The weather today has been cool, but not as cold as the last couple of stormy days, and, happily, no rain or snow, either! We took along our umbrellas, just in case, not willing to get soaked if the weather were to change its mind.
We have decided to return to the Ueno Park area today, stopping along the way in Ikebukuro for lunch and a brief bit of shopping for me. We arrived at the huge Seibu Department Store at the Ikebukuro Metro Station just at noon, and we went up to the top floor, the location of its dozens of restaurants, serving many different types of cuisines, from Italian to Japanese, from Chinese to sushi, and of course, both European and Japanese-style desserts.
And, possibly because it was Sunday, and many families were out shopping together, each and every restaurant had a line of customers seated patiently in front of it, waiting to get in! The most popular, including the conveyor-belt sushi restaurant we had eaten in the day before yesterday, had a line of almost fifty people, while all the others had at least a half dozen people waiting. We decided to try a Vietnamese restaurant, which was relatively empty - full inside, but with only three couples waiting outside! Within about fifteen minutes, we were seated, and we enjoyed a delicious lunch of Vietnamese food, including a set course of seafood pho, served in a hot pot of vegetables and broth, along with rice, and iced lotus tea.
We have come to really appreciate the Japanese restaurant menu, which always includes a number of set lunches and dinners, offering between three and six courses for a fixed price. Not only are these set course meals priced very attractively when compared to ordering a la carte - they are often about half the price of individual dishes - but they also encourage balanced, healthy eating habits! A typical set course meal, no matter the price, includes small portions of rice, salad, vegetables, pickles, miso soup, and tea, in addition to an entree of protein, usually seafood, pork or chicken. The total set meal does not overdo any one dish, and emphasizes courses almost totally neglected in the West, like the soup and pickles. I am sure that this style of eating contributes to the vitality and lack of obesity we have seen in so many older Japanese people here in Tokyo.
We had noticed that my scarf was far too lightweight for winter wear, so we took the escalator down to the men's floor after lunch, and in short order, I found two beautiful winter scarves, both on sale - instant wardrobe upgrade! On to the Starbucks next door, where we spent hours writing in our journals, as once again, it was too late to go to Ueno Park, as originally planned. It is so important to be flexible and spontaneous during these travels, as the most fun and excitement almost always comes from totally unexpected sources!
After we finished writing, we took a walk through the streets surrounding Ikebukuro Metro Station, marveling at the mixture of love hotels, bars, stand-up sushi restaurants (no seats, no tables, you just stand at the sushi bar to eat!) and katsu and tempura joints that make up this locals' neighborhood. All of the narrow alleys and lanes seemed totally safe to walk through, despite the somewhat seedy flavor. On our way back to the Station, we walked by a wider section of sidewalk that was partially cordoned off - it was labelled, in English and Japanese, as the smoking area! You were expected not to smoke on the streets here, as the crowds of people and the narrow sidewalks would make smoking a public nuisance. So a smokers' area was set aside, and you were expected to go there if you wanted a cigarette - and people did! I love the consideration for others that seems a vital part of today's Tokyo.
Sunday, 22 January 2012
Saturday, 21 January 2012
It's Stormy Out, But Hot Inside, Here in Tokyo
The weather was pretty dreary today in Tokyo - rainy and cold. But we were resolved to check out the fashion scene in Shibuya, whatever the weather, so after our morning study and meditation, off we went!
Emerging from the Shibuya Metro Station, we immediately entered an enormous intersection, Hachiko Square, named in honor of the remarkably loyal akita dog, the subject of both books and a movie starring Richard Gere. This intersection of eight streets had hundreds and hundreds of people crossing every couple of minutes, as the traffic lights and policemen dictated - no jaywalking here!
We strolled the rainy streets of Shibuya, which despite the weather were still packed with young people. Everywhere, it was a sea of umbrellas, and I had to keep an eye out to avoid getting poked in the more crowded intersections. We walked down the pedestrian street that runs off the Metro Station, dodging puddles as we went, but despite the interesting boutiques at street level, we found ourselves inexorably heading towards the building that looms over Hachiko Square, the Mecca of young fashion, Shibuya 109. We were drawn like moths to the flame of Japanese style, this nine story building containing hundreds of small designer shops, each selling its own variation of Gyaru fashion.
Gyaru (ギャル?) is a Japanese transliteration of the English word "gal." The name originated from a 1970s brand of jeans called "gals", with the advertising slogan: "I can't live without men", and was applied to fashion- and peer-conscious girls in their teens and early twenties, whose lack of interest in work or marriage gave Gyaru a Lolita image.
