Day 8 - Takayama to Tokyo
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.
