Haunted Houses Honeymoon

First and foremost, we spent the morning before checking out of our hotel totally reorganizing our luggage -- we had several other bags stuck inside our main two pieces of luggage, and we filled them with stuff we'd bought along the way -- again, mostly additional winter clothes for ourselves, but also souvenirs (both for us and others), as well as incidentals we'd picked up along the way. We took our two main bags and filled them with only the bare minimum amount of clothing we'd need for the rest of our trip (pair of jeans, couple of t-shirts and sweaters, socks and underwear, etc) and filled everything else into one of these bags. We left plenty of room in the luggage we WERE keeping with us because Charles planned to buy some guitars before we went home. When all our ducks were in a row, we took this very full duffle bag on wheels to the nearest office of a luggage transfer service. After filling out some paperwork, they took our bag and sent it ahead of us to the airport, where it would be waiting for us upon departure!

Next we snagged breakfast, and my sweet tooth was kicking in HARD. We started off at another MisDo, and then moved on to Hoshino Coffee, a cafe chain. The inside of the one we went to was incredibly fancy. It definitely has more of a sit-down restaurant feel than a Starbucks does, but with a clear focus on their coffee blends.

Charles had a beef curry omurice, and I had a vanilla soufflé with chocolate sauce.

Then it was time to hop on the train back to Shinjuku, our home base in Tokyo. We initially wanted to possibly spend another night, if not the remainder of our nights, in the Manga Art Hotel from earlier, but they had booked up on one of those two nights, and I was pretty adamant about wanting to spend our last nights staying on one place, so we found an apartment to rent for the final two nights. It was in Kabukicho, sandwiched between nightclubs and love hotels, only a short walk from the Hotel Gracery where our trip began, so it all kind of came full circle!

Back in Tokyo and killing time til we could check in to the apartment, we visited the Godzilla store again, to pick up a few things we'd seen at the beginning of our trip, but didn't want to have to carry for two weeks. I personally was EXTREMELY TEMPTED by a bunch of merch they had that crossed over Godzilla with Hamtaro (?!) which was a cartoon I liked a lot as a preteen and teenager. I also sunk SO many hours into a Hamtaro game boy game, you would not believe.....in the end, I decided to get this clear file (basically a thin clear folder) and a couple of buttons, although there was an embroidered tee I seriously flip flopped over whether or not to get for a loooong time.

In that same shopping center that had the Godzilla store, we checked out the Surugaya (a chain of used anime and pop culture goods) on the 5th floor again, and found a few more treasures that were cool to see -- especially an uncommon action figure of Sadako from The Ring, and the Japanese versions of some movies -- Martyrs, which is one of the favorite movies of my friend Kim, and Frankenhooker, one of *my* favorite movies. It was so funny to see them next to each other like that! It's interesting to see that physical media is so popular there, and that these DVDs were around $250 and $100.

In about the time it took us to finish up looking at things, it was time for us to get into the apartment. We unloaded our luggage and took a break (by which I mean, I was exhausted and needed a nap). For dinner, Charles wanted to go to this "Hell Ramen" restaurant that is well known for having especially spicy ramen! I personally did not need something that spicy, and given Charles' gastrointestinal proclivities, I was absolutely not about to let him have something that spicy....but going to visit it and having one of the milder dishes sounded fun!

We walked through Koreatown to get to it, which was very cool and colorful, but...when we got to the Hell Ramen shop it was closed. It was slightly discouraging but we passed no lack of delicious looking places getting there so we decided to try a yakitoridon place -- sadly I neglected to take a pic of the outside (by this time I think I was so wrapped up in trying to enjoy every last bit of the time we had left, I was.....not so good about taking pictures). However, I did have this delicious yakitoridon (chicken and I believe garlic? over rice in a bowl!) Also pictured: charles had some fried cheese, and fried tofu topped with natto)

We also decided to stop in at an incredibly inconspicuous bar with an easy to miss sign that caught Charles's eye:

The bar was entirely about tokusatsu, giant monster and masked hero series like Godzilla, Ultraman, and Kamen Rider (we may have mentioned this concept in an earlier post!). The owner had built many of the props himself and had a giant collection of toys and statues. It was sort of like a host bar, where you pay inflated prices to talk to hosts that entertain you and make conversation, but the conversation was all about giant monsters and the prices were very cheap. I ordered the employee choice drink and they asked who my favorite good guy from a tokusatsu series was. I said Jet Jaguar, the giant robot from Showa era Godzilla, and they made a Jet Jaguar colored drink. It was a fun place and very easy to miss from outside.

