Today I wanted to show the guys the more traditional part of Japan (i.e. some traditional temples) to give them a taste of Japanese culture outside of robots and sushi. We headed towards what is the most traditional part of Tokyo where most of the main temples are still found, Asakusa. Once again, we got to a late start after waking up from the late and crazy night before. The town of Asakusa is very different than the hustle and bustle sections of Tokyo and we walked along the large river bank enjoying the sights of strange looking beer breweries, funny sexually suggestive signs and awesome homeless towns. The homeless in Japan are a fascinating rung of society unlike other homeless in other parts of the world. Here in Japan, the destitute are not shunned by society like pesky rodents, they are simply in another sector of society. They don’t bother people and people don’t bother them (for the most part). They build their own little communities sometimes, a few cardboard houses in a row together in a small park fully equipped with little cut out cardboard windows, bikes, doors and even slippers outside. Even the homeless respect and consider the inside of their homes sacred by taking off their shoes outside. I thought was a fascinating difference that is pretty unique to Japanese society. After buying some ice cream, seeing a pagoda and temple, and teaching Mike and Owen the traditional clap-bow-double clap bell ring, we did a little souvenir shopping and were on our way to Odiaba, a manmade island city that supposedly had some great Tokyo attractions.
We didn’t even make it all the way to Odiaba however for lunch and stopped halfway as we succumbed to hunger pangs and looked for a place to eat while making a subway change. We had some delicious curry soup and udon noodles, which I learned is a great combination (I cook it now at home sometimes).
Odiaba really is a great part of Tokyo, though a little bit far from the center, it was well worth the trip. The island has its own private subway system that connects to the public transportation that shuttles passengers around huge looping tracks, across Rainbow Bridge, and onto the island where there are tons of things to do. Aside from the main shopping plazas along the western shore, the east side has the Tokyo Museum of Modern Technology and Innovation, the Fuji TV Building (designed in part by one of my professors at my Japanese University), and many other large and notable landmarks I did not have time to explore. Unfortunately, when we got to our first destination of Odaiba, The Museum of Modern Technology and Innovation we found out it was closed due to a national holiday. We were all terribly disappointed because this was where I was supposed to show the guys some decent robots and honestly, the museum looked pretty cool, even from the outside. So we decided that we would make another trip out to Odaiba on another day so we could see the museum.
We then walked back towards the monorail and came across a large plain rectangular building mysteriously named Venus Fort. There was nothing but the title and it didn’t really tell us much of what would be inside. The exterior was covered in unimpressive corrugated metal sheeting, but we decided to check it out anyway. When we took the elevator up to the 2nd floor we were shocked to find this…
Venus Fort Panorama
Would you ever guess that this building would house...
This
Yes, somehow we had walked into the Cesar’s Palace of Tokyo complete with fake sky and awesome illuminated fountains and water shows. Inside this building was a casino, normal stores on the 2nd floor, outlet stores on the third and restaurants and smaller souvenirs on the first floor. The stores were eccentric c and random as well as having some normal name brands sprinkled in between. There was a store that sold stuffed animal heads mounted on headboards or a giant stuffed lion, and another that had huge life sized Barbie dolls in yes you guessed it, the Barbie store. We hung there until Charlene came to meet us and the guys discovered the fun of giant mechanical colored machines. I wish there was a better way to describe them, but really all they were, giant (sometimes spinning or rotating) machines that had lots of moving levers, arms, balls, lights, sounds and somehow incorporated losing money into the goal of the game.
Connected beside the Venus Fort building was a giant Toyota Showcase Showroom that displayed some of Toyota’s newest innovations. I saw some of the transforming single person transportation units I’d seen 4 years before in the World’s Fair in Japan as well as some new green cars and some new concept designs by Toyota. I had found the small card in the hotel lobby before leaving for the day for a Ninja Restaurant. I had heard about this before and thought that this was a great opportunity to try it for ourselves. I called in and made a reservation for 9:30 but that meant we had a lot of time to kill until dinner. So of course, we first padded our stomachs before the most expensive meal any of us had ever had with 3 dollar burgers from a fast food joint on the way after leaving the Toyota Showroom.
