July 4th, Tokyo

Happy Independence Day!! :)

The next day Novichenoks WhatApped at around 5am and asked if we were doing anything. LOL, the first for us, but we were all up around that time too. We headed out to the area of Tsukiji fish market. The actual market had relocated some years ago but many fish restaurants remain. 

We started our day with some salmon, ikura, and uni. Isabella was thrilled with the salmon caviar and rice dish. We wandered around the scenic market, sampling things here and there and following the lead of the crowds. 

Since our last time in Japan in 2007, the variety of fish sold has gone down but it also got much easier to get around with many more signs in both languages and Google translate, which oftentimes produced very funny translations. English is studied in school but still very few people seem to speak it.

Navigating the toilet apparatus buttons got much easier with signs in English and pictures. After a while, the novelty of getting your butt washed with warm water wore off, at least for me. You get worried about all the water consumption and excitement when you get on it and it starts running water down to create distracting sounds and ensure that it is warm for you when you are ready 😊

Dan and Romik similarly did well with figuring out the way through multiple subway and train companies that we used while in Tokyo. Thanks to Google Maps and more, they were able to find not just find the stations and operate ticketing machines but also the precise locations of the stations where we had to wait for our trains and the best exits from the stations, which, as 20 years ago, continued to be precise.   

Japanese are very polite and helpful, but it is also interesting to observe that they tend to be inflexible in things and get distraught when we don’t do things according to the process. For example, at restaurants, we usually split into two tables – adults and kids. Several times they insisted on waiting until the very last person made the order at one table before moving on to the next table. 

Even if they are stuck making a decision and the other table is ready to order. Or if you want to exclude something from the “set” order or if you want to order an item marked as “takeout.” There must be a well-thought-through reason for that which we simply don’t understand.

We continued exploring Ginza on Tuesday morning. Taking an a/c break, we worked our way through the 12-story Uniglo. It was located in a very narrow building and the real estate in the area must be very expensive, so many specialty and general stores are spread out vertically. There was a young woman holding t-shirts and other items from the store standing in the back, melodiously singing out something, presumably inviting the shoppers to partake in something. She was still singing as we exited the store. 

We continued our walk and then did 12 stories of the store selling stationery. The top store was a café and the next one down was called the Farm and featured several hydroponic stations growing lettuce. But still, the amount of cute fascinating stuff was amazing. We did an Amazon lookup and saw most items already featured, thanks to globalization.   

For lunch, we went to the tiny basement for ramen. Navigating the menu was like navigating the map – there were symbols on the back of the menu that advised that the letter J stands for some meat like pork, JE means more pork JU means more spice, and so on. See the example below.

Ultimately we were able to voice our choices using the two-letter combinations + beer 😊 The old-style posters on the walls, the ancient counter, and the holes in the floor bathroom added more color to the hole in the wall on the Japanese 5th avenue joint. 

Then we walked over to Hie shrine to see the many little fox charms adorning it. 

The last stop for the day was Shubia Scramble Crossing. Very very cool. We went upstairs to the L’occitane Café to watch the crowds cross the giant crossing all at the same time. 

It’s a pretty pink-cheeked peach time – the enormous fruits are sold for $3.50+ in many places and, like many other fruits and vegetables, are venerably wrapped and packaged with much love and attention. 

Over at L’occitane, they were selling them with two pink halves skinned with custard innards seated on top of the mound of whipped cream spread over a waffle. 

In the evening, we wandered around our hotel looking for an izakaya big enough to fit all of us. Finally found one and had a blast with their magical creations. This is my favorite Japanese food.