Tokyo

Day 11, July 3

So, we took Tess to Tokyo station to meet up with her friends for the Disney Land trip. We had breakfast at Tokyo Station and eventually found Tess’s friends. Tokyo station is massive and goes for kilometres with many many exits and entrances, like over 50 of them.

Our first stop was a French tea shop where Gerard had a sesame latte. It was very nice made out of black sesame seeds. Then it was off to The old Tokyo town.

We did lots of walking and found a nice little restaurant for lunch. Note to self though- if there are any English words then google them before ordering – I ended up with what looked like the Japanese version of steak tartare – only it was raw tuna mince with raw egg served over rice – not my taste! But I did enjoy the plum sake with soda over ice.

We passed through some cemeteries and many temples on the way to the Tokyo National Museum. We had a look through the museum before purchasing a brûléed crêpe ice-creams from a food van outside the museum. They were cake and ice cream in a crepe cone with a brûléed custard top – oishii! (Delicious)

Then it was off to hit the bars of Shijuku. Our first one was a Japanese themed bar called Incubator. Drinks were served in test tubes and beakers and you could pop on lab coats if you chose! Our next bar was run by Monks, Gerard ordered a cocktail called Mugen-Jigoke (never ending suffering in hell). It was a petty groovy place.

Then it was time to choose a restaurant for dinner – how does one choose when there are over 11,000 restaurants in the district? (According to trip advisor)

We walked down a few side streets and just picked one – you can’t tell from the outside what is on offer as it is all in Japanese, but fortunately a lot do offer English menus once you get inside. We ended up in a Mongolian Bar-b-q restaurant specialising in Australian Lamb in Japan – would you believe it? It was delicious and we cooked it on our own bar-b-q’s on our tables.