Tokyo vs Ice-cream

We walked from our hotel to Harijuku, around 1km, which in my opinion had a very European look and feel to it. We stumbled across a unique store that had a Marvel Avengers special exhibition, it was a marvel fans wet dream! It contained life size replicas of all the avengers, small scale models at obscene prices (pretty cool though and if I could justify spending a month's wages on one I would), and various more affordable accessories including bags and purses in Groot style.

We pressed on exploring the East Side of Harijuku with it's many second hand clothes shops and quirky cafes, one thing we just couldn't understand was why the Japanese spend so much time in queues for bubble tea!?!

We crossed the road and hit the super crazy busy Takeshita-dori Street. This famous street is about 400 metres in length and there are hundreds of youngsters and tourists exploring the many crepe, candy and yet more second hand clothes shops.... This street I'd say eptimised the atmosphere of the Shibuya area which is very on trend with the teenaged crowd in Tokyo.

We managed to find an absolute diamond of a Mexican restaurant round the back of Takeshita-dori called Chillis, I believe a family run restaurant and I had one of the nicest burritos I've had since visiting Mexico a couple of years earlier... Not what I expected to find but we were glad as we were running on empty after the night before.

Once we recharged our batteries we headed into the Meiji shrine although templed and shrined out from Kyoto and the North we were over that way and decided to make a brief stop. Meiji shrine is famous for the first Torii gate and is a reasonably nice shrine to walk around and more importantly free.

We spotted what looked to be the ultimate ice cream and shake cafe, Cookie Time (apparently its big in NZ) the other evening when walking back and given its proximity to the park and my sweet tooth we headed back toward Harijuku. I was not disappointed after a short wait there was so much choice, I ended up with a freak shake (if I'd lost any weight on holiday it was now certainly back on again... but so worth it). Laura had a cookie dough ice-cream but I feel like won on the greed front.

Before our sugar coma kicked in we head to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building to get a FREE view over Tokyo City although only the South Observatory was open as the North was closed for renovations. We were there late afternoon and it took around a 30 minutes to get to the lift to take you to the 45th floor, once at the top you got great views over the city not quite 360 as the North Tower blocked... the North view surprisingly...

As we detoured for an ice-cream and a milkshake earlier we'd skipped Yoyogi Park so decided to walk it from the Government Building which felt like an eternity, probably because we'd walked a fair bit already and our sugar coma had kicked in! The park itself wasn't the prettiest but there were quite a few people there enjoying the Tokyo sun and it had a couple of nice water features... You could easily skip it though but it also provided an alternative route back to Shibuya where we also experienced the craziness of the crossing once again although I think it wasn't as crazy as normal given that it was Golden Week.

That evening we decided to go back to explore the bright lights of Shibuya and Shinjuku to try some DECENT famous Japanese BBQ Kobe beef. We'd found a restaurant earlier called Han No Daidokoro and as it was late we decided to just go for it.... So unlike us as we often spend half the evening wondering round until starving trying to find the right restaurant before going back to the first one we saw! We each had a set menu of 5 varieties including back and rump, salad, rice, pickled cucumber and roast beef, dried seaweed and a drink. The beef was high quality and the price reasonable (£40 per person) for Japan but you just want more of it.

Next we decided to have a better look around the Shinjuku area as we rushed to get food and go to the Robot Restaurant so spent time wandering the streets before grabbing a beer in a bar on Golden Gai. 

It's a Mario!

We started our day with a fantastic view of a game at the Menjijinguya baseball stadium where there was a game on, if we had more time we would have watched more than just the one innings, but we had the whole of Tokyo to explore in just 4 days so we cracked on...

As Tokyo is the largest city in the world! We decided to focus this day on the central Tokyo area. It was another glorious day so it seemed perfect to wander around the Imperial Palace and East Gardens.

After a short walk around the baseball stadium we took the subway line a couple of stops to Hanzomon and walked along the perimeter of the grounds to the park entrance hoping to find a bakery or cafe for lunch but as we didn't find anything and we were hungry hippos we detoured to a local cafe to satisfy our craving.

