[RD] Exploring Japan

The cat gives off a certain Puss in Boots vibe.
 
can you tell us more about the cat?

I did some research and this cat is apparently from the Kawaguchigo Konohana Museum. I am not sure if this is where I found it. I remember it being in a souvenir shop with a cafe, which this museum appears to have. It's possible the museum itself was closed and I was just in the other part of the building at the time.

The cat appears to be "Dayan the cat", who according to the internet is a popular manga character.

At first I also assumed Puss in Boots, and didn't really think about it much. I wonder if it's a Dayan meets Puss in Boots sort of thing
 
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Day 22 - Yoyogi Park

Yoyogi Park is a popular park in Tokyo. It was the location of the first ever successful powered aircralft flight in Japan in 1910 and it housed the the 1964 Olympic Village. These days it attracts a diverse group of people on sundays, including jugglers, comedians, martial arts clubs, rock music fans, cosplayers, and other subculture groups.

Unfortunately I went here on a tuesday, so I missed out on all that.





 
Meiji Shrine

Walking through Yoyogi Park I ran into this shrine, which is dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji and his wife. This emperor presided over a time in Japanese history (1867-1912) when the country was going through some big changes. You might have heard of that period referred to as the Meiji Restoration.

There was a wedding photo shoot in session. Traditional attire usually fascinates me enough to want to get a shot in of my own. I tried to do so without being too intrusive







 
Yoyogi Park (continued)

Yoyogi Park is quite pretty. I was glad I came here at a time when it isn't packed with people..







This is the tree in question:





Yoyogi Park hosted the Olympic Village for the 1964 Summer Games. It also contains the Yoyogi National Gymnasium, which was used in the 1964 games, and there's the nearby Yoyogi National Stadium, which housed the aquatics and basketball competitions for the 1964 games as well. Some of these were due to be used in the 2020 Olympics
 
Subway Sushi

A friend of mine was raving about a small sushi restaurant she found right by a Tokyo subway stop a couple years before this trip. It came recommended to her by a local and ended up being delicious.. Based on the long set of paragraphs she wrote about the place I decided that I needed to find it and try some of their sushi! So after I was done relaxing in Yoyogi Park, I jumped on the subway and headed in the direction of this mystical subway sushi restaurant.

The description sounds awfully like a restaurant Obama visited when he was president, but it does not appear to be the same place. In the pictures it looks almost identical, but it's by a different subway stop. It almost sounds like my friend went here thinking it's the other place. She said the restaurant is owned by an old chef who used to run a Michelin star restaurant, but then opened up this sushi shop with only 10 spots for customers by the bar. No other seats. That matches up with the place Obama ate at (Sukiyabashi Jiro), but the location is different. So I'm not really sure what's going on here, but in the end the sushi was delicious.

I was told that this place is very busy at lunchtime and that I will have to likely line up in a long line that tends to form outside. When I first arrived I couldn't even find the place.. Google maps took me to the right spot, it seemed, but I just could not see this restaurant anywhere. I had to walk through some of the underground tunnels by the subway to eventually find it.. It's a very small place sort of tucked in a corner. I walked past it twice before finally realizing I had found it. And when I arrived (later on in the day, well past lunchtime) there was almost no line and only a handful of people in line ahead of me. Brilliant!

I sat down at the bar and put in my first order. The menu was very simple, with no fancy sushi rolls you might expect to see at a north american style sushi restaurant. Instead there was an impressive variety of different types of fish prepared in simple ways, from what I could see anyway. The menu had pictures and English names for the different options. My first order was all nigiri sushi, half of it salmon and the other half tuna:



