Japan Trip: Day 15-16 - HCMC

Day 15-16: The Old & The New in Saigon

During my Africa trip with my parents earlier in the year, I wrote about a couple of our days in Cape Town using a crutch of splitting it up into what new stuff I did that I somehow missed in the prior five trips, and what old, familiar stuff I did. Given this is my third trip to HCMC in five years (and technically fourth overall), I figured I would go about it the same way. Especially since I did take some focus to ensure I could fill up the "new" side of the ledger.

The Old

Of course, I'll still start by focusing on the old stuff. First the weird thing where the rain just holds off. I may regret writing this now, at the tail end of the touristic part of my first day, but it is weird how little the actual weather seems to correlate with forecasts even the prior day. Anyway, let me move on before the weather gods crucify me for this bit of flaunt.

So, let's talk about the War Remnants Museum. I've know been here each of the three trips to HCMC. Not sure why, to be honest other than its me admitting that coming to Vietnam as an American... kind of means I owe it to the people of this country to give a bit of pennance and reflect on the atrocity that was that war. Granted of course, I wasn't alive for it. But I am an American, and yeah it is a harrowing experience each time. There were actually a few changes this time around in the museum - first they replaced what was the prior two trips an exhibit on the Anti-War protests in America (basically the one area that they give some credit to the American people that largely were against the war) with one memorializing the 50th anniversary of a particularly awful aerial bombing attack. 

The rest of the museum was largely the same, with teh top floor giving a very honest breakdown of the timeline fo the war, starting from the war against the French that gave Vietnam its initial independence in the 50's, to the entirety of the Vietnam war itself. I did notice this time more than previous that it is fairly openly anti the Southern Vietnamese people, who the US were backing and fighting alongside (and who ultimately lost, as Hanoi and the North took over the whole country). The other exhibit on the third floor is beautiful, featuring photography from war photographers (including some US ones) on the brutality of war on all sides. This is probably the "fairest" portrayal in the museum.

The second floor is more pointed and stark, with two exhibits, one just simply called "War Crimes" and the other specifically about Agent Orange and the trail of deformities and diseases it has left in its wake. There is no combating the atrocities here really, and as an American I feel we should visit each time just to remember again how awful of a war this was.

Shifting gears a lot, quick shout out to the Le Meridien Club Lounge, which remains one of the few Marriott-property club lounges I've visited in recent years worth its while. The food selection for hourdourves is excellent, with the normal cold cuts and cheese, but also prepared food of beef satay skewers, crispy bang bang sauce soft shell crab, actually good crostini, and local fruits. It was an excellent little break both of the two days.

I did some Temples ("Chua"s in Vietnamese parlance), a couple new ones that I'll get to, but it was nice to go back to the Chua Ngoc Huang, which is the most contained active one I've been to in teh sense it was being used far more as an actual temple than a tourism site, adn then the Vinh Ngiemh near the other river that runs through HCMC. The Vinh Ngiem is a little bit out of the bustle and has some space to breathe, including multiple pagodas, three or so temple buildings, some ornate sculpture, and a beautiful little side pond so chocked with koi it was hard to keep track, again with some nice buddha statues to boot. Overall, the HCMC temples are far from the most ornate, and definitely not the largest, but the way they seemlessly just fit in right smack in the middle of this city is quite impressive.

In terms of meals and nightlife, Anan technically fits in teh old category, but went with a tasting menu option this time that I'll detail separately. Cuc Guach Ngon was as good as ever, seemingly a bit mroe built out as this time I was sent to teh second floor of the house that they've converted into a restaurant, that literally had a wall of pottery and ceramics befitting a museum next to my table.

In terms of nightlife, Pasteur Street Brewing was as good as ever - they really have some great beers on tap. My new favorite this time that I don't recall in past was a Pomelo IPA which was lovely, but their stout and more standard IPA offerings are strong as always. The Gin House had some great cocktails, even if they're a bit more expensive than needed given what i found at Summer Experiment (check the new section).

Finally, let's talk about The Observatory. I've ranked it as my favorite techno club in the world. I nearly avoided going there Friday night because they had one event which was a pride event. I have nothing against pride events and think it's awesome they can have such an event on what many would think is a fairly conservative country, but it's just not my scene. Instead I tried out The Lighthouse, which is a similar set-up but nowhere near the same. You aren't as high up, the dance space is not nearly as chill and dark and special. The DJs weren't as good. I gave it a bit of a run but gave up and headed over to The Observatory around 1am.

The Observatory was packed. There was definitely a sizable pride / drag presence but the scheduled drag part of the night was over at midnight. And I think given the large expat-heavy crowd that there always is, many came just because The Observatory is awesome. They had redone the semi-outdoor terrace half of the establishment - admittedly the half I spend far less time in, but it was definitely looking spruced up. The interior club was as perfect as I remembered it. The balloons as fun as ever (made better by basically everyone there doing them as well). The scene is just perfect.

I went back Saturday, it was packed again as it was their official "unveiling" of the redesigned terrace, and again it was just a great time. Maybe its the balloons, maybe its the great scenery, maybe its the friendliness of the Viettnamese people infecting us all through osmosis but I'm always happily surprised how many people there will ask who I am, why I'm in Vietnam, to do a balloon with them, etc. It was effectively the last thing I did in HCMC, and if not for needing to leave the hotel by 10:30am tomorrow morning, I probably would've stayed until 4am.

New

Again, this is probably going to be longer of the two sections, just because I made it a point to do some new stuff. Some of these were good enough I'm retroactively mad at myself for not doing them on my two prior trips. The first was the Ho Chi Minh City Museum of Fine Arts. 

This is probably the best museum in HCMC (aside from the War Remnants one), and I really enjoyed it. It's laid out in three buildings each with 2-3 stories or exhibits. The first showcases Vietnamese art and sculpture made from 1950 to today. A lot of war undertones certainly, but it is all made by Vietnamese artists and a lot was certainly quite beautiful. The third building had more ancient artifacts, each floor with a specific medium it was focusing on. The first floor was stone work from ancient times, then ceramics and bronze, then woodwork and jade. It spans roughly 100 BC up to the 1900s. The middle building is rotating exhibits, this time with select work from the National Art Museum in Hanoi, which again had a level of intricacy, and more than that emotion that I wasn't totally expecting.

The next stop was the the observatory of the Bitexco Financial Tower, the odd shaped, glistening building that is the tallest in Vietnam. It really is a gorgeous building, its defining feature probably being the helipad that juts out of it. The observation deck is on the 49th floor (oddly about 15 floors below the top), but gives a 360 degree view of the city. Ho Chi Minh City is interesting in the sense the Saigon River cuts right through it but basically everything worth doing and seeing is on the Western half of the river. Truly, I don't know if I've ever actually been on the Eastern half. It's quite start from the observatory view, but that Western Half is gorgeous, from being ab le to see the opera house and the main esplanades, to the bridges, to the size of the city in the distance. Every time I've come here I get more impressed - and in reality that's the way it should be. In many ways the country is just 50 years old (end of War to now) and has a drive to improve and better itself like few countries I've seen.

Malt Saigon is a great beer bar. It's right in the heart of the city (in truth a lot of the sites in the city are walkable). It serves craft beer from five or so other HCMC breweries (including Pasteur Street), which is a nice way to try some of the ones that IU don't have time to go to on my limited trip. The decor is also great, with a shuffleboard table, some great artwork, and overall a really nice vibe. 

From a further sightseeing perspective, the two new Chuas I went to this time were both quite special, and arguably the two best that I've seen over my trips to HCMC. The second one was in the Chinatown area, a bit further away from most of the sights, but worth visiting. The Chua Van Phat is tucked away squished between two apartment buildings, and from the otuside and even through floors 1-3 it is pretty meh, apart from some nice paintings on the third floor (and the biggest plus - them having no issues with you taking photos). But once you get to that top floor, you get it. The place is known for having a thousand buddhas. They're all on that top floor.

There are teh three giant ones in the middle, like many buddhist temples will have - though the small nature of the space makes them feel even larger and more imposing than normal. And then on every wall are I guess the other 997, small statuettes of buddhas from floor to ceiling everywhere. It really is a cool sight, and one that was very new for me in HCMC.

The other new temple was the Chua Phap Hoa, which borders the north/south river, notable for its river views, the hundreds of lanters on its big greenery, and its three levels of ornate buddhas and carvings. It probably is the fanciest temple (though I would argue the Vinh Ngiem is right up with it) in HCMC, though sadly they were pretty vigilant of not allowing photos of the main interior rooms. All these temples I saw, with the exception of the Van Phat one, are walking distance of each other - not as close to each other as say the temple circuit in Nikko, but still gives you a good view of HCMC as well.

From a food perspective, my new meal was a dinner at Laang, written up in the New York Times's 36 Hours in HCMC, and also conveniently two blocks from the Le Meridien. The place is really well decorated and has a great, long menu of modernized Vietnamese classics. I went a bit traditional with a beef mince in betel leaf lettuce wrap dish, with the twist being it was deep fried in a casing of a local Vietnamese grain. For the main I went with a duck breast in a garlic and clove sauce with Vietnamese green onion and spinach, with peanut slaw, and it was divine. Duck is very good and underrated in Vietnam. It was a bit disconcerting to see Laang as emtpy as it was on a Friday Nigth (about 40% full through my time there), but the waiters admitted it actually caters more to lunch than dinner. Anyway, it was worth the trip.

Finally, the best new thing I did was go to Summer Experiment. Like the two cocktail bars on Thursday Night after I reached (in good symmetry, one new, one old), it is in a dingy alley a couple flights of stairs up. Come to think of it, so is the original Pasteur Street Brewing Co Taphouse - for whatever reason this is just a common thing in HCMC. Anyways, once you get in they have a gorgeous, open space and some amazing cocktails. It is the best one I've been to in HCMC, and having tasted now six of their cocktails, I honestly think it is my favorite I went to on the entire trip. They opened apparently a month after my 2019 trip here, and when I came last year I focused probably too much on just redoing my favorites checklist, but i'm glad I ventured out. Less glad about it leading me to The Lighthouse (they're close to each other...), but in the end I corrected that error quick enough.

As I leave HCMC, I do wonder when I'll come back again. Not that I wouldn't want to, but if not for these Singapore Airlines miles necessitating me to head towards Singapore, I probably don't return last year or this year. Granted, I could've I guessed done Hanoi, or one of the Thai cities I haven't been to before, this year, but I wanted to come back to HCMC because I truly love it.

