Tokyo Overdrive Part II: Shibuya and Ramen, Shinjuku and Sukiyaki.

My companions and I slipped out of the train station in Shibuya, the shopping district.

I'm sorry, I capitalized that wrong.  There is a solid argument to be made that Shibuya isn't "the shopping district." It's "THE shopping district."

If there is a megalopolis of malls, it's Shibuya.

We were there for three reasons.  Ramen, spectacle, and actual shopping.  One of my traveling companions wanted a bathing suit for The Spa at Andaz (remember that infinity pool? Yeah.), so we were going to swing through one of the two 109s.

First we got Ramen.  Our Ramen place was our second choice, since our first had a very long line, but it was absolutely lovely.  On the small side with just 7-8 seats and enough space for two people to work during the rush, but usually run by one if things were quiet.

I got a Cha Su pork ramen with shio and bone broth.  While the pork didn't hold a candle to Menya Musashi, the broth was delicious and piping hot and had excellent flavor, and (and this was clutch!) they included pure garlic paste and a little bit of vinegar as condiments, which led to a realllllllly unique and powerful flavor.  Just the thing for scrambling around on a chilly winter day.

For no particular reason, this ramen place played hip hop music throughout our meal, which was excellent.

Around the corner from our tiny, antiquated ramen shop was one of the busiest shopping districts in the world.  We walked a block to the Scramble crossing.  You know that crazy intersection in every movie/advertisement/piece of media that involves Tokyo?  The one where people just go every direction at once?  That's the scramble crossing. 

We stood for a few minutes watching the flood of humanity that breaks over the intersection like a wave cresting a sea wall and did a bit of people watching.  Then it was off to the 109.

The Shibuya 109 ("Ichi-Maru-Kyu" - literally "One Zero Nine") is a roughly ten story tall shopping mall owned by a conglomerate called Tokyu Group.   It's the flagship store but there are several others.  The 109s can be thought of as a sort of "department store"--in roughly the same way that the Schwerer Gustav was a type of "gun."

Shibuya 109 is huge, and dedicated entirely to womens clothing and fashion.  There's a separate store (109Men's) just for men's fashion.

(Fun side note: "Ichi Maru Kyu" is a form of high-altitude wordplay--in Japanese "Tokyu" sounds very similar "tō + kyū"  which would translate as "Ten-Nine.")

The interior of a Shibuya store is almost impossible to photograph in a way that conveys what you're surrounded with. . . so here's a picture of the Matcha Parfait that one of my my traveling companions and I consumed while our cohort was shopping.

Ice cream and fruit cravings satisfied and shopping complete, it was off to Shinjuku station, and dinner.

Shinjuku station is the largest public transit/transport hub in Tokyo, which also means it's the largest such hub in the world.  By a long shot.

On average, 3.6 million people will pass through Shinjuku every day.  There's been about 500 words so far in this post and the average person reads 250 words per minute.  That means that in the time it took you to get here from the moment you read the title, five thousand people have passed through that station.  It's massive and complex and aggressively Japanese.  It is, of course, completely infested with shopping malls.  The whole thing is a maze of stores and trains and lost tourists and (reassuringly) lost locals who clearly have been here many times and still just can't find the damn platform for the train they need.

It's bananas.

We were there to do a little shopping (of course!) which went well, and afterwards we headed to a place called Imahan just south of the station for a dinner of Sukiyaki.

Sukiyaki is one of many cooked-at-the-table dishes that the Japanese have invented or refined.  In modern times it'll generally be an induction cooker in the table which heats a skillet with a mixture of water vinegar and soy sauce that you'll simmer vegetables and meat in.

At Imahan, you can pay them a considerable (but so very worth it!) sum and they'll bring you a multi-course meal that feels like a fireworks show of food, with the Sukiyaki course come near the end, as a crescendo of flavor that leaves you a little shell-shocked and overhelmed.  The sushi at the beginning is lovely and the other things are nice, but the pièce de résistance is the sukiyaki course itself, since the beef is Wagyu beef--a marbled delicacy of Japanese cuisine that cannot be bought for love or money, in most of the world.  The beef, as soon as it is cooked, is pulled out with chopsticks and dredged in the raw egg mixture in the individual bowls, then consumed while it's still warm and gooey and delicious.

Dinner was so good it was almost upsetting.  We rolled back to our ridiculous hotel happy and content, stuffed to the gills with food.

Little did I know the next place we were going was almost going to put this dinner to shame.