DC to Dubai and Tokyo via… Santiago? Four Days in Tokyo: Day 2
Introduction
Planning
TAM Economy Class New York JFK – Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Santiago
LAN Economy Class Santiago – Sao Paulo
TAM Economy Class Sao Paulo – New York JFK
United BusinessFirst Denver to Tokyo Seattle (Emergency Landing)
United BusinessFirst on the 787 Seattle to Tokyo
Cathay Pacific Regional Business Class Tokyo Narita – Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific “The Wing” Business Class Lounge Hong Kong
Cathay Pacific Business Class Hong Kong – Dubai
Dubai, Day 1 (Traiteur Brunch, Park Hyatt Dubai, Burj Khalifa, Atlantis Palm Islands)
Dubai, Day 2 (Shark Dive at Dubai Aquarium, Burj Al Arab, 360)
Cathay Pacific Business Class Dubai – Hong Kong – Tokyo Haneda
Tokyo, Day 1 (Park Hyatt arrival, Roppongi)
Tokyo, Day 2 (Imperial Palace, Shibuya Crossing, Ebisu, Kendo, Dinner and drinks in Shinjuku)
Tokyo, Day 3 (Ramen lunch, Harajuku, Meiji Shrine, Baseball at the Tokyo Dome, Dinner at New York Grill)
Tokyo, Day 4 (Tsukiji Market, Tokyo Subway, Airport Transfers)
Park Hyatt Tokyo
Imperial Palace
The next morning, we took the Tokyo Metro to the Tokyo station and made a short walk from the northeast entrance to the Imperial Palace.
The Imperial Palace is located in a massive park in the middle of the city. We primarily walked through the East Garden of the Imperial Palace complex. The Garden was beautifully landscaped and is a true oasis in the middle of the biggest city in the World.
After about an hour of walking around the Imperial Palace grounds, we decided to leave and head over to Shibuya to hit up Shibuya Crossing during the lunchtime rush.
Shibuya Crossing
After a short metro ride to Shibuya station, we emerged just a block or so away from the famed Shibuya Crossing. This is supposedly the busiest pedestrian intersection in the world. Unfortunately, on this particular afternoon it started to rain pretty hard. Surely that thinned out the crowd a bit. We zapped a few pictures and then headed up to the Starbucks for an aerial view of the crossing.
This Starbucks is the highest-grossing Starbucks in the world, and it provides an awesome aerial view of all the people crossing the street. We hungout at Starbucks for a little while until the rain subsided, and then started weighing our options for lunch.
Ebisu and lunch at Blacows
After we asked about a place to find an awesome Wagyu beef burger in Tokyo, the concierge at the Tokyo Hilton highly recommended Blacows in the Ebisu neighborhood, just south of Shibuya. We decided to head there for lunch. It took about thirty minutes to walk from Shibuya Crossing to Ebisu, but we took a leisurely pace as we stepped into a handful of vintage stores on the walk. Upon arriving into the Ebisu neighborhood, I immediately liked it. Ebisu is an upscale neighborhood lined with restaurants, bars, patiserries, boutiques, and vintage stores. I much preferred this neighborhood to the hustle and bustle of Shibuya and Roppongi. With minimal effort, we located Blacows, tucked away on a side street in Ebisu, a few blocks from the Ebisu station.
Blacows literally translates to “black cow”– referring to the legendary black Wagyu beef, which is used exclusively in the burgers made here. This place has been proclaimed by several websites and periodicals to have “the greatest burger in the world.” While I’m not ready to proclaim this as the best burger I’ve ever eaten, it certainly was in the top five. After being immediately seated, I ordered the bacon, egg, and cheeseburger for 15oo yen. Oh, man this thing was good. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
If you’re a fan of burgers, definitely check this place out while you’re in Tokyo.
After lunch, we strolled around Ebisu to the Ebisu Garden Place and the area Sapporo Beer Headquarters before taking the JL train back to Shinjuku.
Japanese Kendo Fighting
After a quick nap, I hit up the Manager’s Happy Hour at famed New York Bar at the Park Hyatt Tokyo. The view from the New York Bar offers some of the best views of Tokyo and the immediate Shinjuku area.
I then proceeded to the Tokyo Hilton where I met my friends to embark on a visit to the Shinjuku Cosmic Sports Center where we arranged to sit in on Kendo practice. Kendo, or “way of the sword” is a Japanese martial art based on sword-fighting. This form of kendo features bamboo swords, or “shinai” and lightweight armor called “bogu.” Formal competitions are judged with points, and the goal is to strike the opponent on the throat, the top of the head, the side of the head, the sides of the body, or forearms. The kendo instructor was extremely happy to have us sit in on their practice, and it was an extremely cool experience. For an hour, we watched dozens of Japanese kendo fighters basically whack the hell out of each other with fake samurai swords.
It. Was. Awesome!
I highly recommend trying to experience this while in Tokyo. The best thing to do is to ask your hotel concierge to arrange a trip to a practice if there is not a formal fight while you’re there. I suppose one could contact the Shinjuku Cosmic Sports Center itself, but there was not much English spoken there.
Shinjuku Dinner
After our kendo experience, we hopped a metro back to the main Shinjuku station in search of a dinner place. We ended up seafood barbecue and Izakaya (bar) place that came highly recommended by a few locals, called Marukou-Suisan in Shinjuku.
The place was packed, and we were the ONLY Westerners in the joint. While the language barrier was a bit of a challenge, we managed to have a pretty good sampling of the menu brought to us.
Some dishes were good; some were pretty awful, but the overall experience was quite special. Grilling raw seafood on the dinner table was certainly fun time.
We sat next to some locals who could not have been nicer, and introduced us to a whole bunch of shochu — a Japanese distilled liquor. We hit that pretty hard, actually…
Shinjuku Golden Gai District
Upon completing a huge dinner, we were ready to go out on the town. This time, we decided to keep things relatively local, and headed to the famous Shinjuku “Goledn Gai” district. This is a relatively small area of a few square blocks that features the highest concentration of bars in the world. Most all of the bars are small, shanty-style bars with no more than 15 bar stools.
Each bar is essentially a different dive bar that has a different theme – from jazz to karaoke to R&B to punk rock — , and we thoroughly enjoyed hopping to a number of different places throughout the night and into the early morning. Apparently this is an area frequented by locals, and Westerners have had a hard time being welcomed, but we had no problem whatsoever (shocking, I know).
After a few hours in the Golden Gai district, we decided that it was time for some late-night noodles before we called it a night. We stopped in a noodle shop in a back alley just north of the north entrance to Shinjuku station in Nishi-Shinjuku. This area is filled of narrow alleys that are lined with ramen and sushi shops — it’s a must see in the early evening hours, for sure. We settled on a decent looking noodle shop, and were served a piping hot bowl of Soba noodles topped with tempura fish. It was freakin’ awesome, and a perfect small meal to end the night.
To be continued with an installment for each day I spent in Tokyo…
Tokyo, Day 3 (Ramen lunch, Harajuku, Meiji Shrine, Baseball at the Tokyo Dome, Dinner at New York Grill)
Tokyo, Day 4 (Tsukiji Market, Tokyo Subway, Airport Transfers)
