Shion in Japan #3/5 - Kyoto & Tokyo
The first phase of our Dec 2013/Jan 2014 Japan trip ended with a visit to the much-loved Fushimi Inari Taisha. After we returned from Hiroshima, we had one more day in Kyoto before we were due in to Tokyo to meet with Caramelaw and to commence our toy hunting expedition!
Near the front is also one of my favourite spots: a shop selling omamori and where people hang ema (絵馬) and thousands of origami paper cranes.
The best known feature of Fushimi Inari is the thousands of vermilion torii, i.e. the senbon torii (千本鳥居; literally, thousand torii), which is located at the back of the shrine and begins with two rows of densely-packed torii gates. As each gate is donated, the names of the donors and the donation dates are inscribed on the gate.
Of course, the senbon torii were also immortalised (and romanticised) in the 2005 Rob Marshall movie Memoirs of a Geisha, where little Chiyo (before she became Sayuri, Gion's most celebrated geisha) runs through them to pray to the kami that she would one day become a geisha and capture the Chairman's attention and affection. Given its fame and popularity, the shrine and its famous senbon torii have also been depicted in Japanese popular culture. Even without the movie, Fushimi Inari Shrine and the senbon torii on their own carry an almost reverential beauty that no photograph or film can capture.
The gates start out rather low and densely packed together, but begin to spread out and increase in height as we go up Mt Inari. They also start to look older and less well-preserved.
I wanted to take Shion out for a photo-shoot, but it was difficult with the low light (which was fast fading) and the number of visitors (tourists included) scurrying to and fro. Perhaps another time, and perhaps I will dress her in a kimono then.
So yes, the trails leading up Mt Inari also lead to smaller shrines and sub-shrines, some of which are stacked with miniature torii gates, likewise donated by worshippers and visitors. Around the shrine are many statues and figures of foxes (kitsune) - unsurprising, since the kitsune in Shinto folklore is the messenger of Inari Okami. There are also smaller shrines and sub-shrines where people placed little clay fox figurines.
Hubby and I got lost at some point and ended up walking around the neighbourhood around Fushimi Inari Shrine - which is residential; there is an elementary school nearby too coz I saw parents with their kids in school uniform. Saw a few cats freely roaming around Fushimi Inari, and there was a little boy who was bicycling around the outskirts of the shrine. I was trying to take a photograph of a black cat with green eyes near one of the small stone shrines, but the cheeky little boy shooed the cat away and then stuck his tongue out at me before running away!
Very early in the morning, we caught the shinkansen back to Tokyo and met up with Caramelaw at the Tokyo JR Station. As per plan, Caramelaw was joining us for a few days of toy hunting in Tokyo, and then the 3 of us (self-dubbed Otaku Trio) were going to meet up with our 4th travel companion JY the following week.
Immediately after picking Caramelaw up, we took the train to our accommodation at Nagatacho, checked in, dumped our luggage and headed out to lunch at Fuunji (風雲児) in Shibuya. We queued in the winter cold for abot 45 minutes and were rewarded with thick tsukemen and a bubbling bowl of super-rich chicken broth, soft-poached soy egg, sea weed and a mound of ground dried bonito. It's bloody delicious. Totally worth the queue in the cold!
We then went toy hunting around Harajuku and Omotesando - to be exact, in KIDDY LAND. Five floors of toy heaven!!! (It has a f*ing AWESOME Studio Ghibli section. And Caramelaw dropped a fortune sweeping up Kobito Dukan dioramas.)
After our initial round of toy hunting, we went to Artnia Cafe out at Shinjuku. I'm not a gamer - Hubby is - but I can appreciate the sophistication of Final Fantasy. And besides, who doesn't want to check out the stuffed toys?!
I think it's okay to stick around if the queuing time is 10 minutes or so, but I don't think it's worthwhile queuing for longer if there for the food. Coz the food is okay, but not great. My honey cappuccino was well, cappuccino laced with honey and Sabotenda (サボテンダー) on the foam, and Hubby's Buster Sword Parfait was vanilla ice cream with sliced banana, chocolate fudge and a piece of chocolate shaped like Cloud's Buster Sword (for the uninitiated, click here).
The wait isn't worthwhile unless you are a dedicated FF and Kingdom Hearts fan and/or you really think you can spend 30 minutes or more checking out the FF and Kingdom Hearts figurines and merchandise (both of which I am not, by the way). I have to admit that the chocolates look amazingly like materia. (Again, for the uninitiated, click here.)
