You’ve probably noticed from some of my posts, but there are lines everywhere here. Everywhere.
They don’t bother me all that much (and in fact, sometimes I’ll seek out a line since it’s a fairly reliable indicator that a restaurant is serving tasty food). But I was going to Kanda Matsuya, a really well-regarded restaurant that’s been serving up soba noodles for over 130 years. There was no possible way there wasn’t going to be a line.
So there I am, just walking around in Tokyo and minding my own business, and wham. Attacked by crazy deliciousness, completely out of nowhere.
Tokyo seems to be pretty good about making sure that the city has a bunch of green space mixed in with the in-your-face modernity of the majority of the city. I’ve been to a few of these areas so far, though I think the Imperial Palace East Gardens might be my favourite.
After the amazingness that was DisneySea in Tokyo, I sort of figured Disneyland would have a hard time measuring up. And yeah, it’s definitely not as good; DisneySea was such a memorable experience that I could easily recommend it to anyone, even people who wouldn’t otherwise be all that interested in visiting a theme park.
You might recall that while I was in Paris, I took a trip to the local Disneyland (because that’s what any reasonable person visiting one of the greatest cities in the world would do, right? Go to a theme park?).
Well, I’m in another of the greatest cities in the world, and there’s a Disneyland here, so take a guess at what I did (hint: it involves both Disney and Land).
Tokyo is trying way too hard to make me fall in love with it. But you know what? It’s kinda succeeding.
Its latest attempt to make me never want to leave: a little restaurant called Tempura Imoya. I think you can take a wild guess at what they specialize in.
Like pretty much every place I’ve been to so far, there was a line to get in. Hot tip: if you’re coming to Tokyo, bring a good book, because you’re going to be standing in a lot of lines (at least if you want to eat well — and trust me, if you’re in Tokyo, you want to eat well).
I mentioned the Meiji Shrine in a recent post — one of the city’s many other shrines is the Nezu Shrine, and though it’s not nearly as popular, I’d say it’s equally worth visiting.
Walking around cemeteries is becoming a bit of a theme on this blog, isn’t it? What can I say? It seems like a weirdly dark thing to do on a trip (and yeah, it kinda is), but it’s also really interesting.
There was a stand near Yoyogi Park selling what they called baby castella (castella being a type of cake popular in Japan). You can see the lady piping in some fresh batter into the moulds.
Sometimes it’s nice to get out of the city and see some trees — it’s especially nice when said trees are actually in an enormous park inside the city. Because let’s face it, that’s just so much easier.