2024 Japan

Iternary from Dec 9 to Dec 19.

Cathay Pacific

HKG -> NRT. Redeemed tickets. Forgot to book seats.

At the counter, they helped Serena & I sit together. But we were both middle seats (plane is a 3-4-3 configuration).

I got seated next to some Jap who had an oversized jacket he took off that kept spilling onto my seat. I pushed his jacket back into his space, and he just made odd hand gestures. And then proceeded to draw crappy cartoon images on his iPad Pro for the rest of the flight.

Bought emergency exit row seats on the way back.

Tokyo

December 9th: Tokyo is cold?

We got off the plane in NRT and everything ran smoothly. