tokyo

Fantasy dining

| mlatimerridley

Ridley: So the tagline for our holiday seems to have become ‘that’s so weird’, mainly because we’re actively seeking out things that are weird, strange and just something you’d never see at home. Interesting is the other word we could use, along with a raised eyebrow!

So with this in mind, we discovered fantasy dining in the Ginza district (I keep calling everything districts, it’s like the Hunger Games, or here, Battle Royal! Mwhaa…). Fantasy dining is where the restaurant is themed and the waiters/waitresses are dressed up. We don’t have this at home, as far as I’m aware (though if we did, it would be epic!), therefore it’s a definite novelty for us! We’ve gone to see both an Alice in Wonderland themed restaurant and a Vampire café.

We first went to the Alice place-Latimer is a fan of all things Alice in Wonderland- it was brilliant and the staff were very friendly. They were mainly dressed up like Alice but there were also a few mad hatters wandering round. The entrance hall was lined with giant ‘pages’ from the book, inside the restaurant the walls were covered in man sized deck cards.there was a hanging light made of top hats over one table and in the middle of the room was a giant cup that was also a seating area. Latimer: Within the giant cup there was a group of people we named the ‘High Rollers’. All night they beckoned to the Alices and Hatters, ringing a bell to summon them for more beers or unusual cocktails. They were hidden inside the cup, away from prying eyes. I imagined them walking into the place in a wave of Yen and dollar signs; “we wish to be part of the atmosphere but not of them plebs. Put us on a step above them all… inside a large white cup, so that we may watch them, but not them us!”. Personally, I think the menu was the most unique thing about the place (and that’s saying something!). It was a box, like a big cube, where one side slid open (the menus were made up of this ‘wall’) to reveal a little diorama and it had a tiny battery operated lamp in it. Latimer: A very cool and novel way to sell the fantasy! Lewis Carroll would have been proud.No point to it really, but it was still fun. There was also a cocktail menu that opened up like a picture book into a glossy hat.

The food was decent too, though nothing spectacular. Though Latimer did get a cocktail with a rose in it and then when it arrived they sprayed perfume on it! Latimer: I don’t know what it added to the taste… but it did smell like perfume. The food didn’t sit well with me, pretty ‘blah’ pre-cooked stuff. Not nice, but you pay for the atmosphere and the fantasy, so I didn’t mind so much.

We’ve never seen such little roses with stunted growth, Latimer decided there must be plant battery farms all across Tokyo growing roses that are destined to be cruelly chopped down before their prime and used in our drinks… Latimer: Ah battery rose, of stunted growth, the casualty of fantasy dining.

We also got bread with a little dish of butter (that didn’t taste like butter, just looked like it) It was provided with a little instruction tag, ‘Eat me’. Just like in the books! All in all, I really liked this place. Latimer: When this dish arrived, Ridley thought it was her starter (garlic bread). Even though it didn’t taste like garlic. When her food arrived she looked confused. Ha.

The Vampire café was freaky, that’s the only word for it. We stepped out the lift and tiny little plastic skeleton heads to our left popped out and screamed at us. Then the hostess popped up, dressed in a black maid’s uniform with white make up and red eyes. Scary! It was the waiter though that was really unsettling….and in a weird strange way quite compelling too, for the half an hours we were there (possibly the bad boy attitude he had going on)…I wasn’t the only one, there were quite a number of giggling Japanese girls there, some dressed up too. He was about half a foot taller than me (I’m 5’10)-he had big platform boots on, so it was an artificial height-he had black eyes, black lips, white white make up, the red eyes and back-combed long hair. He was wearing a sort of robe thing, long flowing and swirled quite well when he moved. But I have to say he was quite abrupt. Maybe that was his appeal in a way, in a country that has smiling, unbelievably welcoming people, he was the exact opposite. Not rude exactly, just…like a superior vampire really…! Latimer: We were laughing our heads off during the whole experience, and maybe he didn’t like that. We weren’t taking it seriously, but as Ridley pointed out with a narrowing of her eyes, “HOW can you take a vampire café seriously?”. Haha. Anyway, in retrospect he was just plain rude.

The bathroom there,with free mouthwash!

We were shown to a little booth lined with red curtain (Latimer: It reminded me of how in Pride and Prejudice, Lady Catherine offers Elizabeth Bennett the chance to use her maids piano in her house. She says ‘you’ll be in no ones way in that part of the house’. Implying that Elizabeth should be hidden away from the eyes of the gentlemen and women. It felt like myself and Ridley were being treated the same way!), there was a giant coffin in the centre of the room with dripping red candles on it in a candelabra. And the hall floor was lit up showing pictures of red blood cells…very weird! Haha… The vampire boy didn’t even say goodbye when we were leaving (we said thanks and bye)! I think maybe there was a little bit too much laughing from our booth during our meal, we got a sense that we didn’t take the place seriously enough.

