Tokyo and Kyoto

Day 1: Arriving in One (Barely Functional) Piece

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 04:51:00 +0000

Not too much to write about today, seeing as how most of it was spent on a plane.

We arrived in Tokyo at about 3pm local time. We then went through quarantine. This entailed a questionnaire and then spending a half hour sitting on a plane full of very cranky people at the arrival gate. Meanwhile, a few folks in blue scrubs wandered up and down the aisles and looked for people with pig flu. At least, I'm guessing that's what they were doing. Who knew it could be diagnosed visually.

Our golden ticket!

After that we were handed a yellow sheet of paper saying we appeared to be flu-free, walked through an extra check station, and that was it. Welcome to Japan, gaijin. I wonder if there is any return on investment for the whole exercise.

We met up with Laura in the baggage claim--it was wonderful to see her. From there it was off to customs, an ATM, and the JR office to make train reservations for our trip. A few minutes later we were taking a local line to Shiodome Station.

Shiodome station is absolutely huge. I mean, REALLY huge. It has a couple underground malls (something we would see a lot in Japan). It connects to several subway lines. It has a lot of signs that seem to contradict each other. Finally--and luckily for us--it also has a good quantity of maps. It took us a half hour to navigate through the tunnels and escalators, but we finally found our hotel, the Villa Fontaine Hotel.

You might want to double-check your order.

Overall, I recommend this place. It was very reasonably priced, has a fairly central location, and comes with breakfast. The rooms are good-sized (important to note this in Japan), internet is included, and the bathrooms very clean. It even came with a "Foods" vending machine that sold underwear. Overall, we were pleased with our stay there.

By the time we'd checked in, we were hungry and exhausted. We wandered out to find some food and ended up scrounging snacks from a nearby convenience store. After that, blissful collapse.

Day 2: Wait, I'm Lost Already

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Sun, 31 May 2009 04:49:00 +0000

I felt almost human after the deep and dreamless sleep that only 24+ hours awake can provide. However, full consciousness only arrived after a trip to the bland but nourishing breakfast buffet offered by our hotel. Rolls, rice, a bit of cereal, and hard-boiled eggs. Filling, but nothing to write home about. Except I just did.

Full and raring to go, we stepped out into a bright Tokyo morning. I proceeded to rediscover the navigational pit toilet that is Tokyo.

And you thought I was kidding.

Streets going everywhere at all angles. A severe lack of signage. Maps with landmarks like "where the practice of goods examination began" and each oriented in a completely random direction. A word of advice for visitors: pay attention to where North is on the map you're trying to read, or you will shoot yourself in the foot.

What to buy, what to buy. . .

Eventually, we succeeded in finding the Tsujiki fish market. Nothing had changed in the two years since my brother and I first wandered here. It was still just as packed, noisy, smelly, and absolutely as interesting as I remembered it. The girls were enthralled--as Laura observed, it was like "Pike Place market [in Seattle, Washington] on crack!"

After Tsujiki we walked north up to Ginza. First stop: the Sony building, crammed full of interesting electronics unavailable to folks in the US. Of note in the Sony building was the Rolly music robot, a little device that played music and "danced" to the music by rolling around and opening and closing flaps. Absolutely a useless toy, but potentially hours of fun when offered to an unsuspecting pet.

Lunch was at a local "lifestyle store", which we thought would be an interesting place to check out Japanese crafts, but turned out to be more like a Japanese Ikea. They did have a cheap and tasty cafeteria, but no meatballs.

After lunch we wandered down the main drag of Ginza. On Saturdays they close this street to traffic, placing seats and umbrellas in the middle of the road for pedestrians to sit and relax. We were confused to see people sitting in the middle of the street, but it really gave the whole district an almost European feel.

If you see this man playing with your Legos, call the authorities immediately.

Our final shopping stop was at the Tokyo Toy Factory, a toy store in West Ginza. In terms of inventory, this place rivals an FAO Schwartz: 6 floors of toys, from video games to stuffed animals to novelties. In terms of sheer crazy stuff, however, its off the charts. Mary was completely in her element, picking up among other things a hamburger-shaped lunch box and a calculator that looks like a Hershey bar--and smells like it too. We also saw some of the strangest Lego sets I've ever seen.

After an exhaustive afternoon of shopping, I next proceeded to get us lost walking back to the hotel, overshooting the train station by almost a mile. The girls absolutely loved that. Once we had dropped off our purchases, we headed out for dinner at a recommended local Indian joint, Dhaba India.

The place sounded great on paper, but finding it sucked hard. It was tucked away in a back alley near Akihabara. Once we got out of the train station, we had absolutely no idea where to go. We couldn't even orient ourselves on the map.

So, we walked in to a nearby grocery store to ask for directions, and ended up single-handedly halted employee productivity for the night. The first clerk had no idea where the place was. He called over a second. They puzzled for a while. Then they called over a third. The third clerk seemed to have an idea, and talked to us for a while in Japanese. I think he thought Mary was Japanese--something which happened a lot for us in Japan. However, seeing how she is actually Vietnamese, this didn't really help us much. Finally, he bowed, beckoned, and went on to actually walk us there. The whole way. We got a personalized guide to Dhaba India. We were shocked and embarrassed, but without him we would never have found it.

