Nearly Neutral Travel

This is the second part of a bumper post covering our time in Tokyo with Katie (see yesterday’s post for part I).

Day two: A palace, soba noodles and manga

We had another clear day, so headed to the Imperial Palace gardens to explore. The gardens within the inner moat were closed, but since we’d read that what you could see inside was quite limited because the Emperor still lives here, we weren’t too disappointed. Instead, we explored Kokyo Gaien National Garden, which has views of the palace and moat.

I think we were secretly all slightly relieved that the main palace gardens were closed, as we’d had another late start and were ready for lunch! We’d had soba (buckwheat noodles) several times since arriving in Japan, but always served hot. To us, this seemed the natural way to order them, but we started to notice that most other people ordered them cold, so I gave it a go when we visited Kanda Matsuya. They were delicious and perfect for a light lunch.

Our next stop was Akihabara, Tokyo’s home of subcultures like anime and manga, and unusual eating establishments like maid cafes. We’d already paid a brief visit with George and Erin, but Katie didn’t want to miss out. Unfortunately, she was still feeling the effects of jetlag and promptly fell asleep in a coffee shop! She headed back to the apartment for a proper nap while Oli and I stuck around to delve a bit deeper into some of the niche interests represented in the area. In record time, things got…weird! We learnt that manga really does have something for all ages, shall we say. On a more innocent note, Oli and I raced each other on a motorbike arcade game and, after a number of dramatic crashes and running out of time to do even one lap, established that I should not be allowed to ride one in real life (although I think we knew that already).

Given that walking is our only real exercise these days and we’ve been eating vast quantities of excellent food, we took a walk back to our apartment instead of taking the train. On the way, we passed through the buzzy Ameyoko market street, which was yet another side of Tokyo we’d not yet seen. Unfortunately, the temptation to bend our route around visiting Asakusa Beer Kobo (a highly rated craft beer joint) was too much and we immediately undermined any benefits of having walked an extra few miles, particularly when we ordered some fried chicken as a pre-dinner snack!

Later that evening, we met back up with Katie and had our first tangible experience of the suspicion of foreigners that we’d heard about when we were refused entry to an izakaya – we’d not even stepped foot inside or opened our mouths before the owner blocked the doorway and told us that entry was for Japanese-speaking guests only. We might have been fluent speakers! As we weren’t, we tried not to be too offended and moved onto a much friendlier establishment that served sake in quite possibly the finest vessel we’d ever seen.

Since the transport in Japan was so well organised, we couldn’t really introduce Katie to our favourite game of public transport roulette, so instead we gave her an experience of another, equally risky, game we sometimes play inadvertently: dinner payment chicken. The rules are simple: go to an establishment that you think will accept credit cards, order with enthusiastic abandon, watch anxiously as everyone else settles up with cash and then keep up a confident demeanor when the bill arrives before frantically checking whether you have enough to actually pay. Extra points are awarded if the staff don’t notice you borrowing a menu to estimate what you might owe to decide whether you can afford another round of drinks (we couldn’t)! This was our closest shave yet, and we had the equivalent of about 30 pence between us after paying the bill 😬

Day three: Divide and conquer

It was grey and rainy on our final day in Tokyo, so we parted ways to find some indoor fun.

Katie and I headed to Shibuya City for a delicious sushi lunch at Katsumidori Seibu Shibuya (another item from her Japan to-do list). We feasted from the conveyor belt and also by ordering from an iPad that was placed in each one-person booth. Our top pick was the seared sardine, which was a bite-sized piece of smoky, melt-in-your mouth deliciousness. We shared most dishes and had to do a lot of precarious passing of delicate pieces of sushi under and around the screens installed between each seat – I’m still not totally certain how much all the individual booth dining in Japan has to do with Covid and how much was already there to give people privacy while they eat. In any case, we were very proud that, despite lots of temptation passing us on the conveyor belt, we were restrained enough to spend only the equivalent of about £5 each!

Next, we spent some time shopping and exploring the hipster lanes of Harajuku. Katie spent an inordinate amount of time in a stationery store while I drank coffee, so we were both happy!

Meanwhile, Oli headed for the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (via lunch at a ramen joint, obvs).

Although this museum’s primary purpose seemed to be to encourage children to build an interest in science and technology, I promise I wasn’t the only one there without any kids! The museum curators seemed to love an analogy, and had a particular soft spot for marble runs. So much so that they’d managed to illustrate a whole range of complex concepts with separate marble runs, such as the Internet, disaster risk management, and the carbon cycle. I’m not sure I really got under the skin of any of these topics, but the exhibits were strangely mesmerising.

