Japan 2019: First (Chill) Day in Tokyo!
DAY 1
Hey everyone! I am BACK with more Japan posts. This will be my second trip to Japan - hope you will stick along with me on my journey. I swear you’ll have fun reading/listening to my story and I hope you’ll be lured into wanting to go to Japan. Also, I hope that you’ll be able to take some tips/pointers/places to visit from my series of posts - enjoy!
[I’m going to go on a spiel here, so you can skip if you just want to get to the action]
It might not seem like a while if you’re reading my posts in a row or if you’ve been following my journey from the beginning (thank you!) but I schedule these to be posted. It’s been a couple months since I’ve finished my Japan 2018 blog series. I’m super excited to start my Japan 2019 series! So after I came back from my Japan 2018 trip, I just couldn’t stop thinking about it and I couldn’t stop talking about my experience with friends and family. Also, since my sisters trip with her friends overlapped with mine… you can just imagine how much we talked about LOVING Japan. So much so that my mom was like… well I want to go now… so my sister and I were like… then lets do it. Lets go to Japan. And so this time, we bought her along with us! Since this was my moms first time going to Japan, we had to stop by a few locations I’ve already visited - you know, must see locations. However, this trip was 2 weeks this time, so we definitely got to see and experience many more different things. I’m actually so excited to talk about and share my experience with you - I’m getting that feeling in my heart - like when I was in Japan again. Love it so much!
[Spiel ends here]
Our plane ride from Toronto > Chicago > Tokyo was expected to arrive around 4PM local time and total travel time was maybe 14h? I can’t remember but that’s because we had a layover in Chicago. Once we arrived and sorted out a few things at Narita airport [check out my post on some things to keep in mind when you first land at Narita airport here] and took the hour train to the heart of Tokyo, it was basically 8PM or so. We were all extremely tried, so now all we had to do was drag our large suitcases to the hotel we were staying at - luckily we were only a ~15 minute walk from the nearest station? But still… we were tired.
Tokyo isn’t really known to have massive rooms because its so populated - especially in the city - so the room was pretty small for the 3 of us (my mom, sister and I) but of course, we made it work. It was a great location being right in the heart of Ginza and there was a Family Mart attached to the hotel, which we had access to though our special hotel door, so we didn’t even have to step foot outside to get there. So after putting all our stuff, we quickly ran down to the Family Mart to grab a quick dinner for the night. Yes, Family Mart is a convenient store but they are NOTHING like we have here in Canada; there are TONS food options they can heat it up for you at the store and ready to eat hot foods.
Apologies for the bad photo, the room was kind of dark. Plus, I was starving and wasn’t thinking about taking an Instagram worthy photo you know? But this is mentaiko pasta with a bit of nori (or seaweed). Mantaiko is pollock roe (basically fish eggs) that’s made into this creamy sauce - it was actually very tasty! Nice filling meal that I think was less than $7, honestly.
All I can remember is that my mom bought some udon which was apparently SO DELICIOUS that she kept talking about the udon the whole trip. She kept comparing all the food we ate to it - being like “I’d rather eat the udon I had from the convenient store instead of this,” which was super annoying at the time but funny now that I look back on it.
But convenient store food in Japan is no joke. There are SO many options to choose from: I recommend you try the egg sandwiches, fried chicken, steamed buns and oden (which is Japanese fish cake stew). It’s all so delicious and affordable.
TSUKIJI FISH MARKET
So NOW starts our real first day in Japan. We started off bright and early around 8AM to get ready to go to Tsukiji Fish market which is really well known for eats. I think it’s most popular for the Tuna and Tuna action that happens there. I believe they let a set amount of spectators but it starts VERY early in the morning - probably at like 3AM where the freshly caught fish and seafood is set out for businesses/restaurants to purchase. The tuna auction in particular is as it sounds - businesses will auction on the freshly caught tuna - some going for tens of thousands of dollars.
But we didn’t need to see that, we just needed to be there and be ready to eat the tuna and other foods!
Some restaurants will have up to 3 hour (yes, I said THREE) waiting times because it’s just so popular but honestly, I feel like any restaurant at that market will serve you some of the freshest fish, there is no need to worry and no need to stand hours in line. Just pop by any place where the food interests you.
Our first stop was at a tuna bowl stall where they were cutting up fresh tuna and making rice bowls right in front of our eyes. Depending on what you wanted in your bowl, the cost was about $12-$16. Mine to the left had some pieces of salmon and to the right was my sisters which had some extra pieces of tuna but the bowl is mainly different cuts of tuna. If you are afraid of eating raw fish, I would say tuna is really easy to eat because there is no fishy flavour and there isn’t much of a give when you bite into it.
The fresh, cold cuts of tuna with the steaming rice on the bottom was SO delicious. And with the various cuts of tuna with different levels of fatness, you really get to experience it all. It was so good. 10/10 would definitely recommend you buy some sort of tuna dish at Tsukiji Fish market.
Since my mom was craving some sort of fruit/vegetable serving (lol) she decided to buy a simple skewer of fruits. She said it wasn’t actually that sweet - maybe you’ll be luckier than her?
To the right is tamagoyaki, which is Japanese style egg omelette - they use a rectangular pan and continuously roll and add batter to get it like that. Tamagoyaki is pretty sweet, so it was a little strange for me, since I’m so used to having savory eggs. It was OK, I probably wouldn’t buy it again but I’d say you have to try it at least once, just so you know.
SHIBUYA
After Tsukiji Fish market, we decided to take it pretty easy and chill for the first day and explored a bit of Shibuya (and possibly do some shopping). Since I didn’t do much here, I won’t be talking too much on it but I will show you some of the foods I ate!
As you might have seen from my Japan 2018 blog post, Ichiran Ramen! Such a classic. Great unique experience of not interacting with the people around you when you sit down. Such rich and flavourful broth. I wouldn’t say this is the cheapest option out there but it’s REALLY good.
Again, if you’ve seen some of my previous Japan posts, you’ll about about this crème brûlée donut from Krispy Kreme. My sister still talks about this to this day (lol) but to a point - it’s actually really good and I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. It has this nice custard that’s piped inside and you see them torch the sugar though the glass screen in the back, giving it the signature crackly top. Paired with their iced tea (tea is never sweetened in Japan)? Makes such a good combo.
Last, what I have for you here are $20 grapes. Yes, $20 CAD grapes. I hear fruits, especially branded fruits, in Japan are expensive (though, it seems all fruits are generally a bit more expensive than here in Canada). Again, my mom was craving some fruits, so we stopped by a grocery store on the bottom floor of a department store (which is typical or it’ll have some sort of food area).
These grapes are actually very sweet - they sort of taste like candy. The only thing I can compare them to are the cotton candy grapes we can sometimes buy in Canada but these Japanese grapes are much sweeter. They’re nice and firm and quite juicy. If you can afford to buy the expensive fruit (and I mean… some melons and strawberries can be $100+) I would say go for it and experience the difference because I will 100% guarantee you can taste the difference. Minus white strawberries, don’t waste your money on those.
We didn’t do much on our first day, we took it really chill since we were still tired.
I hope you enjoyed my stories at the beginning. I promise there is more to come, more exciting adventures to tell you - stick with me. But until next time, thanks for reading!
-Thomas