Tokyo

Tokyo

東京

Sorry that I haven't posted in so long! I've been crazy busy with work and settling into my second year in Taipei that I sort of put this blog to the side! I recently got back from a three week Japan trip, two weeks of which were with my family, and one of which was travelling solo. The trip was jam packed with places and activities as Japan itself is full of exciting and vibrant cities, stunning natural scenery and incredible historic sites. As I went back and forth to Tokyo a few times, I decided that it would be too complicated to go through my visit chronologically. Instead, I've just got a highlight of the best things I did there! So with our further ado, here are my best bits from Tokyo (sorry in advance for the slightly disorganised nature of this post!)

Highlight #1: The food!

The food in Japan was incredible and in Tokyo it was impossible to go anywhere without being tempted by yakitori, ramen or sushi, all of which were in abundance. Despite being such a huge, developed city, the food in Tokyo was actually pretty affordable, at least by international standards. so I was able to take full advantage of what was on offer.

On our first night in Tokyo, my family went out for Sukiyaki, which easily stands out as a highlight of the trip. Sukiyaki involves a large grill at the centre of the table with a selection of thinly sliced beef that you can cook yourself (after rubbing the grill a suitable amount of beef fat). We opted for one of the restaurant's specials which included ten different kinds of Wagyu beef. The beef was all beautifully marbled and tasted phenomenal. The method of eating the beef in individual slices also helped space out the meal, which is great for someone like me who often finishes a steak in a matter of minutes as it gave me the chance to savour the meat more! The combination of ten fantastic slices of beef along with the best kimchi I've ever had (admittedly I haven't had much kimchi) definitely places this as one of my top food experiences in Japan.

This is a sign for a little restaurant which sold these awesome deserts that were made of hot melon bread sliced in half with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the middle. The whole thing tasted amazing and the contrast of the hot, crispy bread with the cold, creamy ice cream was great!

Yakitori involves skewers of grilled meat, usually with an accompaniment of sake or beer, and is one of my favourite kinds of Japanese food. We decided to check out an area in Tokyo known as 'piss alley' (named for its historic role as being the city's urinal for drunk men), which is a short, narrow alleyway that is crammed full of tiny Yakitori restaurants, each only seating 5-10 people. The area had a really unique atmosphere, feeling more historic than many areas in Tokyo, and the meat and beer were awesome!

No trip to Japan would be complete without numerous bowls of ramen, and my trip to the famous Ippudo involved some of the best ramen I've ever hard, complete with melt in your mouth char siu pork!

I never thought that sushi would be included in one of my food highlights, but after multiple attempts to conquer my seafood aversion (the first of which involved quickly washing it down with beer without actually being able to taste it) I finally started to appreciate and even enjoy it! 

A waiter-less sushi bar, where you would order what food you wanted on a tablet before it was sent to  you on fast sliding trays. 

Hamburger sushi-not very good, but fun for the novelty!

As well as eating the food of Tokyo, we also went to explore Kappabashi street, known as Kitchen town, which was home to hundreds of shops selling any kind of Japanese cooking utensils you could imagine, including...

Expertly crafted Japanese knives!

Highlight #2: The Traditional

Sensoji Temple is Tokyo's oldest, and arguably most famous temple and accordingly was filled with tourists and visitors, for whom an entire road of souvenir stalls was built on the lead up to the temple. The temple housed some pretty impressive pagodas, as well as the impressive 'Thunder Gate'.

Feeling zen.

We also checked out Tsujiki fish market, home of the best wholesale fresh fish in the city. Unfortunately, the market was a little empty as we were there before it had fully opened to visitors (due to a very early arrival resulting from a failed attempt to watch a sumo wrestler practice session). Nonetheless, we still got a feel for the market and it was fun seeing the little carts which merchants sped around on to get things from place to place.

These carts were everywhere and definitely took right of way over any tourists.

The Edo Tokyo Museum gave us the opportunity to look at recreations of Edo era Tokyo (both large scale and small) and watch the transformation of the city to what it is today!

A performance by some musicians at the museum, with a traditional Edo backdrop behind them.

Langtons chilling in a traditional living room.

We also went to the National Tokyo Museum, located in Ueno park. Unfortunately large areas in the museum were closed, including the gallery of Japanese treasures. We still got to see some pretty cool things though, including some Noh Masks, old medical documents and tools and samurai swords and armour.

One of the Noh masks. Apparently actors could choose from any number of a variety of masks on the day of a performance, so long as they then acted with the personality of the mask that they chose, ensuring each performance could be different from the last.

This was used as a practice dummy by aspiring acupuncturists!

Highlight #3: The Modern
 Tokyo is possibly the most modern city I've visited. Be it the shops where robots served customers, the sushi bars where your food was shot towards you on sliding trays or the young people in Harajuku wearing the last crazy fashion trends, walking around the city often felt like stepping into the future. So here are some of my highlights of the more modern aspects of the city...

