Derek: We landed in Tokyo (for the second time this trip) late evening and had a free taxi waiting for us thanks to having made so many hotel bookings recently… Tokyo has many neighborhoods and we decided to stay in Asakusa, located north east of the center but a quick subway or train ride from most places in the city. Our accommodation, the helpfully named Hotel + Hostel Tokyo Asakusa 2, was tucked just off a main street by the Sumida River, from which we could see the Tokyo Skytree tower. We ran out to the nearby 7-Eleven and picked up a few onigiri (rice compacted into triangles, filled with pickled plum or seaweed, and wrapped in nori), tofu sticks (comes in chocolate!), and cold green and black tea for dinner. Our room was small, as expected, but clean and comfortable.
The first tasks on my mind were to get cash and an IC card. These cards let you tap on and off of nearly all subways, trains, and buses across Japan as well as working on vending machines and many shops and restaurants (though it seems credit cards also work in more places than older blog posts would indicate). There’s been a shortage of the cards around Tokyo for most of the year, but it was still possible to pick them up at the JR EAST Travel Service Center in Ueno train station. We bought subway tickets, found the service center, and walked away with our shiny new cards.
In the Ueno train station is a branch of T’s TanTan, a fully vegan ramen restaurant. We queued briefly and had a very tasty creamy hot golden sesame ramen and a cold black sesame ramen. We had been overheating even during the short walk to the subway station and around the train station, so dropped into a nearby mall and picked up UV blocking umbrellas, something we’d seen many people around us using. They’re effective and should become popular elsewhere!
Just adjacent to the station is Ueno Park which includes several Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines as well as a variety of museums. In Bali, 86.9% of people practice Balinese Hinduism, 8% Islam, and 3% Christianity. In Japan, the situation is different in several ways. Shintoism is the indigenous religious practice which worships the spirits and deities present in the world around us, including natural forces and locations. Interestingly very few Japanese people will self-identify as being religiously Shinto, but around 70% practice Shinto. There is a feeling of it being part of life or a collection of cultural practices. There is no singular founder, central text, or one way of worshiping. Though in the last century there has been an effort by the government to formalize and standardize the practices. When Buddhism arrived in Japan it was embraced as being complementary and around 67% of Japanese practice Buddhism. The two coexist well and I suspect that many visitors to Japan have trouble figuring out if the beautiful building in front of them is a Shinto shrine or a Buddhist temple, particularly as their long shared history means some shrines have temples inside, and vise-versa! Thankfully Google Maps has different symbols for each, and we’re learning to tell the architectures and symbology apart.
The visiting of holy places in Japan includes a tradition of making a record of where you have been, collecting goshuin. Most shrines and temples will have a seal which they will stamp into a book and a calligrapher will write an inscription which includes the date you visited. We went to the Kiyomizu Kannon-dō hall, built in 1632 and the remaining part of the oldest temple in Tokyo, and I obtained both the goshuincho book and the goshuin inscription on the right to commemorate our visit. Kannon is the Bodhisattva (Buddha-to-be) of Compassion and is one of the most commonly worshipped Buddhist deities in Japan.
The Ueno park includes Shinubazuno Pond, a large lotus pond. And when I say lotus pond, I mean that the entire surface of this large lake is covered by flowering lotus plants! When we peered in you could just barely see the koi fish and turtles swimming in the shade. Located in the middle of the pond is Shinobazunoike Benten-do temple, dedicated to Benzaiten. Benzaiten is one of the Seven Gods of Good Fortune in Buddhism, deity of music and the arts and bringer of financial fortune. I’ll ask you to keep this in mind as we’ll see this deity return in next week’s post, with a fun piece of lore. The goshuin on the right side is from this temple. Even with the umbrellas we were getting toasty so returned to the hotel to cool off and make plans.
When staying with Katie and Ben in Port Angeles they made us a Japanese vegetable curry reminiscent of one Katie remembered very fondly from her time in Japan. CoCo Ichibanya is a chain restaurant with 1,304 branches across Japan! We had to try it out for ourselves, and were not disappointed (though a minor mis-translation meant I had a half portion of vegetables). We’ve encountered vegetarian Katsu curry in the UK which is Japanese curry and rice with some breaded main ingredient. It turns out the “Katsu” in that name is pork cutlet, and the Brits have been abusing it to cover all forms of Japanese Curry. #KatsuCurryPolice are on a mission to fix this travesty.
With night fallen we walked through the quiet and beautiful streets of Asakusa and saw the main Sensō-ji Temple which rises high in the center of the neighborhood. This temple is also dedicated to Kannon, the story goes that fishermen kept pulling out statues to Kannon from the nearby river. As the temple was closed for the evening I wasn’t able to get a goshuin, and foolishly never went back during the day.
Our first full day in Japan ended with a deep immersion into what mega shops can be like. Don Quixote (Donki) is a discount store chain in Japan and Asakusa has one of the larger stores. We dove in to have a look and after an extended expedition of the many floors emerged with snacks and a peltier neck cooler.
