A bit after noon, we left our apartment and headed straightaway to explore the area of the Rialto Produce Markets, as we had gotten to the Rialto Bridge several times so far in our walks, but had not yet crossed the Bridge and gone any further, into the San Polo and Santa Croce sestieres. We discovered a vibrant, busy section of Venice, but both the fish and the vegetable markets were already closing down for the day, so we will return to see and photograph them on Saturday or Monday morning.
Even though Tali mentioned that she wasn't at all hungry for lunch, I somehow didn't register what she had said - perhaps I was listening more to my own desire to eat something than I was to her! - and so we went anyway to Vecio Fritolin, just a few streets from the Rialto Markets.
Even though I had heard good things about this small restaurant, our first impression was that it looked a bit forlorn, with only one of its dozen or so tables occupied when we entered, and the interior looking like it could use a little sprucing up. The food, however, as we soon found out, was at the high end of traditional Venetian cooking - absolutely fresh ingredients, perfectly prepared.
The signature dish of Vecio Fritolin is a generous plate of fried fish and shellfish, served with vegetables and roast polenta. The fish and vegetables are selected fresh every day by Chef Daniele Zennaro from the nearby stalls of the Rialto Markets. The name of this restaurant comes from "fritolini," or "fryers," small Venetian inns that used to sell freshly fried fish, served in paper bags, and indeed the restaurant continues this centuries-old tradition by serving its fried fish on plates covered with brown paper, to absorb any excess cooking oil. The building housing the restaurant dates from the sixteenth century, and is where Caterina Cornaro, a descendent of a noble Venetian family who later became Queen of Cypress, was born in 1454.
After we were seated, Tali mentioned again that she wasn't very hungry, so we decided to share a first plate, of potato gnocchi stuffed with black olives, spinach, and raisins, served with a deep green spinach and herb sauce. The exquisite taste of this dish is what alerted us to just how good the chef was, and I immediately felt a pang of regret that I hadn't brought us here instead for dinner, or anytime Tali might be hungrier! The saltiness of the olives blended beautifully with the sweetness of the raisins, and both were well balanced by the earthiness of the spinach used in both the filling and the sauce - wonderful!
Next we each sampled the signature dish of fried seafood, vegetables, and polenta ("frittura mista di pesce con scampi, verdure e polenta"), which was artfully prepared, each of the eight or ten different varieties and sizes of fish, shellfish, calamari and octopus lightly dusted with seasoned flour and fried for just the right amount of time, which must have ranged from just a few seconds for the smallest shrimp to a few minutes for the larger fish - nothing either overfried nor undercooked, a true showcase of the chef's skill and delicate touch.
We also shared a house salad of the best tomatoes we have had in Venice so far, along with a lovely variety of greens, whose delicate flavors suggested that they were organic or biologic, with an aged balsamic vinegar that was both sweet and just a touch bitter.
Regrettably, we were too full to even tempt ourselves by looking at the dessert menu, but we might return to Vecio Fritolin sometime during the rest of our stay in Venice. Our lunch, including service, came to 84 Euros.
We then slowly made our way through the San Polo sestiere, north into Santa Croce, to visit Ca' Pesaro Galleria d'Arte Moderna, the Venice Municipal collection of art, which is housed in a beautiful baroque palace located right on the Grand Canal. Most of the paintings and sculptures on display were acquired by the city of Venice during its Biennale International Art Exhibitions, which date back to 1895, and have continued to this day as one of the most important exhibitions of cutting edge contemporary art in the world. The work on display at Ca' Pesaro forms a virtual survey of the major art movements, especially in Europe, of the last century, including sculptures by Henry Moore, and paintings by Chagall, Ernst, Dufy, Kandinsky, Klimt, and many others.
The top floor of Ca' Pesaro is devoted to an amazing exhibition of Oriental art, ranging far and wide in Asia, from Japanese swords and armor, to porcelain, musical instruments and lacquer ware, to Javanese shadow puppets. A Venetian nobleman went on an around the world trip with his wife and a small retinue, from 1895 to 1897, including stops in Japan, China, Malaya, Java, and India. During his travels, he somehow managed to acquire and ship back to Venice more than 30,000 pieces of all sizes, and many of these pieces are displayed here. This is an incredible exhibition that speaks to the intricate beauty and skill involved in the traditional arts of Japan and the rest of Asia, and of the energetic man who built this huge collection in only two years!