**City Rankings Sidebar: As always when I do these trips, I start thinking of how all the cities stack up on my list of favorites. Currently going into this trip, we had Tokyo at #18, Kyoto at #11, HCMC at #10 (and Bangkok there too, but this visit is almost only to visit Gaggan Anand, so not expecting my ranking to go up or down on that one...). In retrospect, I think some changes are in order. 

First of all, Takayama is definitely getting ranked, and probably fairly high up. It was a perfect change of pace in Japan. Not as sure about Nikko. I don't want to expand the list further from its current 60, but also loathe getting rid of cities. What I may do is make some honorable mentions, namely the cities I have on the lsit that I've only visited as a 8/9/10 year old. Anyway, back to the list.

Tokyo may drop a bit to be honest. It is a great city, but I think I probably spent a day too long, or its just a bit too overwhelming. The real fun for me has been mentally debating the Kyoto ranking, and then namely if it jumps HCMC. I think it will to be honest. Kyoto on a second, more focused visit, blew me away. The restaurants are great. The bar scene is great, especially since most of the main spots are on the same 8x2 block drag in the center of the city. It is a far more visitable city to see in full than Tokyo - and even then there's a good deal of places I still haven't seen. Put it this way, if I go back to Japan, while I'll probably focus on areas I haven't seen at all, I'll probably still leave room for a couple days in Kyoto, being fine to largely ignore Tokyo. 

As for HCMC, I don't think it rises further, though completely independently, I'm thinking of dropping Sydney down a bit, so it may still see its position change overall. I would always suggest to anyone who would care to listen to visit HCMC and give it a good 3-5 days on a Vietnam trip, but the biggest takeaway from this trip has been to even more strongly suggest that about Kyoto.**

Japan Trip: Day 13-14 - Tokyo & The Start of HCMC

Day 13: Shinjuku In Full

It's weird, in some ways we haven't done the stereotypical Japanese tourist things during this trip, other than maybe go to a karaoke bar the first couple nights in Kyoto (which seem like a lifetime ago). But we haven't done any costuming, or gone to a sumo fight, or an arcade bar or those types of things. Maybe we should do a bit more, and its not like we haven't done a lot in terms of enjoying the nightlife of these various places, but today in Shinjuku was the day to do most of that.

We spent a lot of the day just walking around Shinjuku, particularly the more commercial focused area near the Shinjuku Station. There is one straight in front of it with giant comic book signs and neon and arcades and furry animals and all the rest (including what seemed to be a fairly sizable red light area for a couple blocks). We made tentative plans to come back in the night if time persists, to see what that is like, but even in the day it is overwhelming. Sure, a lot of it is kitchy nonsense, or aimed at people very much not us, but it still is cool to see in that scale.

A few blocks further stand a line of upmarket stores, such as Armani and Louis Vitton, and the giant Isetan shopping mall, an 8-story behemoth, with a beautiful food hall underneath. The food hall underneath was where we had lunch. The pricing here is not cheap necessarily, but generally you can eat a very filling lunch, like we did, for about $20 along with sampling different things. I got a few yakitori sticks, a cold wagyu roast beef salad (excellent) a set of various gyoza and dumplings. All in all a very satisfying lunch.

The only real tourist site of the day was next up, the Meiji Jingo shrine, taking up half of Yoyogi Park, about 20 minute walk south of Shinjuku. The area that this temple takes up is quite large, but the grounds itself dedicated to the place as a whole are quite a bit larger, and quite serene. The entry way past a giant gate, are rows of tree-lined walkways, with giant cedars on each side. You truly feel weird thinking this is in reality spitting distance away from the streets and bustle of Shinjuku.

The main shrine is in honor to Emperor Meiji, who restored the primacy of the Emperor and brought the seat of power in Japan back to Tokyo. The main buildings are similar to what I've come to expect, but had a couple unique features which I liked. First was two giant walls of barrels, one being woven barrels of sake with really colorful weaving work, and the other being barrels of French wine, tying to Emperor Meiji bringing in French winemakers for the Japanese to learn from them. The other unique big was the large gardens just south of the main temple, with ponds, gazebos, lakes and lilypads. The only disappointment there being that the iris garden was being planted and cultivated for next year, so we missed out on that bit completely.

From there we headed back to Shinjuku to stroll around for a bit, including walking through the Golden Gai area, which is a little cordoned off 3x3 block of small alleyways with a ton of bars and tiny restaurant stands. This place is far better to come at night, so we got a sense of what it was and made a decision to come back at night, again time permitting our ability to do so, what with wanting to go back to Bar Trench and hit up one last night club as a group. Today was a bit of a lazy day, some of that is just natural tiredness at this point, and also our laziest start (left the AirBNB at 10:45), but also intentionally leaving some things for a future Japan trip.

Our last dinner was maybe our best, or at least the most anticipated. It was the one splurgy sushi omakase we had during the time in Japan, at a place called Sushi M, and it was fantastic. The place has a cool, dark set-up with spotlights positioned at each of the 12 seats that are there at the sushi bar. Behind is one sushi master who preps all the nigiri and rolls, and other waiters who are taking care of the service. Everything was perfectly done, from the sake pairing to even all the non sushi. As with Lurra and Den, I'll cover the meal in a separate post.

Dinner took about 2hrs, but it was still about 9pm, so we ventured back to the Golden Gai district which was buzzing. It is a little corner of Shinjuku, but not the glitz and kitsch, but instead these little alleys with dozens of bars, each that can accomodate maybe 10 people. Most were already full, we went to one called Bay Window that was a whiskey bar, for a whiskey sampler, including one's from "Inchiro's Distillery", which we were sad to learn is not Ichiro Suzuki. After we walked around the Golden Gai some more - it was definitely tourist heavy, though the bartender in teh whiskey spot told us if anything it becomes more Japanese later in teh day.

From there we headed over to Shibuya one last time, first to Bar Trench for some cocktails, where we met a bartender who happened to live in NYC for 12 years, and even was a bartender at a speakeasy in Manhattan I've frequented. The drinks again were excellent, and all in all not too expensive, most being about $12-15. Overall alcohol, with the exception of some of the mroe fancy whiskeys, is not so expensive in Japan, even compared to say Korea where their versions of Bar Trench had cocktails clsoer to the $18-20 range.

We ended the night late, not a surprise as it was our last night as a group before I had to Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow afternoon. We ewnt to Mitsuki first, which is a I would say more gritty of DJ Oath Bar, though the same setup. A bar backing an small space with the DJ in the front - this one was overall darker, but had nice smoke machines and easily the best AC I've seen in a club of this type. It's hard to rate either place really because while they were semi-crowded, the atmosphere would've been better on the weekend. Of course, maybe we don't get in on the weekend. Such is life as a tourist.

Day 14: Trading the Sun for the Swamp

The last day in Japan. Second straight year doing a mostly northern Asia country, but adding the Southeast to the end of it. Last year I probably was way too quick on the Korea half. Granted part of that was due to losing two days due to a typhoon delaying the start of my trip. This year I chopped off a day in southeast asia, and left earlier for Japan. I'm leaving Japan ultimately knowing that I'm leaving a lot on the table to do on a further trip, whether it is Hokkaido (the north island), any of the further out islands, Hiroshima, many other places. Still it was a good quality trip.

We woke up late, with my friends leaving for Osaka on the 11am Shinkansen. That is when we would part. I've done Osaka, and it was the first place I did in Japan last time when I still had maximum energy, so in my view, I saw what I needed. I know it is known as the unofficial food capital of Japan, but thought to let them enjoy while I skip down to Ho Chi Minh City.

I had about three hours to kill before the very affordable "Airport Limousine" bus that would take me from our hotel to Haneda. This gave me enough time to do one last bit of tourism, walk around Shinjuku a bit, and then have a splurgy Yakiniku lunch. The first bit was impromptu. The giant Tokyo Metropolitan Government building is a block south of our hotel. It is a massive building, 60 stories high, and it has a free observation deck. This is very different than the observation deck at the Tokyo Skytree - which I did on my prior Japan trip. That was certainly not free (by memory $30-40?), and had a super long queue. This one had no queue. Admittedly it's not as high up, but it is still taller than most buildings around it and gives a view good enough that if it is clear, cloudless day, you can see Mt. Fuji.

It was not a clear, cloudless day, so no Mt. Fuji view. It was still a pretty clear day, so you did get a good view of just the giantness of Tokyo - buildings and structures and life in every direction. You get nice views of the business of Shinjuku, and further out can see some of the key sights - such as the Tokyo Skytree, but overall it was just a great time waste and a great way to get a proper idea of how large and dense Tokyo is.

Lunch was at Mokkasan, which is a yakiniku buffet style set-up. I was a bit lucky to get a table withouth making a booking. How it works is you get 90 min to eat as much as you want for a set price, with the price corresponding to the grade of meat you get. The highest option is with kobe beef, which was around $350. I clearly did not pick this option, picking the second lowest, which was about $90, but did still feature wagyu. It's all you can eat of various cuts of the wagyu, and also as much as you want from a selection of innards (stomach, intestine, liver), seafood, pork, and vegetables. My only real complain isn't even a fair one, in that it seemed like they gave portions with each order of the same amount regardless of me being one person and not two or four.

For what effectively was my last thing in Japan, it was a good way to go out. It was also a bit nostalgic. I had this variation of meal, granted generally at cheaper versions, a lot in 2013 when I came to Japan. It was my go to, including going multiple times to various Gyu-Kakus, which I don't think were in the US yet at the time. My meals generally were that or sushi, and when it was sushi it was almost always conveyor belt sushi. I'll say this, the conveyor belt sushi, if you do some homework and find ones that are generally well regarded, is as efficient and cost effective today as it was ten years ago.

The airport limousine bus took me to Haneda efficiently enough that was able to grab about 40 minutes in teh ANA lounge, which was a bit disappointing. It was huge, had good views of the tarmac, and cold sake, but the food options were quite middling. Anyway, after the yakiniku, I was too full to eat much anyway. Plus, though I didn't know it at the time, the food on the actual ANA flight would redeem the lounge. The main dish which a chicken teriyaki over rice with steamed vegetables, which was tasty but nothing spectacular. It was the sides that were great, a light salad with ginger miso dressing, a macaroni salad with crab (real, as far as I can tell), and then edamame with a couple pieces of a sushi roll. Along with of course sake.

