4 days in Tokyo and Kyoto Japan

We woke up our fourth and last day in Tokyo to yet another beautiful sunshine soaked morning. I’d
been wanting to check out the Tokyo Hands department store in the Takashimaya mall right behind our hotel so we started over there right after breakfast. It takes up 8 floors of the mall and is a fascinating collection of random objects. I wish we had more time to browse the stores in Japan! I definitely could have spent days in that enormous shopping center just looking at everything. I never even looked at clothes! I spent a lot of time in the party and craft and beauty and travel sections, looking at funny glasses, party hats, phone cases, nail stickers, toys, umbrellas, luggage...

I never did buy anything, and at some point I lost Rich. He’d been saying he wanted to find a place to sit down, and I looked down by the entrance for him, where I thought we’d meet if we lost each other, but he was nowhere to be found. I had my phone in airplane mode since I didn’t want to pay the roaming charges for texting so I thought I’d try sending an email and see if he got that. There was intermittent free wifi in the mall I was able to use. Thank you google! He messaged me back saying he was sitting in a restaurant on the top floor (14th floor maybe?) so I headed up 14 escalators to find him. What good work he did! He was having a beer on the most gorgeous rooftop patio and we decided it was the perfect spot for lunch. We had shade from our table umbrella and lovely bamboo gardens all around. In fact, this was the only place we ever got to eat outside in Japan that I can recall. They don’t seem to be big on outdoor patios. Pretty much all the restaurants have indoor seating only from what we saw. We had such nice weather for most of our trip that I was really feeling patio dining but we just got that one sweet rooftop lunch. The food was excellent too. Definitely nicer than your average mall food court!

After lunch we headed to the Shinjuku gardens and park and saw the greenhouse, formal French garden with all kinds of roses, English garden and traditional Japanese garden. I took lots of flower photos and we sat on a few benches to rest and take in the sights before heading back to the hotel to freshen up for dinner.

For our last dinner in Tokyo, we looked up a place that our friends from the Japanese cooking class had recommended, called “izakaya-ism,” where they offered a prix-fixe 10-course all-you-can-drink meal izakaya-style. Turns out it wasn’t actually called izakaya-ism, it was called Shirube, but the sign on the door said izakaya-ism, so easy to mistake. We only had 2 drinks each – I had the “mystery sake” which was actually good! – so we definitely did not maximize the all-you-can-drink-ness, but we did max out on the food. We also had a couple drinks at the hotel bar 500-yen ($4) happy hour before dinner, which was awesome.

happy hour

the bartender shaking up Rich's drink took his job real seriously. 

about to feast izakaya style!

We asked our server/chef if we could have only vegetarian and seafood dishes and were able to make
him understand – although I got full toward the end and Rich got to have gyoza / sausage for one course after all. We had salad, mackerel that they blow torched at the table, sashimi, bread with some delicious mixture of tuna, sauce and veggies on it, tempura shrimp in a creamy sauce with a soft egg, a giant radish in broth (that was the weirdest and worst), gyoza, ice cream with molasses and malt on it, and the final dish: miso soup. Why was the miso soup last? Add that to the list of inscrutable things! It was a great meal in a fun atmosphere and we were stuffed and ready to pass out by the end, per usual.

Goodbye rainy Tokyo!

On Wednesday we got up, packed up our stuff and got ready to take the Shinkansen (bullet train) to
Kyoto. It poured rain all day and we were glad it was our day in transit. The Shinkansen was awesome. It goes superfast and the seats were so comfortable, like I wish airplane seats could be. We had tons of leg room and the seats reclined way far back. So luxurious after our trans Pacific flight where the seats did not recline at all! The rail infrastructure in Japan is really impressive. I wish it was that easy to get around the US by train!

about to board the Shinkansen

so. much. legroom.

We also loved our hotel in Kyoto, Hotel Granvia, which was conveniently located in the Kyoto train
station where we arrived. We stayed on the 10th floor and had a cool view of trains below and the city and mountains beyond. It was really quiet though; you would never guess you were in a train station. It has huge, nice bathrooms with spacious showers and firehose-level water pressure, which is possibly one of my top ten favorite things in the world. Both our hotels provided all the toiletries one could desire. The best part was of course the snazzy robo toilet that lifted its lid as you approached and had all sorts of features including bidet, sounds and heated seat. Although an auto bidet feature freaks me out to be honest. I never tried it. And I’m not sure I ever totally got used to the toilet lifting its lid automatically, although I’m sure eventually I would have. I might not be advanced enough for Japanese toilets. Rich thinks they are incredible marvels of technological achievement, though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we own one someday.

