gonpachi and allons-y!

It's been dreary and wintry over the last few weeks, so I've been looking back at vacation pictures, wistfully dreaming of warmer (and snow-less) days. I realized today that I never blogged about our Tokyo Thanksgiving trip...so here we go!


Ben and I have some friends who also teach in Japan - we met them while living in California and we always see each other when we all go home to visit family and friends. Last summer, we agreed that the next time we saw each other needed to be in Japan. We decided to meet in near the middle, in Tokyo, for Thanksgiving.

As per the usual, we took the overnight bus and arrived in Tokyo around 6 am. Now that we are seasoned Tokyo veterans (three times brings us to expert status, right?) we had no problem traveling through Shinjuku Station with our luggage and making our way through the various metro lines to get to Nogizaka, the closest station to our hotel. It felt like decades ago that we had made our first trip to Tokyo, marveling at the sheer size of Shinjuku and the tens of thousands of people making their ways through the busiest train station in the world. This time, it was just the first station of many to go through on our first day.

Out of the 50 busiest train stations in the world, 44 of them
are in Japan, with Shinjuku being the busiest.

Once we made our way across the city and settled into our hotel, we visited Roppongi to see all the Christmas decorations. We had heard Roppongi was home to some amazing decorations and the famed Illuminations.

You might remember the spider from previous photos...

After taking in the sights, we headed to Arisugawa Park to meet our friends. We enjoyed a nice stroll through the park, photographing the autumn leaves and catching up. Then we made our way to Gonpachi, my favorite Izakaya restaurant. The food was amazing, as always, and we were happy to see that our friend Teresa still worked there.

The more times we visit this park, the more I think it's
become my favorite spot in Tokyo...

I'm always captivated by the architecture of this
building. It was especially beautiful with the sunlight
streaming in through the windows!

After our meal, we proceeded to Harajuku to visit Meiji-jingu, a Shinto shrine named after Emperor Meiji. It was quite lovely, though the wall of sake barrels was my favorite part of the experience. Well, that and the Allons-y shop we spotted on our way back to the train station! (Finding a Doctor Who reference in Japan is no easy task...but more on that later.)

Torii Gate entrance to the shrine complex

Kazaridaru, or decorational sake barrels, outside Meiji Shrine

Gateway to the courtyard

Meiji Shrine with the Docomo Building in the background

"There's an old Earth saying, Captain. A phrase of great power and wisdom and
consolation to the soul in times of need. Allons-y!" 

Exhausted, we all headed back to our hotels to try and get some shut-eye before our early morning trek to Disneyland!

day 1 (part 2)

Leaving off from the afternoon (found here) we headed toward Tokyo Skytree. This amazing communications tower was opened to the public in May of this year and has broken the record as the world's tallest tower. Tokyo has other communications towers, including the Tokyo Tower, which was fashioned after the Eiffel Tower in Paris. As the city's skyscrapers grew taller and taller, the communications towers were rendered useless. Tokyo needed to construct a tower that would reach above the skyline; thus, Skytree.

The building itself is a beautiful, cylindrical structure with the base of a tripod. Spanning 2,080 feet, it's the tallest tower and second tallest man-made structure in the world.

Surrounding Tokyo Skytree is a mall and aquarium. There was a Ghibli store, which I was extremely excited about (alas, no KiKi iPhone covers there, either). We made our way up to Skytree, snapping pictures along the way.

The elevator ride up to the first observation deck (350 meters/1,148 feet) was surprisingly smooth. The elevator was decorated with sparkling lights and was exciting to watch as we scaled the building.

The views from Skytree were amazing - I've seen Tokyo from the air before and still can't get over how enormous the city really is.

After Skytree we headed back to the hotel to drop off our belongings and then strolled through Ginza on the way to the Alice in Wonderland themed restaurant. We saw many high-end shops (including 3 Tiffany and Company locations, the Tokyo Apple flagship store, and Cartier.)

The Alice restaurant was awesome! The servers dressed as Alice and had purses in the shapes of clocks and Cheshire cats. The booths and tables all fit the Alice theme, and ranged from booths lined with playing cards to a giant teacup. Even the menu was delightful, with a pop-up drink menu. The drink coasters were playing cards and there was a bell on the table that we could use to ring for our Alice-dressed server to help us. There is even a section near the back of the menu for ordering an Alice outfit for yourself! We had a great time during our stay in Wonderland; it made a great end to a fun-filled day.

day 1 (part 1)

Oh boy, I see a looooong blog post in my future (and yours, too). We packed so many amazing sites into our first day in Tokyo with Cliff and Naomi that it's tough to pick and choose which ones to write about.


