Tokyo is unreal.  We spent nearly a week there, and I think during that entire time, there wasn’t ten minutes that passed without my mind being completely blown.  The city itself is really an experience, and although we did do some sightseeing, it was really all of the small day-to-day things that when added together made me love this city.  From the smells and sounds of slurps coming out of the ramen shops, to the random sumo wrestler encounter on the train, to the vaguely anime-sounding chimes played when the subway pulls into the station, to the unbelievably friendly and helpful demeanor of nearly everyone we met.  The list of small encounters that made me smile, the ones that really made this city stand out for me, could fill 100 pages, but Tokyo really needs to be experienced to understand how awesome it is.

We arrived at our hotel in Tokyo near the Gotanda station at around 7pm after drinking a lot of beer at the Kiuchi brewery.  The first thing we noticed was that Tokyo hotels are much different from the ryokan we had been staying in in Nikko.  It was really more akin to a cruise ship cabin than a hotel room.  Clean room though and the basement was well stocked with vending machines.  This was also when we realized that wi-fi isn’t really a big thing in Japan.  4G and LTE are ubiquitous so most people just create their own mobile hotspots.  Finally, we were able to get a signal in the lobby so we could contact Stefanie and meet up with her and her friend Seitaro for a late dinner.

We never would even known that the restaurant existed because it was on the 7th floor of a high-rise with signs in Japanese only, but with Stefanie’s directions, we easily found the smoke-filled, low-ceilinged izakaya (Japanese pub).  We got to know each other over horse-meat sashimi, tons of beers, and innumerable indescribable dishes, before moving onto the next izakaya to meet another friend, Kentaro.  The pattern repeated, moving from izakaya to izakaya, including rice bowls at Yoshinoya and karaoke until 5am when we went outside to watch the sunrise!  Needless to say, we were all great friends by the end of the night.

The next morning we slept in until noon and then peeled ourselves out of bed so we could take a train to Harajuku, an area known for young people with crazy fashions. We walked around Omote-sando-dori, high end shops and fancy architecture and had a tasty sakura (cherry blossom) crepe.  Amanda loved the cute shops on Cat Street.  We saw the Takeshita-dori with all the trendy teens and zombie little Bo-Peeps.  Then we took the train back to Gotanda to meet Stefanie who was still recovering. We went with her to Shibuya, where we saw the famous chaotic intersection, walked around shops and ate dinner at nice sushi conveyor belt restaurant.

After our day of recovery, we decided it was time for some hanami.  Hanami, roughly translates to “cherry blossom viewing party” and it is a national phenomenon.  For the 7-10 period in April when the trees are blooming, the entire nation pretty much flips out.  Train stations announce the percentage that the flowers are open around town.  Freshmen, or new employees, at the companies are sent out with blue tarps to reserve the best spots for their departments under their favorite trees, and then the whole country comes out to drink sake, eat festival food (tako-oyaki, pickled cucumbers, mochi, bbq scallops, yakitori, etc…), dance, relax, and party.  This goes on until the blossoms start to fall off, then everyone contemplates the transient nature of life and goes back to work.  We went to Ueno Park, one of the biggest cherry blossom sites, and had a blast.

Amanda and I knew that we wanted to do something special for our two-year anniversary, so I contacted my friend Kyoko, back in San Francisco, who used to live in Tokyo and I knew to be a food connoisseur.  She arranged reservations for us at a restaurant that she used to work at Hide’s, in Nijizansabu.  The 11 course meal turned out to be one of the best of our lives.  Again, we never would have found the place on our own, because it was on the third floor of a small tower tucked behind some high-end apartment buildings.  The highlights were chicken sashimi (white meat, dark meat, skin, and with wasabi), pea and scallop fritters, sakura salted trout, uni (sea urchin) in a mushroom, shabu-shabu (Japanese hot pot), and a ramen that was made from the broth of the shabu shabu.  Incredible.

The next day we went to the Studio Ghibili museum.  Ghibili is the Japanese equivalent of Disney.  They made Princes Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo, and many others.  The museum is basically a huge house that they converted to look as if it existed within one of the movies.  Unfortunately, no photos were allowed inside, but it was really cool.

The next night we transferred to a room in the suburbs (Yoga) that we found on AirBnB.  We stayed with a Japanese woman named Senae who was super nice and showed us around town a bit.  She was studying English and was happy to show us around the local park and restaurants.  We went to go do some more sight seeing at the Emperor’s palace and Shibuya then we we went to sleep on the floor of Stefanie’s hotel so we could wake up at 3:30am to go to the Tsukiji fish market.

A large portion of the world’s sushi passes through Tsukiji market.  Only 120 visitors are allowed in, but if you go early enough, you are allowed to watch the actual blue fin tuna auction where buyers around the world bid on the daily catches.  It was really interesting to watch but the best part was sampling some of the goods afterward.  We had the BEST tuna sushi set. O-toro, Chu-toro, maguro, seared maguro and tuna roll in this narrow little restaurants with about 10 seats.

We went back to rest and sleep a bit before heading out for our last night in Tokyo.  We met up with Seitaro and Kentaro again, along with Ren (one of Stefanie’s coworkers) and had another incredible night eating bacon, conch, clams, etc… We taught them how to do sake bombs (an American tradition) and I think they thought it was fun but weird.   Amanda was really tired so I walked her back to the hotel, then I came back out and rallied until sunrise again.  Kentaro bought us some nice pins as a departing gift.  I went back to fetch Amanda from Stefanie’s hotel and we got back to Yoga at 7am.  A few hours later, Senae woke us up saying that her next guests were coming soon.  We completely missed our noon train to Kyoto, but stumbled and grumbled ourselves back to the train station, boarded a 2pm train and fell asleep.