NOV - JAPAN

Travel Day - Thursday

Well after a frantic and short week at work, Mark and I finally did the best handover we could, completed our final pack and put everything in order (that we could) around the house. We had an excited but fitful sleep and then woke at 5.45am to leave in time for the airport. We got on the Melbourne-Sydney flight without worries, but our 10.30am flight out of Sydney was originally delayed until 11.30am and then didn’t depart until 12.50pm!

Eventually at 11pm Melbourne time (9pm in Tokyo) we arrived at the airport, to get our bags in the space of 3 mins, Unheard of efficiency!! However, we’d just missed the bus to Akasaka and so had to wait another 50-mins – bugger.

That trip took 2 hours to get to our serviced apartment as we were a 5 mins taxi ride from the last stop. By the time we arrived at the apartment, we’d been up and traveling for 22 hours! Boy was I tired – I was struggling to keep my eyes open on the bus ride to see Tokyo by night!

One good thing for the day was that the Sydney to Tokyo flight was virtually 70% empty so I had 4 seats to myself! I watched 3 movies and several American & British TV shows which are only on cable at home so that was great!

Our apartment building with our room being third from the top on the left

Day 1 Tokyo - Friday

After a reasonable night’s sleep, Mark was first to try to figure out the shower. It worked eventually and I must say we both loved the heated toilet seat – although still have no idea what most of the buttons are for! Some have music symbols on them (in restaurants or shopping centres) but no noise as yet. Will keep you posted on my success!

We set out first of all to explore the area (Akasaka), get a few basics from the local supermarket and have a quick breakfast in the lobby. At 10am with a vague plan to explore Akasaka, Roppongi and several art galleries and shops in the area. We walked for 5 hrs and saw the Tokyo City View 52^nd floor (Observation Tower) which is similar in concept to Rialto and the Mori Art Museum on 53^rd floor (1500 Yen each). We spent about 2.5hrs there was were most impressed to have caught the Future Beats in Contemporary Arts in Japan show which only happens every 3 yrs. There was some really amazing avant garde art. Unfortunately we couldn’t photograph anything, although we did manage to do one of this metal view of the city. All of the pieces are actually scrap picked up by the artist and many of them are machinery tools which have been fashioned into parts of the cityscape. There was everything from painting, sculpture, porcelain, video installations, very abstract images and craft work on display.

About 1/100th of Tokyo

We traveled the streets of Roppongi Hills and Azabu before finding a place I’d be comfortable with. We’d been told by others to look out for places that have pictures of the food with plastic food, but couldn’t find any. We took a risk because our tummies were seriously grumbling by now and walked into a 2 level place. It was full downstairs so we went upstairs but walked into the main area before realizing we should have taken our shoes off! Oops, off to a good start. Then we realized this is a very ‘local’ place and there was no printed menu, only tokens on the wall in Japanese characters and the waitress didn’t speak much English. To top it off, we’d left the travel guide which had the phrases, including menu items at the apartment! We muddled through and I had friend chicken with rice, whilst Mark had grilled salmon. Both came with tea, miso soup, some pickled veggies and rice. All for 1400 Yen which seemed very reasonable.

Lunch venue no. one


After lunch, we continued through to the ‘famous’ Roppongi Complex which is a 5-storey arts collective area but unfortunately all areas bar 2 were locked or changing their exhibitions. Through the backstreets, we found a design collective (T & G Arts, Link @ Tokyo (www.link-design.org) which had some great pieces, including a very substantial tatami table which folded up into a sideboard (a fantastic space saving device).

Eventually we made our way back to the apartment after walking through Akasaka Park and seeing a stone carved sculpture exhibition and playing table tennis (extremely badly) on a beautiful stone/ marble table. Exhausted we crashed out watching a very old, B-grade movie with Kim Basinger and Val Kilmer and then sorted out where we might go for dinner.

We went for a walk before dinner and ended up at a little basement jazz bar (old record covers on the wall such as Thelonius Monk, Art Barkly etc) and had a couple of beers.

We then ended up at a noodle bar where we had a noodle soup each (miso and soy sauce base) and a plate of gyoza for $20.00 total. Very tasty and good value. For an extra $5.50 we could have had a long neck of beer, excellent value.

A big thumbs up for day one.