Kyoto Station

Once we got settled in our Kyoto hotel I squeezed in a quick in-room workout (there was surprisingly
enough room!) and checked out the train station, which includes an entire mall in the basement, loads
of restaurants and is basically a city in itself. Rich wanted ramen for dinner so after lots of searching we found a place that had ramen as well as other things for me to eat, because there is no pesco-vegetarian ramen to be found. I got what came to be my standard go-to in Japan: deep fried shrimp in a creamy mayo sauce, served with some lettuce. Not quite a pinnacle of nutrition, but definitely tasty. It was a pretty chill day overall which was a nice respite from the breakneck pace we’d been keeping.

Thursday was a great day and maybe my favorite day overall. The sun was shining and it could not have been a more beautiful day in Kyoto. We got up and relaxed for a bit before our daily morning video call with Valerie. We used Facetime to see her while we were in California and then switched to video chat via Google once we got to Japan. It was pretty hit or miss over the course of our two weeks away. She had some rough days and sometimes ignored us or threw a tantrum. It seemed to generally alternate between good and bad days and Wednesday was probably the worst one so we were not sure how it would go Thursday morning, but then we had the best call of the trip. She talked to us, sang songs, and was being the sweetest version of her sweet self. We showed her the trains outside our window and tried to explain that we were on the other side of the world, where it was morning while she was about to go to bed. She LOVED seeing the trains. This girl LOVES her some trains. It was just so wonderful to start the day with a good call and see that she was doing well at home with my dad.

We finally said good night/good morning and headed out for breakfast at a waffle place called honeybee that we found the night before. We had massive, decadent waffle/ice cream/whipped
cream/fruit/chocolate sundaes for breakfast and then went to catch a train to Chushojima for a sake tasting tour.

waffle sundae glory

We found Jason’s tours on trip advisor on Wednesday, emailed him and got lucky he was
having a tour Thursday. Jason was great. He grew up in Minneapolis and moved to Japan something like 13 years ago, got married, had 2 kids, and now luckily for us does sake tasting tours in his spare time! It was lovely to explore the area with someone who knows it so well and is fluent in both English and Japanese. He met us at the station, along with a couple from Australia, and took the four of us to a sake shop in Fushimi (the area where most of the world’s sake comes from I believe) where he taught us the basics of tasting and we tried 4 kinds of sake. I learned on this tour that I really just do not like sake very much. Haha. Except for sparkling sake. But it was still interesting and fun.

miso and tofu for cleansing the palate between each sake

Then we walked to the Gekeikkan Sake Museum and he showed us around there and explained the history and process of making sake and we tried two more kinds of sake and a plum wine which I REALLY did not enjoy.

The last stop was another, fancy sake shop where we tasted six more kinds of sake. It really was a lot of fun in spite of my now officially confirmed aversion to sake.

After the tour ended around 2:30 we found a hole in the wall place for lunch just down the street. We
were a little skeptical. The English was pretty minimal between the menus and the servers but we
muddled through with lots of pointing and some google translate, and the food turned out to be
delicious. We ordered lots of sushi, salad, and of course fried shrimp in mayo sauce. Everything tasted fresh and way exceeded our low expectations.

We stopped in a toy store on our way back to the train station and picked up a train coloring book for
Valerie, and then decided to visit the Fushimi Inari shrine which was on our way back to Kyoto and
supposed to be the best one in the area. Was it ever! It was a highlight of the trip for sure. A perfect,
sunny late afternoon, and it was just gorgeous. There were bright orange gates everywhere and it was at the bottom of a hill, which we discovered was Mt. Inari, and you can hike up to the top. We started to explore, climb the stairs and follow the paths through more and more bright orange gates. A couple at the bottom said it was about a 1.5 hour climb to the top. We didn’t know there was a hike but we were feeling good and decided to go for it! To the top!

overlooking Kyoto

Osaka in the distance

What a lovely climb. It could have used a few more benches to stop for rest along the way, but I am glad we went for it. There is a stunning overlook of Kyoto and Osaka and bright orange gates lining the path almost the entire way up. We actually didn’t even realize it when we reached the top. It didn’t seem to be any different from other sections of the climb so we kept going and noticed we suddenly seemed to be going further and further downhill. Did we miss it? Did we make a wrong turn? Another girl on the path confirmed we just missed it. Being able to read Japanese probably would have helped us identify the top. Whoops! Oh well. We did it! I climbed the equivalent of 87 flights of stairs that day according to my fitbit.

