Since it seems my body has decided 5AM is a perfectly reasonable time to start getting impatient to start the day, and this hotel room is so extra that it has a Nespresso machine in it (more on that in a moment). . . I'm up and writing while pictures transfer from my camera to my laptop.
Day two, like day one, started the correct way, with pastry and coffee (potato and bacon in pastry crust on the left, and an apple green tea. . . soft bread sortof thing, on the right. Both excellent!).
This time, breakfast was at a Lotteria, an establishment I'm well familiar with, being a sort of Korean cross between a Panera bread and a fancy burger king. I was pleased to see they had a foothold in Japan and when I commented on it, one of my traveling companions told me, delightedly, that Lotte (despite being one of Korea's largest companies) was actually started in Japan.
Curious about the details of that, I looked up Lotte's founder this morning, and his life has been absolutely bananas.
Anyway.
We picked the Lotteria because it was between our hotel and the beautiful Ueno park, and a conversation over breakfast about political expression on Facebook and the cost of dissent continued and evolved (through topics like postmodern architecture) into a really pleasant discussion about government policy and minimalism, and eventually that came to healthcare policy and the struggle of being a libertarian that believes a single payer model might be the best way to run a healthcare system.
We wandered past the museum of western art while we were there, which was an absolutely miserable building which faced an even more dour edifice that turned out to be the Tokyo concert hall. Both excellent examples of modern architecture that hates everyone within eyesight and doesn't care who knows it.
I did find a charming thing outside the museum of modern art though--Umbrella lockers. A neat little idea for a museum in a place with very rainy summers.
While I might hate in in architecture, especially in it's postmodern form, minimalism in government is a subject near and dear to my heart, and it can be hard to find people who are actually intellectually curious about others that don't agree with them, and so it was nice to get to take a walk with people willing to evaluate their own assumptions, or at least listen to (and ask questions about) mine.
After our walk through the park, we collected our bags (we were changing hotels today, to an undisclosed location my traveling companions had arranged) from the lockers we'd used at the train station, and headed off to do laundry. Laundry machines here can handle about 5 days worth of clothes for me at a time, and since I had about three days worth of clothes ready to wash, this seemed like a good time.
The lovely place that my traveling companions took me to do laundry is. . .one of those weird yet wonderful businesses that only makes sense in the context of the culture in which it originates. It was an internet cafe, with excellent rates, free drinks, and . . .private rooms. The necessity for desiring a private room to yourself when you live in tiny, shared apartments with family and neighbors at your elbow constantly makes perfect sense, and Customa Cafe is an absolutely great little business, for 900 yen I rented a private room so that I could video call some people back home (to listen in on my book club's discussion of an Icelandic saga) and for another 300 yen in coins, I got to do do laundry while I was at it. In exchange I got a tiny comfy private room with a reclining chair, fast internet, and free coffee and milk tea from their machine while I was there for several hours. The only downside was that my private room was brutally hot, because the Japanese concept of "comfortable temperature" is my concept of "f&%^ing sauna"--as they say, when in Rome. . . sweat like a pig, apparently.
Laundry finished and book club chat complete, we headed to a place that serves Tsukemen. I say that like it's just another restaurant, but really, I was about to have my perception of Japanese food in general--and what good broth-based dishes can be in particular--permanently and irrevocably altered.
Tsukemen is deconstructed ramen--a modest bowl of very potent broth is served alongside a giant bowl of noodles, meats, and extras, and you extract items with your chopsticks from the big bowl, dip them in the little bowl, and then eat them. You basically assemble a soup like experience with each bite. The place we were going, Menya Musashi Bukotsu Souden, was one that my traveling companions had been raving about for two days.
Dark and ardent mutterings about the use of coffee in the broth creation, the difficulty in securing seats even at odd hours, and the importance of us going to this place had wound through many of our discussions about food over the past 48 hours, and so I was very curious.
A neat thing about Ramen here:
We got there at 1400, well after the lunch rush was over, and sure enough, there was a fair bit of standing around waiting, even with 17 seats, which is a pretty high number for a Ramen place here.
Fun fact about Ramen houses here--they don't have front-of-house staff. You order from a machine near the door, which prints out little tickets for you, and little tickets for the 2-3 employees that run the shop. The employees hand you what you ordered in exchange for your ticket after you get a seat. The vending machines can vary from 70s era labeled buttons up to very modern touchscreens like this one:
While we waited, I took a few pictures, and watched them carve some of the best looking pork I've seen outside the southern united states (a traveler often overlooks, to their own detriment, the particular delicacies that their own homeland does to perfection, and I work hard to remember that southern BBQ belongs alongside other cuisines as involving some of the best meat preparation techniques devised by man).
This Cha Su pork was on the level of the best southern pork I've had. And it was served alongside a broth the like of which I've never tasted.
The "Burak" ("Black") broth is the one made with coffee, and at my companions recommendation I at that, with their Cha Su pork, rather than their Red (Spicy) broth base.
It was an almost religious experience. I wish the pictures could convey more than just how good it looks.
It was rich and dark and warm and chock-full of garlic, perfect for a chilly day spent wandering the streets of Tokyo.
When we had (almost tragically, it seemed to me) finished our meal, we grabbed our bags and headed for our next hotel.
One of the things I haven't talked about much yet is how we're getting around--namely, Tokyo's absolutely intense Subway system. My companions tell me that several of the lines are actually privately owned, often by department stores, which then build department stores directly on top of the busiest stations, to give themselves a level of vertical integration (haha!). The train system is lovely, quiet and quick, and I've yet to wait long enough on a platform to even have time to wonder when the next train will arrive.
The Tokyo equivalent to Hong Kong's Octopus card is called a "Suica". It's not quite as nice as an Octopus (you have to provide your personal information for recovery, rather than having the option of buying and using them semi-anonymously), but I do like that they print your name on them--it's a charming detail in such a giant monolithic transit system to have the machine print out something bespoke.
About our hotel: My traveling companions were delighted not to tell me about the particulars (or even the name of the hotel, until we arrived) of our next location, and so they got to watch my bewildered response as we schlepped from Ueno--a chill district of good food, practical streets, and bustling train stations, to the edge of Ginza, where Hotel Andaz Tokyo awaited.
It seems that a few years ago, Hyatt decided that it wanted a brand of "Luxury boutique hotels with sophisticated style, locally inspired cuisine, and vibrant social areas with a kaleidoscope of local culture." So goes their marketing, anyway.
So, city by city, it has been building Andaz properties all over the world that meet that goal.
And my companions, cunning devils that they were, had secured us rooms there.
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