Soon enough we landed in Ho Chi Minh City, and the first thing I did was check the weather app. Googling weather is useless since it just predicts there will be thunderstorms all the time. In my trip last year, that was the forecast at all times and other than maybe 2-3 30min periods of a lot of rain there was nothing sustained. (I'm writing this the next day, and it was supposed to rain most of the day and didn't at all). The rain held off for the first night. 

I checked in at the Le Meridien, which I've learned in the year since I stayed here last has given out its second floor to become a nightclub. They have ladies night on Thursdays and from waht I can tell it is very popular. I arrived at 10pm from the airport, and left aroudn 10:30pm to head to a couple cocktail bars and there were long lines to enter, with what was nice to see mostly local Vietnamese girls dressed to the nines. What was a bit odd though is they don't have a dedicated elevator, so on my ride up to my room I shared the elevator with five girls, these happened to be from Australia. When I arrived back to my hotel at 1:30am, I asked what the cover was and it was 500k dong (~$20) which is super high for HCMC, but I guess it is one of the glitzier clubs. That's not my bag man, at least not in HCMC.

I did go to two cocktail bars that are situated about a block apart, both on the second floor of buildings that you require some trust to walk down fairly grungy alleyways and climb stairs, but then get treated to lovely cocktails in great settings. One thing I'll say of the bat, while they may not have the refinement of the top ones I went to in Japan, they seemed stronger, which depending on how you look at it may be more important. Nothing crazy tonight - leaving The Observatory, and checking out The Lighthouse, the next couple nights. 

When I left Japan, I did wonder should I have rearranged and added Sapporo (North island) to my trip instead of going back to HCMC. Ultimately, I'm happy I didn't for two reasons, first: this is the end of my Singapore Airlines miles (side-note: not really in teh sense I can convert Citi points to them), and I don't know when I would find myself in Southeast Asia again, and two: there is definitely enough stuff to warrant another Japan trip. When? Who knows, but that itinerary is out there.

Japan TrIp: Day 11-12 - Nikko

Day 11 - The Real Mountains

The Japan part of our trip is effectively three different trips in major cities (Kyoto, Tokyo Pt. 1, Tokyo Pt. 2) with little excursions to the mountains inbetween. The time in Takayama more significant, for two and a half days. Takayama presented itself quickly as a lovely little mini city, where everything is walkable. Nikko is the other stop, a most of two days + one night "day trip", far closer to Tokyo (though still requiring two stops and 105 minutes), but even more remote and more befitting of the comparison to Luang Prabang, or El Calafate. Most things are off of one giant road that runs through the town for about 2km, with the train about a quarter of the way through. 

The trip to Nikko was uneventful apart from us cutting it a bit too close on making the first Shinkansen due to the ludicrous inefficiency and unconnectedness of the stop lights in Tokyo. When on the Shinkansen, it was fine. What surprised us was how many tourists were headed to Nikko. Granted, I geuss there's probably not many non-tourists, but a whole bunch of people got off the Shinkansen at the change point and switched to the local JR to Nikko.

Nikko itself is truly Japan's version of an El Calafate. A super well set-up town for tourists, with good enough local touches. Like our lunch place Keiyouka Kazushi, a sushi spot that for sure caters mostly to foreigners given their english menu and english speaking ability of the husband & wife ownership team, but local enough that half the people there were locals. We had a combanation plate of about 8 nigiri, a roe sushi, a 4-piece roll, and miso soup, which was just a perfect quantity and perfect taste. 

From there we started the hike, first thruogh the length of the main road, passing a slew of shops, a couple of which we decided to take a brief step into. My favorite was one call Woodcom which had a bunch of lacquer and wood products. At the very north end of the main road, right before it hits the Daiya River and transitions into what I'll call the "Temple Circuit" (they should call it this too), is Murmur Birru Stand, a craft beer bar that serves four of their own taps. We will be stopping here on the way back.

Nikko is known for both being an entry point into the mountains, and for a few onsen hot spas that are in near distance, and for having a surprising amount of intricate temples, namely four of them that are fairly well connected in close order, needing about a 20-30 minute hike to get to the first one. Of the four, one is fully free, two are mainly free though requiriing a ticket to see the inner most parts (sold in combination for a discount), and then one requires a ticket for basically all of it. We ended up paying for what we needed.

The first one we visited was the Nikkozan Rinnoji temple, which was probably the msot similar to the ones we've seen elsewhere - namely a couple large halls with black and white wood, an open courtyard, a few smaller buildings, a few nice sculptures. The setting was great, with a cool mountain wind, rolling hills of forests on each side, but the temples itself are a continuation of what we've seen.

The rest are all special, and also higher up the hills, more ingrained in nature. The next up was the Toshogu temple, which is the one that requires a ticket for the entire complex, but it was so worth it. It might be the msot ornate, most "awesome" temple of our entire time in Japan. It was the largest complex in terms of things to see, with a series of gates adn walls and shrines begatting more gates and walls and shrines. There was a five story pagoda in the middle. There was a gate where they claimed was the "most ornate in all of Japan", I believe based on teh number of carvings or some such. It was truly impressive. 

It was maybe halfway through this I had a weird epiphany to be honest, that the museum in Takayama that miniature models of temples was largely showcasing this one. I should have known had I remembered the name of that museum was the Nikkosan... But anyway, I'm pretty sure I'm write and now a bit peeved they didn't go through the effort to build miniature trees to go along with it to give the proper full effect. It was a special place in every way. Truly on eof the more unexpected joys of the trip. We knew of Nikko as a haven of temples high in the hills, but still weren't expecting this.

Next was the Futarasan Jinja temple which was the only one to be fully free. It too had a series of temples and shrines at various layers (forgot to mention, that was true of the Toshogu as well, as it had about five different series of steps splitting up its grounds). It was the most unique of them in that it was replete with a striking red color and had, at least to me, the most impressive gates. There was a path in the back up higher to a shrine, but a quick Googling led us to believe that wasn't super worth it.

The last stop on the Temple Circuit was the Taiyu-In, which had some similarities with the Toshugo. It wasn't nearly as ornate, but also had about four or five levels. It took us to the highest point one would conventionally reach in the Temple Circuit (there are a few more temples that are further remote even further up the hills) which was a cool feeling. All of these temples are pretty standard in not allowing photos in their inner most hall, which is a shame but I guess understandable from a religious perspective. On the whole these temples were such a great exposition of what Nikko is. I guess in theory there were similar places in both Kyoto and Takayama, but for some reason having them all in this little area, a little bit aways from a one-road town like Nikko is just perfect. 

This is why we wanted to come here. Both as a little break from the fast pace of Tokyo (or Kyoto before that, though Kyoto is definitely manageable), and as a way to see a part of Japan that most wouldn't on their first (or in my case second) trip. I think if anything Takayama is less traversed. Nikko at the end of the day is doable as a day trip from Tokyo. 

I say that as we were at the Murmur Birru Stand from 4 - 5:30pm, of which we could have made a good deal of the way back to Tokyo. But there's things we plan to do tomorrow, namely going a bit more further afield. Murmur by the way is incredible. I will do a list of my favorite "It's so amazing there's an honest to goodness craft beer bar" places, and this is way up the list. The owner brews four beers on sight. They're all decent (we had small portions of all four), including a great spiced brown ale with clove and cinnamon. Their stout was great too. The only negative was it was so craft they don't have any cans and the to-go options were just to fill a mini growler. We took some  because Nikko is a fairly sleepy won, but man would I have loved to take a beer from here home.

Dinner at Nikko was a pretty special meal also. The place roughly translates to G. Wagyu, and was conveniently close to the Marriott Fairfield (quickly this was a really fancy Fairfield, and goes to show what a tourist spot Nikko is for it to have a Marriott branded hotel). The place was immaculate - effectively a steakhouse where you order a cut and size - we went for right down the middle, an 8oz wagyu sirloin, and you get that plus the rest of the set meal. Everything was presented with care. The starters were a gorgeously clear beef consomme, a great grilled tomato over a tomato-cherry puree (even I, a noted tomato hater, loved the dish), a few cuts of thinly sliced wagyu roast beef in a light mustard sauce, and them some local fruits. All that lead up to the steak.

We haven't just had a wagyu steak in my time in Japan, and this was so good. So soft, so buttery, cooked perfectly to medium rare. Not too fatty, not too thick. Just melted in your mouth. It was served on a griddle with some burned garlic and potato, but the star was that steak. As a round 2, they ended it with a lemon & garlic fried rice, fried on the same griddle soaking up a little bit of wagyu beef fat. This was an incredible capper. Even the dessert of a crepe filled with a light custard cream was so simple, but so beautiful. I truly enjoyed this meal high in the hills.

Night options are fairly limited in Nikko, especially on non-Weekends. We took a lovely 30 minute walk up from G Wagyu down to the main drag where unsurprisingly, around 9:30 or so, the place was fairly barren. There was one interesting bar Yoruyuza that had some locals inside and a really weird decor of a floor to ceiling wall of manga and board games. Every town needs a bar, and this is Nikko's most dependable, and was a decent way to end the night.

Day 12: Returning back to Urbanity

This was our last day in the mountains on the trip. Five days across Takayama and here, both worthwhile stops on any Japan tour. The morning was spent near Lake Chugezi, reachable by a 45 minute bus. It isn't that far in reality, but the last bit requires about 20 straight hairpin turns as you go from about 1,500ft elevation (Nikko) up to 4,000. The air is a lot cooler and crisper and wonderful.

Close to the bus stop is Kogen Falls, a giant waterfall from the Lake down to into the Daiya River that runs all the way down to Nikko itself. The Falls are quite a good sight, offering some aeriel views from the street level and a great elevator down to a lower platform with river-level views.

Back on ground level, we headed back the other direction to the Lake. Lake Chugezi is quite big. We walked on the edge of it past a bunch of little cafes and a few piers offering swan boat rides. The skies were starting to brighten, the rolling hills of pine trees gave a good quality. What's interesting is right at the corner of the Lake, before it starts the path to the falls, is a Ritz Carlton, like literally a Ritz. Wouldn't have guessed there would be one here, but I'm sure bedrooms in the Ritz facing the lake get an amazing view.

About a half-mile down the lakeside is the Futurasan Temple complex. The complex itself isn't the most ornate or stunning, but has views of the lake on one side and views up a hill with giant cedars on the side, so it was unique in that sense. It works well as a turnaround point. The Lake goes on far a lot longer, and there's a few potentially interesting spots along the way, but we were able to turn back, check out a few stops, grab a coffee by the lake, and get our bus back to get us back to Nikko by 1pm. 

