June 15: A Day in Tokyo
I woke up around 5 a.m. and was surprised to see the sun was starting to poke out. I thought it was ungodly to get up that early, and managed to go back to sleep until 8:30. When I got up, Manami and Koichi had already eaten breakfast, and Koichi had been for a walk. I had the two pastries Manami had bought me at the bakery and supermarket yesterday, and Koichi made some coffee for me.Koichi unfortunately had to do some work that day, so Manami and I went into the city on our own. We took a private subway line to the Ginza district, the fashionable part of Tokyo. We walked towards the Printemps department store (I believe there’s a department store in Paris by the same name). Our first stop was lunch at Printemps department store–we left Manami’s late in the morning, and it took well over an hour to get to Tokyo from Manami’s. Manami treated me to lunch at the Printemps’ Angelina Café. It was a casual restaurant by Manami’s standards, but its cleanwhite walls and white chairs, large glass windows overlooking the people in the crosswalk or in their fancy cars (BMWs and Corvettes imported directly from Europe), and waiters and waitresses in black and white uniforms felt nicer to me. The Krispy Kreme truck driving through the scene seemed a little out of place, but Manami told me later that it’s the latest craze—some people line up for an hour to get a Krispy Kreme donut.
There was no English-language menu, so I was grateful Manami could translate the items on the “set menu”. For 1,570 yen (about$15), one could get an entrée with a salad and soup, bread, and coffee or tea. I settled on the fish plate—pieces of fried fish (the less fattening version of eel) atop a slice of Spanish omelette. Believe it or not, it seemed the most traditionally Japanese of the choices. Manami ordered the hamburger steak topped with cheese and eggplant. Yes, I said eggplant. The portions were veryreasonable (i.e. not supergigantic American sized but not tiny nouvelle cuisine either). And we enjoyed the view of Ginza.
Angelina Café is very famous for its mont blanc dessert. We decided to split a small version of it and have it with our tea. It is round and served in a paper cup like a muffin, but it’s consists of a sweet cookie crust, cold whipped cream, and caramel on top. Words do not do it justice, and neither do pictures. Here’s a picture from the Web site anyway: http://r.gnavi.co.jp/g999000/menu7.htm.
After lunch we walked around the department store. I have to admit seeing everyone in beautiful long flowing shirts or short dresses with tights and cute shoes put me in a shopping mood, but Printemps was a bit expensive. It was still a bargain compared to the nearby Coach and Armani stores, but that didn’t inspire me to buy anything.
We walked out towards the main pedestrian street of Ginza, which Manami called “Shopping Paradise”. There were many beautiful department stores here too. We walked into a personal favorite, Mitsukoshi, where Manami usually buys beautiful cookies in beautiful tins for me or my family when she comes from Japan to visit. Manami told me many Japanese students who visit the U.S. miss the food floor at Mitsukoshi, because there are so many samples of free
food. You can’t find that at a department store in the U.S. I sympathized with the students, but after my beautiful lunch I didn’t feel hungry even for samples.
After Mitsukoshi, we walked back to the subway. Manami made a point of taking me to the JR line stop instead of the private subway/train line she knows better so that I could make use of my Japan Rail Pass. We got on the train and had to change trains at Akihabara, the subway exit closest to the part of Japan where the horrible stabbings took place a week before.
Soon we were at the stop we needed for the Edo-Tokyo Museum, a museum about the history of Tokyo. Years ago I had seen an exhibit in D.C. about the Edo period–the early days or kind of cultural renaissance period of Tokyo, complete with shoguns. This museum not only had information on the culture and history of the Edo period, it also had replicas of major parts of life such as the old wooden bridge, a kabuki theater, and a printers’ shop. There were dioramas of the royal palace and ordinary people’s houses. There were binoculars so you could look up close at the models of people cooking or carrying things on their backs. There were interactive exhibits such as fire brigade signs, treasure chests, and water buckets you could try to lift. In the Tokyo part of the museum, one could see the development of the city. There was an interesting diorama of Ginza, which looked different from today but still seemed to capture the energy and style of today, with a touch of the “wild west” look of America.
After the museum, we got on the train back to Manami’s stop and stopped at the supermarket so I could get more pastry for tomorrow, and Manami could get salads and side dishes for dinner. We came back to the condo and had something to drink, and I tried my “cheese fondue” pastry. I think the cheese inside, though, was cream cheese. That made it even better. Koichi showed me pictures from their trip to Nara and Kyoto, which helped me get a sense of where I’d be going next.
Manami said I should rest while Koichi made dinner. He made okonomiyaki, a traditional Japanese pancake. I had had okonomiyaki before in Japan Town in San Francisco, but Manami said there are many styles of okonomiyaki. This variety contained lots of cabbage and noodles. It was still topped with the traditional greens, smoked squid shavings, a special kind of brown sauce, and mayonnaise. Yum!
Tags: Asia, Japan, museums, Printemps, restaurant, Tokyo
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