Time to head back to the hotel and relax a bit before dinner. We found a place that had pretty good
reviews for yakisoba and okonomiyaki within walking distance. This place turned out to be a
vegetarian’s nightmare. There weren’t a whole lot of options for me, so I chose the yakisoba noodles
with shrimp. Rich went for the okonomiyaki, which is supposed to be like a Japanese pizza or pancake, with pork, beef and squid (barf!). Both were cooked on the grill in front of us. It was a real tiny place, just 8 seats or so around the grill.

I couldn’t help but notice the lack of cleaning the grill or the utensils between dishes… and then the chef got out the “oil rag” and swiped the surface that our food would be set on in front of us. You’ve never seen a blacker, more revolting atrocity in your life. I just had to paste a smile on my face and go with it. If you block from your mind the thought of cross contamination it doesn’t exist right? Normally I prefer nothing I eat to touch anything that touched meat, but in this case a teensy bit more flexibility was needed. In general the Japanese seem to be practically obsessed with cleanliness. Removal of shoes in restaurants, washing and cleansing of hands… you’ve never seen a neater, cleaner people. But when it comes to meat all bets are off. They eat raw chicken here we were told. “It’s like sashimi.” I am here to vomit on anyone who agrees with that statement. Maybe I’m the weird one. I love me some sashimi. But raw beef or chicken is just…. A different animal. Literally. No. Just no.

Anyway, back to the vegetarian nightmare. The chef grilled up my noodles and shrimp on the grill
surface where he had just cooked something meaty for someone else, and I steeled myself to be cool.

He set it on the hot surface that was just swiped with the oil rag of terror, and…. I ate it. It was ok. Not the best meal we had. Possibly the worst. But all the others were pretty damn good so that’s not saying too much. Most importantly, I survived, no one got sick, and I played it cool in the face of perceived meaty ickiness which may or may not have been slightly exaggerated in my mind.

It was a mediocre meal at the end of an otherwise glorious day. I’ll always remember what a wonderful day it was… and try to laugh about the icky oil rag noodle dinner, which was memorable at least!

Friday was our last official day in Kyoto, and in Japan. Unfortunately, our amazing weather luck finally wore out. It was gray and cool in the morning and we decided to try to fit in a bike ride to some Kyoto landmarks before the rain started. My app indicated it should begin around 3 pm. Unfortunately my app is a big liar.

First we found breakfast at the Lipton tea place in the mall, which was both delicious and hilarious. I
ordered a smoked salmon eggs benedict, and Rich ordered the British breakfast, which was scrambled eggs, toast, sausage, mushrooms, orange juice and coffee. The coffee was great. The toast was dry. The benedict was served on a closed English muffin, which I thought was interesting. Weird, but still tasty. The orange juice was served over ice. But the funniest part was the teeny tiny portion of scrambled egg.

I’d guess it was just one egg, and it was not a large egg. A comically small amount of scrambled egg,
especially for Rich, who has been known to eat more than 6 eggs at a time. He also had to order a pat of butter for his toast, which was an extra 50 yen (about 40 cents), and it arrived near frozen solid. I
couldn’t help imagining a Japanese tourist visiting the US, going to IHOP for breakfast and ordering
scrambled eggs and receiving a heaping platter of way too many eggs with tons of butter on the toast.
Would they find that as funny and weird as we found a tiny egg and paying an extra 50 yen for a pat of butter to be funny and weird? They’d probably just find it gluttonous and gross. But anyway, it was an entertaining breakfast.

We walked to the bike rental place just a couple blocks from the train station to get bikes for a few
hours. We started around 11 and hoped to be back by around 2-3, when the rain was due to start. I was enormously relieved and thrilled to find these bikes had soft, comfortable seats, in contrast to the
torture bikes we rode in Tokyo. But my happiness was short lived as the rain started not half an hour
into our ride. It started as a light mist and wasn’t too annoying at first but steadily increased to reach
critical annoyance level. By the second stop we were getting soaked and I was ready to turn around and call it a loss. Rich, on the other hand, was determined to see all the stops marked on our map, rain or no rain. He was the one navigating, so on we went to see the park, which would have been lovely on a nice day. Instead it was miserable, biking on gravel paths sopping wet.