Another round of toy hunting at Ginza Hakihinkan Toy Park (博品館 TOY PARK), which is another of Tokyo's biggest toy shops, with a Licca shop at the basement level. (The Studio Ghibli section was also pretty awesome.) And what better way to end the day than to have dinner at the Sapporo Lion Beer Hall.
Said to be one of the oldest beer halls in Japan, the Lion Beer Hall was established in 1934. It has a high vaulted ceiling, murals on the interior walls and black-and-white mosaic-tiled floor.
The beer and food menu is quite German / Bavarian inspired. We had a sausage platter, which came with sauerkraut, and ordered draft Sapporo beer. Oh yes, the red wine sorbet is delicious.
If you visit Tokyo and don't know about Tsukiji Market (築地市場), you don't deserve to live. Tsukiji is after all, Japan's largest wholesale market, best known in the world for the early morning tuna auction. It is also the world's largest and busiest fish market. Parts of the inner markets (the seafood, fruits and vegetable wholesale sections) are off-limits until 9:00 a.m., while the outer market (the retail shops and restaurants) is always accessible.
The live tuna auctions start around 5:20 a.m. and only a total of 120 people are permitted to view the auction from a designated area (a group of 60 at one time). (ieatishootipost writes a comprehensive post about maguro.) Japan-guide.com says people start queuing from 5:00 am, but our bestie DTK (who has been) told me realistically, people start queuing from 4:30 am.
Apparently from December 2014 to January 2015, tourists will no longer be permitted to watch the morning tuna auctions. Honestly I understand and support that decision, considering the complaints of disruption and confusion caused to proprietors and buyers. But hey, there's always a different views on it. (2019 update: No more cause for complaints since there is a dedicated viewing area for tourists at the new Toyosu Market. Which I've yet to visit. No real inclination at the moment.)
Mostly, some tourists generally think Tsukiji is all about the maguro tuna auction and the fish market, but Tsukiji is actually a wholesale market that sells all kinds of fresh produce.
Almost everyone who visits Tsukiji always recommends a sushi breakfast at Sushi Dai or Daiwa Sushi. Honestly, I'm not a morning person, and so am not keen to wake up before the crack of dawn just to start queuing for sushi from 5am. Admittedly, we sort of made an attempt to get into Sushi Dai - but it was half-hearted, mainly because we knew that it was unlikely we would get in within an hour. But really, none of us could be arsed to wake up at 4:30 am just to get there to queue. Seriously, the food will have to be out of this world fabulicious before I will do that. And we did get our fresh and value-for-money sushi breakfast at one of the other sushi stores. Though we still had to wait for about around 30+ minutes.
There's really not much to say about our day in Akihabara except that Akihabara is The Place for toy/anime/manga nutters!!! I love it!
We pretty much spent the entire day in Akihabara, mostly atRadio Hall Radio Kaikan and Mandarake Akiba, with a short foray into Gamers and K-Books (for Hubby). We passed through a few arcades to check out the uber cute plushies, but since we don't excel in these kiap-kiap games, we did not spend too much time trying.
I vaguely recall taking a few more photographs, but there's not much point posting them since you have to physically visit those shops to get the full impact of their awesomeness.
Dropped a small fortune at the Azone shop inRadio Hall Radio Kaikan on doll accessories and parts. There was a shop on the ground level selling these kimo-kawaii plushies called Mokeke (モケケ). Caramelaw and I went a little crazy with the Mokeke plushies. She thought they would make a perfect plushie companion for her CaramelPops customs, while I was mentally planning a sleep-over pyjamas party for my girls.
We also raided Mandarake Nakano (at Nakano Broadway). All I have to say is, while Akiba'sRadio Hall Radio Kaikan is superb for Blythe, Azone Neemo and Groove dolls, doll parts and accessories, Mandarake Nakano is THE PLACE for Blythe dolls, various kimo-kawaii toys, vintage toys and collectibles. (Caramelaw swept up a bunch family of Kobito Dukans, a Sato-chan, and a Peko-chan) There's also an awesome shop selling anime production cels. (For the uninitiated, a cel is the transparent sheet on which traditional hand-drawn animation graphics are drawn and painted.)
We also made a brief foray into Mandarake Shibuya. They have a decent but small selection of Blythe there, but their focus is mostly on kaijuu and print media collectibles.
