Halfway through our time in Tokyo we packed up our place in Edogawa and braved the subway with all our luggage, crossing Tokyo to the busier and fancier neighbourhood of Kichijoji.
Our second place was a bit bigger (2 toilets!) and had nice windows and a bigger kitchen. But its selling feature was its proximity to Inokashira park, a huge greenspace with a lake and a zoo and parks and baseball diamonds and running trails. Seriously big. There were definitely more tourists here than in Edogawa. But plenty of locals enjoying the outdoors. This was the first place we really noticed that some of the locals weren’t huge fans of tourists in their space. And I do get it, if you’ve had the place to yourself for decades, watching an influx of newcomers sitting on your park benches might be irritating.
Our first night in our new neighbourhood we found a little waffle stand nearby and had dessert for dinner, then found a 7-11 and had uni-giri for dessert. This was on the less touristy side and the people were lovely. In another first, the teenage girl 7-11 clerks were clearly interested in Ty and impressed with his Japanese skills. ;-)
The next night we ventured back across the park to central Kichijoji and the kids pulled us down some narrow stairs to a smoke choked Izakaya restaurant.
Kylie almost turned around at this one. It was squished and tiny and underground and smoky. But it was busy! So we stayed and it was delicious. Kylie could not be convinced to try tongue on round 2 but the rest of us had beef and pork tongue plus some other random cuts that sounded intriguing. The kids also got 2 rounds of melon sodas to go with our 2 rounds of Asahi. Party time. Excellent.
Kichijoji is a bustling funky neighborhood but not nearly as overwhelming as Shibuya. Also the buildings are more human scale.
During the day we explored Inokashira park a bit more as well as some local shopping streets. Kichijoji has a thriving vintage scene. Unfortunately, as in Canada that meant “used but also expensive” so it was just window shopping. A lot of stuff from our high school days was displayed completely unironically. Silk shirts, colourful sweaters, Mexican ponchos, Hornets jackets… trying to tell the kids how cool their parents were back in the day!
Ty wanted to go back to Shibuya one more time so on our last night in Tokyo we once again entered the river of humanity.
On our last visit we had noted a burger shop with perfect people watching windows onto the street, which sounded pretty good after a week of uni giri and Yakiniku (we did find some tasty granola brands and kept our intestines stable with cereal and fruit and yoghurt for breakfast - I don’t think any of us coulda kept up with meat and broth in the morning.)
Anyways the burgers and fries were absolutely incredible and the people watching was top notch. The staff were all young and friendly and very interactive.
After dinner we wandered the streets at random. We actually found a used clothing store that must not have been vintage bc the prices were reasonable. And somehow they had Champion hoodies in every colour of the rainbow and an amazing selection of jeans. I bought some bell bottom cords for old times sake.
And just like that it was time to leave Tokyo! Clearly we hardly scratched the surface but we did get around. Ty could have stayed another month for sure but Kylie and I were ready to move on to a place where we weren’t quite so worried our kids would knock over little old ladies in the grocery store. Which they didn’t. But there were a few close calls. Or at least we got some looks… Maybe Japanese kids move slower? Or maybe our kids just take up more space?? Or maybe their parents don’t even take them grocery shopping? Anyways on to Nikko where there is a lot more space and at least a bit more tolerance for noisy kids.
No comments:
Post a Comment