I’ve been back from Tokyo since Sunday evening, but have been working busy little bee since then and haven’t had much of a chance to take a break to think about what I actually did whilst in Tokyo. Here is a quicky recap.
First of all, we arrived and I kept saying “I think it is the start of cherry blossom season” to which I was told NO. Turns out that the person telling me no was the one that was wrong (cough, Scotchie). We actually arrived on the very first day of cherry blossoms! What great luck!
Since I had about 10 hours to prepare for my trip, I had zero agenda. Not exactly the way I had imagined my first visit to Tokyo to be like, but probably good because there was no way I could overplan.
Some quickie highlights of the short week include:
- Arriving and heading to sushi right away – yum!
- Teppanyaki and great sake – my uni (sea urchin) rice with a quail egg was divine
- Chris doing “I’m a Pony” at some dirty expat bar
- Katsu at the supposed best place for katsu – note, doesn’t do much good to have photos on the menu with katsu because, erm, it all looks the same but has different prices (not much you can do to dress up deep fried meat)
- Kiddy Land! My most favourite place of all time. 5 floors of pure Japanese fun and toys. Herro Kitty! I went a little bit insane in this place.
- Dinner with Shin and Richard at the yakitori joint – chicken everything including chicken embryo before it formed a shell – sounds disgusting but was amazing!
- Karaoke in hostess bar with the boys – Chris does a mean Coldplay
- Waking up at 5 am with jetlag and heading to the fish market – it is difficult to navigate the fish market when you are on half a sleeping pill and there are little motorised fish men driving around that will kill you
- Eating uni at 7 am – heaven!
- Wandering around the moat on a beautiful day to admire the cherry blossoms – beautiful
- Hitting Akihabara for electronics galore and checking out electric toilet seats
- Heading up to Ginza to the flagship Mikimoto store where I purchased a new black pearl pendant to commemorate my trip to Tokyo
- Dinner with Hiro at a traditional restaurant where we consumed fugu (deadly pufferfish), horse sashimi and seasonal mountain vegetable tempura – all of which were delicious
- Drinking many many of the best Moscow Mules with fresh ginger whilst debating what to name race horses
- More shopping at Tokyo Hands
- Japanese breakfast…yipee!
- Getting upgraded to business class – Both ways! 🙂