Nigiri sushi is exactly what you see above, a thin slice of raw fish layered on top of a mound of rice. There is also usually a small amount of wasabi in between the two layers. The expectation is for the patron to use chopsticks to dip the sushi in a tiny amount of soy sauce (although this is optional). It is key to not oversaturate the sushi with the sauce, which is seems so common in North American sushi restaurants. In Japan, when I looked around at locals eating sushi, they did not use a lot of soy sauce at all, and sometimes none at all. You don't want to overwhelm the flavour of the fish and drown it out. You are paying for the fish, and if it's fresh that's where most of the flavour is going to be. Soaking your sushi in soy sauce is almost seen as a sign of disrespect. If you remember the dark alley sushi restaurant I went to many posts ago now, I had the chef pour me the amount of soy sauce needed. He also showed me how to dip it properly. You want a tiny amount of soy sauce on your sushi, or none at all.

I was also used to mixing in wasabi with my soy sauce before dipping my sushi in the mixture. That's what I always did in north american sushi restaurants. After this trip though I have changed my ways! I now always put a small bit of wasabi on the piece of sushi itself, and then gently dip it in the soy sauce. Even when the fish is not the freshest, that's how you get the most out of the flavour.

My second order was a bit different:



You are looking at Aburi Sushi. It's essentially the same thing, except that the fish is slightly torched from the top. According to my friend anything that was torched in this restaurant was worth ordering. So I did. I tried a couple of the aburi options on the menu and they were all delicious.

I would have stayed longer and tried other types of fish, but I was full! I could not decide if this was the best sushi I had in the country or the 2nd best. The fish market sushi was definitely very good, but that was all sashimi. The fish was probably fresher there, since it was right by the fish market.. but then again, who knows.. The dark alley sushi was very good too, but I can't decide how that stacks up at all. It's probably my 3rd favourite. The baseball stadium sushi was also good, but a step below these 3 contenders.

I sent my friend a thank you note and a picture of some of the aburi sushi I ate. She insisted that anything aburi on the menu will be amazing, and it was.
 
Avocado rolls with imitation crab meat and BBQ sauce are really are an American thing, not something to be found here. If I had to guess, at least where I’m from, fresh fish is insanely expensive and most people don’t have the palate to take the fish taste.

I’m not a big fan of a lot of sushi myself because of the vinegar in the rice; that gives me a huge upset stomach. I’d sooner make my own dish called “kaisendon” that’s just the sashimi fish draped over plain white rice.

I haven’t been to Tokyo in years now but I hear a lot of foreigners complain about the Jiro restaurant. While good food, they complain about whatever rules they have and how they feel rushed to get out of there. Conversely, the Japanese have their own thing with this called “Paris syndrome,” where Japanese tourists visiting France experience genuine mental suffering because Paris isn’t exactly like what's shown in the movies, so much so that I heard the embassy in Paris has a hotline for tourists that experience this.

Getting back to the sushi, those aburi ones are always good. I haven’t had anything like that in a while now!
 
I wonder if the restaurant I was at was trying to copy the success of Jiro. I'm not really sure.

I am used to North American style all you can eat sushi, so everything I ate in Japan (that was raw fish) was incredible. It's hard to go back to an ayce sushi joint here after you experienced the real deal. After I returned from my trip I was mainly visiting a la carte Japanese restaurants. The quality of the food is higher and you don't even end up paying that much more than an ayce option. I've been to a couple ayce restaurants in the last couple years, and I don't even get that much sushi when I go. You know it will be average at best, so you tend to focus on the beef based and other dishes.

Eating out when you're on the road is so much easier when you're solo. It's a lot easier to find a seat in a busy restaurant and you never feel rushed.. or at least I didn't. I don't have anybody to talk to, so I don't really dwell over my food. I'm also very accepting of local customs though, so that wouldn't annoy me anyhow. When in Rome..
 
Tempura

Tempura refers to vegetables, meat, and seafood that has been battered and deep fried. It was introduced to Japan by the Portugese in the 16th century and the name actually comes from Latin.



I forget what else I was doing this day, but I ended up at a restaurant which specializes in tempura at about 9 or 10pm or so. I had not tried any tempura in the country yet and really wanted to.

