Day 10 -- A Successful Visit to the Right Peacock

I successfully visited the right Peacock today.

This, being the smaller and closer Peacock, is not it;
I just forgot to take a pic of the other store

But I finally found it after failing to find Lawson 100 (like a dollar store, but with groceries, produce and meat, etc) on my phone's google map, even though I was able to use the same address and locate the store on google maps on my laptop a little while earlier. This, despite having deleted the "United States of America" that Outlook automatically appended to the address.

Just reading Serious Eats's review of fried dumpling holes-in-the-wall places in Chinatown, NYC and seriously wishing Tokyo had a similar website. How can you read about and look at pictures of fried dumplings at 4 or 5 for a dollar and not wish you lived close to a cheap dumpling joint? And not wished you, too, could pay just a buck for cheap eats. Despite Koko's reservations about the freshness of the food, maybe it's time to visit a 100-yen shop and see what Tokyo has to offer by way of good, cheap eats--if I can only find the damned place.

Day 9 – Getting My Gaijin Card + Attempt to Go to to the Supermarket Alone

Today I went with Koko to get my gaijin (foreigner) card. Well, it's really called the Alien Registration Card. It's required of anyone staying in Japan for 90 days or longer. I don't need it just yet, since I only have a tourist visa status right now, but one English school mentioned on its website that job applicants need it to apply for a work visa.

Koko had already applied for his when he got here, so he was just exchanging his temporary one for the permanent one.

We took a quick train ride to Minato City Hall, which was very pretty and modern. See?

Minato City Hall

Some pretty trees and sculptures
to the right of the building

City hall was surprisingly empty. We had to take a number from the help desk for foreigners (where the staff could speak English), but Koko's was called almost as soon as we sat down from the number machine.

As I waited for him, I took the required passport-sized photos in the little photo booth near the row of counters/help desks. Unlike what's portrayed in Amelie, the photo booth wasn't disgusting or sketchy. It was actually very well lit and clean (how Japanese!). And the touchscreen menu was available in English, Chinese, and some other languages, I'm sure.

Afterward, I walked around to check out the neighborhood. This is in the park across Minato City Hall.

A small pagoda-like structure

Someone translate for me, please?

Sanmon, the main gate of the Zojo-ji Temple,
built in 1605 in the Chinese Tang Dynasty style

Entering the main gates...dun dun dun!

And there's the Great Main Temple itself

One of the images of a Buddha on these grounds

I always feel a little weird visiting the places of worship of other religions--like I don't belong because I'm not there to pray and I always feel the urge to take pictures (which some places frown upon). But I didn't feel as weird here, maybe because it's a Buddhist temple, albeit a different sect than mine.

 
The temple with Tokyo Tower behind it

Tokyo Tower is a communications tower modeled after the Eiffel Tower. It has not one but two observatory decks. I need to visit one of these days. From the decks, apparently, you can see Mt. Fuji.

Tree planted by the senior Bush during his
visit as then-VP to Japan in 1982

Tree planted by Ulysses S. Grant in 18xx

Maybe the senior Bush wanted to plant the tree after he saw the size of Grant's tree.

I'm not sure what this is...

...but it seems kind of peaceful, like those Zen sand
gardens corporate people keep at their desks

I call this sculpture
"Mushroom with a Hole in It"

One of many such buildings...maybe priests' lodgings?

Some other shrine
(Where's a tour guide when you need one?)

It seemed so far away...

There aren't as many steps as at oh, the Philadelphia Art Museum (which "Rocky" made famous), but their unevenness made me walk about as fast as the obaasans and ojiisans near me.

Despite what you might think, it's not a BBQ grill

Inside the temple

That's a lot of incense smoke; I'm glad I'm not
an asthmatic practitioner at this temple

And this is the temple near my apartment

Around 5:30 PM, I tried to go to the supermarket by myself today and got lost. Well, not really. There are two Peacock supermarkets near us, one smaller than the other, but they're one short block from one another.

I used google maps on my phone to try to locate the bigger one, and it told me to go to Peacock in Azabu-juban. Hm, I thought. I don't think that neighborhood is Azabu-juban, but who am I--the directionally challenged--to question google mapping genius? It also said 7 minute walk from the train station near me (Shirokane-takanawa), so I thought, This has to be the one we go to. (This is where you look them up on a map and laugh at my directionally-challengedness.)


I followed the map's guidance through small streets and what looked like back alleys but were really small streets, made detours as there was obviously no road where the map had thought there was a road. I was definitely not going to the location I thought I was going to, but what could I do? I didn't know how to get to the other one.