For lunch, we decided to just get sushi at the same restaurant as yesterday - not the most inspired but works well as a quick lunch. We wanted to hit a few shops, and get back to Murmur for a couple beers, before needing to check out and grab the 3:19pm train back towards Tokyo. This was easily a pretty lowkey day, but what should you else want from a time in the mountains.

Our time in Tokyo was quite a bit jumpier, even on the "quietest" night of teh week of a Tuesday. For this last part of the Japan trip, we are staying in Shinjuku - one of the most prominent mini cities within Tokyo, notable for being part the main business district, and part the neon lights of Japanese kitsch. Both are true in big supply as we'll get to experience more directly tomorrow.

Dinner was at a Teppanyaki place, where they cook the meal, including a slice of wagyu sirloin, on the tappenyaki grill in front of you. There is something almost serene watching the teppanyaki chefs do their thing on that big flat grill top. The meal itself was a more trumped up version of what we had the prior night in Nikko. The starters were a grilled tomato salad, a lightly grilled scallop and spinach, a great seabream cooked en papillote with a light truffle sauce, then the main event with the customary fried rice following. It was probably not worth the price upcharge relative to the version we had in Nikko, but such is life in a big city.

Post dinner we had our first really late night in a bit, going first to Bar Triad and Bar Trench, two sister cocktail bars tucked away in Shibuya. Both are good, but Bar Trench is another level. It is small, with a couple tables and a bar counter that seats 8, so it took us about 30 minutes to get seated, but once we did we didn't leave for a couple hours. The cocktails were good, were varied, were perfectly poured and smooth, The place is known for an absinthe that they make themselves, so we indulged in that a bit more that we otherwise would've with absinthe. Tomorrow is our last night in Tokyo, and we're already thinking about coming back here vs. another trip to The Bellwood.

The night ended at DJ Bar Oath, which is a underground bar with a small techno dance area. It was about 10-20 people over the course of the night, mostly locals to start, with a closer to 50/50 mix by the time we left. It's the type of place that also would probably require a line or risk serious overcrowding on the weekend, but being a Tuesday it was perfectly good, with relaxed music, cheaper than expected drinks ($4.50 for a highball), and some pretty chill people.

Japan Trip: Day 10 - Tokyo

Day 10: A Trip through History

This is the middle day of the trip. Not sure if it feels fast or slow or what. Wasn't it just yesterday we were singing karaoke in Kyoto? But also we've seen a hell of a lot in that time. Because three of the next four days require some travel (granted Tokyo to Nikko is roughly two hours), it almost feels like we're fast forwarding to the end of my time in Japan, as I leave my two friends to do Osaka & Hiroshima, heading to Ho Chi Minh City for two and a half days. 

Anyway, let's not let my weird nature of fast forwarding through vacations get the best of this, as I tried to not have it get the best of me. The day would be centered around Taito and Asukasa, two areas within walking distance of our AirBNB. For some sights our AirBNB is actually quite well located. It's just there's not much nightlife in the area so each night we require ponying up for taxis. 

The first stop was a 20 minute walk from the AirBNB, over the river, to the Senso-Ji shrine, probably the best known, largest temple within Tokyo proper. The leadup to it is a three block pedestrian only stretch with stalls selling wares on each side, and an absolute maw of people. Being a weekend, there were a lot of locals as well, but it was quite a scene. Once you reach the end of that, you reach the Senso-Ji and it is quite stunning. Instead of the usual brown frame buildings that most of the temples we've seen have, this one is red everywhere, from the ornate entry gate, to the main building, to the pagoda, to the many smaller temples in the grounds. It is a truly large complex, with some great sightlines of the Skytree in the distance as well.

Nearby the Senso-Ji is Asakusa, a more thrifty shopping district that served both as the natural spot to walk through from the Senso-Ji to Ueno Park and the museums that would take up the rest of the day from a sightseeing perspective, and also the Kappabashi Duogu street, which is a stretch of real estate with kitchenware stores. These stores come in all shapes and sizes, from flea-market ones, to traditional ones (where I browsed and ultimately bought a couple things), to ones catering to restaurants selling restaurant sized or quantities, to super high end kitchenware and Japanese knives. This is cooking heaven.

It was also where we had our lunch, at Nihonkai, which is a sushi spot in a conveyor set-up, but instead of the conveyor you just tell the sushi chef what you want. It seemed to be all locals when we went, but they had an english menu, along with adorable cartoon instructions on how to order and how to use the faucet at your seats to drink tea. The sushi was fresh, well prepared, and affordable. People will always have slightly negative thoughts around these more low-key sushi spots. Certainly there are tons of spots within Tokyo that are hyper expensive, but so far these places have served me well, be it now or on my 2013 trip when I couldn't really have afforded too much more.

The rest of the day was spent at Ueno Park, specifically the National Museum complex. It has three buildings (technically it has more, but we only went to three), laid out around a large sqaure at the North end of the Park. In perfect Japanese style there was a super easy to follow map brochure they give you that lays out the buildings, and what order to see the rooms. One of the things I've noticed about Japan so far is how easy it is to follow the path in these museums, or even many of the sites we went to. The main museums that we visited were the Toyokan, which houses non-Japanese Asian artifacts, the Honkan, which houses Japanese artifacts, and the Heiseikan, which houses archaelogical artifacts (plus a couple special exhibits that we didn't get the ticket to). 

We started in the Toyokan, wanting to get the non-Japan stuff out of the way, but even that was a great museum. Not too big - about 13 rooms, that take you through different parts of Asian history in artifact form. About two-thirds of the rooms are focusing on China, but the rest are dedicated to India, to Mesopotamia & Egypt, to Southeast Asia, to the Khmers (unsure why they got their own room...) and to Korea. It was a nice little appetizer for what was to come.

The Honkan was next - in reality both the Honkan and the Heiseikan, as they are connected with a corridor near the end of the Honkan itinerary. Collectively they tell the story of Japan, with the Honkan focusing largely on say 400 BC through the Meiji Restoration. It isn't laid out purely sequentially but half sequential and half featuring specific types of art - say a room around samurai clothing and swords, then a room aroudn calligraphy, then a room around ceramics, etc. The museum is excellent, a great way to understand Japanese history, and to see some truly beautiful stuff. It doesn't overwhelm, but gives you a lot to see in roughly the 2 hours it took us to get through it. 

By the way, there is quite a lot we didn't do in Ueno Park - I guess saving a few things for a third trip one day. Be it a couple buildings within the National Museum complex, to the National Art Gallery (which has both a Japanese building and a Western building) to a Zoo to much else. We did walk through the park to its south end, spending a bit of time at the "Panda Mid-Autumn Festival" which had a stage where people were performing, along with 30 or so stalls selling food where we picked up a few grilled skewers. All in all Ueno Park was a good old time.

There wasn't a reall acceptable beer bar around this area, so instead we grabbed a couple "craft" taps at a little beer hall at the base of the Asahi corporate HQ. They don' sell under the Asahi name, I think to give the allure of the fact its craft, but in reality it was just average. It fit what we needed though and was a 10-min walk from the AirBNB, which was crucial with a short turnaround before Den.

Dinner at Den was arguably the one we were looking forward to the most. It is Japan's most reputable restaurant globally, with two michelin stars (granted, a bunch in Japan have three), and a spot in the Top-20 of the World's Top 50 list. I will have a write up later with all the details, but no the whole it was a weirdly cool combination of all the trappings and global nature of a top flight tasting menu spot, and the homeliness of the courses that favored ingredients, flavor and depth over presentation. The place is super reasonable price wise for both (a) a place of its repute and (b) being in Japan. It is not the most expensive restaurant we're going to in Japan, but was right up there in terms of overall flavor and experience.

Post dinner, we headed back to Shibuya which was both (a) quieter on teh whole than yesterday, and (b) had a longer line for The Bellwood - this time unsurprisingly more foreigners than locals, though that would reverse itself by the time we left around 1am. I tried three new cocktails this time, my favorite being a play on a gin fizz, with a home made colo and cold brew mix, with dehydrated figs as a garnish. The cocktails are all super inventive, presented beautifully without going overboard, and the whole decor makes it a truly great time.

We had to head back relatively early to make it to Nikko the next morning, needing to catch the 10am Shinkansen, or risk being in Tokyo for two additional hours. This ends our first part of Tokyo, with roughly two days (Tuesday night, all day Wedensday and Thursday AM) before we leave. So far, I've enjoyed a whole lot about Tokoy but having a hard time placing it comapred to say Seoul. The one thing I'll say conclusively, which is only reiterated each evening we take our roughly ~25 min uber, is that there is no real slow / quiant part of the city, its steel and concrete and glass and lights everywhere. It truly is one of the most impressive megapolises, based on an idealized definition.

Japan Trip: Day 8-9 - Tokyo

Day 8 - Takayama to Tokyo

Combining these two because Day-8 by itself was half a travel day from Taykama to Tokyo (via Nagoya) and the other half a rushed, but still very active, tourism visit to Roppongi Hills (plus dinner, drinks, dancing, etc.) but without a break to really write anything yesterday (day 8). Either way, there's a lot to cover so let's get started.

We awoke and were able to make the 8am train out of Takayama with maybe two or three minutes to spare. The train was surprisingly full at the start, and more surprisingly fairly empty by the time we reached Nagoya two-and-a-half sleep-filled hours later. The ride had some nice scenery which kept us awake for a bit before tiredness befell us. We narrowly missed a Shinkansen so we had to wait in Nagoya for 45 minutes, however the one we did catch in to Tokyo was faster, so in the end that cost us just 25 minutes. In the meantime we did get a quick udon noodle bowl at a train station restaurant, which are far nicer than their equivalents back home.

The Shinkansen ride was easy enough, but we were left in a bit of a conundrum when reaching. Our plan for the PM part of the day was to explore Roppongi. Given Tokyo's sheer massiveness you kind of have to splice the city into its various sub-cities and hit them one by one (maybe two in a day if you really hurry). The issue for us though is our AirBNB is not super central, particularly not so to Roppongi. What Japan's great transit system does offer is boundless coin lockers, having them at pretty much every major train and/or subway stop. With that in mind, we decided to take the subway down to Roppongi and leave our bags there, which worked smoothly.

The first stop post gazing upwards at the concrete and glass and glitz, was lunch at Imatanksu which is a reknowned Tonkatsu restaurant. I will say, it was a bit of a miss. It wasn't bad, per se, and their miso side was outrageously good (generally these places will give free refills of the soup as well), but the actual tonkatsu (deep friend crusted pork loin) was good but not anything special. It hit as a nice, quick lunch - though after a 15 min wait. Given we arrived aroudn 2pm, it shows how popular the place is, but I'm not exactly sure why.