The bowl I ordered contained a variety of different tempura, ranging from vegetables to mushrooms to eel. The eel was the best part, it's the large deep fried chunk you see sticking out of the bowl.

This restaurant happened to be very close to a business district, which has the sort of buildings you'd expect in a central business district in a large city.. And even though it was so late, I was passing businessmen (i.e. men in suits) holding briefcases, making their way home after a long day's work. Some of them were no doubt returning from a post-work happy hour, judging by the occasionally stumbling old men in business suits I saw.. At one point an especially old gentleman fell over in the middle of the street crossing. He was accompanied by several of his colleagues, who were a bit younger.. First they laughed at him and then they helped him up



I made my way back to my hotel and went to sleep knowing that I had one more full day left in the country..
 
Day 23 - Ghibli Museum

I was lucky enough to get a ticket to this popular museum, which is in the city of Mitaka, just west of Tokyo. It's essentially right in the Tokyo metro area, but the way the city is carved up into.. cities.. and districts.. means that as you're making your way through Tokyo via the subway (and otherwise), you're frequently technically crossing city borders.

Unfortunately there is no photography allowed inside the premises, so I can't show you any of what I experienced inside. It's part children's museum, part technology museum, part fine arts museum, there's a cafe, a rooftop patio, a souvenir shop, and even a small theatre.

This museum showcases the work of Japanese animation studio Ghibli. This studio is responsible for movies such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away ,which you might have heard of even if you aren't into Japanese animation. The museum showcases various aspects of the animation creation process, there's sketches on the walls, paintings, there's interesting technology on display, curious art and artefacts on the walls, things to play with, lots of things to keep the kids busy, but adults as well. It's quite a fascinating place really and I wish I was able to show you something..

The on-site theatre shows several short films exclusive to the Ghibli museum. Each visitor is allowed one visit to the theatre with their ticket. The short I watched was Mizugumo Monmon (Water Spider Monmon). It's a fifteen minute long short about a diving bell spider who fell in love with a water strider (an insect spiders usually eat I think). The animation was beautiful and looked quite nice on the large screen



I'm not a huge fan of anime, but I have seen some of the classics. I would highly recommend this museum to anyone, even if you aren't into animation.
 
Oh man, Ghibli. :love:
 
I wonder if the restaurant I was at was trying to copy the success of Jiro. I'm not really sure.
I’m not “on” the Tokyo scene at all, but I’ve read that Jiro’s son runs a restaurant in Tokyo that gets fewer bookings from tourists that saw that documentary. How old is that guy now anyway, 90?

I found the sign of a good Japanese restaurant in the states to be that it has a menu that has more than sushi, sashimi, or fried rice. One place I used to frequent was like that and sold mostly non-sushi Japanese food. That’s not to say quality isn’t out there! I found another place by a Japanese family that had a small sushi restaurant and they always spoke Japanese to each other while everyone was in line. I don’t think I ever spoke to them but I did listen to them talk quite often, but this was years ago when I only had a very elementary grasp of the language.
 
The museum actually recently posted a couple youtube videos that allow you to do a virtual sort of walkthrough of parts of the complex.

You can watch them here

They unfortunately don't really show you much.. but if you are into Ghibli then you will probably enjoy the videos!
 
Inokashira Park

Ghibli museum is situated right in Inokashira Park. The park has baseball diamonds, an athletic field, there's a small zoo, and even a mini amusement park. Inokashira Pond and the Kanda river water source can be found in the park as well.







This park was a gift from the emperor to the city of Tokyo and opened in 1917. I quite liked this place! Like all parks in Tokyo I came across, it's very well maintained. All the walkways and bridges on or by the water make exploring this park a bit of a treat. There's assorted structures hidden from view by the trees, making it a fun place to walk through. Initially I was just going to cut through this park to walk back to the subway station via an alternate route.. but I ended up staying here a bit longer.
 