The food at Dhaba was fairly good--read about in my review blog entry--but the service was completely terrible. We were shoved in a corner and basically ignored. I realize that we were inconvenient customers to have, but English was spoken and I didn't understand what we did wrong. For this reason, I have a hard time recommending this place to other travelers.

Full of food and exhausted from a long day of wandering, we headed back to the hotel and quickly crashed.

Restaurant Review: Dhaba India, Tokyo

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Sat, 30 May 2009 03:00:00 +0000

There really isn't much to say about this venue. We ordered two dishes and shared. Both were combination curry plates, only Laura's was vegetarian.

On our meat platter we got several types of chicken curry with various degrees of heat along with a few pieces of various fried bread. Overall the meal was much spicier than Indian food I've had in the states--enough to give us stomachaches later.

The vegetarian plate came with several types of veggie curry and a very tasty little yogurt dish. I am not sure what it was.

Overall, very flavorful, reasonably priced, but extremely spicy--if this bothers you, eat here at your own risk! Also, as mentioned in my travel log, the service here is extremely poor. Be prepared to be very patient while you wait for that glass of water to put out the fire in your mouth.

Day 3: Rain, Ryan, and Cup Converters

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Fri, 29 May 2009 04:47:00 +0000

We woke to a day of pouring rain. Unfortunate, but we had come prepared. What former Seattleite doesn't rock a wicked umbrella?

Pink!

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.

Cake we can believe in.

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.

In the game of Free Samples, sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose horribly. Here, we lost horribly.

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.

SHI-BU-YAAAAA!

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.

The infamous Mos Burger

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.

Restaurant Review: Sometaro, Tokyo

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:03:00 +0000

We came to Sometaro for lunch. This little cafe is a traditional eatery specializing in what are essentially do-it-yourself Japanese pancakes.

After shucking our shoes, we were led into a tiny creaking house carpeted with tatami mats. Our tiny table had a gas-powered flattop grill in the middle. We were elbow-to-elbow with the locals, who did their best not to stare at us (unless you were a kid, in which case you got your fill of the weirdos in a local Japanese restaurant who didn't speak a lick of Japanese).

Eating here is a process: when you order, you are given a bowl with some batter, an egg, and whatever ingredients the type of pancake you ordered has in it. You then are responsible for greasing up the grill and making your flapjack. Simple, right?

Well, somewhat. Sometaro did have an English menu, so we at least knew what we were eating. However, we were kind of lost after the staff handed us the bowls and a couple spatulas. Thankfully a very nice elderly Japanese couple next to us were willing to show us what to do (i.e. where the lard for the grill was, how hot it needed to be, etc), and helped us realize that we actually needed to turn our grill up if we wanted to eat before, say, next year.

That accomplished, we fried up two pancakes in short order--shrimp and cabbage, and pork, mincemeat, and cabbage. Along the way we had a great time swapping English for Japanese words with the helpful couple alongside us. Perhaps not surprisingly, "burned", "too hot", and "turn up heat" were heavily featured in the exchange.

Highly recommended as one of those experiences you tell your friends about after you get back. Oh, and very reasonably priced too--just be prepared to roll up your sleeves and do a little short-order-cooking.

Day 4: Raw Fish, the Wandering Panda, and 10-Course Meals

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:46:00 +0000

I am not a huge fan of sushi. I mean, its raw, its slimy, and, well, for some foods being tasteless is best. Mary is right there with me on this one.

However, from the moment we first picked up a book on Tokyo, Mary and I knew that one of our priorities would be trying the freshest sushi in the world from the Tsujiki fish market.

If there was a fish capital of the world, this might be it. Here, at 4am (when the fisherman get in from the previous day of work), the choice catches are sold at auction and in lots to an eager crowd.

Since the odds we'd be able to get up at 4am to eat raw fish are even lower than the odds of us getting up at 4am normally, we wimped out a bit and slept 'till 8am. Dressing quietly, we slipped out while Laura
(a vegetarian) blissfully dozed on.

In our sleepy state it was a minor miracle that we managed not to get lost on the way over to the market. On the way there, we were nearly run over by an enterprising mother biking along with a kid on her back, a kid in the bike's child seat, and a kid on another child seat on the handlebars. Wow--why do American moms need minivans? We weren't the only ones amazed, either; a Japanese couple walking ahead of us turned to stare at her too.

The Tsujiki market was even more fun the second time around. Since we were so close to the opening bell, there were all sorts of live seafood testing the confines of Styrofoam cells. Vendors hawked everything from Japanese steel to tempura at us. Foods of all description were being made fresh all around us--while wandering we tried several samples, including some amazing and savory apple buns, which we ended up buying for Laura.

Eventually we remembered why were there, settled on a sushi venue, and breakfast began.

As I've already stated, I'm not a sushi lover. I figure that your average sushi falls into two categories: overly slimy, and overly chewy. These sensations can be easily simulated with cooked food that is far less likely to kill you.

With this in mind, we started out simple: salmon and shrimp. That went down smooth. From there it was on to clam, squid, tuna, and so on all the way down to eventually trying sea urchin and eel. After breakfast was over we both honestly acknowledged that everything we tried that morning was absolutely delicious. I would write a food blog entry on this meal except that I really would have no idea how to evaluate sushi.

After breakfast it was back to the hotel to pick up Laura. With her in tow, we decided to show Laura the shrine we'd visited yesterday, the Akusaka temple.