Anyway, on to better things, from there we went surveying through what Roppongi is most notable for (aside from shopping): it's art & design museums. This is the unofficial art/fashion district of Tokyo, and its museums did not disappoint in that regard. The first was named the Toto Gallery, which is a bit of a amouse-bouche, as it is small and quick, but also free. It featured an exhibit of an architect who has designed many of Japan's newer art museums, creating 3d dioramas in a very hand-made type way (like think of a school project style diorama, but by a professional) which were weirdly interesting.

Anyway, post that we got lost at The National Art Center Tokyo, a sprawling, three level art museum that was just outrageous. It's a place with technically a free entry but requires tickets for each of its exhibits. Two are a bit pricey and are "special", but in this case means they are showcases from Europe (one from the Tate collection) and therefore for us was pretty much unneeded. The rest had two main exhibits that combined were about $9, and were great. The first was all the hundreds of finalists from a national art contest held every four years. The first bit was modernist sculpture, but the rest was paintings. The other exhibit was also featuring just Japanese paintings. If there's any criticism about the place, it is that there is probably too much in too little space. The space is big, but they really minimize the space between each painting. That said, the paintings were fantastic.

What was the nicest bit was just how different it was. It was all by Japanese artists, so off the bat nothing religious (not that I dislike religious paintings, but it was nice since that usually makes up like 75% of any great European art museum). Then it was crazy how many had such astoundingly clear, crisp, bright colors and lines. Finally, aside from some of the sculpture, nothing also ever made me thing "Wait, why is this art?" - you know the white canvas with the one line on it, or what-not. All in all, The National Art Center was a great time and drained a ton of battery on photographs.

We finally then headed back to the AirBNB, which was really a service apartment building where we got three loft apartments. Tight quarters, but other than a normal 60-min R&R each day, I doubt we spend too much time in them. 

Dinner each night in Tokyo was through reservation - which I'm triply glad we did after our experience in Takayama. The first nigth it was at Hiroo Onogi, which was great. We got an Omakase course, which had a series of smaller dishes featuring such things as crab & uni, a series of sashimi including a really lightly cooked prawn, a table-sider torched seabass (excellent), a nice matcha ice cream sandwhich with honey & cocoa (dessert) and two great mains of a sukiyaki-style wagyu, which was super tasty if probably not the best way to utilize great wagyu beef, and a lobster Japanese fried rice which was incredible and very useful. By this point we each had two carafes of sake, and while sake is roughly the same ABV as wine, the sustenance of a heavy rice dish was much appreciated.

The weather in Tokoy had really turned to outright rain during this dinner period, so we were lucky in a sense that our intended cocktail spot - These - was close by, but they did the same "we're booked" routine. We tried another one a few blocks away, and while they didn't say they were booked for the day, they said the waiting time was roughly 60 minutes. No one was waiting, but at least there's some stability there. Anyway, we want back to These and lo and behold they were no longer booked for the day. What we learned is many of these cocktail spots serve dinner, and probably until 10pm or so, especially on weekends, they'll block anyone walking in for drinks in hopes to get a few more to just have dinner.

Anyway, we each got a couple cocktails, using their system of bringing you a basket of fruit, having you pick two of them, pick a type of liqour as a base, and them making a cocktail of it. My favorite was a play on a moscow mule with ginger and lemongrass as my two vegetables, and whiskey as the base. Don't know what it was, don't even know if it is a real cocktail, but it worked well. We ended the nigth at Vent, which is a classic techno dance hall in Tokyo - a really nice setting also though they pull the Modular at Cape Town routine of putting a sticker over your phone's camera. The place is exposed cement with nice trees in the space, and two levels, both at a really nice crowd level. Certainly less dark and packed as say Faust in Seoul around this time last year, but also more expensive to enter. But this is Tokyo after all - expensive just goes with it, including our roughly $65 uber ride back.

Day 9: Tokyo, but really Ginza & Tsujuki

We have three full days and part of another in Tokyo (not including last evening). There is probably enough in Tokyo to do for a week, but this was a long enough time to take things slow. Also factoring in to that is one of the biggest aspects of Tokyo is the nightlife, so unless we burn candles on both ends (we're at an age where this is possible maybe for one night), we are going to be starting our days late. Today, it was getting up around 10 and out the AirBNB by 10:45. 

Today's itinerary focused around the region at Tokyo's heart, in some degree, the expanse around the Tokyo Station: The Tsukuji, Ginza "cities". They call them that, and in some ways they are. I definitely realized this in 2013, but coming back has only pointed out how much bigger Tokyo is than even Kyoto. 

Tsukuji was our first destination, mostly to have lunch at the Tsukuji Fish Market - but more on that in a bit. The first tourism stop was the Hamarikyu Gardens, a "small" garden right on the edge of the deepest part of the city. Tokyo is not really a green city. It is a concrete jungle of truly epic proportions. But then you get places like the Hamarikyu Gardens, that enliven the city with some green, but also some sightlines on the concrete jungle-ness of it all. The gardens itself are about a 6x6 block size, with lakes and pools and little ornate houses, and the like, but what makes it a bit unique is that it is smack dab in teh middle of the city. You get these few areas that have great sightlines of the city behind it, with the little gingko trees or whatever their called. The other unique aspect is it doesn't hit you over the head with plants. These trees are given some space to breathe and space to grow. All in all, it's a quick little stop, but is quite nice in showcasing some nice views of Tokyo.

From there was lunch at Tsukuji Fish Market. The Market was made famous for where they hold bluefin tuna auctions at early hours - as shown in the "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" documentary. They've actually moved that aspect of it to another location, and repurposed the market, and as we realized when we went, the surrounding couple blocks, as a food market. There actually aren;t that many stalls in the actual fish market building, but either way it was a nice walking market and gave some quite affordable nigiri and sashimi options. One stall was selling pairs of tuna for 400-500-600 yen (regular, medium fatty, very fatty) or one of each for 800. It took us a second to realize the three for 800 deal is a scam, as just getting on eof the nigiri regular priced would be 750. Anyway, aside from that we had sashimi scallop and grilled unagi at other stalls, and left Tsukuji happy campers.

Walking through Ginza was next - Tokyo's answer to both Times Square and Fashion Row in one spot. It's probably best to visit at night to get the Times Square effect of it all, but it's still pretty cool in the day - glamorous, glitzy stores on either side of a four block pedestrian only stretch. With more stores and restaurants and bars (including some pretty well known cocktail bars) on the sides. The area is a great spot to just walk through, even if we had no intentions of shopping. We considered hopping into one of the stores to either (a) see if they would even let us in and (b) stare agape at the pricetags, but thought better of it when we saw most had lines outside.

The intended target of the walk through Ginza was the Eastern Gardens of the Imperial Palace, a gardens complex on the side of the Imperial Palace itself, which requires an application process to visit that we did not get through. The gardens though are free to the public. The walk up to them allows you a decent view of the Imperial Palace for a quick photo, but in the gardens there are no viewpoints of the palace. There are however a lot of nice aspects, including again the gingko trees, but also a really serene koi pond, a waterfall, some flower areas, and much more. It is probably about the same size as the Himarakyu gardens, but a bit more prim and proper. Around this time the sun finally started peeking out after 24 hours in Tokyo of either overcast skies, or torrential rain, which was nice. It is supposed to stay dry for the remainder of our time in Japan, which is even better.

The last stop in this area was the National Museum of Modern Art Toyko, which is a three-story art museum that is smaller than the National Art Center, and more traditional in set-up and display. The only twist being "Modern" refers to basically 1917 onwards, when the museum first opened. So in many ways the art was a bit older, which given I'm 50/50 on liking truly "modern" stuff, was perfectly fine. The museum was quite good, with nice exhibits, my favorite being one that had work from famous international artists (Cezanne, Jackson Pollock, etc.) with a work from a Japanese artist who was inspired by, if not studied under, the Western artist, as a comparison point. The museum also had a nice selection of traditional Japanese art, be it lacquer-ware or scroll work and the like. Overall, it was a nice museum, adn a welcome bit of air conditioning on what hopefully is the last super-humid day in Japan.

We finally did hit up a craft beer bar, named Craft Bar Jingmyo which is really nice and featured craft beer from a nujmber of Japanese breweries. It was a really cool place, and the only key downside is again Tokyo is so large, I'm not planning to come back to this specific area again in our time here. But for a day, for what we needed, it worked perfectly, with 20+ taps, and decent bar food including a charcuterie trio. 

Dinner was one of the ones we were most looking forward to. We're going to Den tomorrow, conventionally seen as Tokyo's top rated restaurant internationally, but tonight was good enough that Den will ahve to do a lot to top it. The spot was Sumibi Yakaniku Nakahara - which is a tasting menu wagyu yakaniki restaurant using as many parts of the cow as possible. Most of the dishes are grilled for you in a charcoal grill tableside, grilled to perfection by the various members of the waitstaff. 

What really makes it work is the menu isn't just 15 different cuts of meat to grill - they understand pacing and mixing. It starts actually with two raw seafood bites to start, which were both great but admittedly an odd way to start. Then comes tongue, cut in three ways representing the three parts of the tongue, cooked on the charcoal. After that we get four or so sets of cuts of meat, from sirloin to chuck flap, to skirt to short rib - all cooked amazingly. During this period we also had little mini courses between the meats, such as a bone tail broth soup (amazing), a salad (good to get a change...) and a trio of kimchi bowls. The final grilled aspect was a trio of beef cheek (amazingly soft) and two inanrds, one of aorta (as in yes, the valve of the heart) and the other stomach, which were both chewy and amazing. That wasn't the end of the meal though, tehre is a final course of a beef bowl of shaved wagyu with rice and an egg sauce, and then cold noodles - which while tasty were a weird way to end it.

In the end Sumibi was amazing. Nearly as good was our night after - heading to Shibuya, the party/as late as you can get part of the city. The first spot was a cocktail bar called The Bellwood, made in a speakeasy style but taking all old time cocktails and spinning them forward and/or Japanese a bit, such as using Japanese rice as a part of a negroni, or banana in a sazerac and the like. The setting was divine, with great old-timey music. It was luckily not super full when we got there around 10pm, but by 10:30 there was a line out the door. We took our time and stayed until 12:15 or so, very much having a great time. From there we went to Womb, which is a traditional club.

