19th May 2019: Art and soba noodles in Roppongi, hipstering in Nakameguro and Daikanyama, and kaiseki dinner in Ginza

On this day, we went to Roppongi to get our dose of ART, then spent an exciting afternoon of browsing and shopping, and finished with a kaiseki dinner in Ginza.

Mori Art Museum

We took a bus instead of the metro, as Roppongi was quite close to our hotel. I had never used a bus in Tokyo, so this was an exciting new thing to do! For the record: it was very easy. No weird unapproachable systems to board, etc.

The museum is on the top of a high rise building in Roppongi, and they had also come up with a somewhat convoluted system in which you were funnelled through some sort of animated cartoons themed exhibition before you were allowed to get into the actual museum—I suppose in order to control crowds. I quite ignored the ‘compulsory’ exhibition as it was not telling me anything I was interested in at the ~deep~ level I’d demand, and thus I instead chose to focus on the panoramic VIEWS, such as the one above!

We were feeling peckish at the end of the museum visit and after browsing around the shops in the complex, so we just made it easy and had some food in a restaurant in another of the towers (or was it the same one? I don’t remember—I only have this vague memory of going up and down multiple criss-crossing escalators and lifts 😂).

Masudaya

Not quite surprisingly we ended up having soba noodles again. My latest obsession, I realised, had turned into our latest obsession, as Devvers also had soba noodles!

To be honest, they weren’t the most amazing noodles I’ve ever had, and I remember thinking that it was a bit unbalanced as there was also a lot of rice. I didn’t finish my lunch…

Nakameguro and Daikanyama

And so it was time to explore some hip shopping areas.

But first, a metro poster! I haven’t tried translating this, but “something” tells me it’s warning about the dangers of trying to get in or out of the train when the doors are closing! It’s so full of sentiment and expression, I love it! 💥🦏

Nakameguro and Daikanyama have a way more chilled approach to shopping than say, Shibuya or other ‘mainstream’ busy shopping areas. We spent a good time walking around, browsing the shops and doing things as niche as visiting the tokyobike Tokyo shop! (I have this not-so-secret dream that one day I will have enough space to own a tokyobike)

I also enjoyed a shop called OKURA, which sold lots of blue denim clothes. Their shop assistants didn’t bat an eye if you asked to try a “men’s” jacket—everything was quite gender neutral!

We also spent a long time browsing the Tsutaya bookshop, and ended up getting a practical book on Japanese cooking which I’ve been consulting here and there in small doses. Maybe now that we have ‘a bit more’ time on our hands I will take a really deep dive 😃

And finally, we met Mariko, who was in Tokyo for a conference, at it Coffee. It was nice to sit for a while after all the shopping and walking around the steep hills of the area, although my voice was mostly fading away (it had been threatening to do that since I had been in Matsumoto, but it was getting really bad by then), and it was difficult to gossip as much as we would have liked!

I have no pictures of the coffee, because we were so busy enjoying the coffee and the chat, but I have two funny pictures from the area instead:

And then we retreated back to our hotel and readied for our last kaiseki dinner…

Sushi Kanesaka

This was quite a bit of a mixed bag; the food was really nice, but we kept having this feeling that we weren’t quite welcome. We could have dealt with that and just focus on the food, but there was a super drunk Japanese guy seated next to us, drinking sake after sake, trying to get the cooks to drink as well (!) and obviously trying to create an altercation for fun… and no one told him to tone it down, and no one told him he wouldn’t be served any more alcohol. Sigh, entitled men, the same everywhere 🤦🏻‍♀️

So we ate our food and left.