Pro tip: stuffed panda bears are comedy gold.

Akusaka was even crazier than the previous day. This time around we ran into some young Japanese folks who appeared to be filming a live TV show. There were cameramen, sound men, what appeared to be a director, a young guy who appeared to be a color commentator, and his female costar. The focus of the filming seemed to be a stuffed panda bear. The color commentator would put the panda bear in some position and then comment on it at length in Japanese, greatly amusing the crowd. At one point he tried a red bean bun and apparently burned his mouth, leading to what was apparently flat out comedy genius. Eventually this whole circus just got annoying--no matter how we tried to avoid the "Panda Posse", we seemed to be perpetually surrounded by a crowd of enthusiastic onlookers.

Also worth mentioning: this time around Asukasa, I tried another sweet I'd been seeing everywhere, a "red bean ball". This turned out to be a flavored ball of condensed bean paste. I had strawberry. Very interesting. I've never been a fan of the earthy, sickly-sweet taste of red bean paste. However, I have to say that adding artificial strawberry flavor and molding it into a suggestively-sized-and-colored pink ball did absolutely nothing to enhance the experience.

After Akusaka, we headed west to Akihabara, Tokyo's "Electric Town". One of the highlights of this district is the iconic 8-floor electronics megastore, Yodobashi camera. The girls loved it. The best part was when Mary and Laura found rows and rows of capsule toy machines and just went to town. It was like tossing a t-bone into a piranha tank. Capsule pieces flying everywhere. Both came away with several weird little toys--including an electric banana that squeals when you peel its rear end.

Exiting Yodobashi, we headed into the streets of Akihabara. This is the only place I've been where you can literally buy an ATX motherboard from a vendor with a street cart. Wall to wall electronics shops, interspersed with arcades and anime/manga/softcore porn joints. In short, your average geek's complete and utter dream town. Mary found a store with lots of Star Wars, Final Fantasy, and Hello Kitty merchandise and the yen flew once again. Interesting note: most of the stock you see on ThinkGeek as imports you can find here in the stores of Akihabara.

We eventually tired of the endless blaring ads (some of them in Yodobashi were sung to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", which was strange) and endless neon signs. It was time to head back to the hotel for dinner.

Our meal that evening was our "splurge" for Tokyo. Another of the goals Mary and I had for our visit was to try traditional Japanese Kaiseki 10-course meal. After getting dressed up--even Laura wore heels, a world first!--we accomplished this at an eatery named Hanasanshou, a Michelin-star restaurant in the Park Hotel Tokyo.

In short: it was an amazing meal, which you can read about in detail in my review entry.

Buzzed, stuffed and tired, we crashed right after dinner for the third night in a row. I think I'm getting old.

Restaurant Review: Hanasanshou, Tokyo

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Tue, 26 May 2009 03:59:00 +0000

Located on the 28th floor of the Tokyo Park Hotel, Hanasanshou offers quite a view to go along with its Michelin-rated cuisine. Its a classy place with a great view, plenty of privacy for diners, attentive staff, and inventive dishes. This was our splurge for Tokyo, and for the most part it was worth the price.

The primary reason we decided on Hanasanshou was the availability of vegetarian dishes a la carte for Laura (surprisingly hard to find at upscale restaurants in Japan) along with their specialty, a full traditional 10-course Japanese Kaiseki dinner.

To get the party started, I had a dry Japanese beer while Mary and Laura each ordered a different type of sake. This was served by first asking them to choose their sake cup (out of a whole array of them--I immediately thought of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. "You have chosen. . . wisely"). They were then given a small handmade earthenware decanter (basically bowl with a spout) with roughly 4 or 5 pours of sake. The variety Mary had was light and sweet, while Laura's was dry and much heavier.

Laura had vegetable tempura and grilled eggplant as an appetizer, which included a large fried flower of some kind. It looked interesting, and according to her it was slightly bitter. While she was working on that, the parade of Kaiseki courses began.

Course #1: Dressed prawn, yam potato, broad bean and shell with soft roe.

This was served cold in a small glass placed in a small bowl. At first I thought roe was some sort of undercooked rue--creamy white, grainy, and bit salty. The vegetables were very crunchy. Overall I found it sort of bland.

Course #2: A smorgasbord of appetizers! Gizzard shad sushi, caramelized sweet fish, dressed stem of taro with pickled plum paste, boiled bamboo shoot, and dressed cowpea with sesame dressing.

All of this food was arranged in a extremely artful fashion around a wooden platform on a plate. The sweetfish was served whole and looked like it was trying to swim off the plate--the chefs even spent time posing it as part of the presentation. The sushi was wrapped and tied in some sort of giant leaf which the waitress was careful to warn us not to eat--"there are six species for you to eat."

There were so many things to try here that its impossible to describe this course as one dish. I don't think it was intended to blend at all, but instead present a bunch of different tastes to the diner.

Course #3: Clear soup. Clam, bamboo shoot and mugwort (herb)
dumpling.

The soup was served in a simple bowl. The broth had some sort of small, slimy roots in it. The dumpling was a large gray glutinous mass in the bowl with pieces of clam mixed throughout. It was also slippery, as I learned the hard way--"Houston, we have splashdown!"
Overall a very interesting soup dish.

Course #4: Sashimi, with flatfish, fatty tuna, and giant clam.