Oli

That evening, we met up again to pay a brief visit to the d47 Museum and then to see the Shibuya Crossing (another sight we visited with George and Erin a couple of weeks ago) on a busy weekend evening.

This seemed like a fitting way to end our second visit to Tokyo, and we were all excited to be heading to Kyoto on the bullet train the following day.

Buckle up, this is going to be a monster post – we’ve been busy! It’s tempting to think that you’ve got the measure of a place after spending a couple of days there, but past experience has taught us that with a bit of effort, it’s possible to see a totally different side of a city on subsequent visits. So, after having explored for a couple of days with George and Erin, we were excited to see what Tokyo would have in store for us on our second visit with Katie.

Day zero: Wow, that’s a big suitcase

Our first task was to track Katie down in a city of 14 million people, which we thought might be tricky as her Japanese SIM wasn’t working, but actually turned out to be pretty straightforward as she had brought the world’s largest suitcase and was therefore extremely easy to spot!

In order to help her recover from her jet lag (and also because I am obsessed), we spent our first afternoon together relaxing at Spa LaQua, a large onsen complex that had more in common with SpaLand in Busan than any of the other baths we’d visited so far in Japan. It was a really nice place with a cool view of a rollercoaster out of the window, but we all spent the majority of our time wracked with uncertainty about which of our assortment of pyjamas we were supposed to be sporting at any one time. I think we got it right, but more importantly, we all narrowly resisted temptation to take a dip in any of the ornamental pools that were cunningly disguised as swimming pools.

Day one: A temple, plastic food and an incredible sunset

We began our time in Tokyo with a full day exploring anything we could reach on foot from our apartment in Asakusa, which already had a very different vibe from neon-lit Shinjuku City, where we stayed on our last visit.

Being rather more organised than us, Katie had written a long list of things she wanted to achieve in Japan. This included such questionable items as ‘go stationery shopping’ but also had much more exciting items like ‘eat the perfect katsu curry’. It was time to start ticking things off! We headed to a highly rated tonkatsu restaurant and promptly ditched Oli in order to get seats at the counter more quickly. He didn’t even try to pretend that he was sad about having 30 minutes of peace and quiet!

Before coming to Japan, I had always assumed that ‘katsu’ (e.g. in chicken katsu curry) referred to the whole Japanese-style curry dish we eat frequently in the UK, but actually, it refers only to the breaded and fried coating on the meat. So, if you order katsu, you’ll get something breaded and fried but not necessarily in curry sauce, and if you order curry, you’ll get a curry sauce but not necessarily with a breaded and fried meat. After revisiting this confusion with Katie (who thought exactly the same as me), she got her katsu curry, but I’m not sure she even tasted it as she was far too busy laughing at me trying to eat my face-sized slices of ginger pork with any kind of decorum. I think there’s photographic evidence but I strategically didn’t request it from her for this post!

Next, we paid a visit to the famous Sensō-ji temple, of which we had a spectacular view from our apartment. The temple is dedicated to a golden statue of Kannon, the goddess of mercy, which was apparently pulled out of the neighbouring river by two brothers in the year 682. However, it is never on public display so no one knows whether it’s really here. We loved the boldness of building an entire temple to enshrine something that may or may not exist!

We wandered through the main hall, wafted smoke over ourselves from the large incense cauldron (said to bring good health) and Katie selected an omikuji (fortune) by shaking a pot full of numbered sticks until one fell out, then taking a slip from the drawer that matched the number on the stick. After establishing via Google Translate that she hadn’t been terribly cursed, she decided to keep hold of her fortune rather than playing it safe and leaving it at the temple, like us.

Our next stop, courtesy of Katie’s extensive pre-trip research of watching quite possibly every series ever made about Japan, was Kappabashi Street, better known as Kitchen Town. This is a place where any budding restauranteur can go to kit out their new restaurant. It was fascinating! In one street, you could buy industrial cooking equipment, furniture, crockery, chopsticks, lanterns, and (our favourite) plastic food! There was even a shop selling carved wooden bears with fish in their mouths. I’d seen one or two of these outside restaurants in Hokkaidō (where there are lots of bears) and had rather romantically assumed that they were carved by local artisans. How wrong I was!