Gyaru subculture is still an important influence in Japan's fashion economy, with gyaru brands branching out and becoming more accessible in rural areas. In Tokyo, more often than not, a shopping center at each main train station is dedicated to offering the newest and trendiest items from popular Gal brands, but the heart of Gyaru beats at Shibuya 109, in time with the throbbing bass of the hundreds of sound systems, each turned to Max Power, that greeted me as we entered the self-styled Community of Fashion.
Besides the incredible noise inside, what else did I immediately notice? This felt like entering a different world - each designer shop has its own salesgirls, who are elaborately dressed in the Gyaru style of that shop, including its typical makeup, level of suntan, and other accessories. Since most of these salesgirls and women are naturally tall, and on top of that, are wearing super high-heels, they tower over not only the thousands of young girls shopping, but also over most of the few boyfriends and fathers who have dared to venture inside, like me. Every one of us males did our best not only not to stare, but to look quite disinterested by the entire fashion show on offer...
Here's a little more background on this elaborate subculture. Gyaru is a girly-glam style, that breaks away from traditional standards of beauty. It emphasizes the man-made (wigs, fake eyelashes, fake nails, etc), and literally puts these Lolita girls on a pedestal - the impossibly high-heeled shoe, usually worn with a super short miniskirt or a short jumper with petticoats. Gyaru fashion certainly doesn't fit with traditionally portrayed ideals of Japanese women, and so it's often identified as a sign of rebellious youth. Gyaru, the fashion style sold in 109, is only one of many fashion styles that can be seen in Shibuya and Harujuku districts.
Gyaru fashion is typically characterized by dyed and streaked hair, ranging from neon red to blue to purple to every shade of blonde imaginable, and lots of heavy makeup. This makeup typically consists of dark eyeliner, and dramatic fake eyelashes; gyaru sometimes wear cosmetic circle lenses as well to enhance the size of their irises, to add more width to their eyes. Typically Gyarus are known for being tan, with their skin color ranging from pure white (Kabuki style) all the way to dark brown.
There are various subcategories of "gals" depending on the choice of fashion, with each subcategory having a storyline explaining each of its fashion details:
Bibinba (ビビンバ): This look usually includes a lot of gold and jewelry. Similar to b-gal.
Banba (バンバ): Banba is a lighter form of manba. Banbas wear less white makeup than manbas; they also use more glitter, and doesn't have neon colored hair as much. Banbas wear more extreme-looking types of false eyelashes, and colored contact lenses. Banbas wear darker colors than manbas, and sometimes dress in club wear.
Ganguro (ガングロギャル): A gyaru with an artificial deep tan and bleached hair. This style was popular in the late 1990s, and early 2000s.
Gyaruo (ギャル男): A male gyaru.
Kogyaru: Generally a high school student (高校生 kōkōsei).
Yamanba: Like manba, but the nose stripe goes past the eyebrows.
I thought that most of the sales girls and women, and many of the girls shopping, spent an incredible amount of time and effort, not to mention yen, on their particular brand of style. They each looked like a performance art piece, and it was easy for me to appreciate them from that point of view. Still...so much time, so much energy spent on something so transient...it seemed so futile. Interesting, but futile nonetheless...
Emerging from the Shibuya Metro Station, we immediately entered an enormous intersection, Hachiko Square, named in honor of the remarkably loyal akita dog, the subject of both books and a movie starring Richard Gere. This intersection of eight streets had hundreds and hundreds of people crossing every couple of minutes, as the traffic lights and policemen dictated - no jaywalking here!
We strolled the rainy streets of Shibuya, which despite the weather were still packed with young people. Everywhere, it was a sea of umbrellas, and I had to keep an eye out to avoid getting poked in the more crowded intersections. We walked down the pedestrian street that runs off the Metro Station, dodging puddles as we went, but despite the interesting boutiques at street level, we found ourselves inexorably heading towards the building that looms over Hachiko Square, the Mecca of young fashion, Shibuya 109. We were drawn like moths to the flame of Japanese style, this nine story building containing hundreds of small designer shops, each selling its own variation of Gyaru fashion.
Gyaru (ギャル?) is a Japanese transliteration of the English word "gal." The name originated from a 1970s brand of jeans called "gals", with the advertising slogan: "I can't live without men", and was applied to fashion- and peer-conscious girls in their teens and early twenties, whose lack of interest in work or marriage gave Gyaru a Lolita image.