We then decided to go on the Ferris wheel right next to the Toyota Showroom since we passed up the chance the day before in Yokohama to ride the Ferris wheel. We had a fun ride up to the top and took some blurry pictures from the dirty plastic Plexiglas of the carriage. Michael made a convincing creaking sound that made Charlene think we were going to fall out of the sky to our untimely ends by tapping his finger on a metal bar without any of us noticing and playing along with the ensuing panic.
Next we got off the ride and entered another large arcade center. It’s an understatement to call this a large arcade. It’s much more like a warehouse filled with random games and giant strange panda, pig and beetle scooters. There Owen and Mike found their niche in a game which is a variation of the classic game found in America from Chuck-E-Cheeses to Dave and Busters. The games objective is to shoot a coin towards a continually projecting and retracting metal arm that pushes coins close over the edge resulting in sometimes tickets, but in this case, just more coins. They didn’t really know what they were doing but after a while, they started to notice patterns and started to understand how to capitalize on bonuses that gave them hundreds and thousands of coins at a time. So after the guys won a huge jackpot and were reveling in their newfound fortune of metal coins and marveling at their own coin shooting prowess we went to find out what they had actually won in exchange for the coins. We learned to their great disappointment that in fact the point of the game was simply to play the game. The coins meant nothing which explained why we saw adults and children playing at the same time. Well at least they were both really happy for a little while when they thought they had actually won money.
(The Legendary) Ninja Restaurant
The Restaurant Itself
The restaurant lives up to the name. We had a hell of a time finding the restaurant itself even after we took a taxi and was dropped off right at the plaza where we were told it was located. The façade of the restaurant is unostentatious and features just a small emblem and doorway. Upon entering, we were unimpressed by the simple small dark room measuring about 6 ft x 6 ft with a single podium and a host waiting to confirm our reservations. There seemed to be only one way into the small room, the way we had one in, but once the host had confirmed our table, he told us to wait just one moment. He clapped his hands 3 times and a small hatch opened behind him at eye level and lo and behold a faithful ninja waitress swung out of the compartment and onto the ground landing in a classic Naruto stance. She greeted us and walked to the solid wall to our left. She then tapped the wall and revealed a secret door that swung open and led the way with a lantern into the dark tunnel. We followed her into the winding corridor that changed elevations, widths, heights until we arrived at a giant gaping hole in the ground. With nowhere to go, she said an enchanted prayer, summoned her chakra and pulled a secret switch that let down a drawn bridge and we stepped up and over the abyss. The drawbridge closed behind us and we were in the belly of the ninja fortress. Inside were narrow winding roads between classic looking Japanese buildings. Everywhere were little touches of ambiance like small waterfalls, rock formations and of course ninja servers. Everybody fit the part, stayed in character and were happy to take an embarrassing number of pictures with us.
I will split of the rest of this account into courses of the meal because it was just a better way to organize the many pictures and videos I took of the dinner. Between the four of us: Owen, Mike, Charlene and I we decided to split the most expensive 10 course set meal on the menu which was 20,000 yen which is roughly $221+ and we each ordered a separate entrée and drinks. This way, we would get to see the ultimate awesomeness of the best meal they had as well as get relatively fool on a student budget. Don’t get me wrong, there’s no way of justify a meal this luxurious as a budget meal, but we really had not eaten any really expensive meals while we were in Tokyo and thought that this was an opportunity we wouldn’t get again and took it. Sorry Mom and Dad in advance for spending such a ridiculous amount of money on this meal but look at all these pretty pictures!
The Drinks
We each ordered a special Ninja cocktail or mixed drink. Owen and Charlene had a… Peach? Mango? Or pineapple? Some sort of random fruit Inspired mixed drink that was probably the best tasting of the drinks. Mike ordered what looks like a strawberry daiquiri that was also quite good and I got a jasmine and rose with bird’s nest drink. Yes they all look girly, but we didn’t care, we weren’t trying to impress anybody. My drink specifically came in two parts and I added in the flower petals and bird’s nest into the champagne. We also ordered water and accidentally forgot to specify we wanted the free tap water. They instead brought us two bottles of VOSS water which ran us an extra 1600 yen or about 16 bucks. They got us on that one. >< We made sure our refills were with tap water.
The First Appetizer
You’ll notice that I don’t have a collage for every course of the meal. That’s because at first, we were so excited we took hundreds of pictures of the first two courses. Afterwards, we were just hungry and skipped the picture taking or took a lot fewer pictures. The first appetizer however was ninja star/shuriken crackers with special spread on some sticks. We had fun taking loads of pictures, playing with the ninja stars, being immature in general and after about 15 minutes each ate our half of our cracker.
