Tokyo Day 1 - Harajuku & Aoyama

The bed in our rental is soooo nice.  It is the perfect "not hard" feeling which seems to not be the norm here is Asia.  We both slept very well which isn't too good since i wanted to get an early start.  Our apartment is just 2 blocks away from the famous Tsukiji Fish Market which is featured in many YouTube videos and blog reviews as some of the best food you can get in Tokyo.  

So, the plan is to head there each morning and eat breakfast there eating something different each day.  The first day we got to the market just before 9:30 AM.  As we turned into the street it did not look too crowded.

Check out the seafood vending machine....I love it!  And, this shrimp has got to be one of the biggest I have ever seen. We did not order one, but I keep thinking about it since we past it up.  What do you think?  Would have it been worth the ¥3,500 => $25 USD for one of them?  Maybe.

Now this is something I did buy and sink my teeth into.  I don't know what it is officially called, but it is tofu skin stuffed with rice and topped with fresh salmon and salmon eggs.  It was one of the best things I have eaten in a while...so good!

Next, Tim and I shared a crab cream croquette (left below) that tasted really good...and for only ¥200 => $1.43, I couldn't imagine anything better.  Finally, the main dish we shared for breakfast was the Tuna Cheek Rice Bowl. This food stand only sells 20 of these bowls per day, and we were lucky enough to snag one.  If you like seafood and have never had the cheek meat of a fish, then you are missing out.  This bowl of moist Tuna Cheek was so good.  It was seasoned with some black pepper and was so delicious.  

Well...that was enough of the Tsukiji Fish Market for the first day.  Tomorrow we will have to get there earlier to get some of the more popular items since by the time we got there, the lines were super long.

​We then walked the 2 blocks to the train station and headed to Harajuku, an area of Tokyo a 30 minute train ride west of here.  First stop of the day is Meiji Jingu Shrine...and here is the entrance gate to the temple.  

Once we entered the gate, it was still quite a walk to the actual temple.  As we were walking to the temple, there was an entrance to a garden...why not...especially since the garden is known for it irises and it just happens to be iris season.  We paid the ¥500 => $3.60 USD each and entered the garden.  It was really beautiful with a spring filled lake covered with water lilies and a picturesque house built in the lat 1800s with incredible landscaping that overlooks the lake.

Finally, we came upon the irises.  This area was originally training rice paddies fields for the samurai children to learn the importance and hardships of rice cultivation, but was turned into Iris fields in the late 1800s.  I didn't realize that irises liked grow in water...quite interesting and oh so beautiful.

We past the irises and followed the suggested path which lead to a line.  We have learned that if there is a line, then get in it since there is usually something good at the end of it

In this case, it was a fresh water well.  We patiently waited in line with everyone else, and when we got to the front we did what everyone else did which was to rinse our hands in the well.  Legend has it that this well was built by a famous samurai, Kiyomasa Kato.

After the well, we exited the garden and finally arrived at the actual temple.  Here we are outside the gate.

And inside the gate was a scene of symmetry and peacefulness.

There was a bonsai exhibit on display around the courtyard of the temple.  Here are some of the highlights which were very, very old.  The tree below left is 200 years old!  The next one is only 90 years old, but we liked the way it looked.  Would you believe that the next tree is 500 years old, and the flowering one is 200 year old.  How amazing are these plants that really are works of art.

There was a shop on the ground where you can buy offerings.  It seems that one of the popular offerings is to my this wooden plaque and write a wish or blessing or thanks on it and then hang it up.  There were plaques written in all languages of the world.

We were ready to head out of the temple and continue on our walking tour, but one more look back to the grounds before exiting.

Outside the gate of the temple was a display of wine barrels on one side of the path and sake container on the other.  It seems that world renowned wine producers from France and world renowned sake makers form Japan donated barrels / containers for consecration to the temple.  

We backtracked out of the temple grounds, past the train station, and arrived in a very lively shopping district.  There was an IKEA with a sign offering ¥50 => $0.36 USD ice cream cones which we couldn't pass up and Tim also had a cinnamon roll that he can't stop talking about.  A couple of blocks more and then a right took us to Takeshita Street, a pedestrian-only pretty much catering to teenagers.

Check out the gate that shows you entering it.  That is Tim and I under the letters "ash"...kind of cool.

This street was filled with lots of color, cutesy stuff, and of course teenagers.  They seem to really like these capsule vending machines that pop out small toys in round plastic capsules.  They cost anywhere from ¥100 - 500 => $0.72 - 3.57 UDS.

Street venders even take advantage of plastic food models of their menu.

We made it to the end of the street and the area opened back up into a large shopping district.  We saw a mall with an elevator going up what looked like a fun house with mirrors, so we took the ride and and back down just for fun.

As we walked and followed the self-guided walking tour, we noticed a conveyer-belt sushi restaurant.  Why not...we can use a snack.

How this works is that you take anything off the conveyer-belt as it passes you.  The price is determined by the color plate it is on.  As seen below, the prices vary from a green plate for ¥150 => $1.07 up to a black plate for ¥540 =>$3.86.

Wow....our snack turned into a large pile of plates.  Grand total ¥3,674 => $26.24 USD.  Not a bad price for all that sushi.

We left the restaurant and finished up the walking tour of the shopping district.  I like this building.

We then headed into the closest train station to take a train to Shibuya and emerged just a few minutes later into Shibuya Crossing.  This is the famous street crossing that during its busy times, 1,000 - 2,500 cross at a single time.  We watch a few crossings from the sidelines and then joined in.

I found information online that said the you can get a free birds eye view of the crossing if you go up to the 14th floor of "Shibuya Scramble Square" building. This is the same budding that you can pay to go up to the 45th floor, but this free view is super cool.  The crossing was pretty busy, but it was a weekday just before 3:30 PM, so it was far from how busy it can be.

By the way...I doubled the speed of the video so it only lasts 30 seconds. The pedestrians have just about 1 minute to make the crossing.  Click here if your browser isn't showing the video below.

Shibuya was another fun area to walk around and just look at people and colors and lights.

After all that walking we took break at a craft beer bar and had a couple of cans that we nursed for about 1 hour. It was about 6 PM so we decided to head back to our neighborhood and find a place to eat and have a beer before calling it a night.  About 1 hour later we arrived at an Izakaya, a Japanese pub that sells food.

We ordered a couple of beers, and through google translate was able to decipher the menu.  I ordered a Tofu dish (left) and Grilled Mackerel.  Both was really good.  Tim ordered something that translated as "Chicken fillet and Zhao sai sauce" that wasn't how it sounded and he didn't like it.  Luckily we were served some kind of miso soup with chicken in it that he ate both bowls of.  

Around 8:30 PM we headed home.  It was only a 5 minute walk to the apartment where we passed other Izakaya places that we will try in the next few days.

Back at the apartment we didn't do much since we were both pretty exhausted.  There was no way I would be able to blog, so I didn't even try.  We both went to sleep around 10 PM.

Tomorrow we plan on getting to the fish market early to beat some of the lines.  Until then...