Gyaru subculture is still an important influence in Japan's fashion economy, with gyaru brands branching out and becoming more accessible in rural areas. In Tokyo, more often than not, a shopping center at each main train station is dedicated to offering the newest and trendiest items from popular Gal brands, but the heart of Gyaru beats at Shibuya 109, in time with the throbbing bass of the hundreds of sound systems, each turned to Max Power, that greeted me as we entered the self-styled Community of Fashion.
Besides the incredible noise inside, what else did I immediately notice? This felt like entering a different world - each designer shop has its own salesgirls, who are elaborately dressed in the Gyaru style of that shop, including its typical makeup, level of suntan, and other accessories. Since most of these salesgirls and women are naturally tall, and on top of that, are wearing super high-heels, they tower over not only the thousands of young girls shopping, but also over most of the few boyfriends and fathers who have dared to venture inside, like me. Every one of us males did our best not only not to stare, but to look quite disinterested by the entire fashion show on offer...
Here's a little more background on this elaborate subculture. Gyaru is a girly-glam style, that breaks away from traditional standards of beauty. It emphasizes the man-made (wigs, fake eyelashes, fake nails, etc), and literally puts these Lolita girls on a pedestal - the impossibly high-heeled shoe, usually worn with a super short miniskirt or a short jumper with petticoats. Gyaru fashion certainly doesn't fit with traditionally portrayed ideals of Japanese women, and so it's often identified as a sign of rebellious youth. Gyaru, the fashion style sold in 109, is only one of many fashion styles that can be seen in Shibuya and Harujuku districts.
Gyaru fashion is typically characterized by dyed and streaked hair, ranging from neon red to blue to purple to every shade of blonde imaginable, and lots of heavy makeup. This makeup typically consists of dark eyeliner, and dramatic fake eyelashes; gyaru sometimes wear cosmetic circle lenses as well to enhance the size of their irises, to add more width to their eyes. Typically Gyarus are known for being tan, with their skin color ranging from pure white (Kabuki style) all the way to dark brown.
There are various subcategories of "gals" depending on the choice of fashion, with each subcategory having a storyline explaining each of its fashion details:
Bibinba (ビビンバ): This look usually includes a lot of gold and jewelry. Similar to b-gal.
Banba (バンバ): Banba is a lighter form of manba. Banbas wear less white makeup than manbas; they also use more glitter, and doesn't have neon colored hair as much. Banbas wear more extreme-looking types of false eyelashes, and colored contact lenses. Banbas wear darker colors than manbas, and sometimes dress in club wear.
Ganguro (ガングロギャル): A gyaru with an artificial deep tan and bleached hair. This style was popular in the late 1990s, and early 2000s.
Gyaruo (ギャル男): A male gyaru.
Kogyaru: Generally a high school student (高校生 kōkōsei).
Yamanba: Like manba, but the nose stripe goes past the eyebrows.
I thought that most of the sales girls and women, and many of the girls shopping, spent an incredible amount of time and effort, not to mention yen, on their particular brand of style. They each looked like a performance art piece, and it was easy for me to appreciate them from that point of view. Still...so much time, so much energy spent on something so transient...it seemed so futile. Interesting, but futile nonetheless...
Our Snowy Third Day in Tokyo
We woke up this morning to the first snowfall of the winter here in Tokyo - and it has turned out to be a cold and stormy day, with a wind-blown combination of snow and sleet for the entire day, with only an hour or two of respite.
Miyuki, the Four Seasons Hotel restaurant, has an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out over the traditional Japanese gardens and park that the hotel borders. During breakfast, we could see through these windows just how stormy it was today - the bamboo trees were being battered by the wind, and the mix of snow and sleet fell almost horizontally at times.
As a result of what we saw at breakfast, we thought it might be a good idea today to visit one or two of the museums we were interested in seeing, since that way we would at least be inside for a good part of the day. But events conspired to make this simple plan a bit more complicated by day's end!
Our first choice was the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, or MOT, as it is popularly called. This is where a lot of the avant-garde art in the city is exhibited, so we were excited about visiting, despite its out-of-the-way location. We made it out there with no problem, but then I saw on a poster in the Metro Station that MOT would be closed until early February, as it was preparing for new exhibitions...just like most of the other contemporary art venues in Tokyo! We tried instead to find the Fukagawa Edo Museum, which is a historical museum nearby, but the storm was making it so difficult to walk that we gave up looking for it after walking just a half-dozen blocks or so.
