Morning Markets & Izakaya Evenings

Sunday, February 16 (20,000 steps)

Unlike many cities that have sprawled outwards from a historic downtown, Tokyo is a patchwork of more than 60 cities, wards, and villages whose encroaching growth has created the modern megalopolis. This is reflected in the Yamanote Line, a bustling metro line linking 30 of these areas, encircling the city like a string of pearls. In any other place on earth, each one of these areas could be accurately called a "downtown," but here, they melt into each other and blur their edges--one grand, undulating continuity. Each stop is different, but equally tempting.

Today, we returned to a station that we had passed through on the train ride from the airport that looked like it had a bustling market and had caught our attention: Okachimachi Station. We started the morning with breakfast set meals at a popular chain called Beck’s, which offers Japanese and western style meals. A few pieces of buttered Japanese milk bread, a side salad, and some hot water that had been at one point stored adjacent to coffee beans—a breakfast of champions. 

Beck's is one of many businesses that are built into the exoskeleton of the Yamanote Line. Brick archways, like the supports of an aquaduct, elevate the entire metro line a story above ground level. In a city with surface area at such a premium, the spaces below these archways are never wasted, packed with a bustling variety of stores. Only a single archway every block or so is left unclaimed to allow pedestrians to transfer under the train lines above.

Towering over our breakfast spot was Uniqlo, a popular Japanese clothing brand specializing in basics. Seven stories of garments in every color of the Japanese fashion lexicon—black, charcoal, navy, chocolate, midnight, occasional pops of whites, which make up the unofficial uniform of the elegant people on the street. Saddling up the self check out machines with two sweaters, we put our shopping bag on the dedicated platform and stared blankly at the lack of barcode scanner or alternative instructions. Before we even had a chance to be confused, the exact items we had in our shopping bag popped up on the screen with prompts to pay. We’re still debating how it did that. 

We wandered around the surrounding area and the market streets--Ameyokocho--we had seen from the train. Stall after stall offered something wholly unique: carefully packaged gift boxes of glistening fruit, steamed buns arranged into orderly rows, second hand designer bags hung from every available surface area on wall and ceiling alike, surplus goods from previously-stationed US military branches, ruby red slabs of tuna, piles of delicate dried fish in wide set wooden bowls available by the scoop. 

Thomas crunched on a skewer of strawberries and grapes shellacked with sugar glaze as we made our way out of Ameyokocho and onwards to Ueno, a neighborhood known for the eponymous Ueno Park. 

Ueno Park is one of many sprawling parks carved out of a city I did not expect to devote so much of its footprint to green spaces. We spent a few hours wandering the numerous paths that traverse the park, people watching and pausing for street performers along the way. We picked up a goshuincho, a booklet that you present at shrines and temples that the monks will sign with the special calligraphy and stamps that are unique to each site. We quickly put our new goshuincho to use at the nearby Shinto shrine and a Buddhist temple perched on an island on the park’s large pond. Clusters of vending machines, offering drinks both cold and, impressively, piping hot, are placed every few hundred meters. We picked up some tea and grape Fanta and settled in near a manicured garden to rest our feet and watch the crowds of people drift by. 

We caught the next train to Akihabara. Compared to the relatively quiet neighborhoods where we had spent our first hours in Tokyo, this area fit more neatly into the vision of Tokyo we had in our heads: an assault on all senses, from all directions. Hordes of people packed the streets, which are closed to car access during the weekend, between towering buildings lit up with neon lights. While the crowd itself was almost eerily quiet (the acceptable speaking volume in Japan seems to be about 30% of what I would consider an average conversation in the US), stores blared theme songs to popular anime and video games, gacha machines chimed and clinked, and overhead, trains rumbled on the rickety bridges that crisscross the central arterial. A cacophony of people making the pilgrimage to worship all things geek. This, apparently, is the place to be if you are in search of vintage gaming equipment, digital cameras, high end PC parts, body pillows emblazoned with your anime crush of choice, and pornographic figurines of animated characters. 

Less interested in the latter, we stuck to exploring a few stores hawking gaming equipment, both new and vintage. These stores squeeze themselves into tight footprints and build skywards, with either a thin escalator, narrow staircase, or elevator only wide enough to fit three or four people. Some stores occupy the entire building, like the 12-story camera emporium, while others stack themselves atop each other with, from what we can tell, little to no signage advertising what they might be from the street level. 

Thomas and I packed ourselves into an elevator with a few high school aged boys, in search of a vintage video game store called Super Potato. Unsure of which button to push, we followed their lead, riding to the seventh floor and filing into the door marked promisingly with a Donkey Kong sign. This was not, in fact, Super Potato. Instead we found ourselves in a room no more than 400 square feet, filled with as many rows of vintage Sega arcade games as could fit while still allowing people to shimmy between them, under low ceilings hung with sheets of plastic ivy. A small Coca Cola vending machine and a selection of Japanese candy, all between 5 and 50 US cents, provided ample gaming fuel. We happily sunk all of the coins we had accumulated into round after round of Street Fighter. 

After extracting ourselves from the tight quarters, we navigated our way back to the train station. Along the way, dozens of young women dressed in maid outfits, pigtails and all, called out to Thomas, smiling, waving, and inviting him back to the maid cafes they represented to keep him company for an hour or two. Strangely I received no such invitations—maybe they assumed I had plenty of company already. 

Jet lag was taking its toll at this point in the early evening, so we stopped back at our hotel to rest our feet again and attempt to keep our bleary eyes open. Jet lag is a bit like a siren, inviting you to rest your eyes for just a little bit with a lullaby, and then wreaking havoc on your sleep schedule for the remainder of your travels. Having a pillow and blanket so near was too tempting, so we headed back out again later that evening in search of food and drink.

Our neighborhood, Shimbashi, is known for its rows of izakaya, Japanese pubs where salarymen eat and drink their cares away after work. The kind of places where smoking is encouraged and ordering round after round of drinks is all but required, where the generally quiet and reserved locals seem to get permission to speak loudly, laugh loudly, and let loose. 

Izakaya seem to dare, rather than invite, you to enter. With no signage and hanging drapes, called noren, obscuring your ability to peek inside and assess the vibe, they are intimidating to foreigners. We picked one mostly at random, our criteria being that it looked busy, smelled good, and seemed like a local joint. We were the only non-Japanese diners, and we stumbled our way through ordering with lots of pointing, kore kudasai ("this please"), and arigato gozaimasu ("thank you so much"). Dining culture is different here, with wait staff hanging back until you summon them with a raised hand and a sumimasen ("excuse me!") shouted over the din.

We ordered rounds of small plates, some familiar—bowls piled high with salted edamame, steaming and fragrant dumplings stuffed with pork and shrimp—and others foreign—skewers of chicken hearts, liver, gizzard, and cartilage. All washed down with icy glasses of Asahi and lemon sours, a mixed drink made with shochu, lemon juice, and soda water. Sufficiently watered and stuffed, we walked the few blocks back to our hotel and finally collapsed into bed, satisfied to have staved off jet lag until a reasonable hour.