We stayed in Ca' Pesaro until closing time at 5:00pm, then stopped in a nearby cafe for cappuccinos. Did you know that the price of a coffee taken standing at the bar everywhere in Venice is about half what it is when you sit at a table (even if there's no real table service, just you, sitting down to drink, rather than standing up)? Coffees and teas are quite inexpensive if taken while standing, which is what most Italians do.
We slowly strolled through Santa Croce, window shopping and enjoying the relaxed pace of a city that has no cars, no motorcycles, no electric scooters (that you can't hear approaching you from behind!), not even any bicycles - what a pleasure, to wander down narrow streets and alleys, coming to beautiful piazzas or campos every once in a while, complete with cafes, shops, restaurants, schools and churches. This is not an experience to be rushed; it is to be savored and enjoyed at leisure.
We had reservations to eat a late dinner in a very out-of-the-way restaurant, in the western part of Dorsoduro sestiere. L'Avogaria, despite its location well apart from most tourist traffic, was very modern and creative in both its decor and cuisine, and the most vegetarian-friendly of all the places we've eaten in since we arrived in Venice. After a wonderful dinner, we had a relaxed and enjoyable late-night stroll through Dorsoduro, where several of the piazzas were crowded with Carnevale partiers enjoying live bands, and stalls selling snacks and drinks.
Friday, 17 February 2012
Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Dining to Die For, in Venice
Our first night in Venice - Located right up the street from our apartment in the Castello "sestiere," or quarter, the Osteria Oliva Nera was an obvious choice after our very delayed, late-night arrival in Venice, so we headed there just after our rental agent Silvia finished giving us a tour of our lovely studio apartment, home for the next ten days.
Despite the hour, well after 10pm, and its location on a very quiet street that is more for locals than tourists, the Osteria was still quite crowded, and the minute we entered, even though we were still a bit groggy from our twenty four hour fly-and-wait marathon from Colorado to Venice, we could see why - the atmosphere of this small, informal restaurant was incredibly welcoming, thanks to the very warm and gregarious owner/maitre d', Dino. We knew we were in good hands as soon as we were quickly shown to a small table and given the menus, and Dino came over to discuss EACH dish in detail, to help us make our choices!
This osteria is a small, informal place with perhaps a dozen tables, that features a Japanese chef, as we found out from Dino, who had come to Venice to perfect his skills in preparing the local specialities, and who had evidently brought along with him a Japanese waiter and waitress as well. Even though the kitchen and service staff were global, the cuisine was most decidedly local, making this a great place to try dishes that were developed in Venice centuries ago, and that still find their inspiration in what is available from both the sea and the earth close to Venice.
Since we had hardly eaten in the past twenty-four hours, because of the delays we had experienced on both American and Alitalia, we ordered a full dinner, despite the late hour. For our antipasti, we had two dishes - Soar, a very traditional dish of fresh, local sardines delicately fried, and then prepared sweet and sour - with marinated and stewed onions, raisins and pine nuts - and also a creamy, soft polenta served with boiled local fish, minced and formed into an oval patty. We shared our first course, an amazing fresh pasta prepared in octopus ink and accompanied by heavenly langoustines. For my second course I had turbot prepared with shredded ginger and carrots, which gave the taste of the white flesh of the fish real depth and complexity, while Tali had sea bream, with fresh roasted, grilled artichokes which were then puréed into a thick, aromatic sauce. We shared a dessert of perfectly prepared Crete brûlée, chosen from a menu drawn freehand on the spot by Dino, in the shape of a flower, with each petal representing a dessert offering! To complete our meal, we sampled small glasses of Dino's homemade orangecillo and lemoncillo, offered without charge, which tasted and smelled of the fresh fruit peels from which they were made. As if that weren't enough, before we left, Dino presented Tali with a gift of a bottle of his own olive oil!