We returned to the Metro Station, wetter and colder than we'd arrived a half-hour before, and headed to the Ueno district, which is a part of Edo (Old) Tokyo, like its neighbor to the east, Asakusa. The big attraction here is Ueno Park, a huge green space with gardens, ponds, Shinto shrines, several important museums, and a zoo. When we arrived, we found right across the street from the Station a busy local outdoor market, which looked very promising, despite the weather.
Walking down the lanes of the market, I was amazed at the mix of items on offer - everything from shoes and other clothing, to children's toys, to...fish! Yes, mixed in and among the clothes and accessories were tables piled high with fish and other seafood of supreme quality, including many that I had never seen before, and some that I had, but just not of that quality, like the impossibly red fresh tuna fillets, and the perfect giant crabs, neatly tied and wrapped. Despite the wind and wet snowfall, the sales people were calling out to the passers-by to come and look at their beautiful fish, and to buy, buy, buy! It was great fun to walk down the streets of this market, a most unexpected gift on a difficult day!
As it was getting a little late in the afternoon to go to any of the museums, and the prospect of a shivering stroll in Ueno Park did not seem too appealing, we decided to go instead to Seibu Department Store in Ikebukuro district, one of the biggest department stores in all of Japan. Massive department stores like Seibu, and its neighbor, Tobu, have set aside their entire ground floors for what is essentially an indoor food market, featuring many hundreds of already-prepared dishes, with the salespeople shouting out their specials, or offering free samples. Seibu's top floor is also all about food - it is devoted to restaurants, with perhaps fifteen or twenty restaurants, offering all kinds of different cuisines, competing for customers' appetites.
These restaurants are nothing at all like what you might find in the food court of a typical American mall. There are no fast food joints, just very high quality places, each one devoted to a different style of food - in Seibu, there is everything from sushi restaurants to dessert cafes, to Italian, and even Vietnamese food! Because we arrived after the usual mid-day rush, we had our choice of where to have our late lunch, and we stopped in at a fantastic conveyor-belt sushi restaurant, with super high-quality fish, at a very reasonable price.
After lunch, we stopped in at a nearby Starbucks, to relax and write in our journals. Shortly after we arrived, Tali decided to venture back into Seibu on her own, for a bit of retail therapy, as she felt fashion-deprived in the purple winter jacket she had brought along on this trip. An hour or so later, she returned to collect me, proudly reporting that she had emerged from the women's department victorious! As I saw later, she had indeed managed to find two beautiful and stylish winter coats, on sale for way less that I would have expected her to have paid for just one...way to go, Tali!!!
Miyuki, the Four Seasons Hotel restaurant, has an entire wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out over the traditional Japanese gardens and park that the hotel borders. During breakfast, we could see through these windows just how stormy it was today - the bamboo trees were being battered by the wind, and the mix of snow and sleet fell almost horizontally at times.
As a result of what we saw at breakfast, we thought it might be a good idea today to visit one or two of the museums we were interested in seeing, since that way we would at least be inside for a good part of the day. But events conspired to make this simple plan a bit more complicated by day's end!
Our first choice was the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, or MOT, as it is popularly called. This is where a lot of the avant-garde art in the city is exhibited, so we were excited about visiting, despite its out-of-the-way location. We made it out there with no problem, but then I saw on a poster in the Metro Station that MOT would be closed until early February, as it was preparing for new exhibitions...just like most of the other contemporary art venues in Tokyo! We tried instead to find the Fukagawa Edo Museum, which is a historical museum nearby, but the storm was making it so difficult to walk that we gave up looking for it after walking just a half-dozen blocks or so.
We returned to the Metro Station, wetter and colder than we'd arrived a half-hour before, and headed to the Ueno district, which is a part of Edo (Old) Tokyo, like its neighbor to the east, Asakusa. The big attraction here is Ueno Park, a huge green space with gardens, ponds, Shinto shrines, several important museums, and a zoo. When we arrived, we found right across the street from the Station a busy local outdoor market, which looked very promising, despite the weather.
Walking down the lanes of the market, I was amazed at the mix of items on offer - everything from shoes and other clothing, to children's toys, to...fish! Yes, mixed in and among the clothes and accessories were tables piled high with fish and other seafood of supreme quality, including many that I had never seen before, and some that I had, but just not of that quality, like the impossibly red fresh tuna fillets, and the perfect giant crabs, neatly tied and wrapped. Despite the wind and wet snowfall, the sales people were calling out to the passers-by to come and look at their beautiful fish, and to buy, buy, buy! It was great fun to walk down the streets of this market, a most unexpected gift on a difficult day!
