our london adventure: Our Tokyo and Seoul Adventure: Day Fourteen

Our time in Korea flew by and it was strange to wake up this morning and realise that we were already leaving for Japan. After Bob and I convinced them that they didn't need to drive us all the way out to the airport, my parents dropped us off at the nearby airport-bus stop, with only minutes to spare before our bus left. While this meant a bit of frenzied driving on my dad's part to get us to the bus in time, it also meant that there wasn't much time for tearful goodbyes, which was actually nice. Our journey today would be a new one for both of us, since we were using the domestic airports in both countries (which run a limited number of flights between Korea and Japan in addition to their roster of domestic flights), rather than the enormous, busy, and inconveniently located international terminals of Incheon and Narita. As with our experience at London City Airport, our departure from Seoul's Gimpo Airport and arrival at Tokyo's Haneda Airport were how air travel should be--no queues at check-in or immigration and none of the utter mayhem, frustration, or sheer helplessness often experienced in larger airports. We left Gimpo

and landed at Haneda, just off Tokyo Bay, in a quick two hours,

with a crystal-clear view of Mt. Fuji greeting us to Japan!

Besides the convenience at the airport, one distinct advantage of arriving at Haneda is that it's much quicker, easier, and cheaper to get into Tokyo--and we arrived at our hotel even sooner than we thought we would. When we decided we were going on this trip, I didn't even look around for a Tokyo hotel--we just quickly booked the same hotel we stayed in last year, because for us, it's pretty much the perfect hotel. We could even happily live here! One in a chain of hotels catering to guests looking for no-frills, convenient stays, I would argue that this Japanese definition of "no frills" in fact comes with plenty of bonuses, including the most comfortable bed in the world, complete with memory-foam pillows and super-comfy robes,

an extra-deep Japanese-style tub, perfect for long, hot soaks (to get water hotter than 40'C out of the tap, all you need to do is push and twist the tap past the child-safety barrier), a typically hi-tech toilet (nothing like a heated seat first thing in the morning),

a kitchenette complete with dishes, utensils, cookware, burners, microwave, sink, and (sadly!) the same size fridge we have back in London, a washing machine that also becomes a dryer at the touch of a button,

a combo DVD player/ VCR, and, best of all, an actual desktop computer with free broadband internet access!

Add in the complimentary breakfast (with unlimited, help-yourself, machine-made cold and hot drinks--including a mighty fine latté), super-friendly service, location right on the convenient Yamanote line, availability of non-smoking floors (definitely not a given in Japan), and rates much cheaper than hotels with half the amenities and twice the attitude, and we were delighted to get the last non-smoking double available for our dates. In fact, our room was so comfy that we had to push ourselves to leave it, but Tokyo was calling--and since it was lunchtime, we had good reason to answer that call! The great thing about Tokyo is that you never have to worry about where to get good meals--they seem to be everywhere, even if you're looking at budget eats. Since I was eager to visit the flagship Muji store, we took the train over to the Ginza area and decided to follow the queues into this simple restaurant adjacent to the train station:

With no English on the menu, I used my limited Japanese--"Saba setto, kudasai" (Mackerel set, please)--to order the lunch I wanted, and since we weren't sure what the set Bob had chosen was called, the always useful last resort of pointing did the trick. Here's the delicious lunch of mackerel simmered in a miso-based sauce, miso soup, rice, and two types of pickles that I got for the absolute bargain price of 660 Yen (CAD$6.50 or GBP£3.20):

It was a stellar start to our culinary wanderings through Tokyo! Suitably fueled to tackle some Tokyo shopping during one of two major annual sale periods, we went into the wonderful Muji flagship, with its three floors of clothes, eyeglasses, housewares, stationery, toiletries, bicycles, and food, in addition to a large restaurant and a walk-through showhome of a full-size Muji prefab house. It's definitely Muji heaven!

While London has many Muji shops, they only stock a fraction of the items that the Japanese shops carry, and at many, many times the price. Add in the new year's sales, and well, let's just say that we went into quite a few Mujis on this trip. We walked around Ginza for a bit afterwards, taking in the scale of the area,

as well as the gorgeous window displays. Happy year of the rat!

I was sad to find that one of my favourite shops, Ito-Ya (the king of stationery shops), was still closed for their new year's holidays. The sign on the door said they would be open from tomorrow, so at least I knew that I would get some good Ito-Ya browsing in at some point on this trip. While we stood outside the shop, talking about where to go next, many groups of people walked expectantly up to the shop, saw that it was closed, made all sorts of sad noises, and then turned around and walked away, so I wasn't the only one whose Ito-Ya happiness would have to be delayed for at least a day.

