Day 3: Rain, Ryan, and Cup Converters
We woke to a day of pouring rain. Unfortunate, but we had come prepared. What former Seattleite doesn't rock a wicked umbrella?
After our tasty breakfast of soylent green--er, plain rice and rolls--we caught a subway over to the Imperial Palace gardens. This is basically the equivalent of Central Park for Tokyo, except with a dash of Japanese formality. Old buildings and walls crouch comfortably alongside some very pretty and well-maintained gardens. Some sort of pink flower was in bloom everywhere, making every hedge a mass of solid pink.
After a wet morning in the gardens, we decided that some bubble tea (a guilty secret of mine is that this stuff has grown on me) to fortify ourselves for further wandering. We'd looked up a likely spot the day before, and found it in an underground train station mall. This is worth mentioning not because of the tea--which was great--but because of the highly embarrassing and hilarious 15-minute one-sided conversation with the poor bubble tea clerk. A young teen with no English skills, the poor girl gave us our change, and then proceeded to talk to us in rapid Japanese. She was clearly trying ask us the same thing in a hundred different ways, but it was just as clear that we had no idea what she was saying. Finally, she took us through the whole transaction again. It turns out she was just trying to count our change for us. Poor girl!
We headed back to the hotel. Waiting for us was my buddy Ryan, a longtime friend of ours who is currently teaching English outside of Tokyo. It was fantastic to see him again!
After spending some time catching up, Ryan and Laura split off from us to find a specific Anime store Laura was looking for, leaving Mary and I to our own devices. Heh heh heh. So we did what any couple would do in this situation. We decided to go see a shrine.
Before we could do that, however, we needed food. And not just any food. We decided to try something uniquely Japanese by heading over to a restaurant specializing in what are essentially Japanese pancakes. Finding the place was the usual Tokyo navigational mindfuck, but once we arrived we were charmed by the tiny little house and garden. After shucking shoes, we were led onto a creaking wood floor carpeted with tatami mats. The name of the place was Sometaro, and we really enjoyed our experience--read the details on my review entry.
After lunch, we visited the Meji shrine at the Asakusa Kannon Temple. More accurately, we visited the huge, touristy, temple marketplace and eventually wandered our way to the temple at the end of it.
Despite its cheesiness, the market was a hoot. Aside from some of the crazy products we saw there (Obama cakes? YES WE CAN!), we had a great time just trying lots of random food. We first ran into a stall containing very interesting machine that made red bean buns. We downed a few of these hot off the griddle only to later find several stalls where they were also being made by hand.
We then found a small shop that made a very strange sweet that looked like sawdust beads on a stick. It turned out that this was sweet glutinous rice covered in soybean flour--delicious. A nice mix of salty from the flour and sweet from the rice. And, uh, wood from the stick.
Later on, we observed bored-looking cooks making rice crackers over open grills (we were stuffed by now and didn't try these), along with some sort of fried rice bun with fruit in the center (which we did try--greasy, sickeningly sweet, and absolutely delicious). In short, our entire market experience was an ode to traditional Japanese snacks and traditional American gluttony.
The temple itself was interesting and hadn't changed since my last visit. There is a huge pot of incense outside with people waving the smoke over different parts of their bodies (for healing powers). There is also a fountain with ladles where folks would ladle up water, drink it, and spit it into a trench around the fountain. I found that odd. Inside the temple people were praying and also paying to get their fortunes told by shaking boxes with rune sticks in them. The stick that came out corresponded to a sheet with their fortune printed on it.
After Asukasa, we caught a subway over to Shibuya. In short, the Shibuya train station still sucks (the one place in Japan not dripping with maps), and Shibuya itself remains crazy--especially on the weekend. The average age of your standard Shibuyaite is probably around 21, and the place was crammed to the gills with them. Tokyo's busiest pedestrian crossing won its title fair and square!
We spent most of our time in Shibuya wandering alleys full of smaller stores. Neon signs everywhere battled each other to catch our eye. Store clerks were blaring messages on megaphones on the street (an advertising style we saw everywhere, and which can get pretty irritating). We went into one "game" store only to find that it was actually mostly a casino. It was still interesting, though--on the top floor they featured "Ultimate Mahjong Fighter 7", which was giving wet undies to a large crowd of young Japanese people.
Just for kicks, we next went into 109, a 10-floor department store mostly dedicated to turning young Japanese girls into club candy. This was both amusing and uncomfortable.
Mary had a good time looking at some of the clothes, but what really tripped her switch was the amount of padding in the bras on display.
"Steve," she yelled, thrusting what looked like a pillow with straps into my unsuspecting hands. "This is madness!" While it was true the thing would probably stop a bullet, I figured visual inspection was probably enough and put it down pretty quick.
But alas, I was too slow. Two heavily over-dressed and over-made-up female store attendants had already noticed blood in the water and immediately descended for the kill. Both were smiling their faces off and babbling in rapid-fire Japanese. I guess they figured Mary actually wanted an A-to-C converter bra and that as the present male escort, I would be buying it for her immediately. Uh, no thanks ladies. Bemused, I just bowed a lot and exited stage left as fast as I could.