We were very close to Golden Gai, there tiny bar area where we like to stop in. 250 or so bars are squeezed into about two blocks of narrow streets. The bar we like best was closed, so we stopped in at another rock bar and ended up making friends with some locals. The guy in the photo is an anime quality control person, checking the animation and comparing it to the character models to make sure it doesn't look incorrect.

Before we went back for the night, we saw a bar that previously was for locals only, now with a sign that said tourists welcome. It's memorable because it's called Bar Troll. We stopped in for a bit, the bartender was out of his mind drunk and talked to us almost entirely using a stuffed animal. We spoke with some other Americans while we were there. Odd little place.

Our only mistake was not stopping in Kawasaki to drop off our bags. We thought we could take them to Shinjuku and put them in a coin locker while we were doing things. The coin lockers, while plentiful, were all in use, so we dragged our bags 15 (normal) minutes to the shrine, poked around the market, and decided to skip Yoyogi to get back and drop off our bags. Carrying bags and switching hotels often was the negative of our travel, taking a lot of energy and time we could have put elsewhere.

The name of this shrine is Hanazono shrine, we've visited it at some point on nearly all our trips to Japan!

After Hanazono shrine, we rubber banded back to Kawasaki, where we were staying for the night. Our hotel was pretty old style, somewhere between a love hotel and a business hotel, in a quiet and older part of the city, but about 10 minutes from the station where the restaurant we would be visiting was. We ate lunch, relaxed, and charged up before meeting our friend. Shops like this that sell rice or noodle sets are plentiful and cheap.

The restaurant we went to for dinner is called Kaiju Sakaba, a bar and restaurant owned by Tsubaraya, the tokusatsu (think Power Rangers as an example) company that created and produces Ultraman, an extremely popular Japanese superhero. There is a new Ultraman show every year, so costumes are always being produced and maintained for broadcast and live events. Every Sunday, the restaurant has a costumed actor come and visit the patrons. When you enter the restaurant, you have to be scanned to see if you are capable of becoming an Ultraman. If not, you are allowed to dine among the villains. It's cute, the monster themed food and drinks are very good. We got our photo taken with the Alien Pitt, a reoccuring monster that was originally made in the 70s and has been used in the last few seasons. This is almost certainly a screen used costume.

Every dish and drink is themed, for example the salad plate asks a quote from a villain character from the original Ultraman series, who tries to bargain with a child to get permission to take ownership of the world. When you finish eating, you use the utensil on the dish to indicate your answer. I said no, the employees threatened me.

The walls are lined with signatures from actors, writers, and voice actors from Ultraman shows. There are also a lot of high end toys and decorations. Videos of monsters eating at the restaurant play and a loop of episodes where the Ultraman of a given series gets beat up by monsters plays.

We had our photo taken with the Alien Pitt, and one with our friend. She said she visits the restaurant often with her family. It was a very cute experience.

After we parted ways with our friend, we checked out a Taito game center nearby; which is a chain of arcades we've seen all over. We played a bit of House of the Dead (A zombie shooting game; this appeared to be an updated remake of one I remember seeing in movie theater lobbies and arcades back in the day), raced each other in Mario Kart, tried our luck at more claw machines, and used a Purimania machine, which is like a photo booth on steroids; it has tons of options for stickers and makeup and automatically applies tons of filters to warp your face into an "ideal" anime-ized version of yourself. They are a little off putting at first but at the same time, I do think they're kinda cute! haha

We started with a quail egg stuffed baby octopus and a small beer, then grabbed a bottle of sake to bring home after tasting some local sake. We found a section that goes into the buildings on either side and has a bunch of smaller stalls with specific food and standing area for eating, and tried everything we thought might be nice. These pork gyoza (steamed or fried dumplings, in this case fried) are the best I have ever had. The stall also had great karaage (fried chicken). Another stall carried several different kinds of locally flavored beers and highballs using whisky and shochu. We tried matcha beer, which was very refreshing, and strawberry blended whisky highball. Also pictured but we did not try was beef sashimi and sushi and tempura.

We did, however, have turban in the shell and grilled tuna with garlic. Before we left, there was a stall probably geared to first time visitors who are unfamiliar with sake that had glasses of sake for 100 yen, around 75 cents. They were tasty, too.

I placed a lot of markers on our map from the last few years of watching videos and seeing posts about different bars and restaurants, not expecting to make it to all of them but considering stopping in if we were nearby. Near the market is a bar called Kyoto Liquor Museum, which is more of a top end Western style cocktail and whisky bar than an izakaya. When we got there, we were one of the only customers, and the bartender asked us to sit somewhere that we we would be close to him so we could chat. He was a recent resident of Kyoto, having moved for his new wife, and originally from Turkey. He was very knowledgeable, and a little opinionated, about whisky and that was helpful for discovering new whiskies. I tried several that would have put me into the easy $100+ bill situation in the US, but ours was around $50. One was specifically bottled for the bar.