We only got ice cream and cocktails there. We ordered from a menu shaped like a coffin.

We’d already eaten in a very old authentic Japanese restaurant where we got to grill our own food. It was called Sometaro (2-2-2 Nishi-Asakusa, Taiyo-Ku) in Asakusa. Again google maps did not let us down, put the address in and you’ll find it. We got okonomiyaki (cabbage battered pancakes) there.

Now that was brilliant, if absolute sweltering (it was already 24 degrees out and then add in the heat from the grills)! The place was made of old dark wood, almost like a tavern, there was a real sense of history to the place. We got a lot of food there, we wanted to try everything we could, two pancake type dishes and yakisoba (noodle dish), we realised our eyes were bigger than our stomachs. We had to take off our shoes and sit on the cushions beside a low table that had a large black hot plate/grill that was heated with gas underneath. For one of our pancake dishes, we picked eggs, cabbage, pork, little cuttle fish and onion, they were all mixed up together and cooked by us (well we got help, being the idiots we are!)

Latimer: This place was great. Felt very traditional. Really enjoyable food and atmosphere. As we search out food in Tokyo, I am gravitating back to ramen (my love). I want us to eat at the best ramen place in Tokyo… but where is it? Damn I wish I knew.

Our food journey continues daily…. ichiban (no.1) ramen…. we will find you!

Chance Meetings (Chansu Miitingutsu)

| mlatimerridley

Latimer: Today myself and Ridley journeyed to Asakusa. A very nice part of Tokyo that contains the jaw-dropping Asakusa-jinja. The main gateway to the temple contains a massive red lantern at its centre. This is often used as a meeting place in shoujo manga for the main boy and girl’s date. (Ridley: I love how this looks like it’s about to be a post about the temple, which perhaps more people would be interested in than our crazy ramblings but…it’s not going to be! So…go see the temple, it’s lovely…now on to our madness..)

The temple site was packed with tourists and also school tours (lots of middle and elementary school kids… we assumed).

As me and Ridley stood poised on the great Temple’s porch (R: We sound impressive, it was more like we lulled over the banister as we were starting to flag against the hot sun. There was a nice breeze on the high porch so we didn’t want to move…) We began to muse over what the school kids ‘stories’ might be. We’ve been doing this a lot on our trip. We will often wonder, what is the life story of any number of random individuals; the gaijin (foreigner) in the suit alone on the train; the old Japanese couple walking hand in hand through the park… and now, the school kids.

I should backtrack and explain that Asian dramas are loved by both myself and Ridley, it doesn’t matter if it’s Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese. We’ve watched them all. (R: Great stories, well woven but really sometimes the endings are poorly wrapped up…we like to think we could end some of them better!) They tend to follow a similar pattern and so, we started to think about our own drama, and we began randomly picking out the school kids below as our characters…

We focused on one group of three girls and four boys.

One girl wore a backpack with the American flag as the pattern; she became ‘Stars and Stripes’.

The one with all the power (when she asked for a picture, all the boys leapt to attention) became, ‘The Main Girl’ and Stars and Stripes, we decided would be her best friend. They were all in Middle School together.

Of the four boys, one stood out; he had a grey backpack (Grey), all the other boys flocked around him, we decided he was the boy that loved The Girl, her best boy-friend. The good guy.

Then we noticed another, separate group of boys. There was one that stood out, a young man in a hat (a sort of black 1930’s hat). Very dapper. He was going to be the bad boy. We named him Hat. Ridley watched him intently; “He’ll be the leader of the gang, the one that will lead the fight out of the subway” (to those that don’t follow Asian dramas, there always seems to be fighting involved and it usually involves the main men, and more often than not, the bad guy is in some form of a gang. I don’t know where this factors into Asian society, it just seems to be a staple in drama-land).

So, we decided that Hat and The Girl had had a ‘chance meeting’ during their school trip to the temple. But they’d also been having ‘chance meetings’ their whole lives (they don’t realise it, but they met first in preschool, when they fought over a red crayon. Since this time, The Girl has referred to this arrogant boy as Aka-baka (red-idiot)).

The title of our drama, then became ‘Chansu Miitingutsu’ (the Japanese pronouncation of Chance Meetings). This is my attempt at the katakana of the title:

                                                 チャンツ   ミ–チングツ

As the school kids started to leave, we fast-forwarded a few years; they were now in High School. Of the Middle school group, only The Girl and her friends, Grey and Stars and Stripes, went to the same school. But…. who ends up in her class? Just Hat (Aka-baka). 

— Another Chansu Miitingutsu!

