Latte art, basement soba joint, kitchen street, a boat ride to Hamarikyu Gardens and Harry Potter Cafe
(Links to places are at the end of the post.)
My feet are dead. Dead. 19,708 steps! We came back to the hotel at 9pm and both crashed like felled timber on the bed. If the window wasn’t cracked open to let in a breeze that left me chilly, we probably could’ve slept until morning.
Jordan had awakened at 8:30am thanks to jet lag and the room is so small that I couldn’t fall back to sleep with the noise of another person moving around. We set out around 9:30 to look for coffee. Cafes don’t open until 10am around here. I don’t know where I found the suggestion for Up to You, but the owner is an internationally decorated latte art champion and just the nicest guy. His coffee was delicious and, to our surprise, so were the sandwiches.
Afterwards, we started walking to Shin-Okachimachi station to meet my friend Ayako, who had suggested a soba shop in Ueno that wasn’t a tourist trap sort of destination. On the way there, we had a bit of time so I suggested a detour to Kappabashi Dougu aka Kitchen Town. It was hard not to get excited as we passed shop after shop filled with hundreds of types of chopsticks, knives, bowls, plates, pots, menu stands, furniture, banners, knickknacks/decorations, not to mention every size and permutation of the maneki-neko 招財貓 (Prosperity Waving Cat). We had to really restrain ourselves from shopping since we would need to haul all of this to Manila, Osaka, AND Toronto before going home.
There’s a cool handcrafted bag shop that we have to go back to tomorrow because we don’t have our passports and we are tax-exempt if we are able to prove that we don’t live here. The bags look very well-made using colorful canvas fabrics. The guy was in the back wrestling with a sewing machine when we walked in. I wish there was a better way to pin down what store we were at so I could find my way back to it, but Kappabashi is a pretty straightforward few blocks and we know which side of the street they’re on.
While walking to the Shin-Okacihmachi, we passed through a side street and noticed this sign:
I guess this was his hood! There’s a little museum nearby too, but I read that it’s not worth visiting unless you’re technically a Hokusai groupie. So cool that we just stumbled on this. Hokusai has been making his presence known to us all year. We became members of the Museum of Fine Arts because of the special exhibition on Hokusai, which we visited twice. I wish we had time to actually go into this little temple and pay our respects.
Ayako hasn’t changed. Ebullient, easy to laugh as always, she looks like she has barely aged. Her hair is still black and I found out later that we’ve both just lost the weight we gained during the pandemic. She was carrying a flower that she snagged at a florist on the way to meet us, which she planned to use in her ikebana (flower arranging) exhibit for the weekend. We chatted nonstop as we walked to the basement soba place she picked for lunch in Ueno/Okachimachi. I can’t even find an English name or website for it.
We all got duck with variations of soba (thick/thin) and she picked a delicious sake to share. I’ve never had sake served like that. The glass was standing inside a wooden box and the waitress poured until the sake overflowed and filled the box too. We also added a side of conger eel which we have never seen on the menu in the US. It was good, but lighter/milder than my favorite unagi slathered with sweet black sauce. Afterwards, Ayako asked them to bring us the broth from cooking soba so that we could add it to our dipping sauce and drink it as a soup. Soooo good!
Ayako had to go back and work from home, but it was great that she was with us because we went on a bit of a wild goose chase to exchange the Klook QR code I had bought for 72hr subway passes, which were included in our Skyliner (airport train) tickets. We went to booths at two exits of Okachimachi station and even walked through the platform before we got to a third, larger exit with a bigger office and the right machine for the transaction. It was incredibly simple once we found the correct fare terminal: scan the QR code and the machine spits out two tickets seconds later.
Ayako walked us to the Ginza line so we could take it and catch the boat from Asakusa to Hamarikyu Gardens. We barely caught the last ferry to Hamarikyu at 2:40pm. Thank God for the attendants who expedite the ticket buying at the machines because we never would have made it if she didn’t fire rapid fire questions about where we’re going, click through the menu, and usher us to the right platform in due haste. We were the last people to board.
As much as I love the trains in Japan, the boat ride was probably my favorite mode of transportation so far. In the context of the 75F and sunny Tokyo day, it was absolutely perfect to be drifting down the Sumida River while a light breeze came through the open windows. While the passing cityscape along the banks were not very interesting, the journey was a balm after an endless day of planes, trains, and cars. We passed by the remains of the former Tsukiji wholesale fish market (according to the tour guide of a group sitting across from us). They tore everything down when they moved the market to Toyosu. All that’s left are concrete slabs that looked like they were floating on the water.
Entrance to Hamarikyu Gardens is included in our ticket and we disembarked about 20 minutes later at the park’s waterbus boarding area. Hamarikyu is a popular green space in Tokyo that used to be the Tokugawa Shogun’s family garden dating back to the Edo period (1603-1868). It was used as a falconry and still has two duck hunting grounds.
We passed through the plum grove and flower fields, which was bright with color from the many different patches of cosmos planted for the season.
