Tokyo

I felt like we arrived in Japan while still in Bangkok. As soon as we boarded the Japan airlines flight suddenly we were surrounded by quiet, conscientious people. The stewardess immediately introduced herself to us and started apologising profusely about the thunderstorm which had just started and any inconvenience we could have had. After a 6-hour mini-redeye we arrived in Narita airport at about 8am and got a bus straight to our hotel. (Taxis from the airport cost about £250 wtf?!)

I'd saved up some Hyatt loyalty points from work trips and it turns out they go quite a long way. We had 2 free nights at the Park Hyatt in Shinjuku which is no doubt the best hotel we've ever visited. I'm not sure how many of their clients come direct from damp hovels on the Khao San road, but they let us check in early and treated us like royalty. The hotel (where they filmed most of Lost in Translation) occupies the 40th-52nd floors of a kind of triple-tower in Shinjuku. The lobby (41st floor) is at the top of the shortest tower, the insane gym and pool (47th floor) on the top of the middle tower, and the swanky New York Bar (52nd floor) is at the top of the third. We had a room on the 49th floor, and they even threw in a bottle of champagne because I had ticked the honeymoon/anniversary box on their website. Nice! We were excited enough just being able to drink the tap water after 4 months of buying it.

Now that's more like it

 After a quick nap we went exploring. First stop was to get some lunch and we stumbled upon one of those sushi restaurants with the carousel bar thing. As soon as we walked the chefs gave a cheer. Oh great, we thought, they're giving us shit for being foreigners, but no it turns out they are just being friendly and all restaurants welcome you like this. Everywhere on our trip until now we have been stared at and treated differently for being funny-looking but not so in Japan. In fact they insist on chatting away to us in Japanese rather than (correctly) presuming we don't speak the language. Anyway we piled into our first sushi for a long time. For places where you can't read the menu it is actually a lot easier to just grab the food as it comes past!

In the afternoon we wandered around Shinjuku, which is mostly a business-y type area but on Sunday afternoon more for shopping. For dinner that night we found a yakitori (barbeque skewer) place and insanely tasty pork cheek skewers, washed down with some Asahi, before walking home in the middle of a typhoon, how authentic.

The next day we set our alarms to get up at 5:30 for the daily fish market. Anyway we ignored them and slept into 11am by accident. Lunch was a quiche from the super posh food halls under Isetan, a department store, however this was not enough so we went for more sushi.

In the evening we went to the very swanky New York Bar back at the hotel for a few cocktails. It wasn't cheap but when in Rome. Even with a free hotel we were incinerating our usual daily budget by lunchtime!

Old Fashioned / Margarita

The next day we did manage to get up at 6am to go to the Tsukiji market. We got there by about 7:30, which was way too late for the tuna auction (apparently you have to be there at 4:30 and queue for this). The wholesalers in the market are obviously getting fed up with tourists getting in the way so you're not meant to go into the market until 9am by which time most of the action is over. So we wandered in and feigned ignorance when the ever-so-polite tourist police occasionally suggested that we should move away. There was a pretty awesome selection of seafood on sale, including some monster tuna.

 

After this we headed to the 'outer market' and got a sushi selection at Daiwa, one of the incredibly busy and small restaurants there. It was tasty, although felt a bit weird to be sitting down for a tasting menu at 8:30am.

sea urchin for breakfast!

We walked into Ginza, one of Tokyo's many posh shopping districts, but at this time in the morning it was empty. We did however go to the Sony building which I thought was exciting and Cath less so. By now we were used to constantly breaking all the Japanese etiquette rules, I found it hilarious when a lady accidentally walked back and stood on my foot. She went bright red and could not apologise enough, it was like she was having a panic attack. We went back to the Hyatt, checked out and dragged our bags onto the train down to Shibuya, where we had 2 more nights. The hotel was meant to be french-themed, but turned out to be more like Cath Kidston meets The Nightmare Before Christmas. One evening the receptionists we wearing dracula-style capes over their suits. It was pretty weird, but perfectly clean and comfortable.

We grabbed a late lunch at a ramen (noodle broth) place called Ichiran. Basically you go in, pay for your food at a machine and then (of course all this is electronic) find an unoccupied booth (or 2 together in our case). There you fill out your order requirements (e.g spicy sauce, firm noodles, extra mushrooms) on a piece of paper, press a button and a window behind the booth opens for someone to deliver your food. It was worth the confusion; the food was incredible.

ramenface

work that out

 If Shinjuku was not bewildering enough, Shibuya was crazy. Hundreds of designer clothes and gadget shops, arcades, flashing lights, you name it. Tokyo is a shoppers paradise, even I was quite impressed. We had a quick go at the arcades but probably just embarrassed ourselves; some of the kids in there had obviously had a lot if practice.

For dinner we wandered round aimlessly for a bit and were finally tempted into a place by the 'English menu' sign. It turned out to be an izakaya, a huge beer hall type place, full of office workers getting on the lash and generally getting rowdy. The ordering worked via some touch-screen thing (like a much worse version of Inamo in London). For the first time in Tokyo, the food was forgetable, but the place was pretty cool. We were surprised that smoking indoors is usually allowed in Japan, and this was no exception. The drink 'Hoppy' I later discovered is a beer-flavoured soft drink; luckily they give you some shochu to pep it up. A bit like shandy in reverse.

salarymen

ordering thing

reverse-shandy?

The next day we wandered around Shibuya and nearby Harijuku. If you want to see people dressed as schoolgirls, this is the place to come.

Schoolgirl-themed love hotels?

get the full look...

...or just the ears

 We had some delicious gyoza for lunch. Cath, who has a bit of a gyoza addiction, claimed it was the best meal she'd had for a fiver, with Damascu bite coming in a close second.

For dinner we had tonkatsu (breaded pork) at a place called Maisen. It was excellent, although I don't think it will ever have the special place in my heart that slow-roasted pork has.

And that was our brief but awesome trip to Tokyo. Four days was barely enough to scratch the surface though, for a city that is up there with NYC and London. The food was incredible, Cath was  complaining there were not enough meals in a day. It was the first time either of us had visited Japan, and was a fascinating glimpse of life there, confirming quite a few stereotypes and providing us with a few more. Tokyo definitely blew away our expectations. For the sake (no pun intended) of our budget and waistlines it was probably good to just have 4 nights this time round, but we can't wait to visit again sometime!