Luckily, we found the best little restaurant to stop and dry off in after the park. I’m not sure if it was
called “Tears II” but that’s what the sign out front said, along with some other characters. We took our shoes off and sat on pillows at a short table. The place was full of interesting knick knacks and loads of charm and we had the best little hot lunch. We drank pineapple and mango beer, which is my new favorite beverage, and toasted to the awesome luck we had with weather on this trip until the last day. Then, sadly, we had to go back out into the now pouring rain to bike all the way back to the rental place.

I hope we can find these again! Sooooo delish!

It was an utter slog, drenched and freezing cold and pedaling as fast as possible to get back. Kyoto would clearly have been lovely to see via bike on a nice day so this was a huge bummer.

Finally we made it back and decided the hotel gym and pool/hot tub would be the best remedy to our
cold, wet state. It was. After a solid workout and 15 minutes in the hot tub I was warm, completely
relaxed and nearly comatose.

It was also interesting. We discovered they have lots of rules in the gym and pool/hot tub areas and
many employees hovering around to enforce them. No shoes in the locker room, no shoes on the
stretching mat, no shoes in the pool area, swim caps required in the pool, no tattoos in the pool…. That one shocked me a little. Fortunately neither of us has any tattoos so not a problem but I had never heard of that before. Apparently they consider tattoos to be very unclean. As relaxed as I felt after my workout and hot tub, I was relieved to get out of there and away from the gym/pool police.

I like the Japanese focus on neatness and order in a lot of ways, like how they all file to the left on escalators. Consideration of others, and efficiency: yes. Love it. On the flip side, I don’t enjoy the feeling of being “policed” to following all the rules quite so much. Sometimes it seems to go a little too far. Like the swim cap rule. Who cares? I have a pretty lax approach to cleanliness to begin with, along with a strong aversion to authority. So as it turns out I would probably chafe pretty hard under too much of that Japanese precision. It was impressive at first but started to feel oppressive by the end.

We had to laugh when we landed in Atlanta, got on an escalator, and were immediately blocked by two people standing next to each other and taking up the whole escalator. Welcome back to America! Have some consideration, jerks!

Anyway, back to the last day. It ended on the best note. We found a restaurant on the top floor of the hotel for our last dinner called Sky Lounge Southern Court and it was exactly what we were looking for. Beautiful view of the city lit up at night. Lovely ambiance. Japanese food. And a live singing pianist.

The food was delicious and we reflected on our trip and looked forward to getting home to our baby. And to top it off, the pianist sang our song, which we hadn't even requested. We were loving this guy, whose name it turns out is Thomas Howard Lichtenstein, which I know because we bought one of his CDs.

It was the perfect, romantic ending to an amazing trip and I will always remember that dinner. In spite of our sometime disagreements and frustrations, I could not love my husband more. He's the reason we get to travel as much as we do to places as exotic as Japan and have adventures I surely would never have without him. I love our life together so much and can't wait for the next adventure.

For some reason, the flight home was slightly less painful than the flight out - probably because our seats actually reclined slightly this time! We flew direct from Tokyo to Atlanta which was just under 12 hours and we made great time - and by some amazing stroke of luck, we made it on an earlier flight home from ATL than scheduled and were home by 6 pm instead of 9 pm! I don't know if it was ATL karma from the time we were stuck there for an extra 5 hours on our way home from Brazil in 2010 but I WILL TAKE IT!!!

We were so excited to hug and kiss our baby when we finally saw her, and she was happy to see us too, and looking so big and grown up.... in two weeks I nearly forgot that she is hardly a baby anymore!  Such a big girl and love her so much to bits and pieces, and we are never leaving her for two entire weeks ever again!  Or well... at least not for a long time! 

Happily, this amazing trip was worth the agony of missing her and we did enjoy some time together just the two of us without the day-to-day busyness of work and parenting and housework and scheduling, and crazy toddler mood swings and tantrums. The best part about being able to take a vacation away from your child, to me, is how much it refreshes you and makes you miss and appreciate the everyday again. That time away is such an incredible luxury, especially knowing she is in good hands with her loving grandparents.

And that is pretty much it for our Japan adventure... props to anyone who actually made it through both entire blogs!! I'm not worthy!!  Thanks for reading :)