We woke early in the morning, headed to Starbucks for breakfast, and then made our way to Asakusa to visit Sensō-ji, sometimes known to visitors as Asakusa Temple. Sensō-ji is the most popular temple to visit in Tokyo, known for its Kaminarimon or "Thunder Gate" and the hundreds of souvenir stalls lining the walkway leading to the temple.  Sensō-ji was built in AD 645 and is the oldest Buddhist temple in Tokyo. On the grounds, there is a beautiful five-story pagoda, as well as a shinto shrine.

As we strolled past the shops and closer to the actual temple, we noticed many of the traditional Buddhist rituals taking place. One such ritual is the lighting of incense. Near the center of the open area, there is a large incense burner. Visitors purchase osenko (incense), light it, and let it burn in the incense area. They can extinguish the flame by waving it in the air, or stick it in the ashy area until it burns out on its own. Then the visitor fans the smoke from the incense onto themselves, which is believed to have healing power and good luck.

Another ritual the Buddhists take part in is the cleansing of the body prior to entering the temple. Near the entrance is a fountain with running water and ladles. Visitors fill a ladle with water and use that water to clean their hands. Then, they will fill the ladle again and use that water to pour it into their hands like a bowl. This water is used to clean out their mouths. Then it is proper to fill the ladle a last time and turn it on itself, thus cleaning the ladle. 

After watching the rituals take place, we ventured into the temple itself. The inside was beautiful. The shrine area was full of detail, and the ceiling had murals painted on it. It was the most detailed of the temples we've visited during our time in Japan.

When we had finished seeing what there was to see at the temple, we made our way back toward the subway station. This time, we walked down the alley adjacent to the busy marketplace. There were several small shops and restaurants along the way and we took our time strolling and window shopping. We ate lunch at a restaurant along the way and then took the subway to Sky Tree. 

tokyo bound...again

We got to visit Tokyo again! This is exciting, because the three days we spent in this glorious city in March just weren't enough to see and do even a fraction of what Tokyo has to offer. Not only did we get to visit again, but this time, we'd get to do it with family!

Cliff and Naomi were slated to arrive at Narita Airport in the late afternoon, so we planned to arrive in the morning via the Willer Express. After arriving at Tokyo Station, we deposited our luggage at a locker and headed for the nearest (you guessed it) Starbucks. I still find it amusing that we rarely visited Starbucks when we lived in the states, but now it's a commodity we get a little too excited about!

While trekking to coffee heaven, we made the realization that Tokyo Station is MUCH easier to navigate than the craziness of Shinjuku! After drinking a gluten-free-soy-mocha-frappuccino, I was ready to hit the streets. 

We headed first to the Imperial Palace. We were a bit disappointed, as everybody says one of the top ten things to do in Tokyo is to visit this place. We had heard there was a spectacular garden, but if there was one we never did see it.

The palace grounds are surrounded by two moats. Inside the outer moat is a tree-filled grassy area reminiscent of the reflecting pool in Washington DC. It was a beautiful place to have a picnic or take a stroll.

The actual castle lies inside the inner moat. It's difficult to see and is heavily guarded, since the emperor resides there to this day. The detail on the visitor's side of the moat, though, was easy to see and was made up of beautiful detail. The entrance bridge was beautifully reflected in the moat's water, and the filigreed fences surrounding the moat were exquisite.

All in all, we enjoyed visiting the palace, but wouldn't go so far as to call it one of Tokyo's "top ten places to see."

After the Imperial Palace was one of the places I was most excited about. You see, I have a thing for themed restaurants or restaurants that have a great background or story behind them. Our lunch destination was one such place: Gonpachi.

For those of you who have seen Kill Bill, you will recognize Gonpachi as the inspiration for "the House of Blue Leaves," where the Crazy 88 have their epic fight scene.

I figured if the real deal had any type of architecture close to its fictitious rendition, we'd be happy we visited. Boy, were we right! We traveled to Nishi-Azabu, a sub-neighborhood in Roppongi. Upon stepping in, we could immediately see why Tarantino was inspired by this place. Rather than try and explain its awesomeness, I'll show you:

In the midst of this awesomeness, I was a bit concerned because this would be the first time I had eaten out since going gluten free. I was anxious about getting sick and had found some great advice on how to communicate my food allergy issues in Japanese.

I did so, and amazingly enough, we were given a server who not only spoke English fluently, but had spent part of her life near Sacramento. Teresa not only took the time to run every item I considered ordering by her manager to check for potential allergens, but we enjoyed talking about our time in Northern California.

The food was a bit pricey, but delicious, and we ended up really enjoying ourselves. (I will post another blog about all the gluten-free meals I found in Tokyo, as there are startlingly few blogs devoted to this for Celiacs traveling to this city.)

After Gonpachi, we checked Arisugawa Park (a beautiful and underrated getaway in the midst of the city's chaos) and then rode the subway back to Tokyo Station, where we met up with the newly arrived Cliff and Naomi. As all of us were exhausted, we headed back to the hotel to unpack and get ready for the next day.

The rooms at the Monterey la Soeur were tiny, but this was Tokyo and we were exhausted!