To get there we had to walk through the heart of Shibuya which is a scene. It is everything you picture - giant lights, bars as all over, scores of locals and foreigners, everyone having a good time but clearly wading too far into that (it was similarly bright and buzzy, but tip-toeing on the wasted side when we left the club and walked down the same street at 2:45). Womb is a three level techno/house club, the bottom level being the darkest, most stereotypcial (and my co-favorite) and the top level being a poppier, house style (co-favorite), and the middle being the most electrionic and, let's say, crowd-pleasing. It was the crowdest with the laser lights and stuff and was fun for a second, but we stayed on top or bottom and enjoyed the hell out of Tokyo at night.

Japan Trip: Day 7 - Takayama

Day 7: Trawling through Takayama

After doing Kamikochi National Park yesterday, we were limiting our tourism in Takayama proper to just today. In the end, as I write this around 6pm in our rest & recovery window between the day's events and dinner/night, the rain that was supposed to come today, that rejiggered our plans, never came in any serious way. There were periods of misty drizzle, and maybe a couple 10-min bands of steady but not bothersome rain, but overall despite ominously cloudy skies all day, it was generally a good weather day - even with a nice breeze cutting through the humidity.

This was a blessed thing because while Takayama does have some indoor sites, and the main shopping and cultural areas have overhangs, there was a lot of walking around its city proper. All of it worthwhile and raising Takayama further up in my lasting regard for it.

When we woke up, the forecast called for the most prominent rain to be in the afternoon, so we decided to do the further out, more outdoor-focused, shrines and temples in teh morning, leaving then the roaming around the Sanmachi District (more to come on that) for the afternoon. The plan worked out well enough, again with the exception of this level of metereology and adjustments were probably not needed. The first sights were on the east side of Takayama, where flat land turns into hills, and in one place a straight up forest - with the trip starting with the Sakurayama Hachimangu temple.

It was a large complex, in an open square within the city proper, with forest starting basically immediately behind it, that led to a really nice look. As we would come to learn, that describes basically every shrine in Takayama, but was appreciated nonetheless. The real great sight of the area was a small one-room museum in its grounds called the Sakurayama Nikkokan, which had incredibly, detailed, ornate, realisting miniaturized versions of a giant temple complex. The one thing I really couldn't discern was what temple complex was it trying to replicate, but whatever it was it was great. They broke up hte large grounds into about 5-6 different miniature replicas, all incredibly ornate, realistic and gorgeous.

From there we walked along the edge of the city proper to the other main temple area, the Higashiyama Hakusan Shrine and complex. This was built into a hill basically, with some arches and entryawys at ground level, including a separate temple, the Diaou Temple, but with most of the shrine built across multiple areas at different elevations. The first was a bit more open, with really nice, clean buildings and gardens. There was a winding road behind that took you walking through a really serene cemetary up the hill towards the final shrine that sat at the hilltop. The shrine at the top was by far the least impressive, which normally would've made me upset to expend all that energy to get there, but the view from teh top of the cemetary adn grounds below made up for it.

This area also had one last temple. this one fully separate, next to it. The Koryuzan Sogenji Temple was a bit more open and had a lot more carving and stone-work. It definitely seemed the newest of all of them, and was a nice quick way to end the first half of the tourism part of the day. Takayama is a walkable enough city that walking to the temple areas, between them and back probably encompassed 40 minutes walking, and 60 minutes touring.

For lunch we went to Aji-no-Yohei, which borders the edge of the Sanmachi area which is basically a 3x1 stretch with ornate old houses, shops, restaurants, with the main stretch being pedestrian only. We would stroll the Sanmachi a bunch later, but for now we had our sights all set fully on the restaurant, another Hida Beef focused joint. Because of our experience yesterday night we were a bit worried but instead were one of the first groups to come - by the time we left around 1:30pm it was very full, but we had no issues getting a seat. 

Instead of the normal yakinaku that has a large gas grill in the middle for you to grill stuff, this one has small grills that they bring ready to order as part of a larger set meal. There's different options, but the primary ones are "Hida Beef Sets", which are some weightage of wagyu-grade Hida Beef (with the marbling to show for it), and a bunch of assorted sides, including vegetables to grill, egg custard, a tofu side with a sweet honey sauce, rice, salad with a good yuzu dressing, and a great miso soup. The beef is expensive, but all of that thrown in makes it a pricey, but not outrageous lunch. The beef was excellent, seasoned with a little bit of salt and pepper, but largely letting the beef do the talking for itself.

After lunch we had probably more time than just the Sanmachi required so added a few impromptu tourism spots which were both good. The first was called the Takayama Jinya, which is an old government building turned into museum where you go on a walking tour through its many ratan-mat rooms, ornately decorated as it would've been in the 1800s when the building would have been active. They didn't have a whole bunch of English signage, but enough that gave you a good understanding of what the building was, what each room was for, and a greater appreciation of the building. This is a place none of new existed, or at the very least none of us had shortlisted as a go-to spot, but was well worth it.

The other non-Sanmachi tourism stop was the last set of temples we visited, another one on the east side that is at the lower ends of the large "Park" that is at the cities Southeast (the Park is really a big forest that has bears and stuff). The temple was the Hie Shrine, which requires some steps and effort but was incredible, mostly because it was so well tucked into the forest, with truly giant cedars trees all over. They were huge, they were impressive and regal, and uplifted what otherwise would've been a temple very similar to the others we went to. But man those trees - again it was like visiting the Pacific Northwest, but with culture and temples thrown in.

Finally after that we took our time in the Sanmachi, which is just a great time waste. The first place we went to was the Fumasake Sake Brewery, which had a sake tasting option where you could pay for takens that you could use to pour sake. It was a bit convoluted, but the sake was excellent and helped me pick out a bottle to buy for back home. The rest of the drag was a great mix of shops, restaurants and just people milling about. Sure, it may be too commercial and priced-up accordingly, but it feels geniune. We ambled in to many places - I spending a good amount of time in a shop that was selling lacquer kitchenware. We also stopped for honey-infused soft serve, and "hida beef" sushi, which was excellent.

The sanmachi is a stretch of three blocks but is pretty easy to burn a good 60 minutes there even without stopping for a serious bit of shopping or eating - which there are plenty of options. It did allow us to mingle about long enough to make it then to Jabrani which is one of the two craft beer bars open today (with good ol' Al's closed...). The beer here was frankly not as good as Al's, but we'll take what we could to sit down for a bit.

Dinner was at a local Izakaya named Dai Dai, going there after not getting a spot at the fancy yakitori we eyed but stupidly didn't ask to make a reservation the day before. Wasn't too much an issue as Dai Dai was quite nice. Probably more simple and less fancy than the Izakaya we went to in Kyoto, but very much the real thing all the same, with a series of shareable options - best being a pork char sui Japanese style, a Teppanyaki Hida Beef Steak (surprisingly cheap) and as always good sake. Overall Dai Dai was a great fallback option, even if that Yakitori place (named Neighbird) did look excellent.

To end our time in Takayama, we went back to Rum Dance Hall, which was as cool as contained as always. The place was far busier - I guess for Japanese folk too, Thursday is the unofficial weekend start. The Japanese whiskeys were flowing, the canape was nice as ever (terrine), and the cool barman/vinyl record DJ was a hit. Overall a nice, calm way to end a great mini stay in Takayama.

Japan Trip: Day 6 - Kamikochi National Park

Day 6: Life in the Forests

Because of the impending rain on Thursday we had made the decision to swap the order of our two days in Takayama, first doing the Kamikochi National Park trial today, and then strolling around the town and closer-in sites on Thursday. It will be raining in both places Thursday, but still made a lot of sense to avoid the one day fully focused on outdoors & nature being overrun by rain.

Kamikochi National Park is about 90 minutes by bus away, require a transfer which may add to the time depending on how the second more local bus is cadenced. We had to wait about 20 minutes on the way there, but only 5 on the way back. There is a central route that takes you on either side of the Asuza River that splits the hills and mountains in half. The trails were well marked, signed and easily navigable. I’m sure there are proper hikes up the hills and the like, but mostly everyone was just following the same route, though there are some options. At times it will split into two fairly parallel paths, one the “river route” that goes close to the river, and the other the “mountain route” which is more hilly. Similarly, you can do a bit of a circle as there are 2-3 walking bridges throughout.

 The park is fantastic, great views pretty much throughout, perfectly blue river water, great topography of the hills, especially on the Northern side (so viewed from the Southern side). I of course my usual spate of pictures but I doubt they’ll fully capture how beautiful it all was. The river spins off to various streams and lakes which just add to the beauty of the area. I generally do a trip each year in the summer where I go to the western part of the USA and get lost in nature (Salt Lake City in 2019, Calgary in 2019, Denver in 2021) and while I didn’t this year, starting to think this is a bit making up for that at least. That’s why we added Takayama to the trip – to get out of the huge city bustle. Kyoto if anything is a lot more manageable than I remembered, but this is a nice bit of solace before we head to Tokyo in a couple days.

The park has various hotels strewn out over the main path, that each have little cafes and convenience stores. I think one may have a proper restaurant, but basically all reviews we read about Kamikochi focused on just getting food to go either before leaving in Takayama (which is what we mostly did) or in one of these stores – which we did when getting soft serve about halfway through. I would say the route we took is basically the conventional one, and with some pauses it took us overall 4 hours from start to finish. A four hours well spent with the lakes, the river, the scenery, the monkeys which made an appearance towards the end (luckily not the bears – though there were signs stating the last bear sighting was August 9^th…). It takes the effort of two buses, and the cost of about $40 round trip, to make Kamikochi happen, but it was very much worth it as a day trip. I’m sure there are even cooler places to get lost in the Japanese wilderness for a day, and of course they have actual winter-activities like skiing in and around these parts, but this was everything I was hoping Kamikochi could be.

We reached back to Kamikochi around 4:30, and milled around for a bit. With Al’s closed, and the only other craft beer option closing today at 5 (luckily tomorrow it closes at 7) we were left to just explore the say 5x5 block of the city center. It is a charming area with shops and restaurants, and a whole host of bars. The only weird part of everything is the schedule. Being so remote, it isn’t surprising that things like the shops close at 5, and then most restaurants close by 8 or 9 (save for a few Izakayas that go to 12). But then there is this weird gap when most of the bars only open at 9. Maybe there’s some odd city regulation that speaks to this but creates a very sleepy evening atmosphere for a place that still has a good nightlife. I guess people come here to laze around so in that way it makes sense.