(Ridley: It’s the only way really, how else are they meant to get together? But Grey will put up a good fight, as he will be able to have The Girl’s best friend, Stars and Stripes, fighting in his corner! Those two probably ended up in the same class, as is the way of things. Oh yeah, we’re writing this, so…they did! And I bet Stars and Stripes likes Grey…oh the plot thickens!)

The school kids soon left the Temple, led off by their guides and sensei. However, for us, the notion of our drama continued throughout the day. As we passed a pachinko arcade (Ridley: Gambling parlours with tiny, metal balls- the noise from them is horrific!), we saw a girl dressed in a ridiculous costume outside, pleading for people to come in (handing out flyers, in a sky blue robe wearing a curly pink wig). Ridley nodded, “That’s the job The Girl gets in High School”.

“And Hat frequents the pachinko dens,” I added.

— Chansu Miitingutsu!

By the end of the day we’d ended up in Ginza, in a Vampire Café (more on that later! Very random I know) being served by a surly young man dressed as a Goth (I’m not sure I’d say vampire, maybe a Goth gone mental). We rounded off our drama for the day by deciding that Hat worked as a vampire in the vampire café.

As we sit, winding down in our hotel room, writing this, we’ve worked out the following:

Yamapi will play Hat

Ikuta Toma will play Grey

This will also fulfil our dream of having these two men work together in a drama!

Inoue Mao will play The Girl

Horikita Maki will play Stars and Stripes

Our drama theme song will be PonPonPon by Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (because it’s a mental music video, and we are sure that that girl is following us all over Tokyo at the moment… she is EVERYWHERE!). (Ridley: PonPon woman has given me a headache. This song has been caught in my head all day! It’s quite catchy…)

‘People watching’ is a major source of all drama goodness! Stay tuned for our release date, once everyone signs on, we’ll let you know! (Ridley: We expect these really well known Asian actors to work for free by the by, so it may take some time and lots of persuading before our drama can be made! haha…)

Tokyo Time!

| mlatimerridley

Konnichiwa from Nippon!

Meiji Jingu shrine and Harajuku

Ridley: Our first proper day in Tokyo was last Sunday as we spent much of Saturday completely jet lagged-sleeping on long haul flights is just so damn difficult-when we arrived, we were like zombies. We stumbled our way through the streets, trains and subway to our hotel, where we slept till the next morning.

As it was Sunday, we decided to head to Harajuku. There we saw the Meiji Jingu shrine (we also wanted to see all the cosplayers dress up in costumes of their favourite anime characters). The day consisted of us getting confused (pretty standard), praying, wetting our hands to purify them and witnessing a Shinto wedding at the Shrine!

I was busy trying to capture ‘artistic’ photos of the wall of wooden blocks filled with people’s prayers, when a very nice (and extremely thoughtful) Japanese man came over to me.

He said ‘wedding parade’ and he gestured for me to come with him. So I shuffled forward to where he was pointing and saw the wedding procession. I think I thanked the man in about three different languages before I got it right! He didn’t have to do that, it was very kind of him and it’s the little things like that, that really make your holiday! I have to say the Japanese are the politest, most helpful of people.

Other things that happened at the shrine; we took many pictures of the large old decorated barrels of sake.

Latimer got chased by a fly all the way there (it really wouldn’t leave her alone) no matter how many times she’d flayed her arms around like a crazy woman.

The praying part took us a while to master. I think we seemed like stalkers as we studied the people around us so we could copy what they were doing. They all give their donations first, then they clapped twice, prayed and bowed twice, but each person had a difference sequence of these three. Eventually we both went with what we thought would work for us. At the end of the day, we were trying to be respectful, the good intentions were there!

Outside of Meiji Jingu, we squeezed down through one of the main Harajuku shopping streets, Takeshita.

Latimer: wherein you can buy all manner of crazy clothes, I will return for odd tights and socks at a later date. Before I bought lots of clothes along this street, but I’m not sure I’m up for a mad shopping spree this time. Might just stick to tights this time.Ridley: Then we doubled back, passed the park in search of people dressed up. Instead of them, however, we stumbled upon a load of stalls selling food and tribal art. There were crowds of people in the middle of picnics and a large stage with singers. I wondered (out loud) if it was some sort of African festival, having not seen the giant Jamaican flags and colours-everywhere. However, I did see the annoyed look of disbelief directed at me from one man, yes people, the blond does seep all the way through sometimes. There was a definite haze nearer the stage too (teehee-it could have been smoke from the barbeque too though…) so we held our breaths and scurried away to continue our search.