We wanted to grab a real dinner, and there is a very well known omurice (omelette over rice) restaurant nearby, but it has been featured on some well knownYouTube channels, so it's now very popular, reservation only yadda yadda. We didn't plan ahead to get one, and that's ok. One of my takeaways from this trip is that if it's been talked about a bunch on the English speaking internet, it's going to be difficult to try. We came across a small shop that served an original version of okonomiyaki, a grilled savory pancake made from cabbage and batter than can include anything from bacon to seafood and cheese. This shop served negiyaki and used a lot of spring onion (negi = ねぎ = onion). It was delicious. The tofu steak was also really good, grilled tofu with sauce on top.

On the way home we passed a liquor store that carried large cans of the sake we drank when we got engaged and this giant bottle of Japanese whisky for somewhere between $6 to 7 dollars. I cannot explain her mischievous face. Miranda got the glass bottle of sake with the sakura flower in it, as expected, because it's cute.

To be clear, we did NOT buy that bottle of whisky.

We were both pretty hungry by this point, so we checked Google maps and realized we were close to a sushi restaurant that was pretty highly rated and also still open, so we walked there. Sure enough, it was super delicious! The place was called Daigen, and it was super fantastic! I think this was actually the only sushi we had the entire trip, but it was extremely extremely good. Even though they didn't really speak any English the staff was super friendly, and the Itamae (head sushi chef) was very very funny. We briefly spoke with some other guests there, including a Japanese-Canadian family that was super into running marathons (we later noticed flyers around for a Kyoto marathon and wondered if that was what brought them into town haha). Everyone was very kind and the chef gave everyone beer when we told him it was our honeymoon and extra shochu when I showed interest.

The Itamae also took a photo with us at Daigen, super super sweet people.

The next day was our only full day in Kyoto. We slept in a little bit just to catch up on our rest, and set out to Cafe Perch for breakfast. We actually ate here on our first visit to Japan, and it left a deep impresson on us -- it was the first time we ever had like, Japanese bread? And I don't mean pan, like, small rolls of bread or buns, but like, how they do sliced bread? It's quite different from how we have it, super fluffy and THICK sliced! The coffee at this place was super amazing. They had signs EVERYWHERE that said not to take photos so we didn't, but here's a Japanese blog post we found from an Instagrammer who clearly did it anyway. Maybe it can help give a general idea of the vibe; it had a similar Showa era old school feel to Royal Cafe in Asakusa, Tokyo, that we visited earlier, but with a more informal vibe. Jazz music was playing, there were lots of live plants, and tons of art and vintage stuff to look at lining the walls.

After leaving Perch, we set out to rent bicycles to get around for the day. Japan in general supports a lot of pedestrian and bike traffic (one of the first things that really stood out to us on our first visit!) and Kyoto in particular is super easy to navigate by cycle, especially since it's super flat. Two bikes for 24 hours were 700 yen each, around $10 total. Bikes function very differently than in the US; each bike has a lock on the back tire, so the owner gave us the keys for our rentals. Kyoto is pretty flat, so most bikes are cruiser style. It is an efficient way to get around and enjoy the scenery.

Next in our day was the International Manga Museum. I kind of don't even know where to start on this one, it's exactly what it sounds like!

The entrance features shelves and shelves of manga from many countries all over the world; and further in are walls and walls of manga -- the museum also functions as a sort of library, so there are tons of desks around where you can sit and read to your heart's content while you're there. You can read anything you find, sit anywhere you find a seat, all they ask is you return it where you found the book. The main hall explains what manga is, how it is made, etc. and has huge walls of manga broken down by year it was made. There were lots of other small exhibits too. Another cool thing about this museum is that it's also a preserved local elementary school. Interspersed with the manga exhibits are displays and rooms explaining the history of the school, how it relates to the area, what a school day there may have been like, etc. Here's a main link to the International Manga Museum, and I'll probably do a seperate photo dump post for most of the photos we took there!

After the manga museum, we planned to go to the Kyoto Imperial Palace, but Charles was feeling a bit weird, so we decided to go back to our Airbnb to rest for a bit instead. After about an hour of napping, we decided to get back out there, but unfortunately, by the time we got there, the actual Imperial Palace area itself was closed, we could only walk around the grounds, which are now preserved basically as a park, including the Munakata Shrine.