Charis: The next day we woke fresh and early to head out to TeamLab Planets, a multisensory digital art exhibition. It started with taking our shoes and socks off and walking up a slope with water running down it, pretty unusual in an indoor public space! The following rooms were in turn weird, interesting, fascinating and beautiful. A fully black room with an uneven squishy floor and padded walls, a huge mirror-covered hall with strips of sparkling colour changing LEDs, a room mid-calf in water, with bright koi fish projected downwards to swim around your ankles and many many more. It was a really fun experience, and surpassed both of our expectations!
From there we returned more centrally and had a wander around Ginza, one of the main shopping districts in Tokyo. A beautiful mochi shop caught our attention and we decided to nip in and get one to try. This shop did fruit mochi and we went for one with a big fresh chunk of Japanese pear in the middle to share. I think we misjudged the vibe a little though – we were asked if we wanted a wooden gift box and even the cardboard ones came with a mini ice pack, a cutting string and a little slip of paper telling you the best way to cut your mochi to get a clean cross section! Like many things in Japan, we were impressed by the delicacy, deliberation and effort that had been put into it.
The main shop we were searching for though was a 9 story stationary shop, Itoya. Whilst Derek mainly stuck to the floor with the writing pens and inks, I thoroughly enjoyed checking out some of their paper crafts and the entire floor called simply ‘colour’, with multiple different paints, pens, pencils and papers in every colour of the rainbow. There was also a small inspiration gallery in the basement showcasing some of their goods such as water soluble colouring pencils for use in watercolours.
With the weather remaining hot and heavy, we decided to stay close to our hotel for dinner. Just round the corner on the quiet second floor of a building whose lift opened directly to the street was a small vegan restaurant called Injoy. The dining room was beautiful and serene, with only a few other quiet customers and gentle piano music playing through the speakers. The food lived up to the ambience and I enjoyed a delicious dandan noodle dish and started to realise I might like pickles if they happen to be the right ones. Dessert was fresh fruit, a jam/cream shortbread sandwich and an incredibly delicate tea jelly. Again, I was thoroughly impressed.
Derek: We’d already started making heavy use of the subway and would use it much more through the week. Pretty soon we started listening to the musical jingles which played as each train arrived, then noticed that they are different at each station. Looking online, the Ginza subway line has a tune for each station and each direction. You can listen to them on YouTube.
We’d both had a haircut in Bali, but time moves on and the hair gets long, so we found haircutters to go to. I went to Sugatami barbers, which unfortunately either didn’t cut women’s hair or didn’t do women’s hairstyles.
Charis: Whilst Derek was getting his haircut I made an appointment for mine a couple of days later and mooched along to the nearby Cat Cafe Calaugh. I was a bit wary at first of how well looked after the cats were going to be, but this place had good reviews so I thought I’d give it a try. 1300 yen got me an hour, a drink and 10 cats to admire, ranging from 8 to 13 years in age. I quite liked that there weren’t any kittens there, and all the cats seemed very chilled out and docile, well fed and very soft! Some of them did seem a bit miffed with all the attention, but there was a high shelf at one side of the cafe where they could escape to if it got too much. I particularly made friends with Nora, a lovely tabby who plonked right down in the cat bed on the table in front of me and fell asleep to some head scritches.
Overall, it still felt a bit odd and I don’t think I’d go to one again. It was also strange to see cat and dog pet shops (with kittens and puppies put in small plastic boxes in the front window) and other animal cafes – one advertised ‘micro pigs’ which based on the size of them would be tiny piglets, and it seemed incredibly unnatural for these little creatures to be running around a fluorescent pink cafe to be fawned over and morbid to think what happened to them when they got too big. Being vegan, I’m sure our sensibilities are heightened, but I think most Brits would many of these places to be a bit distasteful.
Derek: In the evening we returned to Ginza to see a Kabuki theater performance. Our interest and bravery extended just to a single 20 minute act, which was long enough to admire the set and costumes and to get a feeling for the very particular cadence and style of speaking. The Kabuki-za theater has recently started offering text translations of the plays which did help to understand a little more of what was happening. The play was Iomseyama Onna Teikin, “Mt Imo and Mt Se: A Tale of Womanly Virtue“, and the scene was Hana Watashi (The Handing of Flowers). Check out this summary of the scene for a description.
After the play we walked to Hibiya park, had a very tasty and fascinating dinner at CHAYA Natural & Wild Table (including an incredible fig and mango parfait) and caught some music overflowing the open amphitheater, Age Factory performing “twilight 2024”.
One of the must-visit locations for me was Mokuhankan, a woodblock printing shop run by carver David Bull. He moved to Tokyo many years ago from Canada to learn more about woodblock carving and printing and has been streaming several times a week on Twitch. I’ve been watching for years and it was super fun to visit, pick up a few prints, and even get to sit at his carving desk. I may have lost a bit of my chill, he was fun to talk with and I hope I can try carving sometime.