Consequently, because of this festival (we think) not many (at all) of the cosplay Harajuku people turned up that Sunday. Only the rockabilly boys were there, dressed up in leather jackets with giant quiffs. They were dancing outside Yoyogi park, which was brilliant too. Inside the green, there were comedians (though we couldn’t understand them, they were getting a lot of laughs), there were dancers, musicians, loads of groups doing yoga or playing Frisbee. There was hardly any part of the large park that wasn’t occupied. We wandered for ages through it all and then sat on a bench to people watch.

Latimer: from a distance we observed a mime artist setting up his act. A group of boys passed by, one decided to sit down in front of the mime artist and await his act. His friends were forced to join him. The jury was out on whether they wanted to or not. Ridley watched the mime artist and noticed the act was flagging; “he’ll loose his audience if he keeps up the crap Olympic ring-acrobat miming.” She nodded. I got bored and started people watching. I saw a westerner on a bike walking his dog. Odd I thought, what if he went too fast or the dog got startled? By the time I looked back at the mime, the boys were gone, his audience diminished. “Where’d they go?” Ridley gave a deep nod, “Lost his audience didn’t he.”  

Ridley: There was man playing a music on possibly an erhu beside us. There were rounds of head bowing from us and him when we were leaving. 

The next day was Akihabara….

Where it was brilliant, crazy, loud, colourful and just plain fantastic all rolled into one!

We’ve gotten so many pictures of the billboards, the anime, the manga and all the technical stuff that’s for sale here.

There were also loads of girls dressed up in maid costumes…

Latimer: Ridley was caught staring at the maid-dreaming café.

Some of the maids that lined the busy Akihabara streets must have misinterpreted her confusion as interest.She was swiftly handed a flyer by a school-girl in a maid costume with a happy, high-pitched ‘irasshaimase’. Without thinking, Ridley took the flyer. She stared, still baffled.

The odd, anime-esque map, depicting a girl and her rabbit/dog thing, plotted a course through Akihabara towards what we could only imagine was a café full of maids waiting happily to serve the masses- but were we wrong? Was it actually a cry for help? Were the maids prisoners in some strange anime-esque story of betrayal and corruption- was she the only one that could get away- was she trying to get help for her friends?

Had we, the adventurous, intrepid gaijin, in fact scorned her cries? We’ll never know. In true shoujo-anime style, I hope some bishounen (pretty boy) swept in to save her and her friends, as myself and Ridley enjoyed our curry dinner (yums).

Ridley: We went to a cat café instead of the maid one, it was the less strange of the two options. Though it was still very surreal, being in the middle of Tokyo city, randomly petting other people’s pet cats. We went to Ja La La café, which shows up in an accurate location on google maps when you type in it. The door slides open not pulls open, for anyone going there-took us awhile to realise that one. We stood outside like idiots wondering how to get in, I just kept worrying we’d let the cats out. Eventually we knocked and we were ushered into a room with about twelve cats all lounging around. Though we first had to take off our shoes and wash our hands before we were allowed touch the cats. Just in case we were diseased or anything. We were there for 30 minutes, where Latimer had more luck with the little felines. She had two cats stalking a toy she’d started to wave round, they ignored me, despite numerous attention grabbing tactics. I pouted and told them all my cat at home likes me, sometimes. Eventually this gorgeous tabby here and I made friends. He was purring as he lay on his back half asleep. Very Kawaii (cute)! There was also the biggest cat I’ve ever seen there (a Maine Coon). Really beautiful! He kept turning his head, avoiding me deliberately as I took pictures, fame will make you hate the camera it seems! Going to a cat café is definitely something extremely different to do and after all, that’s what Japan is all about, doing things out the ordinary!

Latimer: The Maine was the biggest cat I ever saw in my life. Like a tiny Tiger cub. But, my god, the cat café reeked of cat (surprise surprise). Might need to air out your clothes after ward!

Later that day, as we walked through Asakasa of an evening, we were asked by some Korean business men (with pretty good English) did we know the way to their hotel. We stared, laughing inside (of course we didn’t know the way). We said ‘no’. Then Ridley said; “why don’t you pop into a shop and ask?” (this seems like a straightforward statement). The businessmen stared, then shook their heads and went on their way. Of course to Ridley it seemed like going into a shop and asking for directions just wasn’t the done thing.

Ridley: There really seemed like there was so much disapproval in his face at the time, now I realise he was just perplexed! 

Latimer: I wondered- just what did the Korean man think ‘pop into a shop’ meant? Ha, well to us it’s ‘to go into a shop’. This is just an example of Irish English isn’t necessarily English-English! Pop into a shop… haha, what must that sound like? What do people think when they hear Irish people say ‘grand’? That’s probably a word that is used very regularly by us, but likely makes no sense to non-Irish-English speakers!

More later on our adventures!

We’re working our way through Tokyo and we’ve been taking lots of pictures….don’t miss out!