Eat, bar, sushi

Waiting for the next train

Early this morning I didn’t know where I wanted to explore today. I had a hard time deciding between Ueno or Kamakura which is a little far away. Since it was already late in the morning, I decided to explore the area of Ueno mainly for the park and highly recommended Tokyo National Museum. I took the train to Ueno station.

Ueno park is an interesting mix of tourists, Japanese families, historic monuments, and the homeless. I saw the Statue of Takamori Saigo, tombs of the Shogitai Soldiers (who actually opposed Takamori), Kiyomizu Kannon-do temple, and the Toshigu shrine. I couldn’t find the Ueno Seiyoken Grill which opened in 1876. Well, maybe I did, I found a restaurant but everything was in Japanese and the host didn’t even bother to try to help me out. I walked for probably a half hour and gave up because I couldn’t find it. I ended up at a small ramen stand which wasn’t that good.

Bowl at Tokyo National Museum

The Tokyo National Museum was very large, modern, and nice. I only had time to visit the main building with two large floors of various Japanese cultural artifacts and another special exhibit showing the National Treasures from Yakushi-ji Temple. In the permanent exhibits, I was impressed by the sculptures and the documentary drawings of animals. At the latter exhibit, there were two very impressive Buddist statues. I spent a few hours at the museum and it was time to go.

Drawing of fish at Tokyo National Museum

Drawing of monkey at Tokyo National Museum

I was having a hard time trying to decide what to do next. There’s restaurant, Izu’ ei, that I walked to and really wanted to try because they’ve served eel since the Edo period (1600-1867) and they specially get their charcoal they use to cook in some remote mountain location. The only problem was that in two hours I was to meet my friends Shawn and Taeko for dinner. I ended up skipping the restaurant and going back to Shawn’s place in Ebisu.

Koji (left) and Shawn (right) joke around

My Japanese friend Chie back in the US introduced me via email to her friend Koji she has known many years. I’ve been trying to coordinate meeting up with him and we finally agreed to meet up for dinner, along with Shawn and Taeko. We all met at a restaurant which was nice. None of us have ever met Koji but we’ve all met Chie before. I guess it was like a Chie fan club meeting or something.

Earlier, we all planned on going out to a club or bar later in the night. In fact, Taeko, Shawn, and I planned on staying up all night in order to go to the Tsukiji fish market at 5 AM to eat some of the best sushi around. Koji wanted to drive home and change before going out and planned on calling Shawn when he was ready to meet up again. We all planned on meeting in the Goruden Gai area in Shinjuku.

In Goruden Gai, there’s a lot of small alleyways lined with tiny bars with only usually a half dozen seats. Shawn, Taeko, and I found one which had the ambience of being in a fishing town or something. Whatever the feeling, it had a lot of charm and the bartender was friendly. Despite that, we were falling asleep and needed to find a venue with more energy. We decided to take a taxi to Roppongi -- with nightlife favoring younger crowds and foreigners.

The first bar we went to was very crowded and energetic. Seemed like there were a lot of foreigners there. Right off the bat, we ordered cocktails and a round of tequila. I have to admit it was a little refreshing drinking something other than rum and coke. After about an hour or so and watching a bar fight, we went to another place which had more dancing.

Shawn noticed that Koji called him and was at Goruden Gai area -- oops. It had been a couple hours since he called and I felt really bad for not getting a hold of him. Especially since he drove home, changed, and drove to Goruden Gai. The next club was a different vibe and at one point we couldn’t find little Taeko. We eventually did find her, and by around 5 AM we hailed a taxi to go to the Tsukiji fish market for some sushi...

- jason