food in japan, day one

Ok, so I figure I should work on my actual Tokyo post, rather than the last one where I just rambled about the trip. Realistically I spent two full days there, with the third partial day reserved for packing and going to the airport.

So first things first: food, day one.

Of course, food would be my first topic. I think Japanese cuisine was definitely something I was looking forward to as I was planning my trip, because only crazy people don’t like Japanese food. To be honest though, I’ve been dealing with some GI issues, so I found my appetite really limited during my trip. My last night there we went all out on a pricey, four-course sashimi meal, and I was dealing with stomach pains all night… just ask T&M, who witnessed me writhing around on the futon for a couple hours. Haha.. so sad.

I don’t have pictures of all our meals. My first meal in Tokyo, believe it or not, was authentic Thai food at 2am. It means it was spicy as heck, and I was way too tired to take any pictures.

My first Japanese meal was the next morning, when T & I had brunch at a sushi boat place down the street. Yes, I can’t really complain about fresh fish the first thing in the morning. I think we grabbed mostly salmon (my favorite), with some different things, like a scallop roll! We also tried delicious steamed egg… Yummy.

It was pretty standard: you sit down and just grab whatever passes by on the conveyor belt, and they end up billing you based on the number and color plates you have. We spent about USD$9 each, which is something I’m not complaining for an entire sushi meal.

Oh, what was also cool is that you self-service your own tea. Darn me for being too shy to take more pictures (there was a young teen couple that kept eyeing us and making me feel self-conscious, but that’s probably b/c we were speaking English), but you make your own matcha green tea with the powder and hot water dispensers at the bar! So delish.. and I love tea first thing in the morning (possibly more than I love my French pressed coffee in the morning ; ).

Later that afternoon, we went to get takoyaki in the Shinjuku station (Tokyo’s busiest and possibly most confusing). I’d never heard of takoyaki, which is fried octopus balls until we were standing in line for them there. Apparently this place is popular, judging by the long lines for it. For about 8 takoyaki, it cost roughly USD$6. It initially starts as a batter poured onto these hot plates with oil, and the chefs meticulously prod and spin them until they’re perfectly rounded balls. It was a fascinating process, but I felt so bad for the chefs… I don’t know if you can tell, but they had hot oil burns all over their hands from the jumping oil. It makes me wonder why they don’t wear gloves or something.

I’m personally not the biggest fan of octopus, and these were still pipin’ hot when they came out, so I had to eat it pretty slowly. I think we got ours topped with sauce and fish flakes. Overall pretty tasty, but I wish we had some Asian mayonnaise to go with it (all of those that know Asian mayonnaise, it’s amazing, right??)

Next stop, crepes in the Harajuku district. These are pretty much like the ones from Sophie’s in Japantown, if you’re familiar with that place. How can you say no to a cone-shaped crepe filled with nutella, strawberries, and whipped cream? These were around USD$5-6 each depending on what you got inside, but T & I literally had 1.5 crepes each that night: we shared the first one, then later each got our own. What. fatties.

These are really hard to mess up, but I was a little disappointed that both crepes that I tried were mostly full of whipped cream. Yes, I love whipped cream as much as the next dessert lover, but it was seriously like.. only that for a few bites, and not even any strawberries or nutella. Kinda sad. Regardless, we tried it from two different crepe places and they were both like that, so maybe the Japanese just really like their cream.

For dinner, we hopped onto the subway to Shibuya specifically for me to try ramen at Ichiran. Unfortunately, this location closed the day before for remodeling, so we went to another location back in Shinjuku. I think this was the meal I enjoyed the most. Definitely very… unique to Japan. The premise of Ichiran is that it’s kind of an underground ramen restaurant (meaning you have to go downstairs to enter it). When you first walk in, there are vending machines that give you the option of ordering from it. So in goes your money, and you choose what you want. I got an original ramen, extra chashu (pork), a hardboiled egg, and extra ginger. (I went a little overboard and probably spent a little under USD$15 for it all, which wasn’t bad at all.) The machine then spits out receipts of the things you paid for, and you take it with you inside.

The second thing about Ichiran is that it’s organized into anonymous booths. Trevor explained that it’s like that so you aren’t distracted by other people, the waiters, or kitchen, so that you can focus on how delicious your ramen is. And this was true. We sat in adjacent booths, but there was a panel between us, and the front of our booth (which was where the waiter/kitchen were) was covered by screen. We left the receipts out for them, but never saw more than hands taking them in and then sliding our ramen into our respective booths. What was also cool was that you get to fill out a form to customize the chewiness of the ramen, the fat content of the soup, the amount of ginger, etc. Definitely amazing.

I heard they will have one in NY, but it’s more of a secret society, meaning you have to have membership. Darn, it’d be otherwise perfect for my trip next month (;

Ok, the next day of food will come when I’m not lazy, but then again, I just really wanted to post about the ramen. Haha..

lovers in japan

{the coldplay song, not that i had a lover in japan. just to clarify}

It’s one of my favorite Coldplay songs, so it was quite the coincidence that they played it when I stopped by the Starbucks in Shinjuku to read (it was also my one and only Starbucks visit the entire trip).

So upon S’s request I’m finally going to do a whirlwind post of my whirlwind time in Tokyo. I actually forgot about it, but I’m glad she keeps insisting on it cuz it’s pretty noteworthy that I finally visited. This is because after studying abroad in Beijing, a couple of my friends were planning to go. I was too, but my standards for prices got reallyy low since everything in China was so cheap.. and I wasn’t willing to shell out around $500 to include the trip to Japan. In retrospect–meaning once I saw their pictures–I regretted it. I think part of it was also traveling non-stop with two friends for two weeks after our program in China… was taxing, and I didn’t know how much more I could do it. During that time I think I really realized how it is by God’s grace that imperfect people can stand each other and not hate each other after spending so much time together. Seriously. Marriage & long-term relationships are a wonderment to me.

Ok, wow, that was a tangent. (See what I mean about lightning thoughts?)

I decided to finally take the trip to Tokyo since I was going to be on that side of the world anyway to visit my grandparents, and currently I have a few friends in Japan. T & M are studying abroad in Tokyo for the year, and so they graciously offered me the futon in the living room for the weekend. JK, who is one of my dearest friends from my time in Beijing, is teaching English in a more rural part of northern Japan for two years. While he was planning to come to Tokyo to see me, schedules conflicted… so next time it is. (I have to add that in our exchange of emails, he explained his part of Japan as really nature-y, and knew that I probably wouldn’t be interested in that. How my friends know me <3)

So after my six days in HK, I took off to Tokyo via Seoul.I should mention that I had breakfast shortly before I left for the HK airport and got food poisoning. I spent my time waiting for my flight in absolute pain, wondering if I could even leave HK–and ended up throwing up 10 minutes before boarding the plane. Ok, gross, but it was amazing that I was fine after a nap on the plane, only to wake up to the best airplane economy food ever–bibimbap, but not being able to eat it cuz I was still a little nauseous. I was sooo sad.

{no pictures here because I was fighting unconsciousness most of the time}

Tokyo as an experience was a little underwhelming at times. Or maybe it’s just because 2-3 days to experience an entire country/culture is not nearly enough. I think I imagined it to look like old traditional Japan (e.g. what I’ve seen in the movies, like Memoirs of a Geisha or The Last Samurai), but I heard that you have to go to Kyoto for that. For the most part, Tokyo was very sleek, streamlined, modern, and clean. And expensive! (Tip if you ever go: exchange more money than you think you need. The rumors are true!)

More specifics to come next! Consider this my prologue.