Dinner was a bit of an adventure. We wanted to go to a yakitori - basically Japenese BBQ where you get plates of miso or soy topped raw meat and grill it (along with vegetables, and miso soup and the like). There is a bunch of these in Takayama, which is not a surprise given Hida Beef is one of the biggest features of the area. The problem is seemingly everyone in this quiet town, from locals to tourists (though I assume more-so tourists) want to go to these places so the first five or so we tried were fully booked. That said, what is somewhat known about some places in Japan is that they aren't super inviting to foreigners (I should say clearly, this is not across the board at all). There could be one or two who denied us for those purposes - especially two that strictly do not take reservations but said with great confidence that they were fully booked for the next three hours.

Anyway, on attempt I think five we found a place that would take us. The ratings are fairly good, a 4.2 on Google (most of the places we tried are 4.1 - 4.3, there are two seemingly that rate above...). The place as a whole was fairly good. We split orders of regular loin, regular kalbi (short-rib, boneless), steak (cut up in chunks), vegetables (better in this grill format than expected), and then ended with a round of the "premium" loin and kalbi - getting that twice becuase it was so good the first time.

It took us a bit to get the hang of the speed by which they would cook - it truly when the grill is at maximum heat, a 30-45 seconds per side affair to ensure you don't overcook or burn. On the side we had a few rounds of sake which were again excellent. They really are a great sipping drink. 

From dinner, we did a quick rest-up at the AirBNB (again, the weirdness of the hours in this town leave this weird gap) before heading out for a couple drinks. First was a cocktail bar called Bar Rabbit Hole. Like with most things in Japan, there is just an incredible amount of class, delicacy and more than anything pride, in how any of these types of places work. The bartender is also a co-owner, and was great to chat with when recommending us different japanese whiskey cocktails with Japanese whiskeys. Each cocktail was meticulously presented, with the only complaint being it seemed like small quantities. More realistically, tehy just follow the quantities a jigger would suggest more closely than US bartenders do.

The other common practice we got introduced to here was being charged a seating fee of 800 yen (~$6-7) per person. Now while this is basically just a cover charge, it also entitles you to get a little plate of canapes which had a caramel chunk, a great yuzu-infused cream cheese over cracker, and some local fruits. Nothing overwhelming, but probably makes up for a significant amount of the cover we're paying. Rabbit Hole was just a great spot - and another aspect that I really enjoy about Takayama, that in a town like this that is sleepy and "in the wilderness" and all this, that places like Bar Rabbit Hole (or Run Dance Hall which we plan to go to tomorrow) still exist.

We ended the night playing some pool at a more local-focused establishment that translates to "Junk's" and nicely leans into that theme with decor of just random American stuff, like license plates and signs. It borders on being too kitschy, but overall worked fine. The pool and discussions, aided by Google Translate, with the locals was fun, but even better was having a Japenese Highball, which is a traditional highball of Suntory whiskey and club soda, with some specific Japenese-aspect that I couldn't quite discern about the way the two are mixed. Whatever it was, it was incredibly fizzy and quite nice. Junk's is not fancy, but for a standard locals bar, was another good sign about how Takayama just really has a lot going for it.

Japan Trip: Day 5 - Kyoto & Takayama

Day 5: Shifting to the Hills

Today was our last day in Kyoto, and similarly then our first day in Takayama. There's a whole lot of this trip left (including a tack-on of Ho Chi Minh City and Singapore on the back-end), but already I'm feeling a pang of sadness leaving Kyoto. From my trip in 2013, it was my favorite city. So far my opinion of Kyoto has only been heightened, and the last few stops today are part of that as well.

First was a trip to two temples on the East side of the city - further east than Gion. They are a bit up a hill (and the second includes a fair bit of stairs to reach) and that added greenery plays an important role at both. The first was the Shoren-In Temple, which is very different than the giant Hokan-Ji or Todai-Ji (or similarly the Chion-In to come). It was reserved (though there was active construction shrounding the main hall), but special in that way. There is a quick tour of each room adorned subtly with ratan mats and great artwork - showcasing the delicate nature of the work. The gardens around it were quite serene as well, with small touches of pagodas, bamboo shoots, incense holders and the rest. More than anything, the Shoren-In was peaceful, shaded and small, in the best way. 

Down the street is the Chion-In, which is very much not these things - it is more similar to say the Todai-Ji in Nara, with giant halls and temples, large open space, ornate fountains and the rest. But what sets it apart, or at least makes it super unique, is how it was built into the hills - with mini temples raised up on the cliff face, great sightlines of the city underneath. The open layout did amplify the heat, but every now and then a breeze would come by and improve conditions a bit. 

The best parts of the sight was the sheer regality of the main hall, and the main entry gate, along with the incredibly ornate interior of the hall (as is standard, no pictures were allowed). There were two beautiful fountains on either side, and as is traditional the big bell stand. The Chion-In is one of Kyoto's best sights all in all - and given what it has to compete with, that is saying a whole lot.

The final stop in Kyoto before heading to the train station, was lunch at Musashi Sushi, a Kaitensushi spot - meaning a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. Generally these conveyor belt sushi spots are a bit frowned upon by sushi snobs, but thsi one was different - as its higher ratings than most conveyor belt spots attested. The setup was the same, with a conveyor belt going around with sushi on differnt color plates - each color matching a specific price point. The cheapest were around $1, the most expensive $8 for two nigiri. We each had about 10 plates, the most expensive being a $5 medium-fatty bluefin tuna (which was excellent). In reality all teh sushi was great - and they had a great little tea tap at each seat giving you unlimtied access to really nice green tea. We had to rush a bit given timing of catching the 1:30pm train out of Kyoto, but it was a rushed meal well spent.

The train journey to Takayama went off without a hitch, as is to be expected when using Japan Rail. The trains run on time to the second, the line up perfectly at teh station with the car markings. First was a Shinkansen from Kyoto to Nagoya, and then a 2.5hr journey on a JR Central train to Takayam from Nagoya. If anything, the train from Nagoya to Takayama was fancier than the Shinkansen, though I figure it was slower.

The train journey did give me a first view of the Japanese forest that are on the perimeter of the Japanese Alps that Takayama touches briefly. The views are gorgeous - conifer hills, rolling waters with some rapids - this easily could be taking a train ride between Portland and Seattle or something like this. On the way the wifi worked well, allowing us to check the weather and altering our plans for our two days in the hills, swapping to do the Kamikochi firest tomorrow instead of Thursday. 

Takayama itself is a city, but a small, walkable one that notably is a good 20 degrees cooler than Kyoto. The first impression of the place is amazing - pristinely clean, great little shops and restaurants, great architecture, all of it. We had an hour or so to kill before dinner (our one fancy dinner in Takayama) and went to Als' Brewer's Beer Stand, which is a beer bar that was just perfect in every way. Great decor, great beers on tap, great everything. Sadly it closes at 10pm, but will service us perfectly for the late afternoon refueling. On just the walk there and back (6 min each way) I've already pegged Takayama squarely in the Luang Prabang sense of "so cool I'm here" category. Now, it is definitely bigger than Luang Prabang, and unlike the Laotian wonderland, there is a thriving nightlife scene (numerous places open to 2-3am - in Japan it is hard not to....), but all the same in terms of how cool the place is.

Our dinner in Takayama was excellent, an Omakase tasting menu at a place called Sakana, situated up a hill a bit away from the city. It did require us having to taxi there and back, and taxis in Takayama are quite expensive. Luckily though most of the real sights in the city are all within walking distance of each other. Anyway, the cost was more than worth it. Sakana was much like the Izakaya from yesterday in Kyoto, but supercharged. The food spectacular, presented impeccably well, and with a nice sake pairing on the side. Again, for these more special tasting menu meals, I’ll do a proper write-up of the restaurants later.

Afterwards we headed back to Al’s Beerstand, which we unfortunately learned would be closed both tomorrow and Wednesday. There are a couple other craft options in the city but neither looked or appealed as much as Al’s, so this is a bit sad. While there we chatted up a Dutch guy who was having his “night off”, with wife and three kids back at the hotel. We learned he used to co-own a craft brewery in the Netherlands which Heineken just bought, so now he’s taking a year off. From Al’s we headed to one more spot named Rum Dance Hall (this is the English translation), but is really a cool, dim bar serving up all types of alcohol (large whiskey selection) with a wall of LPs and record player as the mood music. The place was great and open late and we made it till about 1am before calling it quits – Takayama off to a great start

Japan Trip: Day 4 - Nara & Kyoto

Day 4: Don't Fear The Deer

This day was going to be the most tiresome from a logistics perspective - with planning a half-day trip to Nara in the AM, followed with some mingling around Kyoto for the other half. It all worked out fine, starting with us all making it out and to Kyoto station in time for our planned 10:05 train from Kyoto to Nara (45 min by local JR rail). By the way, I'm surprised we caught it, but also know I'm as much at risk of making us late than either of the other two.

Nara is known mostly for deer, namely a species of Japanese deer that either through innate nature or just by being exposed to people for decades, are incredibly tame around humans and just mill around the giant Nara Park that encompasses a giant stretch of the city. This is not to say that Nara has nothing going for it aside from the deer. If anything, their large Todai-Ji temple complex nestled in a corner of the Nara Park is tremendously impressive even without the furry cuties mingling about, but from the signage, to the tons of stalls selling plush anime-ized deer, to so much else, the city begins adn ends with the deer.

We arrived at the JR Rail station and started on the walk towards the park. There is a straight road from the Rail Station to the base of the Kofuki-Ji Temple, which is a nice buddhist temple complex. It's a great initaition to Nara, the first place we encountered the deer (wandering pretty far away from where they mainly are) and a place that takes you from that main street to the entry point to Nara Park. When you reach the park there are just deer everywhere. It's overwhelming in its cuteness and really it is pretty special.

It is amazing just how not only unfazed they are with us being around them, but they seem to enjoy it. There are a bunch of vendors who sell little biscuit type things to feed them, but even if you don't have food, many will just come up to you, stare and look stoic and adorable. The deer generally are pretty small, but even in this mix there are a few young ones that just look too cute. Some have pretty sturdy antlers but given the size its more a neat feature rather than anything imposing. The deer mostly congregate in one or two known areas (mostly a chicken and egg situation since that's overtime where a lot of people go knowing there will be deer and they'll bring food and what-not), but they are just present everywhere aroudn the park.