Our dinner came to about seventy Euros each, but priceless was the ongoing conversation we had with Dino and his wife Isabella, throughout our meal - conversations with those we buy services from are always a big source of what we learn about how people are actually living and feeling as we travel around the world, and tonight the main subjects of our chat were the Italian economy, and the state of the tourist trade in Venice. Dino felt that while business seemed a bit better in Venice than it was a few years ago, Venetians were still "standing, arms crossed, at the window," watching and waiting to see how the economy fared this year, under the policies of the new, post- Berlusconi government. He also felt that local restauranteurs needed to be more hospitable towards tourists in order to survive, and that the high exchange rate of the Euro was hurting business in Venice, as his costs for fresh ingredients continue to rise ever higher.
After such a day of flight delays, both in Colorado and Rome, followed by the loss of our baggage somewhere along the way, a great meal was just what we needed to improve our attitude about having made this mid-winter trip to begin with, and we were very grateful to the Osteria for having provided one that exceeded our expectations in every way!
At our trip's beginning, we stay close to home - So far, we are sticking to our local neighborhood in Castello... our apartment is perhaps only a five minute walk from St. Mark's Square, but very un-touristy in feeling, with very little foot traffic, and stores that seem to cater more to natives than to tourists. There are also many wonderful restaurants here in Castello, some of the very best in all of Venice, and most are just a few minutes walk from where we are staying!
We selected one of the finest, Il Ridotto, for our second dinner. This is a small, elegant restaurant, with just eight or so tables set in a very modern decor - unadorned walls, exposed brick, and sleek contemporary chairs, very unlike the rough-hewn post and beam look of most traditional Venetian restaurants.
As it is a much more formal dining place than the Osteria we visited last night, there was none of the friendly chat in Il Ridotto that we had enjoyed yesterday, although the quality of the food was just as superb. We each had the chef's choice of four plates plus an amuse bouche, a very good value at sixty euros per person - the chef selects four dishes from his menu, fish, meat, or both, sometimes serving couples the same dish, sometimes not.
We were given two different antipasti - the first was a plate of several small octopi prepared in a stew of fava beans and turnip tops, the second, langoustines served in a thick cream of cauliflower with crunchy slivered almonds. I had never tried octopus before, and I was surprised to discover that it tasted nothing like squid, as I had thought it might resemble - in the skilled hands of the Il Ridotto chef, the octopus was soft, not chewy, with a clean, vaguely crustacean flavor - delicious! The langoustines were also perfectly prepared, with the cauliflower cream making this appetizer quite substantial.
The first course was the same for both of us, tubetti pasta served in a stock reduced from cooking a local fish, called "Go," along with tiny pieces of the fish itself, which had a similar taste and consistency to calamari, and aromatic herbs from the lagoon. Delicious, but not quite as stunning as the first course of fresh pasta in octopus ink at Osteria Oliva Nera.
We also each had the same second course, Branzino (sea bream), skillfully and deliciously prepared with celeriac and green mustard. It is fascinating to see how different chefs start with exactly the same fresh ingredients, and come up with such different preparations!
We had the opportunity to sample two different desserts, what Il Ridotto calls "our idea about tiramisu," dense and richly flavored with coffee and cacao, and a thick chocolate soup, with a cocoa biscuit that had a hint of raspberry filling, and a generous scoop of ricotta and saffron ice cream.
Everything at Il Ridotto was prepared perfectly and served beautifully on oversized white porcelain plates. Half bottles of a very good chianti were an excellent value at just nine euros, and there was also a nice selection of wines by the glass.
After we dressed back up again in all of our layers, we took a late-night stroll around San Marco Square where, under the auspices of Carnevale, a very good jazz group with an excellent chanteuse were performing jazz and popular standards live, despite a very small audience willing to brave the bitter cold to listen.
