We eat Japan - tasting all the food in Tokyo

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The first thing we ate was gyoza. We had spent weeks, months even, planning the trip. Looking into different city locations, having "Japlanning" nights where we sat down and watched YouTube vlogs of people in Tokyo and Kyoto. We had learned about the different areas where there were both incredible sights and sounds, and delicious food. And make no mistake, this trip was about food. And doing a workshop and a conference, but realistically? Food. Japanese food. Having grown up in Vancouver, I've had my fair share of Japanese food and culture and loved every minute of it, eating sushi weekly with friends, going for Izakaya after work, (I remember the one near 2120 Cambie which had towers of gyoza, divine) and with dear friends, finding fun sushi places like Kadoya on Davie and its dessert sushi. However, upon moving to Denmark, sushi became a high end luxury item and there weren't any other Japanese options. In the past year, we've suddenly become overwhelmed with a selection of Ramen restaurants, which has been incredible. And having grown up in Vancouver, and missing authentic Japanese food for all these years in Denmark, I was more than ready to tackle Japan - and I've always wanted to go, ever since I was little, and I have said for many years, I wanted to go for business. It's something different to come to a country with a purpose, a work purpose. You have a place to go, people to meet, things to do which automatically makes you a little bit more immersed than a bewildered tourist. So finally, my chance came and I took it. I prepared with Dzl, a workshop on Electronic Kintsugi - you know when a ceramic plate is broken and fixed with a seam of gold, there's always photos of it with cute memes like "perfection is in the imperfection"? That's what Kintsugi is, the art of repairing. In this case, we made a workshop where we explored how people could interact in the space between traditional craft and new technologies, while focusing on everyday objects. I'm truly tired of screens. I detest writing this on a screen except that I can type quite fast, and right now I'm sitting outside in the sun and overlooking a Japanese track and field training session while waiting for the next conference talks to start. It's spring in Japan and that makes sitting in front of this screen almost enjoyable. I digress - back to Tokyo, let's start at the beginning.



We landed, found our way to the airport limousine, and got into Shinjuku without much fuss. Tokyo didn't look much different from other big cities that I've been - lots of high rises, a few landmark pieces, and suddenly an old shrine, with a sloping roof and an observably peaceful atmosphere around it. We could see this from inside the bus, from sitting in traffic. This was it - the calm amidst the chaos, a token part of the expected Japanese experience. Our hotel was unremarkable except for the toilet, which was fabulous - firstly, it was warm, a nice contrast to the air conditioned room, and trying to figure out all the functions and let's say, interesting experiences it offered was of great entertainment. Cleanliness is next to godliness in Buddhism and I can't agree more, a clean, warm bottom goes a long way!



Again, i get ahead of myself. Before we could check in, we had to wait 3 hours as we had arrived before the official check in time, and so we turned to our carefully planned itinerary and made a decision - it was time for our first food experience. You might wonder if I'm a bit mad with the 'itinerary' thing - isn't travel about exploration? Well for me, I hate, hate, hate standing around, waiting to figure out what we're doing. Or being the one who everyone turns to and says 'now what'? So it makes my vacation experiences exponentially better to simply skip this part, and have a plan. Having a plan - such as, 'this is the place where we're going to hunt for interesting Japanese food on the afternoon we arrive" means that we don't have to wobble around, asking where a good place to eat is, or get lost, or frustrated or worst of all...hangry. So instead, the exploration exists in the experience. We headed out to a terrifically badly named spot, Piss Alley - where some of the good eats in Shinjuku are. It was easy to find, since we had printed a map showing how to get from our hotel to the alley - an easy 15 minute walk - and we were soon in a small dark alleyway where teeny tiny stands with 3 or 4 chairs per place exist. Here the main feature is Yakitori - meat on sticks, but since we were really in a comfort food kinda mood after such a long flight, we settled on gyoza and beers. Easy enough, and for $10, we were both full and happy. A lot of people have told us that Japan is super expensive, but so far, my guess is that they've been eating in higher end restaurants. We have spent more on the hotel breakfast each day than any other meal or experience, and breakfast is $12.



