Jan 9, cont: Shinkansen from Hiroshima to Tokyo, where I've booked at Hotel Villa Fontaine Shiodome. Shiodome is a big modern commercial complex with great transit options (subway, JR, and monorail to Odaiba). It's also close to the Ginza and Tsukiji, places I'd be visiting while in Tokyo. The hotel itself very modern decor and very pleasant staff with generally good English. No common bath here, but breakfast (served in the lobby) is included. My room has a perfect view of multiple train and subway lines, including shinkansen. Did I mention that I like trains?

No specific plans that night, though I did do laundry.

Jan 9, cont: In addition to laundry I must have also gone to check out the neighborhood and picked up something for dinner. Or maybe I'd eaten en route to Tokyo. No snow in Tokyo, but it was quite chilly, and the elevated walkways the connect some parts of Shoodome tp others are like wind tunnels. You can also make your way underground, swarming along with all the commuters.

I stayed in Shiodome once (at the hotel immediately next to Villa Fontaine), and I wasn't thrilled at all with the location. Seemed like a soulless place made of concrete and roads. On a different trip, I found the Hamarikyu Garden, which is only a block or two away from the Villa Fontaine/Conrad. Really pleasant place to stroll around and relax. You can also catch the tourist boat up river from there to Asakusa. Not an especially heart-tingling ride or view, but an alternative way to get to Asakusa (unless, of course, you're like the OP and are enamored w/trains!).

I agree, rizzuto, Shiodome does tend towards the soulless and cold, but it does so in a pretty Japanese way (and for much much less money than the Conrad). After a week of hopping among different styles of lodging I was looking forward to some quiet pampering, and Hotel Villa Fontaine suited my purposes for this trip.

I did not make it to Hamarikyu this time, and still haven't been on the Sumida, but that's because both of my trips to Tokyo have been in January. Brrr.

Jan 10: Sunday, and the first day of the sumo tournament. My first to Tokyo had also coincided with the sumo tournament and this year I planned to go. As it happens, the daughter of a friend and colleague is attending university in Tokyo (having become enamoured of Japan while an exchange student in high school) and so I volunteered to take her with me and buy her lunch and so forth if she would handle picking up the tickets at that end. To nobody's great surprise she did not, in fact, manage to purchase the tickets in time, so no sumo for either of us.

No big deal, though, as it turned out to be more convenient for an ex-pat friend from Yokohama to meet me Sunday rather than our originally planned Monday, so it all worked out.

We met up at the Edo Tokyo Museum (which is next door to the sumo arena, so we saw a lot of wrestlers on the street, and yes, they do smell good). Despite having young children my friend had never heard of this museum, and we both enjoyed it.

Jan 10, cont: After the museum we were ready for lunch. I wanted to try an old school dish called monjayaki and had located a place nearby that sold it, but they turned out to be closed. While we were standing there trying to decide on our next move, a very odd thing occurred.

A man on a bicycle, dressed in a tight-fitting red body suit, helmet, and wraparound refective sunglasses came riding down the sidewalk towards us. There's nothing unusual about bikes on the sidewalks in Tokyo, but this guy was coming right towards us and finally stopped right in front of me. We were both pretty shocked and just stared back, unsure of what to say or do.

After a few seconds the guy started laughing and finally took off his sunglasses. It turned out to be another friend of mine, a French chef who works in the Ginza. We were already booked for dinner at his restaurant the next evening, so even more of a coincidence that would all meet like this. It was coincidence---he was out riding with friends and noticed us from a distance and then realized that he recognized me. A very funny moment.

He returned to his bike ride and we started thinking about lunch alternatives.

So, any lunch suggestions? Any of you familar wth monjayaki? Or maybe chanko?

Hmm, no votes on lunch. I hope somebody's reading along

Jan 10, cont: Neither of us finds the thought of chanko very enticing, so we stick with the original plan of monjayaki. My friend had been quite happy to hear that I wanted to try it, her husband finds it, I'm, icky. He's Japanese and grew up in the area, so this aversion is pretty deep-seated.

So we headed over to Monjayaki Central, aka Tsukishima. There's an entire street there full of restaurants that this dish (and also sometimes okonomiyaki). The place we chose was a little modern in interior decor, and featured box-like seats inside of which you stow you coat and purse, which is great because it keeps your coat from taking on the smelling of the cooking food.

You order according to the ingredients you'd like (we shared my friend's pick: mentaiko and cheese) and it arrives as a big bowl of ingredients with a puddle of batter at the bottom. The whole mess grtspouted onto the hot griddle in the middle of the table, and you stir it around until it's sufficiently cooked. You then cut little pieces off it with a little metal spatula (carefully, as it's got edges and becomes hot from the griddle) and eat them.

I'm a pretty adventurous eater, and at the end if the I have to admit that my overall opinion more or less mirrored that of my friend's husband. The issu here is that there's no egg in the batter, so it never really gets very firm.

Yup still lurking and reading. I don't like chanko much so would have had to vote for the monjayaki. Enjoying your report and looking forward to the rest. Thanks for doing this!

Aloha!

Jan 10, cont: Fed, we proceed with our day. The first half had been planned by yours truly, and it was now my ex-pat friend's turn. She's married to a Japanese guy and they have three kids and so a lot of their family outings involve things that kids tend to enjoy. One if these is Odaiba. I hadn't seen any of Odaiba on my first visit, so she'd be the perfect tour guide.

First stop was a place she hadn't been to, Oedo Monogatori Onsen. On my first visit she'd taken me to a combination water park and onsen (Yunnesun) in Hakone, a family favorite. Oedo lacks the water park thrills, but is every bit as glitzy, with plenty of ways to separate you from your ¥. The baths are nice but quite busy. Very few westerners.

The rest of the afternoon and evening were spent experiencing various aspects of Odaiba, including some Vegas-style shopping malls, some more Edo-esque old school fantasy settings, karaoke, and kaiten dim sum. The kaiten dim sum place was another venue that my friend hadn't tried but somebody had told her it was good. And it was very, very busy while other nearby restaurants (in a Chinese-themed area) were nearly empty. Unfortunately both her information and the hordes of people invthis restaurant were wrong: definitely the worst dim sum experience ever.

Karaoke was my favorite. We chose a place in an enormous entertainment complex that featured a bowling alley in addition to bajillions of amazingly loud games and photo booths for pre-teen girls. Not my cup of tea, but interesting as experiences go. The karaoke itself was great.

By now it was quite late, so we took the Yurakimome line back, depositing me directly at my hotel at Shiodome and my friend at a convenient connection for her trip back to Yokohama.

Sorry, that's Yurikamome line.

Jan 11: Sightseeing today but first breakfast. Hotel Villa Fontaine Shiodome makes use of it's pretty impressive modern lobby to serve a breakfast buffet. Pretty standard issue Japanese/Western mix: green salad, pickles, sausages, western-style pastries (which were very good), plain yogurt, toast, jelly, rice, miso soup, raw egg, natto, orange juice, green and black tea, coffee, milk. I'm pretty sure there was cereal. I tend to have Japanese breakfast (including natto and tamago kake gohan and pickles and so forth, followed by a pastry. This morning I had just about everything, as I was planning on skipping lunch in preparation for an amazing dinner.

Sated, I headed out. I can no longer recall when or where I went precisely, but I do know that I saw the grounds of the Imperial Palace, Senso Ji, Ueno Park, and Kappabashi St. Very very cold.

Home by 5:30 to get ready for big dinner out.

Feel free to chime in here with questions, by the way I'm throwing around terms like natto and kaiten as if they weren't all that unusual, but they likely are for some.

Or you could just look it all up on wikipedia.

Mrs HT and I eat natto almost every morning when we are in Japan, she more so than me. I love the umeboshi with my steaming hot gohan. Kaiten I can live without.

I can feel the cold weather in Tokyo as you write about it. Our first trip to Japan was in late Jan and it was freezing but something about Japan hit me on those first three days, even in the cold and snow, and now I can't stop going back for more.....

Keep the story coming ,you are helping more than you know or can see :)

Aloha!