Contemporary art beckons, but first, we eat traditionally - French billionaire businessman Francois Pinault owns, among many other ventures, both Christie's auction house and Samsonite Luggage, but he is best known in Venice for having amassed one of the largest collections of contemporary art in the world. He has housed part of it in a 1749 neoclassical palace, Palazzo Grassi, which he had minimalist architect Tadao Ando retrofit to display large paintings, sculptures and films. We visited the Palazzo today, and we'll visit Pinault's second, even bigger art museum, also renovated by Tadao Ando, the 17th century customs warehouse building, Punta Della Dogana, in a few days.
Our spirits were buoyed this morning by a call from our apartment agent Silvia, who let us know that, finally, our previously- lost luggage was to be delivered in an hour! We waited in the apartment for it to arrive, and it was like Christmas when it finally did - so many gifts, neatly folded and ready to wear, and all just for us??!!! We unpacked and put away our clothes and then, much more warmly dressed, we headed out for a walk to the Palazzo Grassi, to feast on some very exciting art, collected with quite a discerning eye, with money no roadblock at all!
But first, along the way to the Palazzo, in the San Marco sestiere, we feasted on a terrific lunch at Trattoria da Fiore. This is a family run restaurant that is divided into two parts - on the left side of the entrance way is a traditional wine bar, where locals stop in for a spritz, a prosecco, or an ombra, which they enjoy with homemade cicheto, Venetian tapas. We went to the room on the right side of the doorway, which is a seafood restaurant specializing in traditional Venetian dishes.
We began with a medley of seafood and vegetable cicheto, perhaps half a dozen or so different "small plates" artfully arranged on one larger plate. In addition to sardines, which are served lightly fried almost everywhere in Venice, there were grilled vegetables, including artichokes and eggplant, marinated scallops with tomato and peppers, and several other small pieces of fish - all perfectly prepared and delicious!
We shared a fresh radicchio salad next - we had seen some beautiful heads of radicchio displayed for sale in a fruit and vegetable store close to our apartment, and we were eager to taste the Venetian version, quite different from the radicchio we can get in the U.S. - here in Venice, it's almost a cross between endive and Boston lettuce. In any event, with some balsamic vinegar and salt sprinkled over it, it was delicious!
I next had a fresh pasta in a light and flavorful tomato and seafood sauce studded with pieces of lobster, while Tali had the mixed fried fish assortment, including Adriatic Sea favorites sea bass, bream, sole, molecche, and schille. Both plates reflected Trattoria da Fiore's skill at sourcing the freshest daily ingredients, and preparing many different types of seafood at once, each type cooked for exactly the right amount of time. Including aqua minerale and cappuccinos, and delicious Carnevale pastries served without charge, our bill came to about thirty five euros each.
After this lunch feast and our visit to the Palazzo Grassi, we had a wonderful stroll through the streets of Dorsoduro finishing up at the second part of Pinault's Collection, at Punta Della Dogana, which we will visit the day after tomorrow. On the walk back, we stopped in at the Coop, a busy grocery store, and bought the ingredients for a salad, some pasta, and fruit, as we were too full from lunch to eat a full dinner. We carried the bags from the Coop back to the apartment with us, and had a late dinner to complete a wonderful day.
Despite the hour, well after 10pm, and its location on a very quiet street that is more for locals than tourists, the Osteria was still quite crowded, and the minute we entered, even though we were still a bit groggy from our twenty four hour fly-and-wait marathon from Colorado to Venice, we could see why - the atmosphere of this small, informal restaurant was incredibly welcoming, thanks to the very warm and gregarious owner/maitre d', Dino. We knew we were in good hands as soon as we were quickly shown to a small table and given the menus, and Dino came over to discuss EACH dish in detail, to help us make our choices!
This osteria is a small, informal place with perhaps a dozen tables, that features a Japanese chef, as we found out from Dino, who had come to Venice to perfect his skills in preparing the local specialities, and who had evidently brought along with him a Japanese waiter and waitress as well. Even though the kitchen and service staff were global, the cuisine was most decidedly local, making this a great place to try dishes that were developed in Venice centuries ago, and that still find their inspiration in what is available from both the sea and the earth close to Venice.