The components of this course were all served together in a little bowl with some herbs. I thought the giant clam was by far the most memorable--sweet and a bit tangy, with an interesting texture. The flatfish, however, was chewy to the point of absurdity. I wasn't a fan, although I'm not super familiar with sashimi as a whole and may have had wrong expectations.

Course #5: Grilled dish. Eggplant with sweet miso.

Here we received half an eggplant slice, grilled, with some sort of reduction on top (tomato?) that reminded us slightly of barbeque sauce. The miso paste was on the side and was extremely flavorful. Overall the dish with the most distinctive taste so far. Laura ordered this as her entree.

Course #6: Simmered dish. Eggplant and octopus.

The course next came in another small bowl with bamboo shoots. On the bottom of the bowl was grilled eggplant, with octopus and shoots on top. The octopus was chewy but flavorful (Mary was not a fan), and the eggplant was, well, eggplant.

Course #7: Side dish. Sushi shell and bonito.

I am not sure what "sushi shell" is, but I am guessing it meant shellfish. Two pieces of sushi with plain presentation on a white plate, one with fish and the other with what appeared to be clam. Both were excellent, although I preferred the shellfish sushi over the bonito--more flavor. The standard wasabi and soy sauce were provided on the side.

Course #8: Steamed dish. Burdock root, bamboo shoot, mushroom, in mugwort skin.

Veggie dish--Laura enjoyed this too. The course essentially appeared to be a giant green frog egg on the bottom of a wide bowl. The mugwort skin was very glutinous, and held inside a filling of roots, shoots, and mushrooms. It tasted very earthy overall, and it was very difficult to eat with just chopsticks due to the slimy texture of the skin.

Course #9: Marinated Dish. Fat Cod.

This dish was served cold. The fish was fried, and on top was shredded cabbage and a radish slice--a play on coleslaw. There was no sauce. The fish was moist and delicious, although eating it cold was a bit strange. It was not crisp at all. The cabbage and turnip were fresh. Overall an interesting dish.

Course #10: Last dish. Thin wheat noodles.

Here we received a bowl of clear broth with a chunk of fish floating among a large sunken mass of thin noodles--for some reason looking into the soup made me think of hair. The noodles were a bit on the glutinous side and went to mush quickly in the mouth. The fish had no taste at all that I could discern. In fact the entire soup was bland, although the jasmine tea served with the course was nice.

Course #11: Dessert. Seasonal fruits

Three cherries and a peeled apricot (we thought) sliced in half. Served cold with green tea. A nice way to finish the meal.

Overall this meal was an interesting experience. While Kaiseki meals are served everywhere, I thought that some of the dishes we had were memorable. Unfortunately, all of the courses were tiny, and when consumed over several hours the net result was that I walked away hungry.

Would I go here again? Perhaps, but I doubt it. Am I glad to splurged to try Hanasanshou? Absolutely. This was a dining experience that I will not forget soon.

Day 5: Why Didn't I Go to T.I.T?

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Mon, 25 May 2009 04:44:00 +0000

We got up a little later than normal today to down our last bland hotel breakfast.

The next hour was a flurry of packing, re-packing, and checking out of the hotel. Overall it was a great place to stay, and I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a nice, centrally-located place to sleep in Tokyo.

Next we caught the JR train to Tokyo station. This appears to be the Penn Station of Tokyo--trains roaring in and out every second, huge bustling crowds, and unintelligible signs. We found the gate for our Shinkasen to Kyoto and hunkered down to wait for boarding.

While we waited, we watched the station cleaning crew turn over trains for the next set of passengers. This was fascinating. The first thing they did was flip ALL the seats around on a pivot in the base. I'd never seen this before. Next, they cleaned the train completely in about 5 minutes flat. And when I say "completely", I mean it--all the head clothes were replaced, seats vacuumed, floors swept... I was surprised they didn't get down on hands and knees to polish steps. Amazing efficiency.

While on the train, passed the Tokyo Institute of Technology. I admire the proud graduates of TIT.

A few hours later we arrived at Kyoto and navigated our way to our hotel, the Hotel Gimmond Kyoto. This was surprisingly easy--our home in Kyoto was a straight shot from the subway station.

I was mixed on the Hotel Gimmond. As previously mentioned, the location was great, and the price was right. However, our room was so so, but the bathroom was absolutely tiny, reminding of the boat hotel ("Botel") we'd stayed at in Amsterdam. The toiletry shelf is right over the toilet, with the result that Mary dropped her toothpaste in the drink later that night.

After check in, we wandered over to the local castle (who doesn't have a castle down the street these days?) to check it out. Impressive, but unfortunately we'd arrived too late for visiting hours. The visit gave it a firm spot on our to-do list, however. On the way back, we stopped and picked up some snacks for breakfast. After four straight sessions of rice and buns, none of us ended up missing the free hotel breakfasts in Tokyo too much.

Dinner was at a local "Italian" place, which had al dente noodles (rare in Japan) but made its "risotto" out of sushi rice. Still, after eating pretty much pure Japanese the past few days, it was nice to drink some wine and sup on semi-recognizable Italian food.

Japanese signs are nothing if not thorough.

