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I had slightly different travelling plans from the farmers. Namely, my hotel was in Shinjuku, and their's was in Chibi. This would be rougly equivalent to me getting a joint in downtown and them staying in suburban Airdrie. Aside: they moved hotels when they realized that:
A Shinkansen, a regular subway train, and a short walk got me to another tiny (but adequate) room in Shinjuku. Note, Higashi-Shinjuku station is different from plain old Shinjuku station. I might have gotten a different hotel had I realized, but in the end it didn't matter, and I was still close to a lot of cool things. I settled into my room, and checked out the hotel's restaurant for a bento box.
The hotel also had a breakfast buffet that I could have had every day for an additional room charge. I elected not to do that and I'm glad, since the one breakfast I did have wasn't terribly satisfying. It was like someone had described a western breakfast buffet, but a lot got lost in translation. For example, the scrambled eggs were actually a bunch of tamago pieces. Novel, but not what I was expecting. Also, I mostly continued my habit of buying pancakes at the conbini the night before and stashing them in the hotel bar fridge for the next morning.
My first full day in Tokyo started with a trip to the Imperial Palace. If there were tours of the palace, I couldn't find them. The palace does have an impressive garden/park, and a museum - Sannomaru Shozokan - dedicated to showing off parts of the Imperial collection. The theme, given it was still springtime, was flowers and nature.
[A plaque describing the museum's mandate]
Note: That's the only picture from the museum in this post. I figure the museum needed a post of it's own so that I wouldn't have to choose between pictures of it, and the exterior.
After the museum I spent about an hour exploring the park. After that, I walked the entire perimeter of the imperial grounds. It was a very nice park, showing off parts of the city on one side, and the moat and palace walls on the other. There were other walkers, tourists, and at least one baseball team, jogging by in full uniform. I think they were the Ishikawa Million Stars.
[As you can see, the park/gardens are pretty big, and popular]
[Fujimi Yagura Turret]
[The founder of a local music academy]
[All proper castles should have a mote]
[Random statuary]
[It was the tail end of Sakura season]
[This is the official bridge into the palace. It's used by the Emperor to mark official residence, and is also for accepting diplomats and dignitaries. The hoi polloi can use it on January 2nd and the Emperor's birthday]
All in all I spent the entire afternoon exploring the area. It was closing in on supper time and I wanted to check out Tokyo Beer Lab, which is in the Harajuku neighbourhood of Shibuya. Since I was hungry in addition to being thirsty, I opted to try a hole in the wall Italian joint, Trattoria Sun House. I had inadvertently walked into a place that was decidedly not for tourists. I got there early for the supper rush, and as the place filled up, it was universally Japanese people in groups hanging out and smoking. I guess smoking is allowed in some places? Anyway, while they were perfectly willing to serve me, and were nothing by civil, the service was slow, and my pizza was of clear supermarket quality. It was OK, and cheap. Of note, when going back and researching my locations for this post, I discovered that it is now permanently closed. Make of that what you will.
[Four cheese pizza and a Sapporo Black Label beer]
Tokyo Beer Lab was very close to Trattoria Sun House, but was also several turns deep in a maze of back streets. I walked by the correct road a few times before realizing I had to cut down this narrow lane that I thought was someone's walkway to there house. The walkway opened up onto a plaza containg the brewery and a taco place. The taco place had a line up out the door. Both places were clearly liked by tourists.
[Just a typical side street in Harajuku]
I sat at the bar to discover I was the oldest person in the joint, by a fair margin. I could have been the father of anyone there. The guy next to me (who was turned away from me, because he was chatting up some girl) said to her “We're the oldest people here. I'm 30 and you're 27.” I chuckled at the statement, and his observational skills.
Man, I wish I was as old as the first time I thought "Man, I'm old".
I ordered a flight, and noticed, when reading the menu, that not a single beer was actually made by Tokyo Beer Lab. They were all guest taps. I commented on this to the bar tender (a NYC expat), and he said that they hadn't gotten their brewing license yet, because the Tokyo government works slowly. This was a shame because about half the beers on their website looked delicious. He did recommend his favourite brewery in the city, and I made a note of it.