Since we had hardly eaten in the past twenty-four hours, because of the delays we had experienced on both American and Alitalia, we ordered a full dinner, despite the late hour. For our antipasti, we had two dishes - Soar, a very traditional dish of fresh, local sardines delicately fried, and then prepared sweet and sour - with marinated and stewed onions, raisins and pine nuts - and also a creamy, soft polenta served with boiled local fish, minced and formed into an oval patty. We shared our first course, an amazing fresh pasta prepared in octopus ink and accompanied by heavenly langoustines. For my second course I had turbot prepared with shredded ginger and carrots, which gave the taste of the white flesh of the fish real depth and complexity, while Tali had sea bream, with fresh roasted, grilled artichokes which were then puréed into a thick, aromatic sauce. We shared a dessert of perfectly prepared Crete brûlée, chosen from a menu drawn freehand on the spot by Dino, in the shape of a flower, with each petal representing a dessert offering! To complete our meal, we sampled small glasses of Dino's homemade orangecillo and lemoncillo, offered without charge, which tasted and smelled of the fresh fruit peels from which they were made. As if that weren't enough, before we left, Dino presented Tali with a gift of a bottle of his own olive oil!
Our dinner came to about seventy Euros each, but priceless was the ongoing conversation we had with Dino and his wife Isabella, throughout our meal - conversations with those we buy services from are always a big source of what we learn about how people are actually living and feeling as we travel around the world, and tonight the main subjects of our chat were the Italian economy, and the state of the tourist trade in Venice. Dino felt that while business seemed a bit better in Venice than it was a few years ago, Venetians were still "standing, arms crossed, at the window," watching and waiting to see how the economy fared this year, under the policies of the new, post- Berlusconi government. He also felt that local restauranteurs needed to be more hospitable towards tourists in order to survive, and that the high exchange rate of the Euro was hurting business in Venice, as his costs for fresh ingredients continue to rise ever higher.
After such a day of flight delays, both in Colorado and Rome, followed by the loss of our baggage somewhere along the way, a great meal was just what we needed to improve our attitude about having made this mid-winter trip to begin with, and we were very grateful to the Osteria for having provided one that exceeded our expectations in every way!
At our trip's beginning, we stay close to home - So far, we are sticking to our local neighborhood in Castello... our apartment is perhaps only a five minute walk from St. Mark's Square, but very un-touristy in feeling, with very little foot traffic, and stores that seem to cater more to natives than to tourists. There are also many wonderful restaurants here in Castello, some of the very best in all of Venice, and most are just a few minutes walk from where we are staying!
We selected one of the finest, Il Ridotto, for our second dinner. This is a small, elegant restaurant, with just eight or so tables set in a very modern decor - unadorned walls, exposed brick, and sleek contemporary chairs, very unlike the rough-hewn post and beam look of most traditional Venetian restaurants.
As it is a much more formal dining place than the Osteria we visited last night, there was none of the friendly chat in Il Ridotto that we had enjoyed yesterday, although the quality of the food was just as superb. We each had the chef's choice of four plates plus an amuse bouche, a very good value at sixty euros per person - the chef selects four dishes from his menu, fish, meat, or both, sometimes serving couples the same dish, sometimes not.
We were given two different antipasti - the first was a plate of several small octopi prepared in a stew of fava beans and turnip tops, the second, langoustines served in a thick cream of cauliflower with crunchy slivered almonds. I had never tried octopus before, and I was surprised to discover that it tasted nothing like squid, as I had thought it might resemble - in the skilled hands of the Il Ridotto chef, the octopus was soft, not chewy, with a clean, vaguely crustacean flavor - delicious! The langoustines were also perfectly prepared, with the cauliflower cream making this appetizer quite substantial.
The first course was the same for both of us, tubetti pasta served in a stock reduced from cooking a local fish, called "Go," along with tiny pieces of the fish itself, which had a similar taste and consistency to calamari, and aromatic herbs from the lagoon. Delicious, but not quite as stunning as the first course of fresh pasta in octopus ink at Osteria Oliva Nera.
We also each had the same second course, Branzino (sea bream), skillfully and deliciously prepared with celeriac and green mustard. It is fascinating to see how different chefs start with exactly the same fresh ingredients, and come up with such different preparations!