All in all, the toy hunting trip was probably a bit too fruitful.... I think between Mandarake Akiba and Mandarake Nakano we found a fair spread of Blythe dolls (Veronica Lace, Penny Precious, Miss Sally Rice, Nostalgic Pop, Amaryllis, Peony, Meowsy Wowsy). That's not including the doll accessories and parts, and all the other in-betweens....
In these five days of glorious toy hunting, we usually ended up refueling our bodies with the awesome food that Japan has to offer. The Rose & Crown Akihabara became our refuel stop for our Akiba toy hunts. (The beer fries are awesome shit.)
In one of those five days - I can't remember which day - on the way back, we stopped for Japanese sweets at Anmitsu Mihashi at the first underground level of JR Tokyo Station. To me, nothing beats a hot, soupy dish (sweet or savoury) on a cold winter day, so naturally I go for my favourite hot Japanese dessert (zenzai). But Hubby goes for the shiratama cream anmitsu with matcha ice cream. For some reason that I still cannot fathom, Hubby prefers cold desserts on cold winter days, in particular soft-serve ice cream....
On our fifth and final toy hunting day, we trained out to Bunkyo for dinner at Yondaime Keisuke (四代目 けいすけ) for Chef Keisuke's signature lobster ramen. We were lucky and did not have to queue. (Probably because we were there after the dinner rush?)
Quite similar to his crab ramen in Keisuke Tokyo, the rich and thick seafood broth that's been simmering for hours with tons of lobster shells. Japanese spiny lobster (伊勢海老), to be precise. The noodles are wheaty and flat and, at night, come fried (焼もりめん, yakimorimen) and served tsukemen-style. The soup comes, a bubbling steamy rich oozey goodness. After we were done with the noodles, we were given a fried rice ball, which was put into the soup. It crackled and popped, and we broke it up and mixed it into the soup and let it sit for bit, then slurped it up.
Shion in Japan (Dec 2013~Jan 2014)
- I. Kyoto, Uji & Nara
- II. Enryakuji, Hiroshima & Miyajima
- III. Kyoto & Tokyo
- IV. Mt Fuji & Kamakura
- V. Tokyo & Enoshima
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| Senbon Torii, Fushimi Inari Taisha, Kyoto |
Day 5: Kyoto (京都)
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| The honden of Fushimi Inari Taisha. |
On our final day in Kyoto, we revisited my favourite shrine, Fushimi Inari Taisha (伏見稲荷大社), an ancient and important Shinto shrine dedicated to Inari Okami (稲荷大神). In fact, it is not only the oldest Inari shrine, but also the head shrine of all Inari shrines throughout Japan. Inari Okami is the Shinto kami of rice, tea, sake, fertility, agriculture and industry - and patron deity of business and merchants. So it's not surprising that Inari shrines are one of the most well patronised and prosperous shrines in Japan.
The shrine sits on the base of Mt Inari (Inariyama) and is the starting point of many trails up the mountain leading to smaller sub-shrines. (Fushimi Inari purportedly has as many as 32,000 sub-shrines in Japan). As history goes, the shrine originally began as an Inari shrine located on Inariyama.
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| Ema and paper cranes at the Fushimi Inari Taisha, Kyoto |
Near the front is also one of my favourite spots: a shop selling omamori and where people hang ema (絵馬) and thousands of origami paper cranes.
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| Senbon torii, Fushimi Inari Taisha, Kyoto |
The best known feature of Fushimi Inari is the thousands of vermilion torii, i.e. the senbon torii (千本鳥居; literally, thousand torii), which is located at the back of the shrine and begins with two rows of densely-packed torii gates. As each gate is donated, the names of the donors and the donation dates are inscribed on the gate.
 |
| Senbon Torii, Fushimi Inari Taisha, Kyoto |
Of course, the senbon torii were also immortalised (and romanticised) in the 2005 Rob Marshall movie Memoirs of a Geisha, where little Chiyo (before she became Sayuri, Gion's most celebrated geisha) runs through them to pray to the kami that she would one day become a geisha and capture the Chairman's attention and affection. Given its fame and popularity, the shrine and its famous senbon torii have also been depicted in Japanese popular culture. Even without the movie, Fushimi Inari Shrine and the senbon torii on their own carry an almost reverential beauty that no photograph or film can capture.
The gates start out rather low and densely packed together, but begin to spread out and increase in height as we go up Mt Inari. They also start to look older and less well-preserved.