As it was getting a little late in the afternoon to go to any of the museums, and the prospect of a shivering stroll in Ueno Park did not seem too appealing, we decided to go instead to Seibu Department Store in Ikebukuro district, one of the biggest department stores in all of Japan. Massive department stores like Seibu, and its neighbor, Tobu, have set aside their entire ground floors for what is essentially an indoor food market, featuring many hundreds of already-prepared dishes, with the salespeople shouting out their specials, or offering free samples. Seibu's top floor is also all about food - it is devoted to restaurants, with perhaps fifteen or twenty restaurants, offering all kinds of different cuisines, competing for customers' appetites.
These restaurants are nothing at all like what you might find in the food court of a typical American mall. There are no fast food joints, just very high quality places, each one devoted to a different style of food - in Seibu, there is everything from sushi restaurants to dessert cafes, to Italian, and even Vietnamese food! Because we arrived after the usual mid-day rush, we had our choice of where to have our late lunch, and we stopped in at a fantastic conveyor-belt sushi restaurant, with super high-quality fish, at a very reasonable price.
After lunch, we stopped in at a nearby Starbucks, to relax and write in our journals. Shortly after we arrived, Tali decided to venture back into Seibu on her own, for a bit of retail therapy, as she felt fashion-deprived in the purple winter jacket she had brought along on this trip. An hour or so later, she returned to collect me, proudly reporting that she had emerged from the women's department victorious! As I saw later, she had indeed managed to find two beautiful and stylish winter coats, on sale for way less that I would have expected her to have paid for just one...way to go, Tali!!!
Friday, 20 January 2012
Our Second Day in Tokyo
Today, we again woke up early in the morning, and we spent most of those early hours writing our blog entries, after our customary spiritual study and meditation. Once we completed and posted our pieces, we dressed and headed out for a cold and overcast day of exploration.
Our first destination today was the cultural opposite of yesterday's journey to trendy Harujuku and prosperous but on-sale Aoyama - we headed to Asakusa, the neighborhood most reminiscent of Edo (old, traditional) Tokyo.
Asakusa is dominated by the Sensoji Temple complex, Tokyo's oldest and most popular temple, whose history dates back to 628 AD. The temple itself has been destroyed and rebuilt several times since then, the most recent due to the firebombing of Tokyo by Western forces in 1945. This latest incarnation, although in appearance just like the previous ones, is made almost entirely of metal and concrete, with very little wood, probably to maximize its durability, though this is just a guess on my part.
Asakusa initially grew up as a temple town, spreading out around Sensoji beginning in the seventh century, but as merchants became more prosperous, they demanded more diverse forms of entertainment, and Asakusa was by the early 19th century the main entertainment district of Edo Tokyo, featuring Kabuki and Bunraku theatres, restaurants, shops, and quite possibly, more sensuous diversions as well.
The lane leading straight to Sensoji is called Nakamise Dori, and it is very different than the approaches to temples that I've seen elsewhere in the East, which are lined with sellers of religious artifacts, candles, prayer flags, and the like. Since the late 17th century, Nakamise Dori has contributed to the carnival atmosphere in Asakusa, with its hundreds of tiny shops selling crafts, masks, fans, kimonos, sweets of every description, barking toy dogs - if you can imagine it, it's probably sold somewhere in the maze of narrow streets and covered shopping arcades in and around Nakamise Dori!
Just outside of Nakamise Dori, we visited a tiny traditional restaurant for a late breakfast of soba noodles with a few pieces of shrimp tempura. This wonderful, family-run restaurant, with perhaps a half-dozen tables, did not offer tea on its menu. Instead, we were brought the hot water that had just been used to boil the soba noodles! It was delicious, very delicately flavored, without a hint of starch or oil from its use in the cooking pot just moments before. The customers' use of tobacco in this soba shop had been going on for so many years that it was now soaked deep into the walls, floor, and ceiling, a rich, almost sweet smell with complexity and depth - quite pleasant, actually, even for a non-smoker!
Just down the street from this soba shop, we stopped outside another tiny restaurant, where the cook was steaming buns, using stacks of wooden steamers over boiling water, right at streetside, and selling these buns as fast as she could make them! We went inside, and enjoyed a wonderful dessert, as these were traditional Japanese sweet buns, filled with delicious sugared bean paste, rather than the salty buns we have often seen made streetside in China. Here we were able to enjoy cups of tea with our sweet steamed buns, along with tiny but rich scoops of homemade ice cream, available in vanilla, green tea, red bean, or yuzu (citron) flavors.
As the day progressed, the weather turned a bit colder, so we left delightful Asakusa, and went by subway to the Shinjuku Metro Station, the busiest commuter station in all of Japan. There is a huge shopping district inside and outside of the station, and just down the street was our first destination of the late afternoon, the huge Kinokuniya Book Store, where Tali wanted to look for illustrated Japanese art books. There were eight floors of books in Kinokuniya, so many that it was actually hard to find exactly what she was looking for, but after an hour or so, we emerged victorious!
Just a few steps away from Kinokuniya was the even larger Takashimaya Times Square Department Store, our next stop. Most of the department stores in Tokyo feature not only clothes and housewares, but also food, and we wanted to sample some of the many delicacies on offer in the combination supermarket and delicatessen that occupies the entire ground floor level of Takashimaya.
This part of the store was packed with eager shoppers, listening to the shouted pleas of the dozens and dozens of salespeople, many offering free samples, or announcing sale prices, as it was getting closer to the store's eight o'clock closing. We wandered around - everything looked so delicious! - before selecting a few items to take back to the hotel with us for a small dinner.
Our first destination today was the cultural opposite of yesterday's journey to trendy Harujuku and prosperous but on-sale Aoyama - we headed to Asakusa, the neighborhood most reminiscent of Edo (old, traditional) Tokyo.
Asakusa is dominated by the Sensoji Temple complex, Tokyo's oldest and most popular temple, whose history dates back to 628 AD. The temple itself has been destroyed and rebuilt several times since then, the most recent due to the firebombing of Tokyo by Western forces in 1945. This latest incarnation, although in appearance just like the previous ones, is made almost entirely of metal and concrete, with very little wood, probably to maximize its durability, though this is just a guess on my part.
Asakusa initially grew up as a temple town, spreading out around Sensoji beginning in the seventh century, but as merchants became more prosperous, they demanded more diverse forms of entertainment, and Asakusa was by the early 19th century the main entertainment district of Edo Tokyo, featuring Kabuki and Bunraku theatres, restaurants, shops, and quite possibly, more sensuous diversions as well.
The lane leading straight to Sensoji is called Nakamise Dori, and it is very different than the approaches to temples that I've seen elsewhere in the East, which are lined with sellers of religious artifacts, candles, prayer flags, and the like. Since the late 17th century, Nakamise Dori has contributed to the carnival atmosphere in Asakusa, with its hundreds of tiny shops selling crafts, masks, fans, kimonos, sweets of every description, barking toy dogs - if you can imagine it, it's probably sold somewhere in the maze of narrow streets and covered shopping arcades in and around Nakamise Dori!
Just outside of Nakamise Dori, we visited a tiny traditional restaurant for a late breakfast of soba noodles with a few pieces of shrimp tempura. This wonderful, family-run restaurant, with perhaps a half-dozen tables, did not offer tea on its menu. Instead, we were brought the hot water that had just been used to boil the soba noodles! It was delicious, very delicately flavored, without a hint of starch or oil from its use in the cooking pot just moments before. The customers' use of tobacco in this soba shop had been going on for so many years that it was now soaked deep into the walls, floor, and ceiling, a rich, almost sweet smell with complexity and depth - quite pleasant, actually, even for a non-smoker!
Just down the street from this soba shop, we stopped outside another tiny restaurant, where the cook was steaming buns, using stacks of wooden steamers over boiling water, right at streetside, and selling these buns as fast as she could make them! We went inside, and enjoyed a wonderful dessert, as these were traditional Japanese sweet buns, filled with delicious sugared bean paste, rather than the salty buns we have often seen made streetside in China. Here we were able to enjoy cups of tea with our sweet steamed buns, along with tiny but rich scoops of homemade ice cream, available in vanilla, green tea, red bean, or yuzu (citron) flavors.
As the day progressed, the weather turned a bit colder, so we left delightful Asakusa, and went by subway to the Shinjuku Metro Station, the busiest commuter station in all of Japan. There is a huge shopping district inside and outside of the station, and just down the street was our first destination of the late afternoon, the huge Kinokuniya Book Store, where Tali wanted to look for illustrated Japanese art books. There were eight floors of books in Kinokuniya, so many that it was actually hard to find exactly what she was looking for, but after an hour or so, we emerged victorious!
