eats type of place and since we were visiting with friends and a baby was going to be with us, Tim Ho Wan wouldn’t work. It also has crazy line ups at all times of the day (next trip to HK we’ll go!). Tim and I walked around IFC to kill time since we weren’t meeting at Crystal Jade until it opened at 11am.

While walking around IFC (International Finance Centre) Mall, I forgot how many stores and brands Hong Kong has. They have everything! After being in SE Asia for so long, going to Hong Kong is such a 180 degree change – especially being in IFC. We walked outside to take a quick selfie and boy was it hot out! It was so humid (felt worse than Saigon) so we quickly took a photo and went back inside the mall.

We got to Crystal Jade ten minutes before it opened and there was already a line up for a table. Howard, Tim’s childhood friend, met us outside while we were waiting and we got a table for four plus a baby. Vicki came shortly after and she made quite the trek to come meet us. She drove to Kowloon and then took the train to Hong Kong with a stroller. Her husband couldn’t make it last minute so I felt bad for her because babies are so much work. Vicki is a university friend of mine who moved to Hong Kong after graduating, and has been there since. She’s now married and a new Mom. This was the main reason for having a stopover in Hong Kong. I wanted to meet baby Ashton, who is 7 months old now. Last time we saw Vicki she was 7 months pregnant.

I didn’t take any photos of the food but we had a few orders of xiao long baos, hot and sour soup noodles, fried Shanghai noodles, green beans, spicy wonton, and pan fried dumplings. It was basically just the 3 of us eating while Vicki took care of Ashton. I think he was teething because he kept rubbing his mouth and was quite upset. Poor guy. Time flew by so quickly and it was already time for us to go back to the airport. Howard was really kind and treated us for lunch. He is part owner of a sandwich shop in New West that just opened recently called Big Star Sandwich. I’m looking forward to trying it out while we’re back in Vancouver!

We said bye to everyone and jumped back on to the train. When we got back to the airport, we went through security and exit customs. We had half an hour before our flight boarded so we walked around quickly and went to our gate. The flight boarded a bit late and we ended up being delayed about 45 minutes. Luckily we had a 2.5 hour buffer in Tokyo (Haneda) before our final flight home. The flight to Tokyo was a little less than 4 hours – you don’t realize how far north Japan is until you fly within Asia. They served us drinks and a small meal on the plane. I had grilled chicken teriyaki and Tim had stewed pork. The food on ANA is pretty decent, but I think Cathay and Singapore Airlines has better food. We both watched Zootopia, which was a really good Disney movie. We were both pretty impressed with it and the (not so subtle) message/lessons about race discrimination.

We finally landed in Tokyo, at Haneda Airport, around 8pm. We had an hour to do our (my) last minute shopping before we boarded our final flight to Vancouver. To get to our connecting gates we had to go through security again, which Tim thinks basically means that they don’t trust the security from other countries. The international terminal had a lot of high end stores, your typical duty free stores, and a food court. I was most interested in buying snacks to bring back home. The selection was alright. I bought some Royce chocolate covered chips, mochi, fried mini crabs, matcha cakes, and yubari melon Pocky. I didn’t really hold back since we didn’t have to worry about capacity because our shopping bags were our carry on. We were hoping they would have a cosmetic/drug store like they did in the domestic terminal, where they had all the Biore sunscreen and your everyday Japanese candies. We did see the sunscreen but it was double the price of what we saw at the domestic terminal so we passed. Even just being in the airport, I was really happy to be back in Japan. *Sigh* I miss Japan and can’t wait to go back one day.

Our flight left on time and we were on our way home! The flight was fairly full and filled with more Japanese tourists than Canadians. The flight time was just under 9 hours – which is a pretty short flight compared to flying home from Hong Kong (14 hours!). We were flying on a Boeing 787, Dreamliner, so the windows were nice and big. There wasn’t much turbulence which made it a pretty relaxing flight for me. The food on this flight was better than the previous flight. I had unagi rice and Tim had a tomato hamburger steak. They came around with Haagen Daz vanilla ice cream after dinner. A couple of hours before landing they gave everyone breakfast boxes that had yogurt and 3 sandwiches (they looked like high tea sandwiches). If they had an egg salad sandwich it would’ve tasted like the ones at Family Mart.

After getting a little bit of sleep, we finally landed in Vancouver! As we were descending on the city, Vancouver looked beautiful and the suburbs looked so orderly and nicely groomed from the air. We got through customs and picked up our bags without any issues. My Mom was waiting for us when we got out and my Dad picked us up upstairs. Feels nice to be home.

We unpacked, showered, and then our family came over for a family dinner. It was good that we got to visit with everyone when we got home because I think we would’ve ended up napping. I didn’t take any pictures but we had a lot of my favourite food – a good green salad, smokies, lasagna, Cantonese BBQed meats, and my Grandma’s soup. It was a mishmash of things but it was delicious. For dessert we had fruits and I opened all my Japanese and Vietnamese snacks to share. I wasn’t going to eat all those snacks myself so I was happy to share them with everyone.

After 11 countries, 49 cities, 30 flights, and sleeping in 44 different beds, we’re home! We’ll see where our next adventure takes us, but for now we’ll be enjoying beautiful Vancouver and spending time with our family and friends.

Steps today: 4,500

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