These two photos were the main walk up to the Imperial Palace (the walled off area with the big gate) but it closed at 4 PM apparently. Womp womp. Still, the photos don't do it justice to how insanely huge the space is, especially the mountains off in the distance behind the palace.

These are Japanese apricot trees (we think? they also come up as Prunus Mume, which are plum blossom trees, so I'm not 1000% sure the most accurate name!)

It was a little disappointing to not get to go inside, but it was getting quite cold as the sun was going down, so we walked around the left side of the grounds before going to Nishiki Market, where we planned to get a bite to eat.

Dotonbori is, similar to Kabukicho in Tokyo, an entertainment and nightlife district. However, a thing we noticed pretty early, while Kabukicho is essentially 24 hours and it's easy to see people turning in for the night when others are going to work, Dotonbori closes early. By 10 or 11, most restaurants are closed. The area is famous for a few food, specifically takoyaki and fugu (blowfish). Blowfish is toxic, as in, it will kill you if the chef cuts the lungs when tearing it down. The license for serving fugu is required for any chef serving it, and a few people a year get very sick or die from eating it at home. The area has a lot of large displays of crab, takoyaki, and other fish that are brightly lit and cool to see in person.

We spent a lot of time during our stay in Osaka wandering the Dotonbori and exploring, there are simply tons and tons of bars and restaurants there. Just walking up and down, and trying a lot of street food, was definitely a highlight, and in general represents a good amount of what we did. In some of the photos below, we tried wagyu skewers, candied strawberries, and a lot of kushikatsu, similar to tempura but uses a different batter. It may be the winner of our favorite foods we have had this trip.

On 2/7 at 1pm, Charles had a tattoo appointment at the studio Invasion Club. Headed by tattoo artist Hori Benny, Invasion Club is also kind of a fashion/lifestyle brand, with clothes and art drawn by Hori as recognizable as his tattoos. I was actually pretty aware of his art for a while, especially through instagram and looking at tattoo art online, so when Charles said he had gotten an appointment with Invasion Club, I was SHOOK. He has gotten very popular for tattooing sexy anime girls, which makes having him doing something from a 1980s food manga kind of fun.

The shop was cool, and Hori spent a few hours hanging out, talking to us, and redoing the design before doing the tattoo itself. The appointment, with hanging out, took about five or six hours. He was an incredibly friendly guy, and his work was exceptional.

After the tattoo, and most of the next day 2/8, we wandered around Osaka's Electric Town (aka Den Den town, taken from the kanji 電, pronounced "den", which means electricity) which is Osaka's equivalent to Akihabara, which we visited earlier in this trip. They're both areas heavily focused on things related to geek culture. I would say we actually had a waaaayyy better time in Den Den Town then we did in Akihabara. There was way more cool old collectible stuff to look at, and the shops were less picked over. We did a little shopping here, as well as along the main Dotonbori area.

The tattoo that Charles got is a panel from a manga called Oishinbo. It is about a group of newspaper writers that are trying to create a menu of the perfect meal. The couple in the series eventually get married, and there is a part of the story about takoyaki that includes a real shop in Osaka that invented it. We visited that shop. The experience was very unexpected, but delicious. Takoyaki is a savory pancake like batter with a large piece of octopus in the center. Most places include a sauce, mayo, green onion, fish flakes, and sometimes other toppings. The original shop includes no sauces or toppings, but instead puts dashi, a savory fish based soup stock, in the center. It was much more mild than expected, but we had two orders and Miranda, who generally isn't a fan of takoyaki, had several, so it was something worth eating.

From this point, we kind of had to make a decision. We left our plans at this point pretty loose, because we wanted a little flexibility in the trip; aside from meeting back up with our friend Penko in Tokyo on 2/11, where we'll spend the last few days before flying back out, we have very little set in stone on our schedule. That includes not strictly having a place to stay, either. We decided we would really like one more afternoon in Osaka, before heading to Kyoto, so we found an inexpensive hotel for 2/8 where we stayed for the night, and 2/9 we finished exploring the area some more.

In our wanderings 2/8 and into the afternoon of 2/9, we kind of accidentally wandered into an area called Amerikamura. There are a couple of theories of how it got its name, but one thing we noticed was that it's CHOCK FULL of vintage clothing stores. A lot of the clothing appears to actually be imported vintage clothing from the US which was pretty wild to see. It's a super trendy area, and we definitely did some people-watching, taking in the street wear fashion. It's actually been really interesting to see how fashion varies from city to city; I know this may sound silly or obvious but there really is a different "flavor" from one place to the next. Tokyo and Osaka definitely have distinctly different identities, and even areas within these large cities can feel totally different from street to street and neighborhood to neighborhood.