Jan 11, cont: Remember upthread where I mentioned that I'd booked my hotel, Hotel Villa Fontaine Shiodome, in part due to its location? I specifically mentioned the various transit options, as well as proximity to Ginza and Tsukiji. Well, tonight my plans were in Ginza.

Said plans involved a very fancy dinner in a very fancy French restaurant (three Michelin stars worth of fancy). These dinners tend to go pretty long, and since the chef's an old friend, chances were good that I'd be running the risk of missing the last train home if things went very late, and then I'd be looking at a big taxi fare on top of an expensive dinner unless I'd chosen a hotel in walking distance of the restaurant. I'd also have to deal with my ex-pat friend, so took the precaution of booking a double room in case she had to spend the night.

As it turned out the restaurant wasn't nearly as busy as usual, as this was a national holiday (Coming of Age Day) and the restaurant's web site says that it's closed on national holidays so not many people had inquired further as to whether the restaurant might actually be open. It was, and we had a lovely meal that did last until after 11:00 (start time of 7:00) but still in time to make the train for Yokohama. We were the last customers, so chef dropped me at my hotel and my friend at the train on his way home. Very civilized.

I've got umeboshi in my fridge and natto in my freezer at this very moment, HT. Oh, and a couple of daifuku.

The kaiten experience can vary a lot. Kaiten refers to conveyor belt, and was originally developed as a means of delivering sushi to customers in a way that a lot of people find regrettable, as it tends to be a means of getting around the traditional interaction between the sushi chef and the customer. Of course, if you're a bit shy about that interaction a kaiten sushi restaurant can be nice.

My first meal ever in Japan was at a kaiten sushi restaurant. I'd rented an apartment in Nakano (the one featuring the bathroom that reminded me of a cold, wet tomb) and after getting settled headed out to the nearby shopping street. Lots of restaurants, and I finally settled on a small, busy kaiten sushi place. Exhausted, jet lagged, and hungry (but not too hungry), this was the perfect place. A waitress showed me the hook for my coat, realized I didn't know how to make tea so showed me (hot water dispenser at every seat, powdered green tea to stir in), and I just dove in. Very good quality, not expensive, and some interesting combinations (uni with okra comes to mind). At a certain point I'd slowed down and one of the younger guys working the counter asked if I'd like a special order (or at least I think that's what he was asking). I did, but I didn't know the name in Japanese (and he didn't speak a word of English), so he managed to find a menu that had pictures on it. What I wanted was herring roe, and having found the picture that looked about right I indicated it. He then showed me a block of the real item and I agreed and he made me a couple of nigiri.

Very fond memories of that first meal. I still don't know the Japanese for herring roe.

I love [good] kaiten sushi. It's especially well-suited for someone like me whose Japanese vocabulary is less than 50 words. The trick is to head to the kaiten-zushi places that are high quality.

My favorite kaiten place is Maguro Bito, in Asakusa. Very high quality, especially the fatty tuna (as you might expect from the name). The Sushizanmai chain has a couple of kaiten branches, and the ones I've been to have had reliably good quality. The one I keep going back to is in Akihabara, on the 7th or 8th floor of the huge electronics megastore adjacent to the metro station.

These are now on my list. Thanks, rizzuto.

June 12: Raining, so I spent the morning shopping in Shibuya. Highlight was Tokyo Hands, where I found some great stickers for my daughter and some excellent tiny travel toiletry containers. The latter may be found in the chemistry lab section.

Each and every item was wrapped to within an inch of its life.

The original plan for the afternoon had been sightseeing with chef friend (in between lunch and dinner service) but he'd realized when he got to work that AM that he had to do a photo shoot for a travel magazine instead. So he asked if I'd like to hang out there during it and of course that seemed like a pretty interesting way to spend a very cold and rainy afternoon.

So, back to Ginza and another visit to the kitchen to watch him cook and style food and chat with Japanese media types and photographers and eat more food. Definitely one of those weirdly serendipitous small world moments that makes you appreciate travel.

No recall whatsoever of dinner---I'd eaten about four desserts at that point, so likely just skipped dinner altogether. Dropped by Ameyoko market and Akihabara to take in the evening vibe, so the rain must have cleared off.