January 21: Tokyo Day 2

This morning Uncle Kiyonari and Auntie Megumi came to pick us up around 10:45 because we are moving to a hotel in the Kichijoji neighborhood of Tokyo. I had mentioned wanting to go to the crosswalk that was always crowded in movies when we flew over from Okinawa so they took us to the Shibuya neighborhood. We parked just a few blocks up from the so-called scramble crossing and walked down. We were there at about 11:30 am so it was kind of an odd hour of the day so the crosswalk wasn’t too crowded, but there were still enough people there to get a small taste of how the crossing works. We made a couple of rounds before we headed back up to the car.

Scramble Crossing

Uncle Kiyonari drove us over to the Shinjuku neighborhood where we had lunch at Unoya. It was on the 49th floor of the Shinjuku Nomura Building. Originally they wanted to take us to Hibiki, which was right next-door, but they wouldn’t allow children under the age of 6, so we went to Unoya instead. Being so high up we had a really great view of the city and Mt. Fuji was even in our view.

View from Unoya

For my lunch I ordered the bubuzuke with maguro sashimi, which they only have 10 orders available each day. It consisted of akami maguro sashimi with fresh wasabi and shiso, a dipping sauce of fresh egg yolk, shoyu and sesame mixed together, rice, tea to pour over the rice, tsukemono to top the rice, puffed rice and hiyayakko (soft tofu with bonito shavings, green onion and shoyu). The maguro with fresh wasabi and shiso dipped in the egg yolk sauce and eaten with the rice, tea and tsukemono was really good. It was a nice light lunch, but still satisfying.

Bubuzuke w Maguro Sashimi

Otousan got a beef curry with over easy egg, cheese and tempura onion. For some reason the large size was the same price as the small size so he ordered the large and Christal and I helped him finish it. Just like the other curries we've had in Japan, it was so much better and more flavorful than the golden curry I've had in the US. 

Beef Curry w Egg, Cheese & Tempura Onion

Christal ordered udon with negitoro don. The udon was very good, and it had more vegetables in it than I'm used to seeing in udon. The negitoro don was super fresh and the shiso leaf and fresh wasabi helped cut through the fattiness of the toro. For whatever reason the green onions in Japan seem to be sweeter and have less of the harsh onion flavor than the green onions in America and it seems to help accentuate everything better. Needless to say I was a fan of the negitoro don.

Udon w Negitoro Don

After lunch Uncle Kiyonari and Auntie Megumi took us to the Isetan department store, which has one of the largest food halls in Japan in its basement. We only walked around the desserts section and part of the meat section because we didn't want to get stuck in rush hour traffic, but the displays were amazingly intricate, especially in the desserts section. There is even a French chocolatier, Jean Paul Hévin, whose shop only lets in four people at a time so that they can regulate the temperature and humidity better inside. Whether or not this is actually effective seems suspect to me, but its not my store so they can do whatever they want. On our way out Christal wanted to get her dad an eclair so we stopped at Pierre Hermé at picked on up along with a pistachio and strawberry cake. The pistachio and strawberry cake was exceptional. The cake was light and fluffy, even though it looked like it might be heavier and crumbly, and it had a pistachio cream in the middle that was sweet and rich and full of pistachio flavor.

Pistachio & Strawberry Cake

From Shinjuku we headed out to Kichijoji and we got dropped off at our hotel. Once we got settled in Luke and Christal took a long nap while Otousan went out for a walk and I worked on my blog/journal. Otousan then met up with the president of the Japanese SDA conference and Luke and Christal had kind of woken up by that time so we all headed out for dinner. Christal was wanting ramen with chicken broth, which is supposedly what Kichijoji is known for, but we didn't find any placed with exclusively chicken broth near us so we settled on Souryutougyoku-do. I ordered the shio ramen and it was good, but I think I like the shio ramen I make better. The broth seemed more salty and the noodles were kind of generic, but it was still better than average. 

Shio Ramen

When we finished we said goodbye to Mr. Shimada and then Otousan went back to the room to relax while Christal, Luke and I walked around for a while more. We explored some smaller alleyways that had all kinds of little bars with room for 5-10 people at most. They all had yakitori or some other kind of food that looked and smelled delicious. Right before we headed back to the hotel we stumbled across a fugu restaurant that had tanks of live fugu displayed at the front window. Fugu is one of my bucket list items, but Christal doesn't want me to have it so I may have to hold off till I'm really old.

Fugu!