Jan 25: Tokyo, again

(I can’t believe I’m so far behind on the blog posts! Arghhh.)

On the 25th we got up at a reasonable hour and headed out to Kyoto station to head back to Tokyo – we took a different entrance so we stumbled upon a great food stall in the basement somewhere that had lots of onigiri (triangle-shaped rice with filling, wrapped in seaweed) and inari sushi (sweetened tofu sheet with rice inside). Yum yum. I wish I’d learned a little earlier in the trip to ask for konbu (kelp) onigiri!

mmmm, inari zushi

(Vig enjoying an inari sushi.)

We took the shinkansen back to Tokyo, and even got to see Mt. Fuji from the window! We checked back into the same hotel we stayed in the first time – it was like coming home. Man, Tokyo was so awesome. After a little rest we decided to do one last sightseeing push for Tokyo – first up was Roppongi Hills, a pretty fancypantsy condo-entertainment complex with a movie theatre, a huge fancy mall, lots of restaurants and such.

And a huge spider sculpture.

spider at Roppongi Hills

To complete our upscale Roppongi experience we had a snack in a local coffee shop, Koots. They had great green tea, slightly weird vegetable-soy soup, and an even weirder cheese-and-olive onigiri!

Then it got a little darker and we headed to check out Harajuku – didn’t see too many dressed up people, but there was some good walking around and looking. Lots of crepe shops and clothing shops!

harajuku

From Harajuku we walked along Omotesando street, which has all the designer stores. More fancy stuff! We looked for a restaurant listed online, but didn’t find it. Sort of desperate and hungry, we finally stumbled upon a treasure trove of vegetarian food – a Japanese health food store! I think it was called something like Nature House or something like that. They had a fair amount of prepared veggie Japanese foods in the store, and we picked up some nice oranges to snack on too. I think for food we got some stirfried veggies (beans! glorious green beans!), some salad, rice, and a tofu dish.

One more stop on our way back to the hotel to eat was the intersection at Shibuya station, which is a HUGE scramble intersection. Fun for photos, although a bit tough at night!

shibuya at night

Back in our hotel we ate up our health food store dinner and packed up for the trip to Shanghai!


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9 responses to “Jan 25: Tokyo, again”

  1. j. Avatar

    One of the spider sculpture’s mates is outside the National Gallery in Ottawa…

    http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2005/05/11/mamanspider050511.html

  2. yvette Avatar

    The giant spider is one copy Maman by Louise Bourgeois. We have one in Canada, in front of the National Gallery in Ottawa. It’s one of my favourite things ever! All about the fierce beauty of fertility. Yay.

  3. Grace Avatar

    I was going to chime in about the Louise Bourgeois Sculpture. Her spider sculptures are my favorites of her work. There was an extensive exhibit on her at the Guggenheim in NYC last September, and later I saw a lot of the same works again at the Dia in Beacon NY.

    I highly recommend a visit the Dia in Beacon. It’s a wonderfully lit space for large installations. http://www.diabeacon.org/

  4. Leah Avatar

    I was also going to mention the big spider in Ottawa, slightly closer to home. But everyone else got there first. Anyway, great pictures :)

  5. Lauren Avatar
    Lauren

    There’s another spider here in San Francisco. I had no idea there are more of them.

    http://sanfrancisco.about.com/b/2008/03/25/spider-art-at-pier-14-san-francisco.htm

  6. Knittripps Avatar

    Suddenly I am hungry for vegetable tempura…

  7. Seanna Lea Avatar

    Gosh, this is just making me want to get to Japan even more. I’m glad that you are managing to find vegetarian food. That is one thing that always worries me a little when I’m traveling (even within the states. When I was in Kentuckiana I would have been ecstatic for something that was vegetarian and not fried or in pizza form).

  8. gleek Avatar

    i love omotesando! we went there twice and i spent a lot of $$$ at the lesportsac store :)

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