After the gyoza and beers, we were happy, full and ready for a good nap. Somewhere along the way, catching some free wi-fi, Dzl managed to look up a high school friend who lives in Tokyo, reconnect, (thank you Facebook) and plan an evening for us - going for craft beer tasting. We gave warning that we would be jetlagged but up for it. We had a good 2 hour nap, got up and faced our first battle - Shinjuku station. It's a massive station, and it took us 10 minutes to walk there and an extra 20 minutes to walk through the vast underground mall system to get to our gate, where our train left. Once we figured out how to buy tickets (everything being conveniently labelled in English and a sign showing how much it cost to go to each stop) we turned on our anthropology radar, watched how people got through the gates and followed suit like old pros. Soon enough we were in the hippest neighborhood of Tokyo (TK) and meeting Dzl's friend. He was fantastic, the kind of person where upon meeting him for the first time, I felt like it had only been last week that I saw him last and shared some beers and laughs. Easy to get a long with, welcoming and full of good stories, he led us straight to an amazing experience - an Okinawaya (TK) restaurant which had maybe 6 tables on the main floor and then another 5 tables which were sitting-cross-legged style on a slightly elevated platform. He explained the whole menu for us, as having moved to Japan 8 years ago but having a love affair with Japan his whole life, he is fluent in Japanese. We ordered three types of Okinawaya (TK) and soon another friend arrived, both men happy to be on a night out from new baby duties. We sampled some Japanese beer, plum wine and Shochu as we waited for our food to arrive. The table top was much like in a Korean BBQ restaurant, where the surface is a stove top so soon enough, a waiter came over, and poured out the contents of several bowls on to the surface - chopped cabbage, a broth of some sort and the ingredients for the various versions we had ordered, one vegetarian, one with 'everything' - seafood galore, and one with mushroom and cheese. While the Okinawaya slowly cooked to perfection, the restaurant slowly filled up, some taking off their shoes and populating the sitting-on-the-floor tables (what are those called?!). We discussed the Japanese language, what everyone has been up to the for the past 10 years - that's how long it's been since Dzl and his friend have seen one another, and so we all filled in our life history. Interesting tales of people working around the world, settling in different cultures, learning new languages and customs and exploring the art of moving from country to country.



We had a delicious dinner, and a few stronger-than-expected glasses of Shochu, and headed off to the next stop - a craft beer bar. Along the way we passed a few vintage clothing stores, apparently selling ridiculously expensive used clothing, its value driven up by the sudden fascination in everything 'vintage', and a store full of adorable baby animals with couples, hand-in-hand making silly faces at the cute creatures, before heading on in their evening. In that way, it seemed more like a zoo than a pet store, but who knows, maybe once in a while someone falls too deeply in love with one of the pets and takes them home to tiny apartments. We ended up at #2 of 2 craft beer bars. The story goes that #1 was next door but its customer base soon outgrew its capacity and so, #2 next door was born. When both #1 and #2 became too much, a new #1 was born a few blocks away but #2 remained. #2 was about the size of a hallway in a regular sized house, just long and wide enough to comfortably fit 10 people standing, and 6 sitting, and I can imagine that in reality, on a Friday night, it probably hosts 20 or so people happily squished together, enjoying Japanese craft beers from around the regions. After one beer in #2, we headed over to #1, a much more spacious and lovely location, where upon entering, the owner greeted our friend by name, and sat us in a a booth across from the bar, and we begin a great journey of trying craft beers and delicious snack dishes. The highlight of this was easily the "goba root" dish which was covered in a red powered spice. Our friend yelled to the owner to make it more, more, more spicy! and so he did, stating that he wouldn't even eat it at this level. We had fun taking turns crying tears of spicy madness as we tried not to gulp our delicious craft beers in reaction to the spicy food. Several long and philosophically inclined conversations later, we headed back to our hotel, getting ready for our interview in the morning.



We slept remarkably well although I woke up at 05:30 and couldn't sleep any longer. Breakfast in the hotel was delicious, miso soup, a rice bowl with kimchi, seaweed, fish, and other delicious toppings, and a variety of 'western' breakfast items, including, hilariously, scalloped potatoes. Because clearly, that's breakfast food.



We did our interview for an architecture magazine in Tokyo which was interested in our work in Copenhagen doing interactive art installations within the community. We discussed community initiatives and how people can come to create, own, and have identities in their communities and that it takes more than just showing up to do so. Our interviewer, Mariko, is a past resident of Denmark so it was really interesting to hear her take on Tokyo after living in Denmark.