The Pokemon store! While walking around the shopping complexes below Tokyo Main station, I stumbled upon a huge area which seemed to be full with shops dedicated to cute cartoon characters. Many of these seemed to be characters who had no other purpose than to sell products with their face on them (in the same vein of Hello Kitty) and it was a lot of fun just to look around. Along with the Pokemon store, another personal highlight of mine was that dedicated to Gudetama-a man made of egg-yolk who looks perpetually miserable. 

Gudetama-my newest obsession, who happens to be the very popular in Taiwan at the moment too!

A Panda Bus!

Vending Machines! We also have vending machines in Taipei, but they're nothing like the scale that I saw in Japan and Tokyo especially. For just a couple hundred yen, you could be the proud owner of a small plastic version of pretty much any Japanese character you can think of!

A happy looking plastic man welcoming visitors into a shop.

Speaking of giant plastic figures, the area near our house was filled with an army of Doraemon.

The streets of Akikhabara, a paradise for Japan's gamers and manga geeks as well as home to the city's infamous maid cafes. 

Takeshita street! (and Harajuku in general)

 Harajuku is famous for being the main outlet for Japanese youth culture and is filled to the brim with everything cute, pink, plastic or just plain out there.

Some of the merchandise available in Harajuku.

Neither crepe shops nor Lolita fashion were in short supply!

Anything goes in Harajuku...

One of my family's personal favourite aspects of Harajuku/Tokyo/Japan in general were the Purikura photo booths. These were basically photo booths where you could heavily edit you and your friends to try and look as cute as possible! Side effects may include giant eyes, ghostly pale skin and/or cat ears.

A rabbit cafe in Harajuku. This 'cafe' basically involved going to a room and choosing a rabbit who you could feed and play with for a set amount of time. Unfortunately, the rabbits were so accustomed to the workers at the cafe that they were significantly less interested in us, except for when we offered them the vegetables that were for sale...

Trying to blend in with some locals...

Highlight #4: The Ghibli Museum

One of the places I was most looking forward to in Tokyo was the Studio Ghibli Museum. I was a big fan of Studio Ghibli movies when I was growing up and still love them when I watch them so I was very keen to try and get tickets to go here! Unfortunately, getting tickets is notoriously difficult for foreigners as they are sold in limited batches and frequently sell out months in advance. Eventually I decided to buy some tickets from a third party at a heavy inflated price. Although I can't say the experience justified the price, it was definitely a really amazing place and I definitely recommend going, especially if you can get them at their actual price!

The museum itself was located around a huge park area and the walk from the train station to the museum was very picturesque and peaceful.

A lot of thought has gone into the design of the museum itself, which is meant to look as if you could be stepping into a Ghibli film.

Unfortunately pictures inside the museum were strictly prohibited so I can't show you anything that I saw within the museum. But the ticket included access to a really great little film about a group of sumo wrestling mice living in an old couple's house and unable win any matches against their rivals. The old couple, seeing the struggles of the mice, decide to cook them up some huge meals to help them fight to victory! The film was very sweet and pretty funny and fortunately had little dialogue as there were no English subtitles!

Apart from that, there was a little exhibition on the history of animation itself which had some awesome displays of moving pictures and statues which demonstrated how rapidly moving things could blend into one moving image.

The highlight of the museum was definitely the exhibition on the animation process of the films. The museum took a 'show, don't tell' approach to this and you basically could walk through awesome little rooms where every single bit of wall space or storage space was covered with either memorabilia from Ghibli films or objects which presumably were used as inspiration. You could look through these pieces of memorabilia (such as concept drawings and screenplays) which were ordered in a way so that so that you could see for yourself the steps that animators took to reach the finished product of a Ghibli film.

After exploring the museum (which was pretty small), I went to the rooftop garden (where pictures were allowed!) and was greeted by this statue of one of the robots from Laputa. 

A view of the museum from above.

Highlight #5: The Music

One final thing worth mentioning about my trip to Tokyo was the Hostess Club All Nighter event which I went to! The event was basically an all night long (from 10pm-5am) concert with a number of artists playing on two different stages in the Makuhari Messe. Though the main draw for my coming was Deerhunter, who cancelled last minute (as they previously did when I tried to see them in Liverpool), I was still able to enjoy Thom Yorke, Franz Ferdinand and Sparks, Jon Hopkins and Bo Ningen, all of whom put on a great show!

Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich



And so my highlights of Tokyo comes to an end! The city itself is a little hard to blog about as its not necessarily full of individual attractions, but is instead an attraction in and of itself. Tokyo was an incredibly vibrant city with tons of energy and interesting and exciting places to see in just about any district you decided to explore.