We brought a dozen or so Ninth Realm CDs to drop off at shops while we are here. We shipped some CDs to a well known shop in Osaka a few months ago and they sold out, but the shop is a fair distance from Dotonbori and we didn't make time to stop in, so we tried other places. I first stopped at a punk shop, but they said their customers aren't into metal and recommended another two shops. The first shop took a few CDs on consignment, but recommended we go to the larger shop. They were very friendly, listened to the album, and said "I will take all of them." When I told him I only had about ten left, he said "I will need more, these will sell in a few days." Hopefully we can ship more.

One of the very last things we did before we left for Kyoto was to visit a very sweet cat cafe, Cat Cafe Cat Tail! They had an exceptionally cute group of cats, but I think Charles and I each found a favorite, or maybe were chosen. There is a cat named Kurumi that must be.....a bit of a handful. No joke, there were signs all over that Kurumi hated to be petted on her body, she only liked petted on her head and neck, and she would scratch and bite if you petted her anywhere else. With some gentle encouragement from the store owner, she actually climbed into my lap and napped there almost the entire hour we visited; I barely got to say hi to any of the other cats, haha. And Charles instantly fell in love with a cat named Potato. He currently was wearing a cone due to an eye injury / something wrong with his eye, and also he is one of those like....smushed face cats, so he has all the same breathing issues like a pug does? Charles was DEEPLY MOVED by Potato to say the least.

No one reading this would be surprised to know that Charles believes Steven Spielberg makes the best American monster movies. (Charles talking) Jaws has scared me since I was a very small child, and my first love, probably even before Batman, was dinosaurs, in part because of Jurassic Park. USJ, Universal Studios Japan, still has some of the rides that Universal Studios Florida has gotten rid of (hold for booing). We started our day with the Jaws ride, which was maybe an hour or so wait. The wait was not so bad, because USJ includes really nice Jaws movie settings, in order to entertain you while waiting there are lots of movie sets and displays. The ride itself is maybe five minutes long. It is a boat ride in which a shark appears and attacks the boat, eventually being electrocuted. The "driver" of the boat has a shotgun that she uses to shoot the shark. It is very fun and, somehow, cute?

Because of Charles' stomach issues, we could not take the Jurassic Park ride, but the park itself was very cute and fun. It felt like, to speak to Charles' childhood, Dinosaur Land at max volume and quality. There is an interactive raptor. He is very cute.

We happened to be at the park during an event (I think?) called No Limit? I'm not sure if it's a seasonal thing or what but about halfway through the day they had a parade that ran thru some of the main thoroughfares of the park, with floats from some of the most popular areas. I feel like it was the kind of thing that in the US, it would be easy to treat it like it was cringy, but there was a kind of earnestness to it from the crowd that made it really fun. The Pokemon float at the very end was probably our favorite!

We did ride a Hello Kitty ride, in a more kid-friendly section of the park -- It was similar to a teacup ride. There was a lot of theming for the Minions, Peanuts, and a lot of areas that were themed after a super idyllic US, with a Central Park area, a San Francisco area, and a kinda 1950s diner looking restaurant area.

Also there is a Universal Monsters "Rock and Roll" Show that was previously in the Universal Studios Florida park, back in the ......early 90s??? and it appears to be running completely unchanged since then haha. It was..........something. I honestly felt like I needed 2 or 3 drinks beforehand to fully enjoy it. The main reason we went was because it's hosted by Beetlejuice, and we wanted to see what Japan's ideal of Beetlejuice was like. Japanese Beetlejuice is pretty funny.

Bottom line, TL:dr, but we had a really fun time at USJ! It alternated between being pretty cold and pretty mild, which was probably the only 'bad" thing about it, but that's a very minor gripe. It was awesome to check off the bucket list item of seeing these nearly extinct attractions like the Jaws ride and the Rock and Roll show.

After we kind of got up and moving, we headed out to Tsukiji Market, which was kind of the main draw for us coming to stay here at all. We've been in the past, especially in the summer, and it's packed with great, fresh food, especially fish. The market has a really long and interesting history, and is where some of the most expensive fish in the world have been auctioned off for sale, and until a few years ago was the largest fish wholesale market in the world. However, they recently shut down the wholesale market and auctions at Tsukiji and moved them elsewhere, leaving just the retail shops and restaurants themselves.

Our experience visiting in the past taught us that, given that many of the shops are selling super fresh fish from that day's catch, they open pretty early and a lot of places are closed for the day by 1 or 2 PM.. However, what we weren't expecting is that many of the shops in Tsukiji just aren't open on Sundays. So between getting up late and it being a Sunday, we missed some of the shops we wanted to visit on day one in Tsukiji. We walked around for a while and definitely still had some great food and drinks, we decided to mostly have a chill, low-key day in for Saturday afternoon.