I wanted to take Shion out for a photo-shoot, but it was difficult with the low light (which was fast fading) and the number of visitors (tourists included) scurrying to and fro. Perhaps another time, and perhaps I will dress her in a kimono then.
So yes, the trails leading up Mt Inari also lead to smaller shrines and sub-shrines, some of which are stacked with miniature torii gates, likewise donated by worshippers and visitors. Around the shrine are many statues and figures of foxes (kitsune) - unsurprising, since the kitsune in Shinto folklore is the messenger of Inari Okami. There are also smaller shrines and sub-shrines where people placed little clay fox figurines.
Hubby and I got lost at some point and ended up walking around the neighbourhood around Fushimi Inari Shrine - which is residential; there is an elementary school nearby too coz I saw parents with their kids in school uniform. Saw a few cats freely roaming around Fushimi Inari, and there was a little boy who was bicycling around the outskirts of the shrine. I was trying to take a photograph of a black cat with green eyes near one of the small stone shrines, but the cheeky little boy shooed the cat away and then stuck his tongue out at me before running away!
Day 6: Tokyo (東京)
Very early in the morning, we caught the shinkansen back to Tokyo and met up with Caramelaw at the Tokyo JR Station. As per plan, Caramelaw was joining us for a few days of toy hunting in Tokyo, and then the 3 of us (self-dubbed Otaku Trio) were going to meet up with our 4th travel companion JY the following week.
Immediately after picking Caramelaw up, we took the train to our accommodation at Nagatacho, checked in, dumped our luggage and headed out to lunch at Fuunji (風雲児) in Shibuya. We queued in the winter cold for abot 45 minutes and were rewarded with thick tsukemen and a bubbling bowl of super-rich chicken broth, soft-poached soy egg, sea weed and a mound of ground dried bonito. It's bloody delicious. Totally worth the queue in the cold!
We then went toy hunting around Harajuku and Omotesando - to be exact, in KIDDY LAND. Five floors of toy heaven!!! (It has a f*ing AWESOME Studio Ghibli section. And Caramelaw dropped a fortune sweeping up Kobito Dukan dioramas.)
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| Artnia Cafe by Square Enix, Shinjuku, Tokyo |
After our initial round of toy hunting, we went to Artnia Cafe out at Shinjuku. I'm not a gamer - Hubby is - but I can appreciate the sophistication of Final Fantasy. And besides, who doesn't want to check out the stuffed toys?!
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| Coffee art that Final Fantasy fans can appreciate... |
I think it's okay to stick around if the queuing time is 10 minutes or so, but I don't think it's worthwhile queuing for longer if there for the food. Coz the food is okay, but not great. My honey cappuccino was well, cappuccino laced with honey and Sabotenda (サボテンダー) on the foam, and Hubby's Buster Sword Parfait was vanilla ice cream with sliced banana, chocolate fudge and a piece of chocolate shaped like Cloud's Buster Sword (for the uninitiated, click here).
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| Materia chocolates, Artnia Cafe by Square Enix |
The wait isn't worthwhile unless you are a dedicated FF and Kingdom Hearts fan and/or you really think you can spend 30 minutes or more checking out the FF and Kingdom Hearts figurines and merchandise (both of which I am not, by the way). I have to admit that the chocolates look amazingly like materia. (Again, for the uninitiated, click here.)
Another round of toy hunting at Ginza Hakihinkan Toy Park (博品館 TOY PARK), which is another of Tokyo's biggest toy shops, with a Licca shop at the basement level. (The Studio Ghibli section was also pretty awesome.) And what better way to end the day than to have dinner at the Sapporo Lion Beer Hall.
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| Sapporo Lion Beer Hall, Ginza |
The beer and food menu is quite German / Bavarian inspired. We had a sausage platter, which came with sauerkraut, and ordered draft Sapporo beer. Oh yes, the red wine sorbet is delicious.
Day 7: Breakfast at Tsukiji Market (築地市場)
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| Tsukiji Market, Tokyo |
If you visit Tokyo and don't know about Tsukiji Market (築地市場), you don't deserve to live. Tsukiji is after all, Japan's largest wholesale market, best known in the world for the early morning tuna auction. It is also the world's largest and busiest fish market. Parts of the inner markets (the seafood, fruits and vegetable wholesale sections) are off-limits until 9:00 a.m., while the outer market (the retail shops and restaurants) is always accessible.
