Tsukiji to Ochanomizu
We managed to wake up nice and early and were out of the hotel shortly after 7am. We had some trouble finding the Metro station, since it was our first time off the Japan Rail system, but soon we were sharing a carriage with yawning and drowsy looking locals.
Tsukiji fish market was buzzing though. We wandered around looking at various tasty and/or slimy looking things. We were probably too late to see whole tuna being auctioned, but we did see enormous 7,000 yen slabs of tuna on sale.
The guide book told us that the tradition is to round off a trip to the market with a sushi breakfast, so we dropped into the first sushi bar we saw in the outer market, where we feasted.
We walked up to Ginza, sort of the Tokyo equivalent of London’s West End — not the theatre aspect, but the shmancy department store aspect. Our early start worked against us. Nowhere was open so we killed time with an extremely leisurely coffee. On the way we saw the first of many Ghibli shops, and an almost life size Totoro.
The Itoya stationery stop was open by now, so we took the lift to the 8th floor, and worked our way down. We found plenty of novelties, but I can’t think what they were now — stationery is just stationery, really.
Matsuya department store was like going to Harrods. Debbie was convinced that the cosmetics counters would have nothing for Western skin, and I was happy to accept that. The goods on sale were too classy for the likes of us, but we spent some pleasant time in the food hall downstairs, admiring the beautifully presented bento boxes and patisserie.
The next stop was far more entertaining: Hakuhinkan Toy Park; 5 floors of toys and games. The hot toy from Sega at the moment appears to be a miniature player piano, with real 4mm wide moving keys, and tunes you buy on SD cards.
On the top floor were games you played by swiping collectable cards: the Japanese game companies are very good at finding ways to sell collectable cards.
There was a truly tempting array of Tonari no Totoro and Animal Crossing plush toys (including a pull-along wooden catbus), and we found ourselves worrying about luggage space and finance.
We struck out North, still on foot, in search of the Godzilla statue shown on the map. In doing so, we passed the Sony tower, where we felt obliged to pop in and gawp at headphones and TVs and cameras. I tried a lovely pair of headphones, surprising myself with how much better they could sound and how much more comfortable they could be than what I’m used to. They turned out to be worth around £125, which might explain it.
Godzilla was about 2 feet tall. I think I was expecting this (maybe I read it somewhere), but Debbie was truly expecting something the size of the Statue of Liberty. When I first pointed out the statue, she didn’t even see it.
Despite the sushi feast, we were hungry again. We pondered a little, then decided we were too hungry to be choosy, and persuaded ourselves that a burger was OK as long as it wasn’t a Western chain we’d heard of. We stepped into “Freshness Burger” but were distracted by a lift door. The lift took us to the fourth floor, where a non-burger restaurant served Debbie teriyaku chicken and me tonkatsu pork, both beautifuly presented with rice, miso soup and pickles, ready in a trice, and cheaper than the burgers would have been.
The Imperial Palace lay approximately between us and our hotel, so we followed the moat along to the entrance, paused to see the Niju-bashi bridge (just a bridge, really), and strolled through the part of the Imperial Palace Gardens that’s open to the public. It was nice to have a break from the noise and the high rise buildings on all sides.
Making a beeline towards the hotel, we passed through a fairly dead area of uninteresting buildings, before stumbling on the sporting goods area — we knew we’d found it when we saw two golf shops in quick succession. We didn’t pause there, and as we moved North it became the musical instrument district.
We looked in a couple of guitar shops, just out of interest. There was little in the way of bargains - but many nice looking instruments at daunting prices. If Debbie played, we might have been tempted to buy her a pink Hello Kitty guitar - but think of the trouble carting it home.
Between there and the hotel, we found a vibrant area around Ochanomizu station, that didn’t seem to mentioned in any of the guidebooks. It was close to the hotel and had many restaurants, so we decided to come back later on for dinner.
We must have walked at least five miles, and having had an early start, I napped when we got back to the hotel.
For dinner we returned to the Ochanomizu station area, and looked around. Some people were enthusiastically drumming up business for their restaurant, and we felt they deserved the reward of our custom. It was an Italian restaurant. There are loads of Italian restaurants in Tokyo — apparently
many Italians remained in the country after the war — so we didn’t feel we were betraying any quest for authenticity by eating here (and so what if we did, anyway?).
There was a distinctly Japanese touch to things — our side salad was served with chopsticks, and there was a strong fish element to the menu. Debbie had crab meat and asparagus pizza, and I had shrimp and “Welsh onion” pizza. Welsh onion is spring onion…
On the way home, we bought beer at a 7-11, to fuel my writing.