Just a few steps away from Kinokuniya was the even larger Takashimaya Times Square Department Store, our next stop. Most of the department stores in Tokyo feature not only clothes and housewares, but also food, and we wanted to sample some of the many delicacies on offer in the combination supermarket and delicatessen that occupies the entire ground floor level of Takashimaya.
This part of the store was packed with eager shoppers, listening to the shouted pleas of the dozens and dozens of salespeople, many offering free samples, or announcing sale prices, as it was getting closer to the store's eight o'clock closing. We wandered around - everything looked so delicious! - before selecting a few items to take back to the hotel with us for a small dinner.
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Our First Full Day in Tokyo
We woke up early this morning, as we had gone to sleep quite early the night before, after our long day of flying from Kerikeri, New Zealand to Tokyo. The early start gave us plenty of time to do our regular morning spiritual study and meditation, which is such an important part of our daily lives.
Afterwards, we left our room at the Four Seasons Hotel Chinzan-So, and went downstairs, to sample the set Japanese breakfast offered at the hotel's Miyuki restaurant.
Miyuki offers three set menus for breakfast, varying only by the number of dishes in each one. Each of the menus includes steamed rice or congee, miso soup, pickles, a variety of vegetables prepared in different ways, a small piece of grilled fish, and tea. Every one of the dishes (I had nine small plates, and Tali had eleven) were delicately prepared and beautifully presented. The cost was about 3000 yen per person for this work of edible art, about USD $39, and well worth it, just for the experience alone!
We headed out into the cold but sunny morning air, quickly finding it necessary to put on our winter hats and gloves. We walked through the neighborhoods to the south and east of the hotel, part of Bunkyo-Ku (a Ku is a ward, or administrative district - Tokyo is composed of 23 such Ku). The streets of Bunkyo-Ku felt like an intimate residential community, rather than part of one of the biggest cities in the world! There were small shops and restaurants that were interspersed with grammar schools, universities, and both apartment buildings and single family houses. Traffic was light, even though it was mid-morning on a weekday, and it was calm and quiet.
After we had walked for close to an hour, we came to a much busier intersection, where there was a stop on the JR Train line, part of the convenient and easy-to-use train and subway system that makes getting around all of Tokyo, indeed all of Japan, such a pleasure, even for the first-time visitor. After checking with the station's information desk, we hopped on one of the trains to reach the next leg of our walk today, Harujuku.
Harujuku is Tokyo's center for cutting edge fashion, full of small designer and second-hand clothing stores, along with shoe shops, restaurants, cafes, sweet shops and bakeries, and fast food joints. The streets of Harujuku are also full of very fashion-forward Japanese of both sexes and all ages, out to see and be seen, dressed in very idiosyncratic combinations of colors, textures and styles.
Just a few blocks from the Harujuku Metro Station is Takeshita Dori, a pedestrians-only street which is the heart of the area, and a paradise for the visually aware. We saw kids walking here who were wearing exactly the same elaborate, colorful outfits that Tali had just spent a year painting, and it was exciting and fun to see her painted portraits come to life! Almost everyone seemed to have taken a great deal of time and care in choosing what they were wearing, and they all looked stylish, some in expensive designer clothes, and some in second hand finds. Interestingly, there were also quite a few men from Africa working the street corners of Takeshita Dori, serving as hawkers for some of the area shops - with the stringent rules on immigration to Japan, I wondered how they had managed to gain residency...
Takeshita Dori is also the home of the Ukiyo-e Ota Memorial Museum of Art, which houses an amazing collection of woodblock prints, many of them from the Edo period, dating back hundreds of years. The current exhibition is of illustrated bamboo and paper fans, all with exquisite paintings on one or both sides. So elaborate, and so complex to execute correctly - it was a vivid reminder of the depth and great beauty of the classical arts in Japan.
Takeshita Dori leads to Omotesando Dori, which is the wide, tree-lined boulevard that connects Shinjuku with its much more upscale neighbor, Aoyama. As we walked down this boulevard, the funky, second hand clothing shops of Shinjuku like "Chicago" quickly gave way to more elaborate and expensive clothing stores, along with exclusive hair salons and elaborate sweet shops displaying their wares as if they were jewelry, rather than treats to eat! Lots of the stores had "Sale" signs pasted all over the windows, but even considering the discounts, the prices seemed very high to me.