Charlene wasn’t sure whether or not the stick itself was eatable and took a bite. It was just a stick, haha.
The Second Course & Owen’s Iced Sashimi
The second course is a row of sliced mangos, lobster, avocado and sashimi covered with a layer of sweet and jelly and a tangy sauce. All the textures were complimentary and the flavors were light, playful and appetizing. It built our appetites for the next series of entrees. Owen’s Iced Sashimi Platter came next and it was underwhelming in portion but overwhelming in presentation. His sashimi sat perched atop a large leaf that sat on a solid polished blog of ice that rested on a layer of crushed ice and more sashimi and the whole thing was lit up from inside and glowed a florescent blue.
Hi There Owen
The Next Course…
was the long awaited floating fatty tuna sashimi known as toro. This was what Owen was talking about wanting the whole time he was here and it had finally come and it couldn’t have been on a cooler plate. The oversized bowl had dried ice on the bottom which made the leaf and the toro that sat upon it seem as if it was floating over the bowl in a foggy mist. The toro was really truly amazingly delicious. The marbled fat of the fish made it look more like beef than sashimi, but that’s when you know you got the real deal.
The Other Courses…
included a palette of sushi which I forgot to take a picture of before Owen massacred the salmon egg sushi. Also, there was Mike’s lobster, Charlene’s salmon which was honestly not really anything special, sorry Charlene, special Miso Soup (I forget what was so special about it), a bowl of sharks fin soup, and foie gras on top of the most tender beef I can remember eating in a long time.
Dessert
We ordered 4 separate desserts from the dessert menu which the waitress proceeded to incinerate and we watched at our table as the menu disappeared into thin air in a glorious flaming fireball. The most interesting was definitely the Bonsai Tiramisu which was sweet crackers in the shape of Bonsai tree branches stuck into the soil which was delicious tiramisu. And I forget who ordered a cup of coffee at the end which I accidentally added too much sugar into rendering it undrinkable, that was my bad.
The Dessert Menu that is No More
The Tricks
Of course I would be too late to actually catch the trick on camera, but there was one waitress who brought us our escargot with a mysterious white trail on the plate. She then threw down a handful of powder and ignited the trail all the way to the snail shell.
Escargo-d! She lit it on fire!
Our server near the end of the meal came and performed magic tricks personally for our table. I’m sure this is a service they do for all their customers, but I’m just going to tell myself that they just liked our table. The next series of magic tricks I actually caught on camera. Enjoy the wonder.
Michael’s Invisible Purse
Follow the Stickman
This was definitely the most expensive meal we’ve all ever had. Perhaps Owen’s had more expensive, but I think I can safely say that for the rest of us. It was definitely an experience to be had, one that you can only get in Tokyo and I could not have been happier to share it with some of my closest friends.
Now You See It, Now You Don't - I'm Talking Both About the Ninja Waiter, and about our Money
Karaoke
After dinner, it was too late for Charlene to catch the last train so she decided to come and stay with us for the night. But we decided that we would take a break for a night from drinking heavily seeing as how most of us could barely walk the night before and the next night would be New Years Eve, so we went karaokeing with Jess and Will. Will showed us all up and Jessica kindly explained that he was in choir in high school and not too feel bad about our obviously inferior singing abilities. Mike and Charlene both passed out around the 2nd bottle of vodka and the rest of us sang the night away. Around 5 or 6 AM, we strained out the last few notes with our now hoarse voices and began the job of waking Michael and Charlene up. Michael was no problem but Charlene was very drunk and very feisty. She’s not the worst drunk friend I’ve ever had to take care of, but definitely one that gave me a run for my money. She leaned up against inflatable objects and fell in the street, talked to random businessmen, tried to talk to and hug homeless people and took every chance she got when I didn’t have both hands holding her to sprint towards absolutely nothing. I wrangled ran after her and wrangled her long enough to get her back to our hotel room where she slept on Mike’s bed and would catch the earliest train back she could to write a paper she had due before the end of the year (which was the next night). Thank you for giving me exercise Charlene.
Will and Jess Gettin' Their Jam On
Cute Aren't They?
No comments:
Post a Comment