Next time I'm in Tokyo, I'll have to see if they have their own beer.
- their hotel was next to marshlands.
- It was mating season for the local frogs.
- Frogs are not shy about making noise when fucking.
A Shinkansen, a regular subway train, and a short walk got me to another tiny (but adequate) room in Shinjuku. Note, Higashi-Shinjuku station is different from plain old Shinjuku station. I might have gotten a different hotel had I realized, but in the end it didn't matter, and I was still close to a lot of cool things. I settled into my room, and checked out the hotel's restaurant for a bento box.
The hotel also had a breakfast buffet that I could have had every day for an additional room charge. I elected not to do that and I'm glad, since the one breakfast I did have wasn't terribly satisfying. It was like someone had described a western breakfast buffet, but a lot got lost in translation. For example, the scrambled eggs were actually a bunch of tamago pieces. Novel, but not what I was expecting. Also, I mostly continued my habit of buying pancakes at the conbini the night before and stashing them in the hotel bar fridge for the next morning.
My first full day in Tokyo started with a trip to the Imperial Palace. If there were tours of the palace, I couldn't find them. The palace does have an impressive garden/park, and a museum - Sannomaru Shozokan - dedicated to showing off parts of the Imperial collection. The theme, given it was still springtime, was flowers and nature.
[A plaque describing the museum's mandate]
Note: That's the only picture from the museum in this post. I figure the museum needed a post of it's own so that I wouldn't have to choose between pictures of it, and the exterior.
After the museum I spent about an hour exploring the park. After that, I walked the entire perimeter of the imperial grounds. It was a very nice park, showing off parts of the city on one side, and the moat and palace walls on the other. There were other walkers, tourists, and at least one baseball team, jogging by in full uniform. I think they were the Ishikawa Million Stars.
[As you can see, the park/gardens are pretty big, and popular]
[Fujimi Yagura Turret]
[The founder of a local music academy]
[All proper castles should have a mote]
[Random statuary]
[It was the tail end of Sakura season]
[This is the official bridge into the palace. It's used by the Emperor to mark official residence, and is also for accepting diplomats and dignitaries. The hoi polloi can use it on January 2nd and the Emperor's birthday]
All in all I spent the entire afternoon exploring the area. It was closing in on supper time and I wanted to check out Tokyo Beer Lab, which is in the Harajuku neighbourhood of Shibuya. Since I was hungry in addition to being thirsty, I opted to try a hole in the wall Italian joint, Trattoria Sun House. I had inadvertently walked into a place that was decidedly not for tourists. I got there early for the supper rush, and as the place filled up, it was universally Japanese people in groups hanging out and smoking. I guess smoking is allowed in some places? Anyway, while they were perfectly willing to serve me, and were nothing by civil, the service was slow, and my pizza was of clear supermarket quality. It was OK, and cheap. Of note, when going back and researching my locations for this post, I discovered that it is now permanently closed. Make of that what you will.
[Four cheese pizza and a Sapporo Black Label beer]
Tokyo Beer Lab was very close to Trattoria Sun House, but was also several turns deep in a maze of back streets. I walked by the correct road a few times before realizing I had to cut down this narrow lane that I thought was someone's walkway to there house. The walkway opened up onto a plaza containg the brewery and a taco place. The taco place had a line up out the door. Both places were clearly liked by tourists.
[Just a typical side street in Harajuku]
I sat at the bar to discover I was the oldest person in the joint, by a fair margin. I could have been the father of anyone there. The guy next to me (who was turned away from me, because he was chatting up some girl) said to her “We're the oldest people here. I'm 30 and you're 27.” I chuckled at the statement, and his observational skills.
Man, I wish I was as old as the first time I thought "Man, I'm old".
I ordered a flight, and noticed, when reading the menu, that not a single beer was actually made by Tokyo Beer Lab. They were all guest taps. I commented on this to the bar tender (a NYC expat), and he said that they hadn't gotten their brewing license yet, because the Tokyo government works slowly. This was a shame because about half the beers on their website looked delicious. He did recommend his favourite brewery in the city, and I made a note of it.
Next time I'm in Tokyo, I'll have to see if they have their own beer.