This came into focus in the walk through the park up towards the Todai-Ji temple, where there are deer interspersed with some shops and a giant imposing entry gate. I have to say, these gates are all in some ways similar but endlessly regal nonetheless. The Todai-Ji temple is giant and so pristinely situated in Nara park. The main building also has one of the largest buddha statues I've seen, just empoweringly big in the center of the hall, with "smaller" golden buddhas to each side (guessing the small ones are plenty large). I've yet to go to most of the main Kyoto temples (the Kinkaju-Ji is a bit unique), but they'll have a hard time tomorrow trying to compete with this one.

The last stop on our protracted visit to Nara was lunch at Sushi Ichi. SOmehow we made it 48 hours into our vacation without having sushi, but as a place to break that streak, Sushi Ichi was pretty perfect. It was a very conventional, traditional, but super tasty sushi bar, with a counter where they live prepare the sushi for you, with some ratan tables in teh back. They give you a menu card with the different nigiri options and you just order. The only issue was there was no price listed so we were a bit unsure what we were getting into. In the end it was very affordable - for instance I got 9 nigiri (two come in each order) and it costed me ~$40. The nigiri was great, and they gave us a big bowl of soy with a brush to give each a paint before tasting. All of the ones I tried were good, the two standouts being the o-toro (fatty tuna - no surprise there) and the unagi, which was charcoal flash grilled with this sweet sauce with a hint of soy. That was brilliant, and encompassed three of my nine orders. Sushi Ichi was a really great spot.

We headed back from Nara a bit earleir than expected - the heat again making us go a bit faster through each of the sites than we otherwise would've. With the extra time we visited the Hogan-Ji, a giant temple complex a block north of Kyoto Station. And when I say giant, I mean the main building is big enough for them to claim it is "one of the biggest" wooden structures in the world. I can believe it too, it is truly giant. The hall of the two main buildings also had some of the most intricate art and sculpture work I've seen in a temple. Sadly, they don't allow pictures inside, but it was truly stunning.

From there, we headed towards the middle of the city, the area with inner roads with shops and restuarants and life galore. Truly, Kyoto is one of the better walking around cities. I had picked out a shop selling paper fans but even before we got there I ambled into a couple shops selling cook ware and dishes and the like. The first was ridiculously expensive, but the second standard enough that I picked myself up a teapot and cup set. The fan store was interesting and really well adorned. The price range was high, from some cheap ones, to a middle ground of $30-50 (which is where I focused) and then a bunch in the $100+ range. In the end, the place was a nice pit stop before we returned to the Stand Bar for a couple to refuel. 

Dinner was at a mom and pop run Izakaya (Hasaku) which was special. Mom and Pop is the true description, with the pop being the chef, the mom doing some of the prep along with the main wait staff, and someone who I figure is the daughter showing up as an additional waitress at one point. We were seated at the counter, and it was just exactly what an Izakaya should be. A standard set of Izakaya dishes, all prepared immacutely, from an Octopus in vinegar broth, perfectly dusted fried squids, a great shrimp salad, japanese croquettes (mushroom and cheese filling), a great char-grilled mackeral, and the best dish, a incredible well braised pork belly in teh sweetest sauce ever. Hassaku was a great restaurant and I hope it has a bright future.

After dinner, we hit a few spots around Kyoto. The first was a place named Beer Bar Miyama, right donw Pontocho Alley. The place is small, but was filled with mostly foreigners (not too surprising I guess, this being late on a Monday) but the bartenders were three awesome Japanese youngsters that enlivened the place really well. For once most of the people in the place were American, but of course there was the customary Australian couple. The next step after a couple local brews was Bees knee's a speakeasy-style cocktail bar that was fabulous. Not too big, so we had to wait about 15 min, but once inside the dark, airy room we were entertained through colorful takes on traditional cocktails - such as adding a heavy cinammon flavor to an old fashioned, or a penniciln with kombu. Another great spot. Kyoto is really ticking off everything I like from a city. The night ended with a brief stop at Kitsune Club - a proper techno / hip-hop nightclub (one floor for each), which even that was a fine experience. Overall, Kyoto is a special place.

Japan Trip: Day 3 - Kyoto

Day 3: Hitting the Sights

I'd been to Japan before and while we're venturing out to two places I didn't visit in 2013, namely Takayama and Nikko, I had done Kyoto and Tokyo before. As I mentioned in my previous post, I had gotten a bit tired and overwhelmed by the time I reached Japan last time, so I had convinced myself that this was as good as my first visit. Having revisited two sites that I definitely saw in 2013, and a third that I'm pretty sure I did, I can confidently say my hope going in is right on - I'm basically seeing all this for the first time.

We woke up after staying out later than we expected for the first night, but still showered and ready to leave around 10:15am - for this group that equates to really early. We had a checklist of places to hit, all trying to do them before they close at 5pm (with 4pm last entry). We thought it would be rushed, but in the end was fine that we reached a great craft beer bar at 4pm. Not that the sights weren't good, but it was a pounding 95 degrees in Kyoto. I sweat a lot normally, but my walking around drenched wasn;t even all that notable. Everyone, including many very in shape Japanese people, were as well.

Anyway, for the sights. The first place was the Nijo Castle. This was a really nice plot of land with two castle structures in the heart of Kyoto city. The entrance is grand, a beautiful archway in a long fortified wall. Having gone to Korea last year, I can definitely say there are simialrities abound, but at least the two castles here are jsut a bit more delicate and sturdy. The Nijo Castle has two castles, one of which is being restored. The other allowed for a long walking tour of it - sadly no photos allowed inside the castle. 

It had a series of interconnected rooms, all with ratan mats, beautifully carved and painted wall panels and a general sense of class and import. The rest of the grounds had beautifully manicured gardens and pools - I will always be astounded at teh pure attention to detail of the landscaping and design in Japan. the Nijo Castle was a nice entry point into Kyoto sightseeing. Not the best sight but given how well adorned it is, even that is saying something.

From there we were all a bit hungry, so we ventured to a nearby restaurant-heavy area and went to a place that I believe translates to Dive Ramen. It was a small shop, seven seats at a counter around an open kitchen where two people were cooking up ramen. It was essential stuff - similar to me having Bibimbap in Jeonju last year. The only weirdness, in a very novel way, was ordering through a vending machine type thing that spit out little slips that you handed to the cook. The ramen was stunningly simple and elegant - just perfectly cooked chicken broth, so delicious, so slight., The noodles were soft, the pieces of pork lightly cooked and juicy. It was all excellent. The ramen, with a side of Kirin beer, all for $9.

After this we were runnign ahead of schedule. The most notable sight in Kyoto is the Kinkaju-Ji - the Golden Temple. The plan was to see it tomorrow after we return from Nara, but we decided to just finish it off. It is situated a bit elevated in the Northwest end of Kyoto proper. The grounds are serene, but really it starts adn ends with that Golden Temple - a three story cube with pagod adornments, plated in gold, rising out of the lake. Brilliant from every angle. You see it a bit in the distance when you enter the grounds, but the walking path takes you closer inch by inch to the point you are within 20 feet of it. It is incredible from afar and even better in a way up close when you see basically how perfect that gold finish is - no chips in the paint or dirt or anything.

From the Kinkaju-Ji, went ventured back to central Kyoto, to the giant park that sits in its center, with the Imperial Palace in the middle. This was the palace that the Japanese emporers lived at for hundreds of years until the Meiji Restoration moved the seat of power back to Tokyo. What I really love about Kyoto so far is each of these sights has a really clear walking path through the grounds to see all the sights in each place. Easily laid out, easy to follow and no doubts then on if you saw the right stuff.

At the Imperial Palace, it was a walk around the outside to three of the key, beautifully adorned "Gates", and then inside to the large rooms, be it where the Emperor entertained guests, to their private meeting spaces, to the livign areas, and even quick detours to really lovely garden areas. It was still burning hot through all of this, but we all basically reached that point where we had sweat what we sweat and just were content being overly hot. Anyway, back to the grounds - the Imperial Palace is just so big. Again, there are 1-to-1 similarities say in Seoul from last year, but first this isn't the coutnry's main city, but there is a just a scale and size here that is a bit larger than its counterparts in Korea.

From there, with our main sights out of the way for the day, we headed south with the destination being Umine Stand Craft Bar - a jumbled way of saying a craft beer bar where you have to stand up at the counter. Tehse are very common in Japan and the place was excellent. Good beer, good folks, good scene - twenty-one taps all from craft breweries aroudn Japan (guest featuring was 10 of them from a particular brewery in Osaka) and about five large fridges of various cans. The place is craft beer heaven. 

On the way the walk was a slice of heaven as well. It was largely down one road but that road had so many just beautiful little shops, restaurants, homes with such exacting wood, bamboo and minimalist design. I truly have fallen in love with that aspect of Kyoto. In many of these places, from Floor 2 on up they are concrete blocks, but the ground floor is just a different world. I'm pretty sure some of the places we crossed were muilti-hundred dollar kaiseki restaurants, but others were just regular shops, iuncluding an incredible honey shop that I forced us to stop at to buy my first souvenirs of the trip.

After the stop at the Stand Bar, we walked around the Gion district, a giant shopping, tea & restaurant area - much like the old Hanok Village of Jeonju from last year. I don't like that I keep comparing Kyoto to Jeonju, but in many ways tehre are similarities, with the biggest exception that Kyoto is a massive city that houses all of this. 

For dinner, we went to a place named Ibushigin Kayazawa, which is a sake bar serving sake & smoked foods. Odd combination, I guess but it worked. The sake were all quite good, and the way they serve it a bit interesting, as they overpour a shot glass into a little bowl, giving you basically a shot and a sipping bowl worth of sake for $6-10 a pop. We each had about four varieties, and split a ton of small plates, all well smoked and flavored. None are mains with the exception of a couple dishes of pork ribs and chicken - which we did get the chicken which was excellent. The best dish might have been a cold smoke octopus in a fermented wasabi broth, which was truly brilliant. That or the smoked in cloche starter of sea urchin everyone gets (you ahve to pay for it though). This was I guess not "lowkey" but a very different type of meal from last night but equally as unique and nice.

After dinner, we went down the Potchongo Alley (we learned the name for the main bar and club drag since yesterday) pretty far South to L'Escamoteur bar, which is a cocktail bar run by expats but truly inventive. They too specialize in smoked cocktails, but have a bunch of others as well - my favorites being a honey-infused gin cocktail, and a smokey old fashioned which was more smokey than any I've had. The nigth ended with a brief appearance at the karaoke bar (at least for Kyoto, we're passing on the club scene - saving it for Tokyo, I guess.