After returning to the entrance we proceeded through the gate and into the East Gardens. We found out that the Imperial Palace itself is mostly out of bounds with the exception of two tours daily around a small section of the outer perimeter and given the new emperor had been sworn in just the day before we weren't sure these would be happening. The gardens are well kept and contained by a moat separating it from the inner palace and the city, we spent an hour or so wondering around the various levels. It provided great city scape views, reminding me of good times in Central Park New York (although it's much small).

We exited the park through the Ōte-mon Gate on the East side. It was pretty clear that was the entrance most people use by the queue, we didn't have any queue on the North gate (Kita-hanebashi-mon). We headed in the direction of Ginza to check out the famous shopping district, not that we could afford to spend our money there with its Tiffany's, Louis Vuittons etc...

It's a bit like Oxford St or 5th Avenue in New York but the sheer size and number of department stores is over whelming, you could easily spend days and thousands of ¥ here if you're a shopaholic BUT we are not.... so we headed to where we probably fit in better... Yup you've guess it the FISH market. The Tsukiji fish market (outer) to be exact and although the inner market has moved, it still has it's charm for tourists and locals a like by providing fish, crabs, lobsters and a variety of street food. We decided to try the local tuna as this market was once famous for it's tuna auctions so we found a stall preparing the tuna and making delicious looking sushi right in front of us. It was extremely fresh and definitely delicious although a touch pricey we got 4 pieces for about £7 but still reasonable compared with England.

After this we retraced our steps to Ginza and got on the subway line picking up a 72 hour subway pass that's available to tourists for just over £10, if you show your passport at one of the various resellers including a few major subway stations.

In the early evening it was time for us to head over to Tokyo Bay area to do MariCAR, not in anyway related to Nintendo other than it is called MariCAR which used to be called MariKAR and allowed people to dress up as characters from Super Mario.... but as I said not in anyway related to Nintendo or indeed Super Mario.

It was a little walk from Shin-Kiba station through an industrial park that was reasonably quiet but felt safe enough and as we turned the final corner we saw the go karts, my excitement levels rising significantly at this point. After a short registration process we were told to go upstairs to get ready which involved choosing the costumes (unfortunately no Mario characters anymore after the lawsuit a couple of years ago) but luckily Disney Kart doesn't exist yet so I found a Woody costume (Toy Story is actually one of my favourite films) and Laura got a Sully (of Monster's Inc fame).

The staff were reasonable young and seemed quite relaxed about talking us through the dos and don't, how to drive the kart and safety instructions (of which there weren't many). We were given a pair of plastic glasses but if you have your own from cycling or such I would recommend it as the glare on the ones we had in the dark made it hard to see the hand signals from the lead driver.

Nao was leading our group of 6 and Ryan was tailing to ensure we all stayed together, our group started off a little nervously as go karting on the road is definitely a new one for me! The instructors were great though and starting in the bay area there wasn't much traffic allowing us to get used to the karts. We were told by friends (Jill and Dave), that had done it a few days earlier, to get the front seats and you won't need a camera as the lead driver takes a lot of photos this was a great tip!

We weaved through the streets of Tokyo for around 3 hours covering all the major sights including Rainbow Bridge, Shinjuku, Shibuya + Crossing, Harijuku, Skytower, Tokyo Gate Bridge and many more.. We stopped at a Telecom building and had a break from the Karts towards the end. We took a lift up and got an incredible view of the Tokyo skyline (included in the price) this was an unexpected surprise.

Overall I thought the tour was well worth the price (around £80 including £5 insurance for the kart) it's a once in a lifetime chance to explore Tokyo in a completely different way and I would highly recommend doing it around sunset as we got fantastic views on the Rainbow Bridge.

We were out Karting from about 6:15pm to 9pm including a 15 min stop off for the view and this was plenty of time and we covered so much distance also the traffic was general quiet and respectful of the karts (occasionally a car would sandwich the group but it felt safe, although a helmet wouldn't go a miss).

We headed back to Shibuya for food as we were starving by now and had a Yakisoba meal with Gyozas from one of the first restaurants we found as we were both flagging by this point food was okay nothing to write home about.