For dinner we decided to try a native Japanese fast food chain, "Mos Burger". Their signs caught our eye--they look like meat donuts with some kind of rice paste in the middle, which sounded both wrong and interesting at the same time. Mmm, meat donuts.
So, we ordered one. . . but it didn't have a hole in the middle. Instead it was a fairly regular burger smothered in rice sauce, onions, and tomato sauce (not ketchup). Very interesting. We didn't think we'd be trying it again.
After a long day of wandering, we headed back to the hotel to meet up with Ryan and Laura. We had a great time catching up with Ryan until he had to catch a train home. A few hours of sleep and it was time for the next set of adventures.
 |
| Pink! |
After a wet morning in the gardens, we decided that some bubble tea (a guilty secret of mine is that this stuff has grown on me) to fortify ourselves for further wandering. We'd looked up a likely spot the day before, and found it in an underground train station mall. This is worth mentioning not because of the tea--which was great--but because of the highly embarrassing and hilarious 15-minute one-sided conversation with the poor bubble tea clerk. A young teen with no English skills, the poor girl gave us our change, and then proceeded to talk to us in rapid Japanese. She was clearly trying ask us the same thing in a hundred different ways, but it was just as clear that we had no idea what she was saying. Finally, she took us through the whole transaction again. It turns out she was just trying to count our change for us. Poor girl!
We headed back to the hotel. Waiting for us was my buddy Ryan, a longtime friend of ours who is currently teaching English outside of Tokyo. It was fantastic to see him again!
After spending some time catching up, Ryan and Laura split off from us to find a specific Anime store Laura was looking for, leaving Mary and I to our own devices. Heh heh heh. So we did what any couple would do in this situation. We decided to go see a shrine.
Before we could do that, however, we needed food. And not just any food. We decided to try something uniquely Japanese by heading over to a restaurant specializing in what are essentially Japanese pancakes. Finding the place was the usual Tokyo navigational mindfuck, but once we arrived we were charmed by the tiny little house and garden. After shucking shoes, we were led onto a creaking wood floor carpeted with tatami mats. The name of the place was Sometaro, and we really enjoyed our experience--read the details on my review entry.
After lunch, we visited the Meji shrine at the Asakusa Kannon Temple. More accurately, we visited the huge, touristy, temple marketplace and eventually wandered our way to the temple at the end of it.
 |
| Cake we can believe in. |
We then found a small shop that made a very strange sweet that looked like sawdust beads on a stick. It turned out that this was sweet glutinous rice covered in soybean flour--delicious. A nice mix of salty from the flour and sweet from the rice. And, uh, wood from the stick.
 |
| In the game of Free Samples, sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose horribly. Here, we lost horribly. |
The temple itself was interesting and hadn't changed since my last visit. There is a huge pot of incense outside with people waving the smoke over different parts of their bodies (for healing powers). There is also a fountain with ladles where folks would ladle up water, drink it, and spit it into a trench around the fountain. I found that odd. Inside the temple people were praying and also paying to get their fortunes told by shaking boxes with rune sticks in them. The stick that came out corresponded to a sheet with their fortune printed on it.
 |
| SHI-BU-YAAAAA! |
We spent most of our time in Shibuya wandering alleys full of smaller stores. Neon signs everywhere battled each other to catch our eye. Store clerks were blaring messages on megaphones on the street (an advertising style we saw everywhere, and which can get pretty irritating). We went into one "game" store only to find that it was actually mostly a casino. It was still interesting, though--on the top floor they featured "Ultimate Mahjong Fighter 7", which was giving wet undies to a large crowd of young Japanese people.
Just for kicks, we next went into 109, a 10-floor department store mostly dedicated to turning young Japanese girls into club candy. This was both amusing and uncomfortable.
Mary had a good time looking at some of the clothes, but what really tripped her switch was the amount of padding in the bras on display.
"Steve," she yelled, thrusting what looked like a pillow with straps into my unsuspecting hands. "This is madness!" While it was true the thing would probably stop a bullet, I figured visual inspection was probably enough and put it down pretty quick.
But alas, I was too slow. Two heavily over-dressed and over-made-up female store attendants had already noticed blood in the water and immediately descended for the kill. Both were smiling their faces off and babbling in rapid-fire Japanese. I guess they figured Mary actually wanted an A-to-C converter bra and that as the present male escort, I would be buying it for her immediately. Uh, no thanks ladies. Bemused, I just bowed a lot and exited stage left as fast as I could.
For dinner we decided to try a native Japanese fast food chain, "Mos Burger". Their signs caught our eye--they look like meat donuts with some kind of rice paste in the middle, which sounded both wrong and interesting at the same time. Mmm, meat donuts.
 |
| The infamous Mos Burger |
After a long day of wandering, we headed back to the hotel to meet up with Ryan and Laura. We had a great time catching up with Ryan until he had to catch a train home. A few hours of sleep and it was time for the next set of adventures.
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