teamEggers

Yoyogi & Lunch in Harajuku

After a day of bumming around on Saturday, Will, Jon & I decided to venture into Tokyo on Sunday. On the agenda for the day: wandering around Yoyogi Park / lunch in Harajuku / Mochi festival in Setagaya-Daita / dinner with Brian & Emi in Shibuya. I think we walked for about 6 solid hours. It was a whirlwind kind of day. Ready? Okay.

We’ve talked about this before, but train stations here are just incredibly busy. (That’s Will on the left side) It never stops amazing me how so many people can fit so gracefully in such a small space.

We’re off to Yoyogi – one of the largest parks in Tokyo with actual grass and trees. Because this park is just so awesome, it’s always packed with people doing all kinds of things: throwing frisbee, dancing, flying kites, tai chi, sleeping (hobo style). It’s pretty great.

After the park, we wandered around the Harajuku / Omotesandō area in search of lunch. The three of us know the areas exactly enough to swear we know where something is, and then be utterly incapable of finding it. (Okay, i take that back. Jon would never do such a thing.) Neighborhoods here do the weirdest things: it seems that types of stores are all grouped together. You’ll be walking down the street and realize that all around you there are nothing but boutiquey, women’s clothing stores. Then a few blocks away, all you’ll find are hair salons. By the time your stomach is growling, “Where are the restaurants!!!???”, you’re about to run into a new patch of alleys and streets with food options. It’s a little crazy. Don’t people get hungry *while* they’re shopping? Doesn’t anyone want to stop in for a glass of wine right after their haircut? Definitely a different culture.

Eventually, we found lunch. The place looked appropriately Japanesey, and we were sold:

And we lucked out – they had an Engrish menu!!

They had 4 lunch specials (A, B, C, D) that weren’t on the Engrish menu, so we thought we’d be daring and get those. They ended up being really tasty. Will got a tonkatsu plate that had pork and a few fish-type things:

Jon had something Korean-ish, with a mild kim-chi. Why is everything served with mayo here?

My tray had a stacked tower of boxes that unfolded into four different dishes. Score! (left to right) There was a roasted daikon covered in a moss-like substance, pork katsu, little fishies covered in pickled somethingorother, and this odd taro cake with peanut sauce and mushrooms. All tasty. All crazy.

This seems like a reasonable spot to pause for a minute. Stay tuned for part 2.

Mochifest & Dinner in Shibuya

After lunch, we headed over to the main event for the day: the mochifest. One of the ways the Japanese celebrate the New Year is by getting a big group of people together and pounding the heck out of some rice until it turns into a sticky otherworldly substance called mochi. This is often topped with bean paste. Sometimes they stick ice cream inside and roll it into happy little dessert balls.

Turn your head sideways here. I dont know how to rotate the video:

After the rice was good and done, they fed it to you! Lines of people queued up.

This was a volunteer dishing it out (you can see the purple bean-paste on the left. they just kind of… smeared it on):

I think the mochi-pounders got tuckered out, because after a while there was a boy-scout-like drum ceremony…

…and they let little kids take part in the mashin’

While we were standing in line, a very persistent Japanese woman started talking to us. I want to emphasize that she didn’t speak a lick of English and we tried to make it very clear that we didn’t understand a word she was saying. She hung out with us for about a half hour, until someone around us helped translate and told us that she was inviting us to an International Students party. More mochi, she says. She was crazy, but very nice. We think.

On our way back to the train station, I found some roasted sweet potato flavoured kitkats. Boy, these were tasty. I hate it when they put them in a bag with 4 flavoured and 4 regular though – who wants boring old regular when you have the option of SWEET POTATO!?

We had some time to kill before heading over to dinner, so we stopped in Shinjuku to check out the Tokyo Government Tower.

This is SUCH a find. First, it’s free. Second, there’s an observation deck on the 45th floor of the building. What a cool view!

Will noticed that the cafe served beers at really reasonable prices. ($6 for a beer. I say this is reasonable, because that’s the price of beer on the 1st floor – they could have easily added us a lofty surcharge.) After being out-and-about for 8 hours, we were ready to sit down and take a break.

Also, this is where we started drinking for the day. One beer at 5pm on a school night doesn’t seem like a bad idea, right? That is, until you start following it by roadies. What’s that? You’re not familiar with the roadie? It may still be frowned upon, but strictly speaking, it’s not illegal to drink while you’re walking down the street. So we did. It’s important to exercise the rights that you have abroad, that you can’t take advantage of back home! This stuff below was like grapefruit juice with a punch in the face. And it only has 45 calories! It’s basically healthy!

Time for dinner. We were meeting our friends Brian & Emi at one of Emi’s favourite restaurants in Shibuya. I can’t tell you how awesome it is to have a Japanese friend that will order for you.

Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that she’s a really nice person! More sake. Wait, didn’t i say this was a school night? oh boy. (that’s brian and emi in the background)

The night ended with me falling over and nearly murdering jon. No, really. He’s okay, but for a few seconds as I was laying on the floor, watching him fall down a flight of concrete stairs, I thought about how terrible it would be to not have a husband anymore. I suck!

Bummin’ in ‘Hama.

We had the best intentions to be adventurous on Saturday. There was even a [failed] attempt at taking a weekend trip to Hakone.

After a quick lunch, we stopped off for dessert. They do this weird thing here involving corn flakes & soft serve, that I had always meant to try. Today’s the day! (it wasn’t that good!)

Eventually, Jon & Will & I headed off to the Red Brick Warehouse to check out a photography gallery, and to meet up with Brian (another co-worker of jon’s) & Emi (brian’s girlfriend). The photo thing was so cool. At first we were a little skeptical, because it was formatted more like a portfolio review than a gallery. And Jon hates talking to strangers.

…but eventually we warmed up to it, poked around, and found out that a few of the artists spoke english. Very cool. I can’t wait to check out some of their portfolios online.

I remember thinking this during my first few days here last year: art is the great cultural equalizer. Art always behaves the same way, regardless of what country you’re standing in. It’s a really comforting fact.

After the photo bit, we wandered around China Town for a bit, commenting to each other about how easy it is to get lost within the hanging lanterns, roasted chestnuts, and curvy streets. Also, they eat weirder food in that part of town than in other areas. Duck, anyone?