More Steak Please

My trip was winding down to a close and I still had enough in my budget for one more splurge meal.. I found a well reviewed steakhouse reasonably close to a subway station near Inokashira park... Supposedly one of the better steakhouses in the area.. Turns out their most expensive steak was not Wagyu.. It's another type of beef which they claimed was even better. I don't know if I believe that really, but I was willing to give it a try





This meal cost slightly more than the A5 Wagyu beef meal I had in Kobe.. but not by much.. If I had to compare the taste and the experience, I don't know which one I would say is better. Both steaks were incredible
 
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More Steak Please

My trip was winding down to a close and I still had enough in my budget for one more splurge meal.. I found a well reviewed steakhouse reasonably close to a subway station near Inokashira park... Supposedly one of the better steakhouses in the area.. Turns out their most expensive steak was not Wagyu.. It's another type of beef which they claimed was even better. I don't know if I believe that really, but I was willing to give it a try





This meal cost slightly more than the A5 Wagyu beef meal I had in Kobe.. but not by much.. If I had to compare the taste and the experience, I don't know which one I would say is better. Both steaks were incredible
Was it the red/brown akaushi beef?

https://www.lowecattlecompany.com/akaushi-beef
 
More Steak Please

My trip was winding down to a close and I still had enough in my budget for one more splurge meal.. I found a well reviewed steakhouse reasonably close to a subway station near Inokashira park... Supposedly one of the better steakhouses in the area.. Turns out their most expensive steak was not Wagyu.. It's another type of beef which they claimed was even better. I don't know if I believe that really, but I was willing to give it a try





This meal cost slightly more than the A5 Wagyu beef meal I had in Kobe.. but not by much.. If I had to compare the taste and the experience, I don't know which one I would say is better. Both steaks were incredible
The steak looks amazing, so much marbling!!:eek:... must have been delicious :yumyum:
 

I don't think so. That seems to say that akaushi beef is wagyu, but these guys were saying I wasn't eating wagyu, but another breed. But who knows

The steak looks amazing, so much marbling!!:eek:... must have been delicious :yumyum:

It was incredible and well worth the cost. I often think back to the flavour and try to remember it for as long as I can..
 
Nakano Broadway

After savouring the steak I did some research and realized that Nakano Broadway was only 4 subway stops away.. and on the way back to the hotel anyway...20 minutes later and I was there.

Nakano Broadway is supposed to be the new Akihabara.. I think.. A mecca for nerds and geeks.. A multi-level complex with many shops selling gadgets, anime, manga, toys, games, and many other things..



I think I spent a couple hours here.. I don't remember what I bought, but it was fun looking through some of the shops.. I wanted to buy some cool little toy or robot or something.. but anything cool was way out of my budget..

In the end I ended up eating a noodle dish near here somewhere and walking around the city a bit looking for souvenirs to buy.. I bought some chopsticks somewhere, I still have them here and use them all the time.. I bought a traditional Japanese piece of art.. It's a picture of waves that's sitting up on my dresser.. I also bought some sake cups, and suggestive magnets for a friend..
 
Gigi Hadid

After I bought my souvenirs I started making my way to the subway station.. when I ran into some sort of a commotion





Turns out this Gigi person was there in person and was going to say something. But that was just what the person I asked heard from somebody else.. I had a lot of time to kill so I hung around a bit to see what was going to happen.

More and more people were showing up and blocking the sidewalk.. and eventually the security people told all of us to stand by the building, behind the barricades



At one point the door opened and there was somebody coming out with what seemed like an entourage. People got excited and started pushing.. and the barricades started falling down.. People fell.. There wasn't a ton of chaos, but somebody could have been injured..

She did come out eventually and said hi or something, I forget. It wasn't really that exciting. I grabbed my souvenirs and dropped them off at the hotel, so that I could head out on town one last time.
 
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