The live tuna auctions start around 5:20 a.m. and only a total of 120 people are permitted to view the auction from a designated area (a group of 60 at one time). (ieatishootipost writes a comprehensive post about maguro.) Japan-guide.com says people start queuing from 5:00 am, but our bestie DTK (who has been) told me realistically, people start queuing from 4:30 am.
Apparently from December 2014 to January 2015, tourists will no longer be permitted to watch the morning tuna auctions. Honestly I understand and support that decision, considering the complaints of disruption and confusion caused to proprietors and buyers. But hey, there's always a different views on it. (2019 update: No more cause for complaints since there is a dedicated viewing area for tourists at the new Toyosu Market. Which I've yet to visit. No real inclination at the moment.)
Mostly, some tourists generally think Tsukiji is all about the maguro tuna auction and the fish market, but Tsukiji is actually a wholesale market that sells all kinds of fresh produce.
Almost everyone who visits Tsukiji always recommends a sushi breakfast at Sushi Dai or Daiwa Sushi. Honestly, I'm not a morning person, and so am not keen to wake up before the crack of dawn just to start queuing for sushi from 5am. Admittedly, we sort of made an attempt to get into Sushi Dai - but it was half-hearted, mainly because we knew that it was unlikely we would get in within an hour. But really, none of us could be arsed to wake up at 4:30 am just to get there to queue. Seriously, the food will have to be out of this world fabulicious before I will do that. And we did get our fresh and value-for-money sushi breakfast at one of the other sushi stores. Though we still had to wait for about around 30+ minutes.
Day 7 to Day 11: Akihabara, Shibuya, Nakano (秋葉原、渋谷、中野)
Five Glorious Days of Toy Hunting
Five Glorious Days of Toy Hunting
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| Akihabara, or Akiba |
There's really not much to say about our day in Akihabara except that Akihabara is The Place for toy/anime/manga nutters!!! I love it!
We pretty much spent the entire day in Akihabara, mostly at
I vaguely recall taking a few more photographs, but there's not much point posting them since you have to physically visit those shops to get the full impact of their awesomeness.
Dropped a small fortune at the Azone shop in
We also raided Mandarake Nakano (at Nakano Broadway). All I have to say is, while Akiba's
We also made a brief foray into Mandarake Shibuya. They have a decent but small selection of Blythe there, but their focus is mostly on kaijuu and print media collectibles.
All in all, the toy hunting trip was probably a bit too fruitful.... I think between Mandarake Akiba and Mandarake Nakano we found a fair spread of Blythe dolls (Veronica Lace, Penny Precious, Miss Sally Rice, Nostalgic Pop, Amaryllis, Peony, Meowsy Wowsy). That's not including the doll accessories and parts, and all the other in-betweens....
In these five days of glorious toy hunting, we usually ended up refueling our bodies with the awesome food that Japan has to offer. The Rose & Crown Akihabara became our refuel stop for our Akiba toy hunts. (The beer fries are awesome shit.)
In one of those five days - I can't remember which day - on the way back, we stopped for Japanese sweets at Anmitsu Mihashi at the first underground level of JR Tokyo Station. To me, nothing beats a hot, soupy dish (sweet or savoury) on a cold winter day, so naturally I go for my favourite hot Japanese dessert (zenzai). But Hubby goes for the shiratama cream anmitsu with matcha ice cream. For some reason that I still cannot fathom, Hubby prefers cold desserts on cold winter days, in particular soft-serve ice cream....
On our fifth and final toy hunting day, we trained out to Bunkyo for dinner at Yondaime Keisuke (四代目 けいすけ) for Chef Keisuke's signature lobster ramen. We were lucky and did not have to queue. (Probably because we were there after the dinner rush?)
Quite similar to his crab ramen in Keisuke Tokyo, the rich and thick seafood broth that's been simmering for hours with tons of lobster shells. Japanese spiny lobster (伊勢海老), to be precise. The noodles are wheaty and flat and, at night, come fried (焼もりめん, yakimorimen) and served tsukemen-style. The soup comes, a bubbling steamy rich oozey goodness. After we were done with the noodles, we were given a fried rice ball, which was put into the soup. It crackled and popped, and we broke it up and mixed it into the soup and let it sit for bit, then slurped it up.
Shion in Japan (Dec 2013~Jan 2014)
- I. Kyoto, Uji & Nara
- II. Enryakuji, Hiroshima & Miyajima
- III. Kyoto & Tokyo
- IV. Mt Fuji & Kamakura
- V. Tokyo & Enoshima
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