Our Tokyo and Seoul Adventure: Day Eighteen

Today was our last real day in Tokyo (tomorrow morning would just be about getting ourselves to the airport), and we were pleased to see that we wouldn't have to make another visit to a bank machine to get more Yen.
I think I mentioned in an earlier post that our hotel was conveniently located for getting around the city, and here's some visual proof! I took this photo while we were having breakfast--the Yamanote line (the main circular route around Tokyo) platform is above the road at the left, while a separate subway station has an entrance just in front of the hotel.

Our first stop of the day was at Ikebukuro, a busy and yet still somehow quiet-feeling neighbourhood that Bob wanted to visit for its guitar shops, so we went our separate shopping ways, Bob to his guitars and me to another branch of Tokyu Hands. I was a bit confused as to the giant puppy that graced the top of the building,

but realised that this branch of Tokyu Hands has quite a large section devoted to pet goods, so perhaps that explains the sign. This sign inside the store was a bit more confusing

until I saw what "cat's house" meant--for a separate admission fee, you could enter what appeared to be a cat cuddling area, kind of like an all-you-can-pat cat-lovers' dream. Unless you paid, you couldn't see into the cuddling area though; I suppose this is to give the cuddlers and cuddlees a bit of privacy! Bob and I met back at the station about an hour later and decided to head over to a nearby neighbourhood that we visited last time we were in Tokyo, but that we wanted to explore more. Yanaka is old-school Tokyo, a lovely example of a neighbourhood that retains much of its shitamachi ("low city"), slow-moving charm. Adding to Yanaka's allure are the staggering number of temples that seem to dot every winding street, the traditional shops selling handmade goods, and the number of locals going about their daily lives. One of the few Tokyo neighbourhoods that survived both the great 1923 earthquake and WWII air raids virtually unscathed, Yanaka is proof that not all of central Tokyo is of the Shibuya and Shinjuku variety. On our last visit, we wandered through the neighbourhood, but this time we decided to follow a guidebook walking tour that ended up showing us parts of the neighbourhood that we hadn't ventured into before. We started by peeking into the grounds of Tenno-ji, a temple dedicated to a deity of good fortune, known in the early 1800s as a place to buy lottery tickets (then a definite no-no) until the government shut down the temple's business dealings.

The temple's bronze Buddha was cast in 1690:

I don't know the significance of this decoration, but somehow I found its simple beauty breathtaking.

As we soon discovered, Yanaka's temples were very busy on this sunny Sunday so early in the new year, with people coming from all over to pay their new year's respects.

After Tenno-ji, we entered Yanaka Cemetery, one of Tokyo's largest cemeteries and a popular place for picnics during cherry-blossom time. It was too early for cherry blossoms today, but there were still many old impressive trees to admire.

The main boulevard across the grounds was busy with people, and although the cemetery is even more beautiful when the trees are in bloom (as they were on our last visit), something about the starkness of the trees coupled with the liveliness of the people made for a nice balance.

These people were touring a number of Yanaka temples, and as we walked through the neighbourhood, we saw many people carrying the same lists of temples as they made pilgrimages from place to place.

Our next stop was at Choan-ji, a temple dedicated to the god of longevity, which seemed particularly popular.

Many of Yanaka's buildings and walls belong to another age:

Kanno-ji contains a memorial to the 47 ronin (masterless samurai) who remained loyal to their lord, avenging his death and then committing ritual suicide:

In a strange way, all the overhead wires in Yanaka reminded me of Vancouver's trolley-bus wires!

We peeked into another temple, Ryusen-ji,

before continuing along the street. Many residences had hung their futon out to air for the day, but this house also seemed to be airing out their teddy bears!

I hadn't heard of him at the time, but we passed by a museum dedicated to Asakura Fumio, considered the father of Modern Japanese sculpture. After reading a bit more about Asakura and the building itself, I wish we had paid to go inside the museum, housed in his former residence/ studio. Apparently, it's quite beautiful inside, with half of the interior in traditional Japanese style and the other half in a western style, and the roof garden has beautiful views of Yanaka. (I also like the Antony-Gormley-esque placement of the figure on the roof.)

Hatsunei Komichi is an arcade from another time--filled with tiny drinking establishments, its wooden roof is a rarity in Tokyo:

Although most of the bars were closed at this time of day, we still enjoyed walking the short length of the arcade, peering into the tiny businesses, and even spotting this lovely handmade group of creatures outside one of the bars.

Yanaka's main shopping street has the cute name of "Yanaka Ginza," and features an artistic sense of cohesiveness echoed in the black and white murals that dot many of the shopfronts.

Halfway down the street, I spotted this tiny shop and after noticing what they were selling, we decided to go in for a peek.

Yanaka Coffee is a gem of a place, and it's easy to see that they're serious about their coffee. A teeny-tiny shop, packed with people and beans, the place smelled fantastic and our lattés were lovely.

Yanaka Coffee sells a large selection of beans, but do you notice something unusual about the way they look?

They're unroasted. Just behind the counter was an enormous roaster in which they custom roast each purchase!! (That's worthy of two exclamation points in my book.) Time-consuming (about twenty minutes per small batch, apparently) and delightfully individual, I'm not aware of any London or Vancouver coffee shop that offers such an extreme-artisan service right in the shop. I never expected to come across such a thing in Yanaka, but that's Tokyo for you. After we left the shop, I noticed this particularly lovely new year's decoration outside a private residence,

as well as more than a few great dogs enjoying the sunny day.