After dinner we decide to walk through the central district of Kyoto. We headed west towards the river, and then walked south through the Teramachi shopping arcades. This is basically a mile of roofed-over alleys full of a eclectic mix of shops--everything from stores showing handmade traditional tea equipment to "100 yen" stores (dollar stores). It also is home to some truly epic signage.

From there we looped around and came up the Pontocho, the remains of the nineteenth-century waterfront district in Kyoto.

This ain't Tokyo: Pontocho at night was amazing.

Pontocho was enchanting at night. In short, it is a narrow alley fronted with some of the oldest wooden houses in the city. In the darkness it was lit up with an eclectic old vs. new combination of traditional Japanese lanterns and neon signs. Throngs of locals and tourists wandered up and down the flagstone pathway, peeking into stores, bars, and restaurants. A very magical place for an evening walk. I know that most of the truly old places are in Eastern Kyoto, but this was a great introduction to a Japan that one just doesn't get in Tokyo.

Our walk complete, we headed back to the hotel and crashed. Tomorrow we'd hit Kyoto like a truck.

Day 6: Pounding the Pavement in Kyoto

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Sun, 24 May 2009 04:43:00 +0000

We learned pretty quickly that our hotel in Kyoto was not nearly as quiet as the one in Tokyo. We woke up several times during the night to people shouting in the hall. And just for fun, at 6am a group of Japanese businessmen checked out with all the grace and courtesy of a trampling herd of elephants.

Wearily, we munched some baked goods for breakfast in the room, and then departed for the subway station.

Today we were determined to explore the east side of Kyoto, rain or shine. We caught the subway to the main station, and then decided to take our legs for a spin and walk the rest of the way. On the way, we took a gander at the Kyoto Tower. It looked like a giant lighthouse.

A few minutes later and we were approaching the Sanjusangen-do shrine. The current buildings at this historical landmark date from 1266. It's famous for many reasons, but the most striking of these are the statues it contains: 1,001 gold-plated statues of Kannon, the goddess of mercy, along with 28 statues of guardian deities. These aren't miniatures, either--the main hall is absolutely huge. So big, in fact, that historically it has been the site of indoor archery contests.

After viewing the statues and wandering the pretty gardens, we left Sanjusangen-do and wandered to the nearby street of Chawan-zaka. This narrow, straight lane is lined on both sides with merchants selling local crafts. Kyoto is famous for its pottery and paper fans (among other things), and both of these arts were very well represented. Mary and Laura had a great time browsing the shops. Exhaustively. I don't think there was a single vendor on the street that didn't have a visit from these two insatiable bargain hunters. Mary also tried some sakura (cherry blossom) ice cream, which was very interesting--a hint of cherry, but not too sweet.

Lets all pray for this guy.

At the head of Chawan-zaka is the Kiyomizu shrine. Located on the slopes of Mount Higashiyama, the temple itself is currently under renovation, but the surrounding area still offered some absolutely stunning views of the city from the wooded hills. Unfortunately, it was also packed. I'm not sure exactly why--while this is a famous temple, there didn't seem to be much religious activity that we saw, other than leaving highly entertaining prayers on little blocks of wood.

From here we went down the temple market street on the other side of Chawan-zaka. Named after the shrine, the broad avenue (Kiyomizu-zaka) was packed with shoppers and full of more interesting shops. I had a blast with these, mostly because several of them specialized in local foods: pickled vegetables, and mochi sweets.

We'd tried different types of traditional Japanese sweets in Tokyo (everything from sweet rice balls in soybean flour to "bean balls"), but in my opinion none of them came close to Kyoto's local treat--a kind of mochi called "Yatsuhashi". Basically, think "mochi ravioli" with a sweet center of bean paste with some additional flavoring. Absolutely delicious, and the confectionary shops lining Kiyomizu-zaka were not stingy with the free samples. We tried all different flavors, and eventually came back to the States with a couple boxes to share.

The other local specialty we eventually saw everywhere (but first tried on Kiyomizu-zaka) were Kyoto pickles. Basically, if it grows in the ground, someone in Kyoto is going to pickle it somehow. And they aren't screwing around here--there are your standard sweet pickles like our gherkins, there are all sorts of interesting dill relishes, and then there are whole categories of pickles that'll grab your nuts and twist. Free samples were also liberally handed out, but once I learned the hard way that pink did NOT mean "strawberry" I, uh, moderated my intake somewhat.

One other food of note we tried here: "savory" ice cream. This is not something you will find at your local 31 flavors shop (although I've seen it at several specialty ice cream stores). We'd already tried Sakura, and here Laura tried Sesame ice cream, which she must have really liked--she looked for it the rest of the trip.

Looking down Ninen-zakka.

Halfway down the market street we looped onto a narrow alley
(Sannen-zaka) that took us through some of the oldest sections of Kyoto. This took us directly to our final target for the day: the Kodaiji temple.

This must take some serious Zen.

Founded in 1605 and located in probably the best preserved area of Kyoto, this shrine consists of several small buildings set amidst a mossy garden. We were handed a pamphlet and immediately shepherded through the buildings by some positively militant old women (some of which spoke English, which was handy), but far and away the most interesting aspect of Kodaiji was its landscaping. Here we first saw some of the Zen gardening we'd read about previously: gravel raked with astounding precision into various shapes and whorls. The gardeners must spend an extraordinary amount of effort maintaining this. Also interesting was how the paths here were part of the gardens--they wound through the moss, often presenting different views of the same pond, a particularly interesting tree, etc.