I was hungry and still had a ways to go, so I stopped by a yakitori stand and got myself a tebasaki (grilled chicken wing). It was about $1 and tiny (just the wingette, without the tip, was about the width of two of my fingers, including two bones!), but I thought it would suffice since I was going to buy food anyway. In retrospect, I should have gotten chicken meatballs or something without bones since everything was the same price. But I got to practice my one new Japanese word: tebasaki.

Forty minutes after I left home, I arrived at the supermarket. I used the google translator app to help me ask a store clerk where the coconut milk was. ("Sumimasen, kokonatsumiruku doko desu ka?")

Another 40 or so minutes later, around 6:45 PM, I got home. We didn't eat until almost 8:30 PM and I was starving. Damn you, Google Maps!

Day 8 – Shopping in Shibuya and Ginza

Koko wanted to get cufflinks for this one shirt that has French cuffs, so off to Shibuya we went. Shibuya and Ginza are enormous shopping districts, but the former (as we found out) seems to have more casual clothes. The latter is similar to NYC’s Fifth Avenue (upscale, more expensive, etc), so we figured they'd sell things like cufflinks.

Right out of the subway,
looking at the masses in Shibuya

Love that it's a giant bubble tea
cup--with a straw!

It is a "lifestyle store" indeed--it's so Japanese
with the cartoons!

All kinds of bento boxes

More interesting to look at when
you're going up/down the stairs

This was between two other levels

Lumine Est (dept store) is integrated with the train
station, so you can start shopping as soon as
you arrive in Shinjuku

Starbucks' seasonal offering:
Sakura (cherry blossom-flavored) lattes

This explains why Japanese men have
nicer skin than I do

Kimonos, next to the lingerie section, for sale at $200+

Kimonos are mostly worn for ceremonial purposes these days, but the really traditional women wear it every day. No easy task, if preparing it is anything like what's depicted in "Memoirs of a Geisha" (the book; I didn't see the movie).

Flintstones architecture in Ginza

85°C may be a bakery in Taiwan, but in Tokyo,
4°C is a bridal boutique

"Shop here for the sexy androgynous look"


Lots of lights in Ginza

Looking at these signs makes me wonder...does this only work because Japanese writing can easily be read vertically? Could horizontal signage have the same effect?

The entire facade of the building was a TV screen.
The Chanel logo just happened to float up when
I took this pic

These donut "logs" were about 2.5-3' wide

Cross-sections of the donut log.
Price tag: $33.75

Available in sakura flavor, of course

After about 4-5 hours, he finally found a pair of cufflinks that he liked. No picture, because it's still in the bag, with a sticker taped over the closure.

Stepping away from the shopping in search of food
in Shinbashi

We tried to go to the izakaya that Koko had been to with his colleagues because it was good and cheap, but we couldn't find it. Izakayas are like bar and grill joints in the States, but food is served in tapas portions (maybe a little bigger) for sharing.

At left: Cafe Tobacco, which Japan Times
describes as "an oasis for smokers"

Japan is supposedly becoming more and more smoke-free (like the no-smoking policy at restaurants during lunchtime). It would have been nicer for us non-smokers to be able to have dinner without choking on bad air, though. Where's my oasis??

A larger-than-life size sculpture above a bar

We walked into this small, hole-in-the-wall izakaya which I know now (from looking at the business card) is called Matoi Goma.

The restaurant had about 2.5 more of these tables

An app you can eat: yam noodles with fish roe with a
side of cold barley tea for me, a draft biru for him

The sampler yakitori: tebasaki (chicken wing tips);
chicken with lots of cartilage (not my fave); chicken gizzard;
chicken skin; and momo (chicken thigh)

Later, I showed this pic to our server to tell him which of the five skewers we wanted more of. I think now Koko appreciates my obsession with taking food pictures before eating. =D

In reading the menu, I tried using Google’s translator app to translate “tsukune," but it kept telling me that it meant “tsukune” in English. (I had to look up an online menu of another izakaya--in New York, no less--to find that it means "chicken meatballs.")

Tofu, egg, onion, seaweed, and pork belly

Potato croquette--with peas, carrots and corn--
like samosas, only w/o curry and with panko crumbs

Age-dashi tofu (deep fried, with bonito flakes
and raw onions)

Good food. Service was slow, which would have been fine if we were just hanging out and weren’t so hungry. Pricey, though. For nine tiny skewers, an onion/tofu dish of about 1.5 rice bowls’ portion, two potato croquettes, three cubes of age-dashi tofu, and drinks (3 beers for Koko and one tea for me), our bill came out to 4800 yen (~$57), and this is supposed to be one of the cheaper options when dining out in Japan.

