Tokyo - girl

I never believed in love at first sight, until now. Tokyo, for a Brit, is the most wonderful place imaginable: not only is it supremely fascinating but people are orderly, they follow the same escalator rules as we do, they're polite to a fault and the food is out of this world. What more could one wish for?

 

We had been assured that Japan's reputation for being extremely expensive was outdated and that ten years of stagnation had brought costs into line with the rest of the world.  I hate to think how expensive Japan was at its peak: our £70 a night bunkbeds were my first shock, the second was the exorbitant metro costs but it was the fruit and vegetable prices that really hit me. We saw melons for around £40 and mangos for over £10. A single apple costs £1 minimum and up to £5 for the prettiest ones. As a serial fruit eater this really troubled me so I did some research and now know all about the differences between 'eating fruit' and 'gift fruit'. Fruit for eating, that you or I might buy when we feel peckish or want to stave off colon cancer, is hard to find outside of suburban supermarkets, whereas fruit for giving is all over the place. 'Gift fruit' is exceptionally Japanese. When visiting a friend or colleague at home or in the hospital it's polite to take a gift of fruit, not just any fruit, but 'gift fruit'. These expensive items are cultivated more carefully than 'eating fruit' and then gift-wrapped in order to justify the costs. Everyone's a winner: the gift fruit company gets to charge high prices, the giver gets to look generous and receiver gets a piece of great fruit. Except it's clearly a sham. All fruit here is expensive anyway and who needs £40 worth of perfect melon? It doesn't show thought or consideration since every single corner shop stocks 'gift fruit'. And as our hotel owner in Kagoshima said, 'Id rather have the money anyway, thanks'!

 

That's not the only weird thing about Tokyo. On our first day here I saw a woman with a small dog that she seemed to think was her child: it was wearing clothes and being pushed in a pram. She and her friends were cooing over it as if it were a baby. I love puppy dogs, as C will attest, but this was crazy. And she wasn't the only one we saw behaving in this deranged manner. At least she was dressed fairly normally, I guess. 'Cosplay' is big across Japan but is at its biggest in Tokyo. This basically seems to entail grown women dressing as little girls - perhaps somehow related to the stories I hear of the Japanese fetish for school girls? Weird? Yes. Very.

 

All of this clearly makes for a fascinating place for the tourist. It can also be quite overwhelming, especially when language is added to the mix. On our first night in Tokyo, C suggested that I pick a restaurant since I was hungrier than he. The sheer choice, the pace and the lack of English anywhere made this a major task. We walked around for a while trying to make sense of everything and completely failing. This was compounded by the fact that instead of menus on the wall, Japanese restaurants have models of their offerings. For C this is heaven but for me it makes life even harder as I'm a word person. A well written menu can beat a picture hands down for me. Of course, I'm not going to get this in Japan but pictures/models just do nothing for me, somehow they just don't represent food. Panic not, we eventually found a restaurant and since then we haven't looked back.

 

Everything is such amazingly high quality that even the corner shops' offerings are quite wonderful. Our days in Tokyo began with breakfast in the hotel, we'd then begin considering lunch: usually a bento box and some raw fish from the local supermarket or if we were lucky, a selection of sushi and katsu from a deli that puts UK delis to shame. Supper, always the main even of the day and would be udon noodles, tempura or sushi.

 

Clearly, when we ate something non-sushi related we offered up our apologies to the sushi gods and then did our best to appease them by quickly finding a sushi restaurant. We were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to eat in what is considered to be the best sushi restaurant in Tokyo, and therefore, the world. While this may conjure up images of an evening meal in a swanky restaurant, smart waiters and an extortionate bill, that couldn't be further from fact: we got up at 6am to queue for a spot at the bar in a small (13 people) room in Tokyo's famous fish market. After 70 minutes standing in the pouring rain it was finally our turn and we were let into the hallowed shrine to the sushi gods to receive communion in the form of fish. Ten pieces of perfection were ours for the extremely reasonable price of 39,000Yen a head (around £30): fatty tuna, semi-fatty tuna, tuna and crab nigiri, prawns, eel, sea urchin, mackerel with ginger (my new favourite), snapper, ikizukuri (live) shell fish and squid. I couldn't eat the live stuff, but C tucked right in. The fatty tuna and the mackerel were enough to bring tears to my eyes they were so perfect, the flavours so intense and exquisite. For me, regular sushi is great on a daily (I wish) basis) but there is just no comparison. I defy anyone to eat at this restaurant and not fall in love with sushi.

 

The fish market is a tourist attraction in its own right so on our second morning in Tokyo we got up at 4.30am to be at the market early to wander around watching Tokyo's chefs jostle for the best tuna. The most striking thing was the complete absence of smell. Never have I been to a fish market that doesn't stink. We bought a box of tuna sashimi and ate it standing at the gateway to the market before heading into a small restaurant (sushi for breakfast is wonderful) for more. Here, we tried whale sashimi. Having tried it in Iceland we were actually disappointed with the Japanese version but I'm still glad to have tried it even knowing what people back home think.

 

I also have to briefly mention the avocado and honey ice cream that took my breath away. The Japanese seem to love weird ice cream flavours but they do pull them off. I am always willing to try ice cream and this was like frozen guacamole. What's not to love?

 

The Japanese love of the vending machine also intrudes into the dining experience as many of the smaller places have you check out models in the window or a brief menu before hitting the button on the vending machine. Sadly, this only spits out a ticket, not the meal itself. The ticket is then given to a waitress, who in turn hands it to the chef. An experience to be sure, and the food was usually excellent.   

 

I guess it's obvious that much of our Tokyo experience has revolved around food, well, how could it not? We've been very successfully down to two meals a day for much of this trip but now we're well and truly back up to 3+ but I don't blame us at all, in fact, I think it would be rude not to be. I'm just a bit concerned as I'm quite loving being down almost two dress sizes and at this rate I'll be more than back to my old size.

 

We were expecting Tokyo to be far more futuristic than it has turned out to be. Perhaps the stories we hear in the west are exaggerated, or perhaps they're simply old but there's very little technology here that really seems new or exciting to us except the toilets. As a child I saw Blue Peter presenters visit Japan (that's were my desire to see the place for myself stems from) and marvel at the toilet seats. Well, they're the same toilets 20 years later but they're still extremely impressive. There are buttons for washing front bits and back bits, a seat warmer and a fake flush to cover all the potentially embarrassing noises. Brilliant. The first time we saw the seats we both spent longer than normal in the loo. I pressed one of the cleaning buttons to see what would happen (what did I think??) and was so surprised by the well aimed jet of water that I jumped up, leaving the jet aimed right at my trousers. I was giggling so hard I found it hard to explain to C what had happened!