A theme I saw throughout my time in Kyoto was the use of moss in the ground cover in Japanese gardens. I don't think I ever saw a lawn. Instead it was all different shades of moss softly draping the undergrowth in blues, grays, and greens. I think its fantastic. It makes a whole garden seem much more earthly and alive, while somehow softening it. Look at the pictures--my technical writing background just can't do the experience of wandering this artform justice.

The temple gongs were ringing the evening out while we walked down out of eastern hills and back to central Kyoto. We wandered down Nishiki market looking for a recommended vegetarian restaurant, but couldn't find it and instead ended up eating soba noodles in a small homey place in an underground mall.

By now we'd been on our feet for about 12 hours straight, and our tails were dragging on the ground. Literally. Full and sleepy, we staggered back to the hotel and crashed.

By now we'd fairly thoroughly wandered a couple Japanese cities. Amazing fun. Here are some of the observations I jotted down after pounding the pavement:

- One of the best parts of wandering Japan overall has been seeing some of the crazy English t-shirts people are wearing around here. In Kyoto we saw one old lady sporting a pink polo with a team logo for the "Non-Alcoholics". Not much later we ran into a man wearing a shirt proclaiming "it's only funny when the sun sets." I wish I could take pictures of these people!

Needless to say, I followed directions EVERY TIME.

This slayed me.

- Many (well, most) of the Japanese restrooms I've been in have no way to dry your hands after washing them. A quick web search shows that I'm not the only one noticing this. I wonder why this is. Do most Japanese men carry handkerchiefs? Also, the signs in the bathrooms? Hilarious.

- Trash cans for public use in Japan are few and far between. These people take "no dumping" to a whole new level. Since space is at a premium, I guess I understand. However, there is almost no litter anywhere.

- Being polite is almost a religion here. Even the AMBULANCES here are polite. A couple times we saw emergency vehicles tearing along on a call only to stop at a crosswalk while people blithely walked in front of them. The driver got on the megaphone and asked politely for them to move, and--this is the kicker--then THANKED them afterward. Meanwhile, somewhere, people might be dying?

- While folks in general are polite, it is not hard to see that some are easily frustrated by foreigners and generally dismissive of non-Japanese. We got treated pretty poorly in several restaurants due (I'm guessing) to the difficulty in communicating with us. Interestingly enough, we never had this problem with other patrons in restaurants or with merchants.

Day 7: Of Nightengale Floors and Geishas

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Sat, 23 May 2009 04:42:00 +0000

Today Laura decided to wander a bit by herself. So, Mary and I got up and headed out early while she took it a bit easy.

We started by walking over to Nijo-jo, a walled area of gardens containing the Ninomaru palace. In short: well worth seeing. I will leave precise descriptions to the tour books, but here is what I found most interesting:

- The "nightingale floors". The shoguns were not trusting folk--I gather that a careless shogun was generally a dead shogun rather quickly. They had their floors especially engineered to squeak in a specific way when any weight is put on it. This was briefly explained in a picture--basically, there are metal wedges driven at an angle between two layers of planks making up the floor, separating them slightly. When stepped on, the planks are pushed together, making noises. Simple and I'm sure ridiculously effective. I'm also sure that the guards would be going crazy with false alarms--these babies were SENSITIVE.

- The painted screens were amazing. While I've been to museums all over Europe, I'm pretty ignorant of the great Japanese artists. However even to my peasant's eye, there was some masterful work done decorating the walls of this castle. These alone are worth the trip to see Nijo-jo.

After walking through the castle, we spent some time wandering the gardens. Pretty, not enough to keep us long once it started to rain.

While huddled outside the gates reading directions from the guidebook, we were approached by a flock of schoolchildren--about 10 years old--herded along by an elderly male schoolteacher in a crisp business suit. After much urging, a young girl nervously stepped forward and started reading to us from her workbook in broken English.

"Hello, may I. . .please talk. . . to you a moment?"

We smiled. "Sure."

"Where are you. . .from?"

"San Francisco, in America." This prompted some whispering, which the teacher quickly shushed.

"What is. . .purpose of. . visit?" Wow, a little government official in training. We already passed customs, kid. "Vacation."

"May I take. . picture with you?" The kids all gathered around while the teacher, beaming, snapped a photo of us all.

"Could you please sign?" Bemused, Mary and I dutifully wrote our names in her little book. The girl stepped back, all smiles and literally melting from relief. Then the next student stepped up. And the next. And the one after that. Mary and I looked at each other--they couldn't seriously expect us to go through this a dozen times? Luckily, the teacher had pity on us, and all the other students just asked us to sign their books. After a flurry of bows with our new friends, we escaped into a nearby subway station.

After a brief lunch of random Japanese pastries from an underground bakery (there are more malls underground than aboveground in Japan), we spent the next couple hours wandering through the riverfront shopping arcades of Kyoto. Mary was on a mission: to locate a Japanese day robe for wearing around her apartment.

For some reason I really enjoy Japanese outdoor markets.

On the plus side, while looking for her robe we got to peruse the colorful and pungent Nishiki-koji street market. Locals have been buying groceries in this narrow covered alley since the seventeenth century, and absent the whizzing motorbikes and electric lights I imagine it looked almost the same back then. Stall after stall offered variations of either pickles (the previously mentioned local specialty) or fish (surprise!) to curious onlookers. Several offered samples, although by now I'd wised up to eating pickles in Kyoto, free or otherwise. Nothing like a free sample that literally knocks you on your ass and then stomps on your face.