I wish there were Yelp for Japan. There's bento.com and sunnypages.jp, but there aren't that many reviews, and most of the restaurants listed/reviewed are still pretty expensive.

Day 7 - Exploring Shirokane and vicinity + On My Own in Azabu-juban

Usually Koko gets home from work around 6:30 or 7 PM, and we just have dinner at home, do the dishes, watch TV and go to bed. So today was the first day we had a chance to walk around our neighborhood.

We had lunch in this noodle shop. I had no idea what any of the signs said, and neither did Koko. We just poked our head in, saw that there were some customers eating (always a good sign--outside tourist traps, at least), and sat down.

View of the eatery from our seats
(seats maybe 8 people total)

English and Japanese menus

After struggling with the Japanese menu (written in a "handwriting" style, which is like cursive vs print in our Roman alphabet), the waitress brought over an English menu. It was slightly smaller than the Japanese one, which was disappointing, because the menu was tiny to begin with.

Condiment, utensil and drink

L to R: Bamboo container of shichimi togorashi, a spice mixture for noodle soups, with the stopper plugged

in the hole; cute polished stone as a chopstick rest; and a cup of barley tea

We both got the "hot noodles," which sounded great on a cold day.

"Hot noodles" with chopped scallions and wasabi
on the side and a cup of dipping sauce

The "hot noodles" turned out to be cold soba on top of a woven bamboo platter, to be dipped into the sauce and mixed with scallions and wasabi. I'm a scaredy-cat when it comes to wasabi, but it was such a small blob that it really wasn't that spicy, thank goodness.

We were both a little disappointed that the soba wasn't in a hot soup, like we'd expected. But this was an interesting experience. I was little afraid the sauce would seep through the plate and get all over the table, but it was actually ok. (I'm still not a fan of cold noodles, though--like antipasti--but Chinese sesame sauce is ok.)

House special tempura

This tempura is what made the noodles "hot." It was one big clump of fried shrimp, okra, Japanese pumpkin, and other goodies that I can't remember.

Sobayu (そば湯), literally ‘hot soba water’
(Credit: JustHungry for the info)

When this came, we had no idea what to do with it. The waitress explained that it's to be poured into the dipping sauce at the end of our meal and drunk. (Another website said that when soba--buckwheat noodles--are cooked, many nutrients are dissolved into the water, so drinking sobayu helps you regain nutrients that would otherwise be lost or gone to waste.)

Sobayu + dipping sauce = this mixture

This mixture wasn't as salty as I thought it would be. (But then, we used Koko's cup of dipping sauce, which had less in it than mine.)  The texture is a little floury and similar to Chinese rice milk, only savory instead of sweet.

After a day of walking around our neighborhood, we went home and I took a nap.

Then we got into an argument about the laundry, so I went out for a long walk by myself.

I decided to check out the part of Azabu-juban that we had only passed by the night before. Like our own neighborhood of Shirokane, it is supposedly inhabited by the wealthy and populated with expensive restaurants and stores. (In reality, not everything is chic and upscale.)

Here are my findings:

Frijoles...rhymes with "Chipotle"

Looks like an izakaya (Japanese bar and grill)

Look at all the dried squid and

opened uni shells

This Hawaiian fabric store also

offers hula classes

$10 for ramen...typical price here, if not cheaper
than the norm

Looks like a swanky place to hang out

if you gravitate toward models

One of two thrift stores I saw

Fancy place for dumplings

I wonder if they're related to the Hawaiian fabric
store people

A real rock garden

A less fancy dumpling place

Also serves ramen

 

"Asian Kebab"? Not yakitori but Turkish kebab

One of the cheapest restaurants in town

(besides that 350 yen dumpling place)

Tokyoites, like New Yorkers, also like to eat

"curry in a hurry"

Himalayan Curry's kitchen and walk-up order window

(they have a few seats inside too)

Some prix fixe items

If I’m not mistaken, Minato-ku is supposedly one of the most diverse neighborhoods (towns? I can't get the hang of the Japanese geographical subdivisions) in Tokyo. You can't tell by looking at the passersby and commuters on the trains, but the diversity of restaurants may be an indication. Either that, or all the foreigners are hiding when I go out. Not sure.