One place we discovered on Sunday, especially, is a shop that only opened a few years ago; it's a little bar in between the main streets of the market, where you can insert yen coins into machines holding whisky, shochu or sake, as well as buy a soda/juice mixer and kind of make your own vending machine drink. There's a small amount of seating, and we chatted with some of the bartenders there as well as the owner, all of whom shared local spots to eat and drink during our stay (which we....didn't get around to, but we may still try! There's still time! haha)

One thing that is maybe noteworthy, in that maybe it'll give y'all a laugh? but we absolutely failed at using a Japanese washing machine -- our Airbnb had one in our room but it like....never seemed to agitate the clothing properly, also never drained the water? I genuinely can't tell what we did wrong, but we ended up having to hang dry all the clothes we tried to wash off of a drying rack (that normally would sit outside on the apartment balcony -- it was soooooo cold, we were worried the clothes would never dry!) or in some cases, in the shower, and cranked the heat up in our apartment to try and like....ambient dry everything. And it mostly worked! Some of our clothes didn't get super clean but at least we didn't have to travel with a bunch of soaking wet laundry haha.

(the offending washing machine in question)

Monday we had to check out of our Tsukiji airbnb by 11 AM, so we got up early and hit the market around 8:30. Much more stuff was open, so we got to browse a good bit. Charles checked out some knives and cutlery, and I got to grab some sashimi from a shop we ate at on our last trip in 2019 -- I liked it so much, I tried to recreate some of their logo and stuff in Animal Crossing! The shop is called Maguro Kuro Tsukiji, and they specialize in tuna (maguro). They were quite busy so I didn't get to grab anything til last call. I showed one of the staff members the animal crossing designs I'd made and told them I'd been looking forward to coming back for a long time, and they were super tickled by it, and we all took a photo together haha.

Before long it was time to start moving on to our next stop, which was Nara, Japan! Look forward to it! Here's a Tsukiji Market photo dump (this probably isn't even all of it, there was just too much to see! I feel like that's the theme of every place we've visited, there's just too much to see and do at any one place for sure).

In these photos we had: a fried sardine cutlet, grilled egg sandwich and beef and egg bao bun, sea urchin (always incredible, it's like warm butter), a coffee shop where John Lennon once visited, oysters and hot whisky, and the big ticket item: wagyu. Charles had been looking forward to it since our last trip in 2019; we saw it here and decided to wait until our honeymoon, which we did not know would take several years. It's expensive, but the quality is incredible.

We also grabbed some snacks at the convenience store and I tried some things I had wanted to check out for a long while. Spam is a Japanese novelty because of the US military presence after WWII. Musubi (Spam) sushi and onigiri are something you can find around certain shops. I would like to have a real one prepared from a restaurant, but the one from a convenience store was pretty good. I also had a shrimp cutlet. I have said this to anyone that will listen, I apologize for mentioning it again, but the quality from convenience stores is on par with most restaurant food in the US, and the cost is considerably cheaper. This sandwich, Spam, Miranda's soba, and drinks were likely under $10. Dinner for two. I had the Super Chu Hi (a lot of grapefruit drinks available) and Miranda had the plum wine highball.

This was our breakfast; it was at a chain called Sukiya, which specializes in gyudon (beef bowls) but we ordered their breakfast meal, which was a piece of fish with some sides! There's a big bowl of rice with natto (fermented beans), lil bits of onion, and a raw egg on top; a miso soup, and a like....macaroni salad? It was like macaroni salad with carrots and mayonnaise? Natto is a very aquired taste, but Charles loves it. There's kind of a trick to getting it to taste right and not be kinda stinky and weird. I had an iced coffee, with coffee jelly at the bottom -- you can see it in the dark stuff mixed in with the ice at the bottom of my cup!

The amusement park is called Hanayashiki Park! We couldn't get too many photos sadly, but it was cool to see!

Charles and I spent some time on Hoppy Street, which I think Charles will probably make into a separate post!

While wandering, we found a small shrine to Tanukis on the grounds of Senso-ji temple also. Tanukis are Japanese raccoon dogs!

Charles and I also killed some time by doing a sake tasting at a place called Marugoto Nippon, which was a souvenir shop kinda set up more like a mini marketplace, with goods from all over Japan as well as local to Asakusa for sale. There was tons and tons of tasty food, especially spices and sauces that looked awesome.