After only a few hours of shopping we'd successfully tagged and bagged one pink robe for Mary. Leaving the arcades behind, we headed over to East Kyoto for some of the shrines we'd missed the day before.

The immaculate gardens of Shorin-in Temple

A short subway ride and walk later and we stood before Shorin-in temple. Again, I'll leave details to the tour books. What made seeing this shrine worthwhile for us was not the building itself, but the amazing gardens surrounding it. I freely admit to being a very untutored connoisseur of Japanese art, but these gardens caught and held even my simpleton's fancy. Carefully arranged plants surrounded the temple building and up the hill behind it. It looked like every shade of brown and green possible was captured within moss, gnarled trees, ponds, and bamboo. In short, this shrine was very much worth the visit.

Shorin-in: sacred, but Shaq-sized.

From Shorin-in we walked a short way south to see another temple, Chion-in. This shrine didn't amaze so much by its beauty as its sheer scale--the place is built for folks like Yao-Ming. The steps were about two normal steps tall. The main gate dwarfed us. The temple structure itself made me wonder who got stuck with the heating bills. I'm not sure why it was built this way, but it sure made for an interesting sight.

After Chion-in we had some time to kill before dinner, so we continued south to the Gion region. This area is the descendant of the pleasure quarters of old Kyoto. Tourists were everywhere on the narrow streets, which were overlooked by antique wooden facades fronting restaurant and teahouses. Gion also turned out to be a local hotspot for Geisha-spotting--more on that in a moment.

Dinner was at "Imobo Hirano-ya Honten", a three-hundred-year-old restaurant in nearby Maruyama park. Their specialty is "imobo", a type of deconstructed dried cod stew. We both got the "imobo gazen" (set), a small grouping of dishes featuring the dish. Check out my review entry for the scoop on how this went down.

After dinner we walked back to Gion. We thought we'd just get a taste of what it's like in the evening. Instead, we ran smack into Kyoto's prime-time sport: Geisha Hunting.

Geisha Alert!

In the early evenings, the local Kyoto Geisha and Geisha-in-training leave their cloistered houses to travel to their nightly engagements--private parties and the like. Many of these gatherings are held in the traditional teahouses lining the streets of Gion. As a result, hordes of tourists and Japanese alike line the streets of Gion every night, peering into taxis and chasing after the few unlucky Geisha that get caught outside. Mary got excited immediately and managed to chase down a few pictures. I was lucky enough to see a Geisha sneak into the back door of a teahouse while leaning in a doorway waiting for her--maybe they take turns being decoys? The young lady looked just like the pictures in books and the film "Memoirs of a Geisha"--white painted face, exquisite hair and kimono, the works. She looked at me, I looked at her, and then she ducked inside. I understand that a Geisha's job is to be on display, but on the tourist paparazzi has to be annoying.

After the excitement of Gion, Mary and I headed back to base. Tomorrow is our last day in Japan.

Restaurant Review: Imobo Hirano-ya Honten, Kyoto

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Fri, 22 May 2009 03:01:00 +0000

This little restaurant makes its home in Maruyama Park in the hills of eastern Kyoto. You can find the English website here.

The name of the game here is "imobo", a dish of cooked potato and preserved cod fish. To round out the experience, we decided to try the "imobo" set, which comes with both the signature dish and a supporting cast of supplemental courses.

As you can see in the picture, we ended up with five small dishes of various types. The imobo itself was by far the most interesting. The potato was some sort of peeled sweet potato, and was steamed to almost bread-like consistency. The cod was dry and little salty, tasting mostly like soy sauce.

Alongside the imobo was "aemono", a cucumber salad with sesame butter. This was basically a featureless and tasteless gel cube in the bottom of a bowl. The texture was interesting.

Next up was "umewan", a clear soup with an egg omelet (a square piece of cooked egg), a "honewart" leaf (large herb leaf), a mushroom, and a boiled fish paste (basically a fish cake), and yuba. We didn't think there was anything exceptional about this.

Then came rice with several types of pickled vegetables, sliced and minced. Delicious--actually my favorite part of the meal.

Also served was "gion-doufu", a hot soup with tofu. Hot apparently meant both temperature and spice, as it had a surprise dollop of wasabi at the bottom.

We washed this down with tea, water, and an order of cold sake. Overall, an interesting meal. I personally enjoyed learning about how pickles--which I previously had avoided after some sinus-clearing mishaps--could enhance the flavor of blander foods like rice. Mary thought the meal was fairly flavorful as well (something we haven't often found in subtle Japanese cuisine), but thought that for what we paid the food was overall too light.

Overall, it was a delicious--if somewhat unsatisfying--meal. I enjoy Japanese food, but at times I find myself missing some of the more filling dishes I normally find at home. In addition, very rarely have I seen anything with an actual crunch in Japanese dishes. The textures seem to err far on the side of soups, pastes, gels, etc.

Recommended as a truly local Kyoto eatery with serious history behind it.

Day 8: Our Last Day in Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Thu, 21 May 2009 04:29:00 +0000

This was our last full day in Kyoto, and we made the most of it. Today's main objective: wander the Philosopher's path, a short paved lane running along a canal in the north east corner of the city.

