The Hatch House Goes Global: Japan - Part One: Walking Food Tour

The Hatch House just came back from another international trip, this time to Japan!

Our trip was five days long: two days in Tokyo, one day train trip, and two days in the Japanese countryside.
We flew into Narita International Airport, which, as it turns out, is not very close to Tokyo. As you can see in the map below, the airport is on the eastern edge of the map and Tokyo is on the western.

We knew this was a train trip vacation though and had purchased 7-day Japan Rail Passes in advance of our arrival. These were great and allowed us to go anywhere that JR goes, including riding the Shinkansen bullet trains! They also covered the hour-long train trip from the airport into Tokyo.
To get around to all of our destinations within Tokyo however, we also had to purchase Metro passes. We discovered that Japan loves international tourists though and created the 48-hour tourist Metro pass. Yes, please!

Here is a zoomed-in map of the places we visited in Tokyo.

After dropping our bags at our AirBnB in Nakano-ku, we took the subway to Shibuya station, changing trains at Shinjuku station, and met our walking Arigato food tour guide at Hachiko Mae Square. We had a great guide named Ryu.

Ryu

The first thing we did was go back into Shibuya station so we could watch people crossing the intersection. Shibuya Crossing is one of the busiest intersections in Tokyo, with upwards of 3,000 people crossing each time. It is estimated one million people cross there every day.

Ryu also mentioned that Shinjuku station has over 3.6 million people pass through it every day. Shibuya station has more than 2.4 million. I can attest that it felt every bit that crowded in both of those stations.
While we were standing there we saw the Mario Go-Karters. These are people dressed as Nintendo characters and driving Go-Karts around Tokyo. If our kids had driver's licenses, we would have been right down there with them.

Along our tour Ryu would stop and point out interesting buildings and tell us some facts about life in Tokyo. One of these is the profitable business of Pachinko. He told us that gambling is totally illegal in Japan, however they get around that by only giving the winners plastic templates. They must leave the Pachinko place and walk down and around the corner to a little teller window in order to exchange the plastic templates for actual money.

Peeking inside a Pachinko place. The noise coming from them was deafening.

Pachinko teller windows

Our first stop on the walking food tour was a sushi place. We learned that sushi was originally street food, eaten without utensils, while standing. So, this place had no chairs and we ate with our hands, shoving the entire piece of sushi into our mouths each time. I have never been a fan of sushi, but since I was in Japan I decided I had to try it. I was very surprised to discover that I actually liked it. The only one I didn't like was the one they covered in mayonnaise. We tried two different cuts of tuna, then one of each of flounder, eel, and salmon.

Lean cut Tuna sushi (wasabi hidden underneath)

still questioning whether she likes it

not a fan of sushi

Eel sushi

Salmon with charred mayo

Our next stop was J.S. Curry for curry bread. We had a choice between regular curry or curry with spinach and cheese. Since Charlie did not eat much of the sushi, he inhaled his whole curry bread in quick time.

Notice that Eric is wearing his Pokeball hat. He was playing Pokemon Go the entire trip.

curry bread

We then walked to a hidden restaurant, up on the fourth floor of somewhere. There we tried Okonomiyaki, the Japanese savory pancake. I also tried plum wine, which was very tasty.

adding the special Okonomiyaki sauce

then drizzled with mayo, of course

Maya, the bookworm

The end result, with shaved bonito (Katsuoboshi) on top

This was a different one, made with noodles.

On our way to the fourth stop of the tour, we made a detour to Mega Donki. There we learned that in Japan there are upwards of 200 different flavors of Kit Kat available. We then made it our mission to write down every flavor we saw during the trip. Here's the list: Rum Raisin, Strawberry Cheesecake, Wasabi, Sweet Potato, Raspberry, Strawberry, Apple, Green Tea, Sake, Chocolate, Red Bean, Soybean, White Bean, Japanese tea, Japanese waffle, Peach, Kobe Pudding, Grape, Melon & Mascarpone Cheese, Matcha, Sakura Matcha, and Cranberry & Almond. Who knew????

Our fourth stop led us back towards the Shibuya Crossing and by now it was dark and even more busy. We ate Kobe Beef on skewers. It was so tender. We had tried to not get full on all the previous stops because we knew this stop was coming, but it was still hard to finish even one skewer. And we still had to save room for dessert!

Shibuya at night.

The happy couple with us was from Australia. They were part of the tour group.

Before dessert, Ryu walked us through a very old alley filled with Izakayas. These Izakayas were teeny tiny pubs, room for maybe 4-5 people in each. People take their shoes off at the door and leave them in the street.

Our last stop was underground in the Shibuya Depachika. We walked past extremely expensive but perfect fruits. Ever bought a $5 strawberry or an $80 mango or a $259 melon? What about $130 for 48 perfect cherry tomatoes? If you are looking for the perfect fruit, apparently this is where you get it. Each one is either wrapped in a styrofoam sleeve to keep it from bruising, or comes in a gift box.

After the ridiculously expensive fruit section of the Depachika, we got to the area where they make Takoyaki (octopus balls) and Taiyaki (fish-shaped cakes with a sweet filling). Takoyaki was not on our menu for the evening, but Taiyaki was! We had the choice between a red bean filling or a custard filling. I think we all chose custard.