We had lunch as Vegan Eat Tokyo, coffee and cake at Shochiku-en Cafe, and visited a variety of kitchenware stores in the Kappa Bashi area. I walked back to Ueno Park to stretch my legs and see some random back alleys and visited the Hinoya store to check out a bunch of Japanese denim clothing. I’ve looked at Buzz Rickson clothing online (ever since they were mentioned by William Gibson in Pattern Recognition), but hadn’t been able to try any on. They did have a cool brown jacket, but I didn’t end up getting anything. We met up and had some really great Indian curries then walked to the Akihabara to see the electric town at night. It ended up being mostly an odd and underwhelming experience, but sometimes that’s the cost of being sure you aren’t missing something!
Charis: I woke up fairly early the next morning for my haircut (which was excellent and involved a shoulder massage!) before heading across the river to the Tokyo Origami Museum which really was a fairly small shop but had some gorgeous displays and lots of origami books and papers for sale. I managed to hold off on the books but did come away with a small sheaf of papers to bring home.
I stopped off at Earthful Cafe before heading to meet up with Derek; a lovely little vegan cafe with a white pebble floor, birdsong playing through the speakers and stuffed with plants. Does an excellent vegan burger!
Derek: I realized that all of the interesting stores in Akihabara were closed at night, so returned in the morning and sought them out. Beep was the highlight with a fascinating variety of retro gaming hardware and software. I wish some of the folks from the CMU Computer Club had been there to go through it with. One day I’ll get back to programming my NeXTstation Turbo Color that’s been holding down a shelf for the last decade.
Having been so impressed by the TeamLabs Planets experience we met up at Teamlab Borderless, a newer experience which opened earlier this year. In Planets the art was divided into a series of rooms enclosing a single art installation each. Borderless does what it says in the name. Nearly every wall (and some ceilings and floors) in the building is a video display and the artwork is animated to migrate from room to room and to interact in realtime with people and other artwork. For instance the blue wisps moved between several rooms while we were there and created different patterns in each. Check out TeamLab’s teaser video to see it all in movement!
We moved from the futuristic to the historic and visited the Kyu Asakura House. Built in 1919 by the chairman of the Tokyo city council it has been preserved and restored as an excellent example of a luxurious residence with traditional garden. My camera isn’t well suited for indoor photos and I neglected to use my phone’s wide-angle, so check out their website for photos.
Waking up the next morning we realized that I’d made our hotel reservation two days shorter than planned and had to make a quick migration to a new accommodation just across the river. Oops.
We tried a selection of donburi at Kawa Kitchen then went to see the shopping super district of Shibuya. I’m a huge fan of Uniqlo and we’d missed the flagship store in Ginza so went to one that was a close second in size. Given well over half of the clothing I have on the trip is from Uniqlo I didn’t actually find anything to get other than some fresh socks, but it was fun to see.
Charis: We stopped off at another vegan restaurant (genuinely incredible to have so many options!) after our shop to try mapo tofu (the Sichuan pepper numbing effect is so weird!) and vegan kaarage, or fried meatballs (interesting, but didn’t feel we were missing much), then headed towards the Meiji Jingu shrine, a huge Shinto shrine set within 70 hectares of forest within Shibuya City. The forest and several of the shrine buildings were very impressive, particularly in the last of the evening’s sunlight, but we did leave it a bit tight, with less than half an hour before the park shut for the night. Nevertheless, we enjoyed our little speed run!
Once the sun set, we did a quick wander through Harajuku’s Takeshita Street, a bright, busy shopping area filled with odd fashion stores, at least 3 strawberry only sweets stores, creperies and a general kawaii vibe – fun!
All too quickly our last full day in Tokyo was upon us so the next morning we decided to head for the Tokyo National Museum, a huge multi-building museum back in Ueno Park. It contained multiple exhibits, but the main one which we wandered through for several hours contained beautiful art pieces through Japanese history, from pottery to embroidery, samurai sword engraving, lacquer-ware and painting. It was a gorgeous and very interesting spread, and I would highly recommend a visit here should you find yourself in Tokyo.
We made a quick stop at the Ueno Toshogu Shrine as we walked back through the park for Derek to pick up another beautiful goshuin before heading back to the hotel for a shower and quick change before dinner. I’d wanted to book something a bit special to celebrate Derek’s thesis being submitted so we headed up through Asakusa to a little place called Veganic Monkey Magic. Usually, the host is dressed up as Monkey-San, but due to the very hot and humid weather Monkey-San had headed up to the mountains and been replaced by Cat-San for the night (thankfully with the heavy monkey suit absent!). It was amusing and a little bit weird, but with only six of us tucked into a little bar beneath a hotel, our delightful host proceeded to feed us multiple courses of delicious little Japanese tasters, including creamy cold watermelon soup, smoked farro and pumpkin salad and tempura mushrooms, talking us through all the dishes and ingredients as she went. Delicious! And deliciously washed down with a few plum wines.
Derek: We’d bought a few things in Tokyo and still had a stack of fabric from Bali. Our bags were overflowing so I headed to the local Japan Post office and over the course of about 45 minutes successfully sent a box back to the UK. It’s being literally shipped home so will arrive in about three months assuming the Suez Canal stays in good shape.
We tried one last restaurant, Chaya Macrobiotics, then our IC cards let us onto a local train southbound along the coast towards the hotspring town of Yugawara near Mount Fugi and the Goen no Mori vegan retreat. Catch you next week!