We were headed to the famous tea house, Nakajima-no-ochoya, so named instead of “chachitsu” or “tea room” because it was a building for shoguns to rest and be entertained. Ulysses Grant once visited this tea house. It was originally built in 1707 and destroyed by fire twice, but the current structure was rebuilt in 1983. I learned that the teahouse sits in the middle of a tidal pond, Shioiri-no-ike, and it is the last seawater pond from the Edo era within Tokyo. The water levels rise and fall with the tides in Tokyo Bay.
At Nakajima-no-ochoya, we each got the tea set which included matcha and wagashi, a little autumn-themed confection with a purple-colored bean paste inside. We had to take off our shoes to go into the tea house and this erstwhile woodworker found herself geeking out over the shoe lockers because it featured such a simple lock: a wood block with a three-pronged finger joint. When you slide the block into place, it pushes something and opens the door. When you take the block out, that something falls back into place and prevents the door from opening. All the blocks were probably the same, so if you used the key in the wrong locker, it would probably still open the lock but then you wouldn’t be able to wear other people’s shoes… so it wouldn’t matter. Why make it more complicated? I just LOVE the simplicity and practicality of Japanese design!
Afterwards, we walked through and out of Hamarikyu Gardens to get to a cafe in Ginza that was supposed to have a variety of soft-serve ice cream, but it turned out to be (a) closed and (b) devoid of any ice cream offerings on the menu. Boo to whatever TikTok/Insta influencer who sent me here.
I did enjoy watching Ginza and its lights coming alive in the dusk. Ginza is the Rodeo Drive/Fifth Avenue of Tokyo. All the high end brands have an outpost here along with the traditional multi-level Japanese department stores like Mitsukoshi. Their unique buildings are woven into the usual fabric of countless little restaurants, shops, bakeries, and konbini.
We walked a several more blocks just to catch the Marunouchi train that would take us to Akasaka and the Harry Potter Cafe. The thing with Japan’s train stations is they are SO vast. Multiple lines intersect within massive underground complexes. If one’s reference point is the 1-2 entrances per direction for each station in Boston’s lamentably pathetic T, then the Ginza station alone will make your head explode. Three lines — Marunouchi, Ginza, and Hibiya — pass through this area, and you can access all of them above ground or under the streets if you want to avoid walking in hot/cold weather. There are several sets of exits (A1-A13, B1-B8, C1-C9) that span about a dozen city blocks, so if you’re meeting a friend, you’d better be specific about which exit, platform, car, and door number you will be at or you haven’t a prayer of finding each other at a subway station. (By the way, Tokyo station is even bigger.)
In hindsight, we should have taken the Hibiya Line and transferred to the Chiyoda Line so that we could have walked less, but we arrived at the Akasaka-Mitsuke station instead and saw a little bit of the neighborhood in our 10-minute walk to the Harry Potter cafe. Akasaka’s streets reminded me of Hong Kong at night, minus the frenetic energy of massive foot and car traffic.
I found the gift shop and spent a ridiculous amount of time and money buying random merchandise to bring back to Manila and Boston, splurging on a leather wand case for myself. My trusty replica of Sirius Black’s wand has been with me for 10+ years now through every comprehensive exam at acupuncture school and every one of the four board exams I had to pass for licensing. It deserves to travel with me in style when I finally go to the Wizarding World in Florida someday.
I suppose we should have gone into the cafe itself instead of just the gift shop, but we were kind of hangry, jet lagged, and not in the mood for overpriced Western food. (I don’t know if it would be weird to go into the cafe just to take pictures.) We went looking for dinner instead.
We ended up at the restaurant with the best gallery of plastic food in the window display, and it turned out to be called Tonkatsu Sakura. It was our second basement/underground restaurant of the day where the staff barely spoke Japanese, although they had a limited English menu available. Google translate FTW. This tonkatsu chain prides itself in the quality of the ingredients: special varieties of pork, a specific type of rice, etc.
Jordan got the set with tonkatsu and fried oysters. I picked the thick cut tonkatsu set. (The waiter checked if I knew it was 230g. Yes, indeed I did.) So this is what tonkatsu in Japan is supposed to taste like: juicy, tender, perfectly fried in the lightest crispy panko crust. There were three sauces on deck: the regular tangy brown sauce, an oil-based black sauce that smelled of worcestershire, and another thick black sauce that had a bit of a kick to it. They served the sushi rice in a black ceramic crock that they cook the rice in. (There is a row of these on the stove visible through the window into the kitchen.)
My plans for soft serve ice cream for dessert was foiled by the 230g tonkatsu meal. The walk to the subway and back to the hotel wasn’t enough to make room for a cone or two, sadly.
We did pass by the 7-Eleven again and I picked up a waffle ice cream thing called Dandy Chocolate to share. It was, once again, more delicious than it had any right to be. It was a waffle that had a chocolate coating on the inside and a layer of chocolate filling. It didn’t survive long enough for a picture. God love the konbini ice cream choices in Japan! No frozen sugar bombs like the American bodegas but lots of decent, inexpensive ice cream.
We didn’t get to explore our own neighborhood in Asakusa as I’d hoped but it was a fun exploring other parts of Tokyo. We have one more day tomorrow!
LINKS
Kappabashi Dougu (Kitchenware Street)
