I loved Osaka, but had to say goodbye. We packed and headed to the train station bound for Tokyo. We decided to buy bento boxes to eat on the train at the station. My final Osaka bite was Kakinoha-sushi, a pressed sushi from the area. It features slices of lightly vinegared mackerel on rice, then wrapped in persimmon leaves. The persimmon leaves aren’t eaten, even though Samer was convinced you are supposed to eat them. Thank god I decided to check online, because he was very wrong on this. I learned that the leaves naturally preserve the sushi with their antimicrobial properties and impart a subtle fragrance.
When we were in the Tokyo train station a week before, it was busy, but we were still able to make sense of it. That was early on a Sunday morning; this time, we were arriving in the middle of a weekday, and it was chaotic. The sheer number of people moving about is staggering.
We stayed in Shinjuku, a massive commercial and shopping area in Tokyo. Approximately 350,000 people live in Shinjuku. Despite its relatively modest residential population compared to other Tokyo wards, Shinjuku sees millions of people passing through daily. Shinjuku Station serves over 3.5 million passengers daily, making it one of the busiest transit hubs in the world. Our place was near the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, so it was quieter and more residential.
After dropping our bags off at the Airbnb, we had lunch at Kirimugiya Jinroku near our house. To our surprise, it received the Michelin Bib Gourmand Award a few years ago. Kirimugiya Jinroku specializes in udon noodles, and I ordered the Zaru Udon, which are noodles served plain that you dip in a chilled mentsuyu sauce. Delicious. This is a dish I am going to try to replicate in the USA. I’ve set a goal of learning how to make mentsuyu sauce this summer. Samer had something called Oyako-ten Bukkake Udon (I know, I giggled), which gave you sauce to dress the noodles, but he dumped it all on, which made it too salty. However, he raved about the tempered, soft-boiled egg. There was a line while we waited, but it moved pretty quickly. We found ourselves with another American couple. He was an AWS engineer, and she was a novelist who was oddly cagey about her pen names, so we don’t know what she wrote.
Tokyo has many enormous neighborhoods that feel like cities on their own. The town is very decentralized, and there is no one downtown. We scheduled a walking tour with Localized Tokyo for a Shibuya Night tour. This was a mediocre tour. The Shibuya station was one of the busiest places I have ever been, and meeting our guide there during rush hour in the pouring rain was a lot. Most of the tour was outside, and the tour didn’t have an incredible pace, because there was a party of 3 or 4, and only one showed up. They kept slowing the group down, trying to connect with their absent friends, and the guide stopped us to wait for them. I get it; it was a free tour, and they’re paid in tips, but it kind of sucked.
The guide herself was very nice and showed us the hustle and bustle and the cool side streets. When we asked her what she did, she explained that she interprets for animals. I’m dead serious. She said she works with animals and interprets their feelings and emotions for others. I try to be open, but that seemed pretty kooky. I guess it takes all kinds to make the world work.
After the tour, we left Shibuya’s chaos and returned to Shinjuku. Shibuya was the first time I thought, “I think I am more Osaka than Tokyo.” My shoes were full of water, and I was feeling grumpy. We found some refuge at an izakaya called Jokigen. They had a covered awning, which may have been the only time I ate outside at a restaurant in Japan. They do not do that.
Everyone in the Izakaya was Japanese, and getting attention to order was difficult. On reflection, part of this is just Tokyo vs. other places. Philly is easier than NYC, and you get that vibe because Osaka/Kyoto is easier than Tokyo. Things are busy and polite but certainly more curt, and tourists are less curious and more of a speed bump.
It ended up being a great place to escape the rain and have a few beers and bites. The otoshi was chopped cabbage with some dressing on one side. I was thankful it wasn’t a cup of slimy seaweed. This was our first time doing the yakitori thing, so that was a nice change. How can you go wrong with chicken on a stick prepared over hot coals?
How did our evening end? Answer: Unexpectedly. Our Airbnb had a washing machine, and we were both out of clothing, so the second we checked in, we started doing laundry. However, there was no dryer, and the pins for the outside drying bar were missing, so we started to hang wet clothes around the house carefully.
I was ready for bed, but Samer was looking to turn on the air conditioner because he thought it might have a dehumidifier option to help dry the clothes more quickly. He decided to press a button labeled in Japanese that set off an alarm. The screen next to the button started to flash, and neither of us knew what to do. The Google Translate app revealed it said “emergency”, and using the app, I navigated through the menu to turn off the alarm. Relieved that the alarm was off, I noticed it again, but not from within our house. The button had set off the building alarm in the main lobby, and there was no lobby attendant to turn it off.
Japan is the quietest place I have ever been. Tokyo is the biggest city I have ever been to, and it is so peaceful. People are not walking around and yelling. No one says much on the subway, and I never saw anyone talking on their phone while in transit. These people like silence, and we’ve set off an alarm so loud you can hear it throughout our building and into the neighborhood.
Sam volunteered to go to the lobby to problem-solve, and while he was there, a Japanese police officer arrived. He turned off the alarm and came to our apartment to verify that there was no emergency. He didn’t speak English, so we were back to using the app, but after taking down our information, he left, and silence settled over the building.
We didn’t touch any more buttons in the apartment for the rest of the trip.
Next: Japan – Day 10: Tokyo