On our way to the subway station, we passed the distinctive Mikimoto building, with its bubble-like windows illuminated in the night.

When we got off the subway, we appeared to have been transported back to London's Tate Modern!

In fact, we had arrived at the Roppongi Hills complex, and took the elevator up to our destinations on the 52nd and 53rd floors.

This was our first visit to the Mori Art Museum and I'm happy to say that it surpassed our expectations, providing an excellent venue as well a group show in which there were many standouts. We spent quite a bit of time walking through Future Beats in Contemporary Japanese Art: 36 Artists You Must See Now, although I'm sorry to say that photography wasn't allowed, so I don't have any photos of my own to show you. You're not even allowed to use pens in the museum--something I found out when I started to write down names of artists I particularly liked. Thankfully, the same museum employee who rushed over when she saw me using a pen also kindly gave me a pencil to use, so I was able to make a list of some of my favourites. Chu Enoki's enormous piece crafted from drill bits and scrap metal, RPM-1200, was quite something--with a viewing platform overhead as well as a pathway that allowed a single person to walk into the centre of this fascinating city, overhead spotlights repeatedly shone and darkened over the metropolis, giving the impression of a pace of life as manic as the overwhelming details that made up the city. Tanaka Iichiro had us both smiling with the video Naming Doves, which featured a group of pigeons milling about a square, with the video freezing over each bird as a typical Japanese name (family name and first name), bestowed by the artist, popped up on the screen. His series Street Destroyer was a fantastic interaction with the urban environment, with photos showing the artist appearing to smash, bend, twist, contort, and generally destroy aspects of the city which were in fact already destroyed (for example, punching the ground at exactly the spot where there was already an enormous pothole). Nakanishi Nobuhiro's Layer Drawings were sheer brilliance. Exactly as the title suggests, each "drawing" is in fact made up of numerous photographic slides stacked together, resulting in an other-worldly texture that had me peering at each creation with wonder. You can see some examples mid-page here and also here, although they don't really give a full sense of the striking work. Tsujikawa Koichiro's Cornelius videos were incredible--I could watch the video for Fit Song over and over . . . . Sato Masahiko and Kiriyama Takashi's Arithmetik Garden was great interactive fun: you choose a starting card with a number on it and then decide how to move through a series of gates containing various mathematical operations in order to end up with the number 73. Only after the number has been attained can you successfully leave the "garden." From the Mori Art Museum, we went down one floor to Tokyo City View to enjoy the views on this clear night. If we needed any reminder of the size of the city that we were in, this was it! As we walked around the observatory, we saw Tokyo Tower with Ginza to its left,

Shinagawa at the top left,

the bright roads leading to frantic Shibuya in the distance,

a close-up of Shinjuku just beyond the darkness of Aoyama Cemetery,

the same view without using a zoom,

and Tokyo midtown and Ueno.

Back on the ground floor, we headed into the maze of lights we had seen from up above, taking the train over to Ebisu where we wanted to revisit a favourite restaurant from last year. I couldn't remember where it was, except that it was close to Ebisu station, but Bob was confident he could find it and he did! On a quiet, winding street full of restaurants, Sacra was a place that we had stumbled upon last time. After peering in at the food being served, and scanning the outside menu to make sure we could afford the prices (even though we couldn't read what you got for those prices), we went in, made do with our knowledge of izakaya-style food and Japanese food vocabulary, and had an utterly fantastic meal. Tonight would be a nice repeat of that meal, with the added bonus that in the year and a half since we were here last, Sacra now boasted an English menu! Three floors of izakaya joy awaited us, and in we went.

Vancouver has some great izakaya restaurants (many of which are very close to where we used to live), and we miss eating izakaya food very, very much. Essentially a lot of shared small plates with an emphasis on grilled foods, izakaya is a great way to taste a variety of dishes while enjoying the informal ambiance of an izakaya joint. We ordered and waited with anticipation for the dishes to start arriving . . .

Those of you who read these pages regularly know that pictures of food aren't, well, a rarity around these parts. What you don't know is that I often have to ask Bob to wait before digging in so that I can get a photo. Usually he remembers to wait, and sometimes he's a bit impatient, but tonight I think he was wishing that the camera wasn't holding him back from the plates that kept coming. First up was a plate of tangy seafood-salad rolls,