Finally we packed it in, and headed to our next stop in Tsukiji. We wanted to stay there because there is a massive fish market there -- more on that in a future post. But its main business hours are in the morning thru the early afternoon and there was no way we were gonna make it in time for that, at that point.

Here's some views on the way to Tsukiji!

We took a rest for a while, and then I pulled the trigger and decided to do something I'd been flip flopping on for a while -- a record label I follow called Neoncity Records, had announced a little while back that they were going to be having a show featuring several of their artists in Shibuya, during our stay. These are artists constantly on repeat for me, that I listen to allll the time. Initially, I kind of had talked myself out of going, because I felt like I didn't NEED to go, and I wasn't sure if it was fair to drag Charles out to something I wasn't sure he'd be into, since it's really not his kind of music. But he assured me probably a hundred times that he didn't mind, so I bought the tickets and shortly thereafter we took the train into Shibuya.

Shibuya is another area with lots of nightlife and tons of shopping -- I think most people know it for Shibuya Crossing, a massively crowded and busy intersection in the heart of the city. We actually crossed it on our way to the venue! But before the show, we took an hour or so to go to Shibuya Parco, which was basically a huge mall. On the 6th floor there was a Nintendo shop (I really had to restrain myself from buying all the Animal Crossing things I could get my hands on, but it was mostly home goods and we don't strictly have enough space to justify all that stuff), another Pokemon Center and some other stores as well.

Next up, time for the show! The venue was at a spot called Tokyo Circus, a nightclub! It was a tiny little venue, with a bar on the ground floor, and a second bar, the bathrooms and the stage are below ground.

This is the flyer, so you can check out the lineup. I wasn't as familiar with Daviouxx, Lagchun or Milk Talk, but I'm a big big fan of Neon Vectors, Vantage and Macross 82-99! Without getting into it too much, and I'm sure there are folks out there who would debate the nitty gritty of it, but all of the music here falls somewhere under the umbrella of City Pop or Future Funk, Future Funk being a subgenre spinning out of Vaporwave! I don't know if that's at all interesting to any of y'all but if you're curious, ask me about it sometime!

Everyone was AWESOME, Daviouxx started the show off while the crowd filled in, and it ended up being a PACKED HOUSE. Lagchun started off, and performed some Cantonese city-pop songs which I'd never heard before but I totally want to look for now, and I'll definitely be checking out his music going forward. Milk Talk is a duo that mixes funky guitar sounds with soft vocals that I think Charles liked the best, and then Neon Vectors, Vantage and Macross had wild DJ sets. I kind of didn't know what to expect from the three of them, even though I've listened to so much of their stuff for years, so I was a little surprised that the evening took on the vibe of a rave, but honestly it was really cool to be around a group of people as super hyped about this very niche genre of music that I love! Also I was really lucky that I got to get suuuuuper close to the stage, so I had an awesome view the whole time! I'll probably repost some of the music from these folks here, and maybe post some of the videos I took later! At the end of the day, I'm really glad that I ended up going! These events don't seem to happen very often, and certainly not anywhere near where we are on the east coast, so I know if I had ended up not going, I would have been super sad.

When we got there, I quickly noticed signs advertising a Cardcaptor Sakura 25th Anniversary Exhibition, which obviously had my attention, so we made plans to go after we went up the Skytree.

The Skytree itself is the tallest structure in Japan, and the third tallest structure in the world. It has two viewing decks, we went to the lower of the two, which is still a whopping 350 meters (about 1,148 ish) feet above the ground. We got some incredible views looking out over Tokyo and beyond!!

After we took the trip up the tower and took in the sights, we headed back down to where the CCS exhibition was. The show debuted in 1998, and I watched the English translated version (called Cardcaptors in the states) as a kid -- I had a Sakura doll growing up, and the villain Ruby Moon was an absolute fashion icon to me as a preteen -- I would have KILLED for her hair. I also had box sets of the original 6 volumes (I still have them actually!)

The Exhibition mainly showed off stills from the show mounted on the walls, had a big display showing off some of the MANY costumes Sakura wore during the show and lots of photo ops where you could pose with props from the show.

After the exhibit there was a gift shop, but as the exhibit was nearing it's end (today 2/4 is the last day!) It was pretty picked over. I grabbed some small things (a photo holding keychain and a pencil bag) as mementos and got a necklace with my ticket to the exhibit too!

It was totally unexpected to get to go to, we had no idea the event was going on, and to catch it right at the tail end was something special!!

At the beginning of the exhibit they walk you through a soft recreation of the beginning of the show, where they address you as if YOU are the Cardcaptor, and even just being in that made up little room replica made me a little misty eyed.