We had the opportunity to sample two different desserts, what Il Ridotto calls "our idea about tiramisu," dense and richly flavored with coffee and cacao, and a thick chocolate soup, with a cocoa biscuit that had a hint of raspberry filling, and a generous scoop of ricotta and saffron ice cream.
Everything at Il Ridotto was prepared perfectly and served beautifully on oversized white porcelain plates. Half bottles of a very good chianti were an excellent value at just nine euros, and there was also a nice selection of wines by the glass.
After we dressed back up again in all of our layers, we took a late-night stroll around San Marco Square where, under the auspices of Carnevale, a very good jazz group with an excellent chanteuse were performing jazz and popular standards live, despite a very small audience willing to brave the bitter cold to listen.
Contemporary art beckons, but first, we eat traditionally - French billionaire businessman Francois Pinault owns, among many other ventures, both Christie's auction house and Samsonite Luggage, but he is best known in Venice for having amassed one of the largest collections of contemporary art in the world. He has housed part of it in a 1749 neoclassical palace, Palazzo Grassi, which he had minimalist architect Tadao Ando retrofit to display large paintings, sculptures and films. We visited the Palazzo today, and we'll visit Pinault's second, even bigger art museum, also renovated by Tadao Ando, the 17th century customs warehouse building, Punta Della Dogana, in a few days.
Our spirits were buoyed this morning by a call from our apartment agent Silvia, who let us know that, finally, our previously- lost luggage was to be delivered in an hour! We waited in the apartment for it to arrive, and it was like Christmas when it finally did - so many gifts, neatly folded and ready to wear, and all just for us??!!! We unpacked and put away our clothes and then, much more warmly dressed, we headed out for a walk to the Palazzo Grassi, to feast on some very exciting art, collected with quite a discerning eye, with money no roadblock at all!
But first, along the way to the Palazzo, in the San Marco sestiere, we feasted on a terrific lunch at Trattoria da Fiore. This is a family run restaurant that is divided into two parts - on the left side of the entrance way is a traditional wine bar, where locals stop in for a spritz, a prosecco, or an ombra, which they enjoy with homemade cicheto, Venetian tapas. We went to the room on the right side of the doorway, which is a seafood restaurant specializing in traditional Venetian dishes.
We began with a medley of seafood and vegetable cicheto, perhaps half a dozen or so different "small plates" artfully arranged on one larger plate. In addition to sardines, which are served lightly fried almost everywhere in Venice, there were grilled vegetables, including artichokes and eggplant, marinated scallops with tomato and peppers, and several other small pieces of fish - all perfectly prepared and delicious!
We shared a fresh radicchio salad next - we had seen some beautiful heads of radicchio displayed for sale in a fruit and vegetable store close to our apartment, and we were eager to taste the Venetian version, quite different from the radicchio we can get in the U.S. - here in Venice, it's almost a cross between endive and Boston lettuce. In any event, with some balsamic vinegar and salt sprinkled over it, it was delicious!
I next had a fresh pasta in a light and flavorful tomato and seafood sauce studded with pieces of lobster, while Tali had the mixed fried fish assortment, including Adriatic Sea favorites sea bass, bream, sole, molecche, and schille. Both plates reflected Trattoria da Fiore's skill at sourcing the freshest daily ingredients, and preparing many different types of seafood at once, each type cooked for exactly the right amount of time. Including aqua minerale and cappuccinos, and delicious Carnevale pastries served without charge, our bill came to about thirty five euros each.
After this lunch feast and our visit to the Palazzo Grassi, we had a wonderful stroll through the streets of Dorsoduro finishing up at the second part of Pinault's Collection, at Punta Della Dogana, which we will visit the day after tomorrow. On the walk back, we stopped in at the Coop, a busy grocery store, and bought the ingredients for a salad, some pasta, and fruit, as we were too full from lunch to eat a full dinner. We carried the bags from the Coop back to the apartment with us, and had a late dinner to complete a wonderful day.
Sunday, 22 January 2012
Our Last Full Day in Tokyo
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.
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)