Japan trip recap: Tokyo Pt2

After writing my first four posts on my Japan trip, I’ve realized that I wish I had more time to write. Growing up, I never was a great writer and I generally hated it. I’d much rather do a math problem or math homework than my English homework. I do think this blog has made me a lot better writer in the last 4+ years I’ve had it although I wouldn’t call it necessarily my strength.

I’ve gone much longer than I’ve wanted to in each of the posts. Part of that is maybe I’m not the most succinct writer. Another part of that is that I’ve found that I really enjoyed reminiscing about my trip and writing about it. I wish I had more time to really go into depth, but that’s life. Maybe as things settle down in my life (lol), I’ll start writing more in-depth essays.

Anyways, time to bring this one home.

Tokyo: Day 12-15

When we booked the trip, we knew we wanted to end in Tokyo as a way to tackle everything that we missed as well as get some shopping done. I’m really glad we did as this segment turned out to be the perfect ending to our Japan adventure. After a quick ride on the Romance Car to Shinjuku station, we checked into our tiny hotel room and decided to head out to lunch.

We knew we wanted to try Tsujihan which has gone viral on Tik-tok and Instagram lately for their damn good looking seafood donburi bowls. It was about 2pm when we arrived and luckily, we had no line. Sophia and I both ordered their famous donburis which consisted of a mix of seafood including squid, ikura, uni, and other various fishes diced up on top of a bowl of rice. It looked really damn amazing, but unfortunately only tasted okay. I’d come back, but it definitely was something that looks better than it actually is.

We went back to the hotel to rest a bit and went back out to Shibuya for the early evening. Sophia found this awesome rooftop that served drinks that overlooked the famous crossing. It was fun, but unfortunately we missed rush hour and perhaps the peak of the crossing. We got standing sushi bar once again as a pre-dinner snack and god I love that place.

After a quick sushi snack, Sophia and I headed to Roppongi to grab drinks and eat dinner at Savoy. The restaurant has gained a lot of popularity recently for their delicious pizza. My mind was absolutely blown. The best way I can describe Savoy is that it’s one of those things that makes no sense…. pizza in Japan?!? but at the same time, makes a lot of sense at the same time. The Japanese are true masters of their craft and the bar for food is so damn high. Sophia and I thought that this might be the best pizza that we have had, and we’ve both been to Italy.

We met the sushi maker who has been posting daily photos of his clientele on Instagram at Savoy for years now and it was great to be connected to him. He mentioned that he was looking to move to New York and open a shop soon enough. I loved that and I can’t wait to hear about Savoy moving to NY. I can imagine the push back from traditional NYers confused about a Japanese pizza chain, but they’ll be pleasantly surprised once they get a taste of that pizza. I can’t wait.

The next day we decided to have a shopping and eating day. This consisted mainly of Sophia shopping and me stopping in various sushi bars. I had a good run at Sushi Ginza Ondera Kaisen which is a famous sushi shop’s conveyer belt sushi location which was fantastic. We also stopped at Sushiro, another popular conveyer belt sushi chain. I love how fun, affordable, and delicious these conveyer belt sushi places are. If these existed at these price points in the U.S., I might eat at one of these places every day for lunch. At night we headed to Piss Alley for some yakitori in a small shop. The food was good but it was more of an experience that we had to partake in.

On Thursday, we went back to Tsukiji fish market to grab a few more bites and ate at a local sushi shop. It was some of the best value sushi I’ve gotten. This was a local spot on the outskirts of the market and for $15, I got a sushi platter that was to die for. Again, I wish I could do this everyday.

After the market, we did a bit more shopping in Ginza as Sophia was looking at some bags that were on discount due to the conversion rates. Then we headed to the kitchen street to do some kitchen shopping. That was a really cool experience and we got some really awesome Japanese kitchenware. One thing I did notice was that we had a lot of the same stuff in the stores in San Francisco. We had a good laugh when we realized that the same chopsticks that we bought in Japantown SF was being sold in this chopstick store in Tokyo.

We capped our last night in Tokyo with a night out in Shinjuku. We stopped at Golden Gai for some drinks and then hit the town. The Kabukicho tower was pretty cool but got old pretty fast so we ended up going to some of those Japanese claw game arcades. I told myself that I didn’t want to leave Tokyo without winning once. Unfortunately, all that happened was Sophia ended up winning a small doll and I ended up spending a lot more money to win nothing. She’s going to hold that over me forever.

The next morning, we checked out of our hotel and parked our bags in Tokyo Station. We checked out the tech district to see some of the towers of anime and manga just to see it. And headed to Manten Sushi for one of our last meals. This was a popular omakase counter that is advertised as affordable at only $50. It did not disappoint. We were actually pretty full from an udon meal a few hours before, and the food felt like it wouldn’t stop coming. For the price of $50, it was maybe one of the best value experiences we had in Japan.

Afterwards, we went to Ginza for Sophia to finally purchase her hand bag that she wanted while I ventured off to check out Daiso and Muji real quick. Afterwards, I found a Japanese bath house to take a shower before our flight. We met back up in Tokyo Station and headed to Haneda.

Those last few hours in Japan were definitely a bit sad for myself. I was thinking back about the trip and our experience. We’ve been lucky to visit some amazing places over the last year, but Japan was definitely probably the top destination. The food and culture is just second to none. Everything in Japan just simply worked.

All that said, I was actually ready to go home at that point. Two weeks away was a good amount of time. I felt recharged and even wanted to go back to work. I know I’ll be back to Japan sooner than later. It was 7 years since my last trip there and hopefully it won’t take me another 7 to make it back. Until next time Japan.