So, last week was a great week. David came to visit me in Tokyo, and we had a lot of fun. I had missed him a lot over the last month, and I miss him again because he has gone back to Orlando. So, this entry will probably be pretty long, because I want to post some notes and photos about what we did during the week.
Needless to say, we didn’t do anywhere near all the things I would have liked to have done, but we did accomplish some goals for the trip. :)
Goal 1: Okonomiyaki
So, the first goal was to try some okonomiyaki, which is a Japanese food that is basically a cabbage pancake with meat in it. Sounds weird, but it’s pretty tasty. Our experience was on the experimental side, because none of us had actually made okonomiyaki before. We had some trouble locating the place in Shinjuku that we ended up at, called Monja. It seemed to have either switched floors or moved, or whatnot, but we eventually found it. I went with David and my friends Justin and Becky. Through Becky’s querying of the locals, we finally made it there and got seated. Then there was a mix up with the service. It was fairly tense for a bit there, but we managed to get through it and all get some okinomiyaki. I really liked it, but I ended up seasoning mine liberally with sauce, salt and pepper. I think next time I go, I will have a much better understanding of how the process works. :)
Sadly, I have no photos of okonomiyaki…
Goal 2: Ghibli Museum
So, one of our goals for the trip was to visit Ghibli Museum (Wikipedia site). If you are ever interested in doing this while you are in Tokyo, it’s a quick train ride to Mitaka, and the museum and surrounding area are very pretty. Here is a site that gives you information on obtaining a ticket: Getting tickets! Apparently, they can also be obtained at Lawson’s, which I didn’t know, but it was fine that we got them in the U.S. (except for the crazy shipping fee).
The museum, apart from having exhibits of various kinds (including a really cool stroboscope) and a mock up of Miyazaki’s studio with storyboards, etc., also allows you to view one of a number of films only shown at the museum. The one we saw was called The Whale Hunt, and it was very cute. :) They rotate the films every month.
Anyway, here are a couple photos from the museum. We weren’t allowed to take photos inside the museum, but I have more of the grounds up on Flickr.
David and I in front of the mock ticket booth. Totoro was there to welcome us! There were Totoro characters all over the place, but that one was my favorite, except for the immense stuffed catbus, which we weren’t allowed to photograph.
This shot is from the roof or cafe… can’t remember which. You can see a bit of snow still on the ground. It had snowed on Saturday, and it was still all over the ground on Monday. Really, though, it was still on the ground in parts of Tokyo as late as the following Saturday, because we saw some at the Meiji Jingu shrine as well.
The side of the museum, and some kids playing in the snow. :)
The robot from Laputa:Castle in the Sky on the roof of the museum.
So, those are a few of the photos from the museum.
Goal 3: Imperial Palace
This was kind of a failure… we were supposed to take a tour of the imperial palace, but I managed not to know exactly where to meet the tour, and we ended up there early, and it was very cold and blustery out, so we just wandered around the east garden for a bit, which is the grounds of the original Edo Imperial Palace.
Here are some photos…
This was a guardhouse
A shot of the foundation walls, which were currently being restored. You can see the modern buildings in the background.
This was my favorite structure on the grounds. It was a music hall dedicated to one of the Empresses. It was really ornate and the mosaics were really gorgeous. David though it looked like some kitschy 60’s building. I liked it though. :P
David on the top of the highest platform of the foundation. The sky and trees were really gorgeous that day. Too bad it was super cold!
Valentine’s Day
So, we didn’t really have any plans for Valentine’s Day. David doesn’t observe it… sniff sniff Although, I did present him with a bag of goodies Japanese-style. I even tried to bake him cookies, but that failed miserably… My grandmother would never be able to survive here. My apartment doesn’t even have a proper oven! So, given that we didn’t have any particular plans, I thought I’d look around for somewhere nice to eat.
Using Gourmet Navigator, I looked for a shabu shabu place, because I thought that shabu shabu would be an interesting kind of Japanese dish for David to try. It’s not really something that’s readily available in the U.S. Through the site, I lucked onto the restaurant used in the movie Lost in Translation. The restaurant is called ShabuZen, and it is located in Shibuya. It was fairly painless to find, since David and I decided to take a cab from the Shibuya station. ShabuZen is located in the Creston Hotel, which is a really small hotel near the NHK building. The menu contained many price ranges for beef shabu shabu. The cheapest started at 3500 yen per person and went up to something like 15,000 yen per person… Needless to say, we opted for the inexpensive imported Australian beef. It tasted just fine. Also, you have the option of getting all-you-can-eat shabu shabu at ShabuZen, but we decided against it, as neither of us needed that much food. The people sitting next to us must have gone through five plates of beef in the time it took us to eat one. It was pretty impressive. The other option was to have a kaiseki meal (or course meal) along with the shabu shabu. Since I thought it might be fun to try kaiseki, and it was something I was thinking of us doing at a ryokan anyway, we decided to go for it.
Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation of what shabu shabu is for those interested. It ALSO has an explanation of kaiseki. Wikipedia is my hero! It means I never have to go into the detail needed to explain all this stuff to everyone. :) Also, here is a link to the restaurant, if anyone is interested in going there.
So, the shabu shabu kaiseki ended up costing about 5,000 yen per person, which wasn’t too bad, given that we got a bunch of courses. Of course, the waiter accidentally bought us out the wrong appetizers from a more expensive meal, so we got some free, weird fish. I took photos of each of the courses, because they were really beautifully presented and the food was definitely weird. So, here’s my photos of food from ShabuZen… (also, these photos were taken with my casio exilim cell phone camera, so I apologize for their quality… I didn’t think to bring a real camera for some reason).
1st Course – fish jello
Some kind of fish skin suspended in meat-flavored gelatin, served cold, with scallions on top. It actually wasn’t too bad, but I could only get through one of the two little bricks they served. You’ll notice the beautiful plates. Everything served to us came out in gorgeous plates.
2nd Course – raw fish mistake!
This appetizer was actually served to us by mistake. It consisted of two tiny, raw squid, two clumps of fish eggs wrapped around something that tasted like ham, and some pickled veggies. The fish eggs and squid were actually pretty good. David was okay with the squid, but I think the fish eggs creeped him out. :)
3rd Course – Soup
I found this course to be one of the more aesthetically pleasing ones. It was a mild soup with pink noodles in it that had a flowery taste. Under the large veggie flower was a bread soaked in the soup that had what tasted like octopus meat in it. It was pretty good as well! And very lovely!
4th Course – Sashimi
The next course was a sashimi course, with some tuna and an unidentified white fish. The tuna was excellent. It just melted in your mouth, the way good tuna steak does. Mmmm. The white fish was okay too.
5th Course – Cooked fish and goo
This was the final course before the shabu shabu. It was a firm white fish, cooked, with a gelatinous goo and some wasabi on top. The fish was pretty tasty, although the good was a little odd for my taste.
6th Course -Shabu Shabu
Finally it was time for the shabu shabu course… even the bowl was extremely elaborate.
Meat and veggies boiling away. David and I ate pretty slowly, just adding a couple slices of beef a time. You can see the raw meat in the back of the shot. It was a very pleasant meal. You basically just cook the beef and veggies in the pot and pull them out when they are done, dip them into a bowl of sauce, and eat them with your chopsticks.
7th Course – Noodle Course
We were stuffed at this point, but we still had more to go… after the shabu shabu, the servers will take the “broth” that you’ve basically been simmering and make a cup of japanese noodles for you out of it. I didn’t think to photograph it until it was almost gone, but it was noodles that were wide and flat with some kind of thing that looked like a lump of mochi in it. The broth was quite tasty!
8th Course – Desert
This was our course desert (we ended up with yuzu sherbert and caramel ice cream also, because we’re insane), which was a stack of candied apricot jellies. I had had my fill of gelatinous things by that point in the evening, so I didn’t eat much of mine.
Us
And one of us – it’s on the blurry side, but you can kind of see the restaurant’s decor. You’ll probably recognize it if you’ve seen Lost in Translation.
Miscellany…
So, other stuff we did included visiting the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno, shopping around for a coat for David, visiting the Meiji Jingu shrine, visiting the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, karaoke with friends on Friday, and taking the most ridiculous photobooth photos ever!
I have photos of most of these things up on flickr, although you can only see the photobooth photos if you are listed as a friend or family member. They are too goofy to be released for public consumption.
Some samurai armor from the Tokyo National Museum.
A noh mask from the Tokyo National Museum.
A cute, but blurry photo of us from karaoke.
Entrance gate to the Meiji-jingu shrine.
Meiji-jingu main shrine.
Anyway… that is about all I can think of for last week. It flew by, and it feels like it didn’t last nearly long enough, but I guess we did a lot more than I thought we did. :) Anyway, hopefully, this weekend, I will get to try snowboarding for the very first time. If so, I will have some photos of Nagano to show everyone. If not, there is always the Hakone trip next weekend (which is sponsored by the school).
Well, I miss everyone at home, but I am making the best of my time here. So, for now… ja mata!