I'm so glad we got so lucky as to be there at the same time!

A few other things we did in Skytree (that we took fewer pictures of) was stop at a stand that sells individually wrapped umeboshi, or pickled plums, for a snack; there was a small Ultraman themed shop (which of course Charles loved) and there was a Pokemon Center there too, which was INSANELY crowded. We didn't want to take too many photos in there because of just how much was going on in there but I did snag a few.

We walked about a half hour to Tokyo Skytree, though we did so much there it deserves it's own post.

On the way back from Skytree is the oldest Western-style bar in Japan, and where a unique type of liquor famous in Asakusa called Denki Bran, electric brandy, was invented. It's ingredients are a secret and the taste is very difficult to describe, but Charles really liked it! Seeing a bar of this age, what Japanese people thought Western dining and drinking was like in the late 1800s, filled with older customers, was very interesting.

Next to our AirBnB, we noticed a sign with a photo of an actor from a TV show Charles likes called Solitary Gourmet, about a man who can't stomach alcohol that goes to bars and restaurants at night by himself after work to eat. The sign said he has ate there and signed some things for them. We watched the episode and went there for dinner. The restaurant served monjiyaki, a dish similar to okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki is made with various ingredients, like meat and seafood, batter, and cabbage, grilled on a griddle. Monjiyaki replaces the batter with cheese, which is a very messy but tasty meal. You make it yourself. To be more honest, other people that know what they're doing make it themselves. The waitress felt bad for us and helped.

(From the show)

We'll cover Tokyo Skytree in our next post (for real this time!)

Thanks for keeping up with us so far!

We also noticed while checking out right outside our room the building across the alley was, at a time, a historic building with the first electric elevator in Tokyo, and the remains of the brick foundation were recently discovered.

The interior was amazing, I wish we had taken more photos. Taking photos inside establishments can sometimes be difficult, privacy is much more significant of a cultural consideration than in the US and we don't want to take photos of other patrons. It was a lot of gorgeous, dark wood, short, low to the ground tables, tatami mats, and floor chairs. There was a super zen, indoor water feature too, which was pretty cool, to put it mildly.

I don't even begin to know how to describe how tasty the food was; there was a huge menu of sakes (Japanese style alcohol, think sort of like a "rice wine" even though that's not strictly accurate) and shochu (more like a liquor), almost all, if not all of which, we'd never seen before in the states. The entire meal was a like...5 course experience, starting with a small appetizer of fruit, tofu, fish egg and beans (in honor of the Setsubun holiday, which is today [2/3] at time of writing!) all the way to a hot pot of tuna, leek, mushrooms and more. Genuinely everything was like, beyond delicious, and it was sooooo much food, without ever making us feel like we were totally gonna pop (although it was close). There was also a beef dish mid meal that was the first beef Charles had eaten in close to two decades, and it was worth it.

It was also really really special to get to spend the time getting to know Penko and her family better; I first met her here on tumblr actually, maybe....gosh, I don't know, 8 years ago? give or take a year? through a mutual fandom (we were both fans of a specific pairing in a video game called Danganronpa, where she was a very popular fan-artist at the time). Since then, we've met her in Japan a few times on trips, and we've slowly gotten to know her family over the last few years. After our engagement, Penko actually drew some lovely art for us as a congratulations; if you were at our wedding, we had it displayed near our guestbook :P

The following day, we spent exploring around our Airbnb in Asakusa, as well as visiting Tokyo Skytree. Our stay was on the second floor, above a restaurant, right in the heart of the district.

We started the morning early at Cafe Royal, a super old-school Showa-era coffee shop built in the early 1960s. We had coffees and breakfast there, and their specialty Royal Coffee has to have been one of the best coffees I've ever had. It almost reminded me of dark chocolate in terms of its acidity and smoothness. It was truly awesome.

Afterwards, we spent some time shopping at Uniqlo, a Japanese clothing store (there are some in the states too, if you're curious!) My favorite pair of jeans ripped badly on the plane, and I wanted to replace them, so I bought a new pair at Uniqlo, as well as some of their warm layering clothing, which they're well known for, to stave off the February chill. Charles also got some warm winter wear, so we're both totally topped off for the rest of the trip with trendy heat-tech goodies.

We also wandered around the streets and streets and STREETS of Asakusa's extensive shopping and food district surrounding the massive, gorgeous Senso-ji temple. One thing I love about Japan is that these huge shopping districts often have covered roofs over the streets so even if it's raining or kinda crappy weather, you can still walk freely across blocks without too much trouble. We were mostly window shopping, but we definitely stopped for a few treats.