Day 2 – Saturday

Today we thought we’d be clever and take our time in the morning as we discovered that most shops, museums or activities don’t commence before 11am. Therefore, we left at 10.30am and thought we’d attempt the Japanese metro system. First of all, we had to figure out how to buy a PassNet Ticket which is a multiple trip ticket for 1000 Yen. We tried at our train station (Asakasa) but in the first instance we bought a 160 Yen single trip ticket and the second time around we bought a Pasmo ticket for me, which is a rechargeable one that residents use. Whilst we bought it for 1000 Yen , it only has 500 Yen value as the card costs 500! Finally we bought the right one for Mark. I then managed to stick the Pasmo plastic card into the slot meant for paper PassNet and single trip cards. Luckily there was a station attendant (who giggled at us) but managed to fish out the Pasmo virtually unscathed. You swipe a Pasmo, in case you hadn’t figured it out by now.

Finally we got on the train (every 4 mins on a Saturday), which is very efficient and quite clean, we ended up at Shibuya station, which is the famous crazy street crossing everyone sees on travel shows about Tokyo. We thought actually for 11.15am on a Saturday that it was quite manageable, not nearly as chaotic as expected. Then we just wandered through the Shibuya 109 building (which has 2 parts about 100m away from each other). One of the buildings has 9 floors of fashion for 15 – 19yr old girls. The style at the moment is very short denim shorts with opaque or sheer stockings, knee high boots and knitted or fabric soft hat. You can add in some colour at times, although they prefer black, an expensive and large handbag and very rarely your boyfriend. We only saw 2 or 3 boyfriends trawling after their girlfriends (assumption of relationship). Lots of it was garish but some of it was really nice. Then we had a very expensive coffee (me) and dry ginger ale (Mark) at Segafredo coffee shop on the street and watched the world go by for about 40-mins, passing judgment on all the Japanese fashion. It’s extremely rare to see tables on the street so quite a novelty. For those of you who’ve traveled to Europe, you can appreciate that the coffee cost nearly $4 AUD, whereas most others are at least $1-2 cheaper.

We walked for ages up one particular street to try to find Spiral Records (www.spiral.co.jp) which Mark had read about in the Wallpaper guide to Tokyo. Naturally distances look a lot closer on the page. After about a 40-mins walk, we found it and bought some Japanese Dub just for fun and then discovered the trendy furniture / homewares store on the next floor and then onto the Spiral Market, which is actually a very upmarket design and craft shop. We found ourselves a nice present each.

After a few hours and a nothing lunch, we attempted to circumnavigate the Metro so we didn’t need to use the JR line which we hadn’t paid for. By only going 4 stops backwards, changing lines and then 4 stops back towards the right direction – we found Ebisu which is about 2 suburbs south of Shibuya. There, again we walked around but this seemed to be more of a ‘locals only’ area which was good. Wandering the backstreets, we found ‘We Nod Records’ (www.wenod.com) one floor up in a residential street. It was about the same size as our apartment lounge room (3m x 3m), crammed full of mix CD’s, international and Japanese vinyl, some creative t-shirts and stickers. We found a good CD by ‘Count Bass D’.

How are you meant to know this is the entrance to the record store?

We’re now listening to both CD’s which have a nice chill out sound (much needed as my lower back is killing from nearly 6hrs walking).

We went back to Ebisu for dinner last night and found a cool place next door to Passover sneaker store, yes Mum there obviously are Jews in Tokyo! We went up for a drink but it turned out to be a 4 floor restaurant which we ended up on the 4^th floor in a very squeazy place. We were lucky enough to have a slightly English and Japanese menu, the reason I say slightly is that there might be a 1-word description and for example, one of the things was described as ‘ysm’ which we assumed must be yam. I ordered a Red Eye off the cocktail menu and was most unimpressed to find out it was beer and tomato juice! Yuck, I managed to drink about two-thirds of it before ordering a Gin & Tonic instead. It seemed to be more of a food place, than a stop for a drink and by the sounds of appreciation from the trendy patrons on either side, we thought we’d better join in. We ordered a mix of Yakitori (skewers) in chicken, mince balls, ysm and gingko nuts. Mark also tried sea urchin with rice.

Then we went out into the night to check out some possible dessert and instead found ‘Guapos’ a cool Spanish inspired bar which, although painted mid-orange, really reminded us on Melbourne. It was absolutely tiny but had managed to cram in about 20 people at one point. They featured about 4 different Spanish red wines by the glass (between 500 – 800 Yen each) and gave an appetizer of sardines which wasn’t really necessary for us as we’d just had dinner. There was really cool music and an excellent vibe, a great young bartender and their menu was in Japanese and Spanish. I ordered in Spanish which was fun but I’m not sure the bartender or waitress really understood. We saw chocolate postre on the menu (which if memory serves is pastry). We assumed it wasn’t going to be churros which are Mark’s favourite but we were extremely pleased to find out that it was 4 sugar cube sized pieces of premium chocolate ganache in a small sherry glass. You ate it with a toothpick. Absolutely melt in your mouth gorgeous.

We took the train home and went off to bed