We said goodbye to Bill and Pam the night before at Haneda airport. They got a tiny hotel room up near Ueno and Pam planned to revisit one of the pottery stores before flying back today. Bon Voyage Pam & Bill, it was a fun two weeks with you.
Michele and I pulled into the Mitsui Garden Shiodome hotel, which is nicely located near Tokyo Central but is not in nearly as cute as neighborhood as Kichijōji. Central Tokyo seems all about business and tourists visiting core Tokyo (Tokyo tower, etc.). The restaurants are either high end or focused on drinking, Next time if we stay in Tokyo I think I will aim for one of the first or second ring areas. Or maybe just go back to Kichijōji.
Within easy walking distance to the hotel is the Hamarikyu Gardens, which used to be the Edo period private garden of the Tokugawa Shogun. Now anyone can stroll the grounds and have some matcha in a picturesque tea house, including us. The tea house is out on its own little island.
Michele and I snagged a corner table and ordered some matcha and a treat, bitter and sweet. We appreciated the scenic setting and did a little people watching.
Duck hunting seemed to be a popular imperial sport. The ducks were caught with a net. A special pond was populated with domesticated decoys. The pond has narrow side channels, and at the end of each channel is a pyramid mound that served as a blind. Food was sprinkled in the channel and the honcho spied on the ducks from a slit in the mound’s door. When the ducks were up the creek (as it were) hunters pounced with their duck nets. Poor ducks.
Our next stop was Nippori Fabric Town, a street in Nippori full of fabric stores. Michele was looking for fabric for the small Shishi’s she makes from Sculpy. We didn’t find the specific swirl pattern for Shishi’s cape, even at the multi floor sprawling Tomato store. Perhaps the pattern is only used for actual Shishi’s. We did find some other fun fabrics.
I asked the internet if there were any festivals going on in Tokyo, and now that it was post-sakura the only thing that looked good was an azalea festival. From Nippori we walked over to the shrine where the gardens were. Along the way we saw this tiny shrine down an alley and little Suzuki car called the Hustler.
The azaleas were in full bloom but there was also a full mob there, so we didn’t actually walk up into the garden. Too many people for a relaxing flower stroll.
Instead we headed over to Roppongi, an arty area of Tokyo, to see an exhibition of ramen bowls. At the subway exit was tranquil Nogi shrine, lovelier than the azalea shrine, that had only a few people visiting it. They had an inspiring display of hopes and wishes from people visiting from all over the world. It was a reminder that all almost everyone wants is peace and prosperity.
I am learning that in the social internet era if something is promoted as uniquely great on the web it will be mobbed, at least in Japan. The azalea festival was listed as the primary festival in Tokyo this week, and sure enough it was mobbed. Nogi shrine isn’t on a “this week in Tokyo” list, and it was tranquil and beautiful. This also goes for “best restaurants” lists, sights in Kyoto and so on. For me Japan is at its best when you find something on your own, or by accident. There are so many things to see that it’s hard to go far wrong, and in our experience the average restaurant quality is pretty high. You can usually tell by just looking at a place.
The ramen bowls were in a modern airy museum gallery and were a lot of fun to peruse. So many creative decoration ideas. They had a good technical section too, including this temperature graph that claims the rim of the ramen bowl is hotter than the middle. That isn’t my experience, I think the rim feels cooler than the body when it has hot soup in it, so that was a mystery to me.
After the ramen bowls we tried to find the pottery shop “Gallery 645” but they had closed early. From the front window it looked more like an antique shop than a store featuring craft potters, so I’m not sure I missed much.
We went back to Kichijōji and walked the streets, since Michele didn’t get a chance the previous week. There was loads of street life as dusk turned to evening, with almost all the shops still open. We ate at a fun yakitori restaurant that was next to this rabbit-with-lemons restaurant. The yakitori was served very rare, almost raw, in the middle for the breast and liver. It was delicious but a little concerning. The couple next to us were eating “chicken sashimi”, raw chicken lightly seared on the surface and sliced. Hmmm. Our cook/server claimed he had never gotten sick there. We chatted about Shohei Ohtani and how the chicken is over cooked in America.
I wondered if Japan was somehow immune to raw chicken issues. According to the Japanese Health Department they aren’t. In 2016 the government put out an advisory asking yakitori restaurants to stop serving raw bird. No dice I guess, Japan is going to Japan.
[Epilogue: we survived]
Ken Chin-Purcell 