A short subway ride and walk later and we were strolling north on the famous walkway. The Philosopher's Path is a very peaceful paved pedestrian route winding alongside a babbling canal It actually reminded me strongly of the Burke-Gilman trail in Seattle. The day was warm and humid as we wandered past several small shrines. We didn't stop to check them out, however--we saved ourselves for the Temple of the Silver Pavilion, Ginkaku-ji.

That is some truly righteous raking.

Again, I'll leave the history of this amazing place to the guidebooks. I will say, however, that if you have no interest in religious art and only have time to see just one shrine while in Kyoto, this should be it. Just look at the pictures--the gardens are absolutely fantastic, and include quite a bit of sand and gravel art. I can't imagine how much work it has to take to maintain these after, say, a storm.

After a short break for some green tea and mochi, we hit the path again back to urban Kyoto. Our next objective: a very special lunch in (early) honor of Laura's birthday. Yeah it's not till mid-June, but I'm a firm believer in preemptive strikes.

Chocolate. Oh god yes.

And boy did Kyoto deliver: the Kyoto Nama Chocolat Organic Tea House served us up some of the best grub we'd had in Japan. Comfortably situated in a small old house in east Kyoto, the Kyoto Nama is run by a wonderful woman from Vancouver and her Japanese husband. Our hostess, Sherry Nakanishi, was warm, welcoming, and very hungry for news from North America given the recent economic events. We did our best to satisfy her curiosity as much as her husband's cooking satisfied our hunger, but really it was not even close. See the my review entry for the scoop on the food we tried here. Highly recommended.

Full from a huge lunch, our next stop was the nearby Fureaikan, or Kyoto Crafts Museum. The museum itself is a huge structure covering lots of topics. The bottom floor, however, contains a long gallery describing many of Kyoto's traditional craft specialties. The English here is thorough and flawless, there are hands-on exhibits (I'd never tried to weave a rope before--not a career I think I'd enjoy), and there are several video screens showing various craftsmen in action. Expect to spend a couple hours to take it all in, but highly recommended for those who enjoy crafts.

And with that, we decoded that we had pretty much completely covered Eastern Kyoto. Heading back west, we spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the arcades and Nishiki-koji street market.

Dinner, if you could call it that, was at a touristy and overpriced restaurant on the Pontocho riverside path named Yamatomi. I'm not going to bother doing a write-up of the food we ate--despite being nearly empty, the staff was crabby and the cover charge just for sitting by the river ridiculous (500 yen per person). I can't recommend this restaurant to anyone going to Kyoto.

However, we more than made up for Yamatomi with our final stop of the evening: the Inoda coffee house. Here, we ate cake. Lots and lots of cake--some sort of green tea tiramisu cake, a fruit tart, and something chocolate. A delicious way to end the day.

Afterwards it was back to pack--Saturday would be spent traveling back up to Narita, and then back to the US. Overall, Kyoto was a wonderful city to visit. It's a lot slower and smaller than Tokyo, but its charms are many and well concentrated. It manages to feel homey and walkable while retaining all of the navigational bear traps that make wandering the streets of Japan so much fun. I would return here.

Thanks for reading, and feel free to drop me a comment!

Restaurant Review: Kyoto Nama Chocolat Organic Tea House, Kyoto

noreply@blogger.com (Steve) — Wed, 20 May 2009 03:00:00 +0000

This little organic cafe is an absolutely delightful find in the suburbs of east Kyoto. It is run by a wonderfully kind woman from Vancouver B.C. named Sherry Nakanishi and her Japanese husband (the chef and chocolatier).

As you'd expect from the name, one of the specialties here is homemade chocolate. In fact, when we stopped to ask for directions, the hotel clerk we asked knew immediately what were asking when we mentioned chocolate. Several small pieces were served to us as an appetizer before the meal, and it was fantastic--light, crumbly, and extremely flavorful. According to our host, many of the ingredients came from the gardens outside the little house.

The rest of the meal was likewise distinguished. Laura (a vegetarian)
ordered a "veggie burger", which ended up being a deconstructed Japanese take on the standard veggie burger. Her impressions:

"I was very skeptical at first--I'd never seen a garden burger with tomato sauce on it, much less one that came with rice and beans in it. The "burger" itself were incredibly flavorful, much more so than the usual gardenburger. The salad and homemade bread were absolutely fantastic."

Mary had beef stew, which when it arrived actually more resembled a deconstructed beef pot pie (the deconstruction technique being something of a theme here). The dish consisted of vegetables, beef, sauce and a large puff-pastry crust piece piled on her plate. The beef was melt-in-your-mouth tender, and the homemade bread served with it was again superlative--perfect for sopping up the savory sauce.

I had smoked salmon crepe. The crepe was with soba flour. I had my doubts when I saw it; it came out green and with the texture of a rubber grip mat. However, it ended up having a unique taste which I actually enjoyed. Even the texture worked, as there wasn't much in the rest of the dish. The flavors of the avocado blended well with the vinegar used as salad dressing. Superlative overall.

I highly recommend this cafe if you are in Kyoto and looking for a truly local place to eat. The flavors don't quit, and the chocolate is amazing. Take a load off, have a chat with Sherry, and don't forget to pet the cat.