Where's Scott?

We have a plan to have lunch at the sushi house that Gaku recommended (but was closed on our last trip). We arrive and stare at the small house wondering if we really have the right place – it’s down a small, quiet street in a quiet business district. We step in and find a bar seating maybe 12, most seats filled by black suited Japanese businessmen. We’re seated at the bar and order our usual: o’toro – Nope, first faux pas of the day, no ordering here, we’re instructed to relax, enjoy some tea, and wait for our fixed menu sushi to be served. What follows is 4 plates of absolutely stunning sushi. We eating with our eyes closed it’s so good! Our last plate is an option: salmon roe, or Uni (sea urchin). Both of us detest Uni, but the sushi’s so good, we decide to risk it. They give us both a monster pile of urchin; how are we going to not shame the chef if we take a nibble and can eat no more? We nibble… it’s heavenly! It almost tastes as delicate as the o’toro! We’re unsure, is the Uni that much better here, or have we finally crossed some threshold, and now, at long last, become Uni eaters?

We wander the area to get a feel for business Tokyo (and check out the Denny’s). Some Japanese men in clean black suits pile out of a van and hand us some towelettes; I guess we were a bit too dirty for their liking. We spot some more men in suits on the bridge, carefully picking up stray leaves with pincer rods and putting them in plastic bags. Seb suggests that their all part of some cult, and the towelettes we were given are laced with arsenic. The suits are just strange enough (even sporting a yellow sash) that I agree to ditch the towelettes.

We stroll across the river, and try to get our bearings; Seb fancies himself a navigator, but after we finally locate ourselves on the map he’s only off North by 90 degrees. We decide to play it safe, and stick to the subway. Since we missed the downtown of Shibuya the previous day, we opt to return and check out the shopping there.

The area near the Shibuya station is an amazing mix of shops and restaurants that we’ve all but come to expect in the shopping districts of Tokyo. There are stores stocked floor to ceiling with comic books, or small toy figurines and models inspired by them; multilevel mega-stores with everything from small plastic gems for make-your-own jewelry to robot construction kits to small, electric led-blinking lapel pins; there’s plenty of name brand clothing as well, and it’s clear that most of the shops are targeted to teens or young adults.

We spot a promising looking bar, and nip in out of the cold (and it’s getting quite cold) for a pint. The bar is decorated to be an old, seedy British bar, but the interior is spotless and quite recently decorated – like so many things Tokyo, there’s an attempt to create a small escapist environment, but the underlying character of cleanliness and attention to detail always remain (hence, an immaculate dive bar). We enjoy a few pints to steel us for the cold, and decide that we can happily spend the rest of the night here; but first we need to fetch our bags from Roppongi.

We cross over a huge crosswalk to the Shibuya station; we wait for the light with hundreds of people (none crossing against the light), and are again reminded just how dense this city is! We arrive back at the hotel and figure that before we leave the area, we should check out Roppongi Hills, and perhaps grab a bite to eat. We ask the concierge for some “awesome” sushi, and he scribbles a few choice spots on the map for us.

Roppongi Hills is difficult to navigate, being effectively circular, but lacking easy access between levels, and the stairs are outdoors in the now biting cold. We manage to locate the top sushi recommendation, and find it a tiny, 8 seater sushi bar. We settle down and order up some kama o’toro: “near-kama” is all they have, and it’s $35/piece! This better be gold trimmed sushi! We’re disappointed to find it barely on par with the sushi-boat o’toro, but decide to try some scallops just to see if it’s just a bad selection; again, very average. Apparently, you can’t pay your way into epic sushi, you have to find it yourself.

We leave a very disappointed sushi chef, and try to locate one of the other sushi houses in the Hills. Our second choice has much more atmosphere, even if, as we’ve come to expect as pale faces, we’re seated right in the back away from the rest of the Japanese clientele. We have our own chef though, and we encourage him to serve up whatever’s good, and are rewarded with some excellent sushi!

We pick up our bags, and head back to Shibuya; as we’re leaving at 7am, we’ve decided to skip the hotel the final night, and just power through the night on beer and sake. Bags in tow, we explore the windy and hilly back alleys of Shibuya. A young teenager approaches us and asks if we’ve like to have sex with her for cash – I’ve read about this being a common technique for the Tokyo teenagers as a way to pay for the latest cloths and gizmos, but I’m surprised as how open and matter-the-fact they are about it; we decline, and she turns and asks the guys walking behind us, no shame in the approach at all. It’s snowing lightly now (1st snowfall of the year for Tokyo!), and so we find a bar that’s open late, and decide to camp there. We’ve chosen well, the bar is small and warm, and actually has some interesting graffiti scrawled in the wood walls going back to the 60s. They’re playing some excellent tunes, and we have the place almost to ourselves. We put away a few pints, and plan our final hours in Tokyo.

We have some credit left for the rail line, and decide to head back to the first sushi house we’d found the first night in Electric City (where, as luck would have it, we’d had some of the best sushi of the trip). We leave the bar about 4am, and grab the first train for the far side of the city. It’s a 20min ride, but we both manage to fall asleep on the train and miss our stop by a few stations ;). We finally walk in the sushi house just as twilight is breaking, and true to the first night, enjoy some absolutely fantastic fish!

We seriously consider the possibility of forgetting our departure time… and almost… almost… stay.