Our last Yanaka stop was at Daien-ji, built in 1591.

The temple itself is very striking, and our guidebook informed us that it "is a highly unusual building in that it consists of two symmetrical halves. The left half was intended to serve as a Shinto shrine, the right as a Buddhist temple, but such plans were rejected by the shogunate, which enforced the separation of Buddhism and Shinto."

After our long walk in Yanaka, we decided to head across Tokyo to Kichijoji, a suburban neighbourhood on Tokyo's western edges that is meant to be the newer version of Shibuya. While we were on the train, we both started to get hungry, and Bob spotted a great blurb in our book that made us get off the train two stops early in Ogikubo. From the train station, the area looked pretty nondescript, but we weren't here to sightsee--we were here to eat! The problem was that while our guidebook gave the name and address of the restaurant we were aiming for, it's virtually impossible to find any business in Tokyo without a map. So there we were, in front of the station, hungry, and with no clue where to go. There's a good solution to this though: the koban. There's a koban (police box) in every neighbourhood, usually close to the main station, and if you ever need help with directions, that's the place to go. At first we couldn't spot the Ogikubo koban, but when we did find it, we rushed over to ask for directions. With my clumsy Japanese, I could sense the police officer's nervousness when I said we needed directions to a restaurant, but when I said the name, both officers immediately smiled with relief and nodded--ah yes, they knew this one! With their directions only in Japanese and me asking for as much clarification as I could, and still only understanding half of what they said, we walked in the general direction of their instructions. "How are we going to find it?" Bob asked. "I'm not quite sure," I replied. We had only walked for about five minutes before I said, "How about that? I bet that's it!" Harukiya is a ramen restaurant--not ramen like the familiar instant variety, but ramen the proper way: handmade noodles, rich broth simmered for hours, and a permanent queue outside a tiny restaurant. After confirming with the last person in line that we were in the right place (one complaint I have about our guidebook is that it doesn't spell out names in kanji), we joined the queue, thinking it was a good sign that Harukiya had the only line on the block, the neighbourhood, even!

An even better sign was that every person who came out of the restaurant was red-cheeked and sweating--a definite clue that the broth was nice and hot and that the restaurant was filled with the neverending steam of cooking noodles and simmering broth (a proper ramen place has the simple kitchen in the eating area itself). When we neared the front of the line, the proprietor came out and took our orders (helping us very nicely with the Japanese menu), and we were soon ushered through the noren into the restaurant. We watched the chefs at work while we waited,

and after a few minutes, our steaming bowls arrived.

One sip of the broth and we understood why Harukiya is one of Tokyo's most famous ramen shops, with people visiting from around the country to experience the ramen we were having. Mmm! We left the restaurant (yes, as sweaty and red-cheeked as the rest) very happy and very full, and sauntered back to the station to continue on our way to Kichijoji, which turned out to be a great neighbourhood filled with people, shops, and a nice mix of the old and new.

We wouldn't have known what it was if we hadn't used a similar machine at my parents' eyeglass shop in Suji on our last visit, but since we recognised the machine, Bob decided to take advantage of this shop's help-yourself ultrasonic eyeglass-cleaning machine. Like other shops, the machine was out on the sidewalk to encourage people to stop at the shop, so if you're wandering around Tokyo or Japan, you don't have any excuse to have dirty glasses! If you've never had your glasses cleaned this way, you're looking at the world through a haze of dirt. Seriously.

After walking around the busy commercial centre of Kichijoji, we headed down toward Inokashira Park. The closer we got to the park, the more restaurants and street stalls we noticed.

The park must be beautiful in the day, but it was too dark to see much in the evening. Still, it made for an atmospheric walk, and after London's annoying city-wide policy of locking up green spaces after (and sometimes even before) dark, it was nice to go for an evening stroll in a park--something we did on most nights when we lived in Vancouver.

We weren't quite ready for dinner yet, so we resisted the urge to eat in Kichijoji, and instead headed back to Kagurazaka to buy an armful of sushi for our last Tokyo dinner. Everything at this shop looked incredible,

and even though we clearly bought a ridiculous amount of sushi for two people (the woman gave us five pairs of chopsticks), the final tally was only about GBP£12.50 (CAD$25). Here's Bob back in our hotel room, thinking about the meal he's about to eat:

Unfortunately, things went a bit downhill for me from here--on our way back to the hotel, I started to feel really ill, and once in the room, I couldn't warm up even though Bob said I felt like I was on fire, and he blasted the heat until he was sweating. After a restless nap, Bob woke me up to have supper, and (this will tell you how poorly I felt) I couldn't even eat my share of the sushi and ended up giving most of it to Bob before crawling back into bed. I didn't know it at the time, but tonight was the beginning of about a week of terrible stomach trouble for me. I never would find out the cause, although it didn't seem to be a flu since Bob never caught it, but neither did it seem to be food-related, since funnily enough, today was the only day of our Tokyo visit that Bob and I ate exactly the same thing at every meal. In any case, our last sushi meal on our last night in Tokyo was quite anticlimactic for me, although Bob definitely got to pig out!