Our final activity of the day was to ascend the Tokyo Skytree. This (with some qualifiers) is the tallest tower in the world.

We took two lifts to the Tempo Galleria at 450 m, which gave us a totally staggering view over the city and all the way across to Mount Fuji. We timed our visit for the clearest forecast weather of the week and arrived before sunset so that we could see the city by day and night. We’ve ascended quite a few tall things on this trip, but this view really was magical. To celebrate, we treated ourselves to some drinks at the bar, which prompted Katie to ask, “Seriously, is this actually how you two live these days?!” Well, sort of…normally we’d have snuck in supermarket cans to save a few pennies!

That concluded our bumper first full day with Katie – but I’ve decided I’ve rambed on quite long enough! Check out Part II tomorrow for the remainder of our time in Tokyo, including manga, soba and marble runs…

Another Shinkansen bullet train brought us back to the island of Honshu, where we’d picked Sendai as a base for the next three nights. This was as much for its convenience for a couple of day trips as it was for its exciting food scene.

Day trip 1: Matsushima

On our first day out we took a local train along the coast to Matsushima. The coastal town is famous throughout Japan for its beautiful collection of pine-covered islands dotted across its bay.

Matsushima is also home to Zuigan-ji, a Buddhist temple constructed in 1606. After a short walk through the grounds we kicked off our shoes to explore the temple’s dark wood interior, which was beautifully decorated with golden painted screens. The temple was built by Date Masamune, a regional ruler and founder of modern day Sendai, to serve as the family temple. However, we were saddened to learn that when he died, 15 of his samurai committed junshi, also known as “suicide by fidelity”.

When our stomachs started to rumble, we picked up some local delicacies from a seafront cafe. Sara went for kiritanpo (kneaded rice on a bamboo stick), which she barbecued over charcoal until it puffed up and the outside turned golden and crispy. I’m not entirely sure what I got, but it was softer in consistency and fortunately they barbecued it for me. While both skewers had quite a subtle flavour, the kiritanpo had a very satisfying texture, and their warmth was very welcome given the cold outside.

The real highlight of the day trip was a walk around Fukuura-jima, a small island connected to the mainland by a vibrant red pedestrian bridge. The island has a circular perimeter path, affording stunning views across the bay in the late afternoon sun, which had already begun to cast a golden glow across the sea.

That evening we returned to Sendai to try another local delicacy for dinner – beef tongue. For this, we sought out a restaurant called Tanya Zenjirou, located on the third floor of a covered arcade not far from Sendai’s main train station. Between us we tried tongue three ways; sliced in half (pictured below), thinly sliced and in sausage form. Honestly, the taste was great, primarily because it had been expertly barbecued to ensure it was smokey and charred on the outside while still rare on the inside. I don’t think either of us had expected this dish to be a winner, but I’d happily eat it again!

Day trip 2: Ganiba Onsen

The next day, we travelled 226 km by Shinkansen to Tazawako, followed by a local bus up the snowy mountain to Ganiba Onsen. Once again, I was very happy to be a passenger on the bus as it trundled its way through snowy forests and past ski areas to finally reach our onsen at the end of the line.

While this onsen had typical indoor baths, it also had an outside mixed bath located at the end of a very snowy path. Fortunately, the onsen owners had ploughed a path through the snow (which came up to my shoulders!) as otherwise there’s no way we would have found it.

The outdoor onsen itself was absolutely stunning. It required a bit of a leap of faith to leave our clothes in the changing rooms and emerge into the sub-zero temperatures, but we left any anxiety behind us as soon as we plunged into the lovely warm waters. The water was so warm in fact that we ended up using some of the surrounding snow to cool ourselves down! It was so relaxing soaking in the steaming water, watching piles of snow periodically fall from the heavily laden tree branches surrounding the pool.

On the bus back to the station we decided to hop off at the shore of Lake Tazawa. Legend has it that a local woman drank so much water that she turned into a dragon, and was soon followed by a local prince, and it’s their antics that prevent the lake from freezing over during winter to this day. Alighting the bus here was the sort of plan where we both agreed in advance that it was absolutely mad thing to be doing, and yet that didn’t stop us. The snow was so deep that even retracing our steps in our walking boots was a real challenge!

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After an exciting few days on the move, it was now time to return to Tokyo to stay put for a few nights. Once again we wouldn’t be alone, as Katie (Sara’s sister) was joining us for the next nine days. We were delighted to have more company, and also keen to explore a different side of the world’s largest metropolis.