As the late afternoon sun reminded us, it was now too late to visit some of the art galleries we had thought about seeing in and about Aoyama, so we took the metro to Ginza for our final few hours of walking today. Ginza is the home of Tokyo's huge department stores and upscale global fashion boutiques (yes, there is even an "Apple" store in Ginza, which of course was packed!), along with expensive restaurants and beautiful sweets shops. In the lower levels of many of these huge department stores are sellers of all kinds of specialty foods, delicatessen style, which are great fun to visit, but we decided to save that experience for another day. We contented ourselves with walking the neon-lit streets of Ginza and window-shopping, before we headed back to our hotel.
Afterwards, we left our room at the Four Seasons Hotel Chinzan-So, and went downstairs, to sample the set Japanese breakfast offered at the hotel's Miyuki restaurant.
Miyuki offers three set menus for breakfast, varying only by the number of dishes in each one. Each of the menus includes steamed rice or congee, miso soup, pickles, a variety of vegetables prepared in different ways, a small piece of grilled fish, and tea. Every one of the dishes (I had nine small plates, and Tali had eleven) were delicately prepared and beautifully presented. The cost was about 3000 yen per person for this work of edible art, about USD $39, and well worth it, just for the experience alone!
We headed out into the cold but sunny morning air, quickly finding it necessary to put on our winter hats and gloves. We walked through the neighborhoods to the south and east of the hotel, part of Bunkyo-Ku (a Ku is a ward, or administrative district - Tokyo is composed of 23 such Ku). The streets of Bunkyo-Ku felt like an intimate residential community, rather than part of one of the biggest cities in the world! There were small shops and restaurants that were interspersed with grammar schools, universities, and both apartment buildings and single family houses. Traffic was light, even though it was mid-morning on a weekday, and it was calm and quiet.
After we had walked for close to an hour, we came to a much busier intersection, where there was a stop on the JR Train line, part of the convenient and easy-to-use train and subway system that makes getting around all of Tokyo, indeed all of Japan, such a pleasure, even for the first-time visitor. After checking with the station's information desk, we hopped on one of the trains to reach the next leg of our walk today, Harujuku.
Harujuku is Tokyo's center for cutting edge fashion, full of small designer and second-hand clothing stores, along with shoe shops, restaurants, cafes, sweet shops and bakeries, and fast food joints. The streets of Harujuku are also full of very fashion-forward Japanese of both sexes and all ages, out to see and be seen, dressed in very idiosyncratic combinations of colors, textures and styles.
Just a few blocks from the Harujuku Metro Station is Takeshita Dori, a pedestrians-only street which is the heart of the area, and a paradise for the visually aware. We saw kids walking here who were wearing exactly the same elaborate, colorful outfits that Tali had just spent a year painting, and it was exciting and fun to see her painted portraits come to life! Almost everyone seemed to have taken a great deal of time and care in choosing what they were wearing, and they all looked stylish, some in expensive designer clothes, and some in second hand finds. Interestingly, there were also quite a few men from Africa working the street corners of Takeshita Dori, serving as hawkers for some of the area shops - with the stringent rules on immigration to Japan, I wondered how they had managed to gain residency...
Takeshita Dori is also the home of the Ukiyo-e Ota Memorial Museum of Art, which houses an amazing collection of woodblock prints, many of them from the Edo period, dating back hundreds of years. The current exhibition is of illustrated bamboo and paper fans, all with exquisite paintings on one or both sides. So elaborate, and so complex to execute correctly - it was a vivid reminder of the depth and great beauty of the classical arts in Japan.
Takeshita Dori leads to Omotesando Dori, which is the wide, tree-lined boulevard that connects Shinjuku with its much more upscale neighbor, Aoyama. As we walked down this boulevard, the funky, second hand clothing shops of Shinjuku like "Chicago" quickly gave way to more elaborate and expensive clothing stores, along with exclusive hair salons and elaborate sweet shops displaying their wares as if they were jewelry, rather than treats to eat! Lots of the stores had "Sale" signs pasted all over the windows, but even considering the discounts, the prices seemed very high to me.
As the late afternoon sun reminded us, it was now too late to visit some of the art galleries we had thought about seeing in and about Aoyama, so we took the metro to Ginza for our final few hours of walking today. Ginza is the home of Tokyo's huge department stores and upscale global fashion boutiques (yes, there is even an "Apple" store in Ginza, which of course was packed!), along with expensive restaurants and beautiful sweets shops. In the lower levels of many of these huge department stores are sellers of all kinds of specialty foods, delicatessen style, which are great fun to visit, but we decided to save that experience for another day. We contented ourselves with walking the neon-lit streets of Ginza and window-shopping, before we headed back to our hotel.
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