We spent the rest of the day exploring Asakusa, a small area whose main attraction is a temple/shrine from the year 968. We had watched a great YouTube video about the area - and what to eat there, and we were not disappointed. With loads of street food, it was easy to munch a little, walk a little, and munch a little again. Interestingly, there is a 'walking while eating prohibited' rule so tiny eating areas are set up just to the side of the vendors so people can eat, throw away their garbage and continue. The area was fascinating, a combination of beautiful old world wooden buildings, and newer structures built to house vendors selling souvenirs. It was also clearly a place where locals came to spend a day, we saw many groups of teenage girls who had hair, makeup and costumes done to look like geishas, running around with selfie-sticks, creating fantastic albums of their day in Asakusa. Admittedly, it took us a while to figure out that there weren't just entertainers running around, it was clear they weren't geisha-geishas, because they weren't that elaborate but until we saw all of them giggling and taking selfies in the same spot we had just taken a selfie, we didn't realize that they weren't just there for our entertainment, but rather for their own, with the nice after effect of contributing to ours. The temple itself was massive, and we came in from the side, having wandered through a garden and coming upon the steps which opened out to the main entrance where hundreds of people were amassing. The crowds were exploring the various t¥pes of fortune telling: Shaking a container full of sticks where eventually a stick would pop out, and a number revealed - which indicated which fortune to read from the list of fortunes; Various ways to get good fortune and health including wafting smoke at onesself, or doing a ritual cleansing by filling a ladle with water and cleaning first the left hand, then the right, then the mouth, and eventually, cleaning the ladle you used. There were again, many small shops and food stands, but the place was quite crowded, so, appreciating the beauty of the temple, we said our good byes and moved on.



That night, we made our way to the Golden Gai, a drinking hole area in Shinjuku where our hotel was, and found our way to a little, and I mean...little! restaurant called Nagi. (Read about it here: http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/05/nagi-golden-gai-tokyo-japan.html) We had read a bit about it online, and decided to stand in line, in an alleyway, with about 10 other people, patiently (okay, not so patiently, secretly, I went to 7-11, grabbed a delicious rice snack and Dzl and I munched on that while waiting. I told you, we were here to eat Japan) and eventually were led up a steep staircase to a restaurant which housed exactly 8 patrons at a time. We picked our food - the Special - from a machine, where we fed in cash and it fed us tickets. Giving those tickets to the waitress, we were seated and eagerly awaited our ramen. Ramen is a wonderful dish - full of flavours and is a bit like good chicken noodle soup, all the right stuff. This ramen...was the best food I've ever eaten. It was divine. It is made from baby sardines and the broth (that's how the restaurants differentiate themselves, their broth recipe) was simply amazing. It was a combination of wide and thin noodles - all handmade by the chefs, and seaweed, and pork, and an egg. It was so good, I cannot even describe it here. Salty and savory and way too much, we basically rolled back to our hotel.



The next day was our Electronic Kintsugi workshop - the reason we were in Tokyo. As part of my work, I'm exploring how traditional craft can be combined with technology to create new, and potentially meaningful, experiences. Kintsugi is the art of fixing something with gold or silver when it breaks - such as a cup or plate, so it is more beautiful than before. Some people have heard of the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi - nothing is perfect and nothing is finished, and this is part of Kintsugi. What we did was combine these fixed artifacts with electronics, so as you stroke the golden path holding a plate together, you affect lights, sound or movement. We did the workshop with the FabCafe in Tokyo and it was truly a great experience. We were able to work with a Kintsugi artist and learn about her process, and then work with a combination of Japanese and non-Japanese people to do the workshop in a mixture of languages, all exploring the touch based interaction of Electronic Kintsugi.



Our good friends joined us at the workshop and afterwards we headed to the famous Shibuya crossing - an insanely busy street crossing which hundreds of people cross at one time. Our friends, one of whom is Japanese and both of whom have lived in Japan, took us up to a Starbucks above street level so we could watch the spectacle from above. Each time, the crossing would clear completely and the traffic would pass and then the chaos would begin anew. We eventually made our way to a conveyer belt sushi bar, where you order sushi on an iPad and it comes rolling out to you on a little automated belt. Coming from Vancouver, this wasn't surprisingly new, but we did find a menu item which fit into the 'only in Japan' part of our travels - Nattō. Fermented soybean. We thought we had ordered minced raw tuna, and so upon biting into this sticky, fermented...not especially delicious *to us* substance, we were suddenly done with dinner.



We left and headed off to a supermarket to buy some gifts for friends, including a special buckwheat tea which required me to quickly play 'match the symbol', somehow a very rewarding game to play when trying to match a photo with a product and realizing that recognizing Japanese Kanji symbols is difficult, but not impossible.



The next day - our last in Tokyo, we headed to Harijuku, the famed district of fashion and outlandish costumes. We found a beautiful park with a shrine, Meji Shrine, and witnessed a Japanese wedding done in traditional style, it was stunning. The bride was covered by a large red umbrella and the procession looked quite amused that there were so many tourists snapping photos of them. We didn't find many dressed up people in the Harijuku district but we did find a few fabulous costume shops which was fun!



The next days we travelled to Yokohama and then Kyoto, but those are tales for another blog entry.

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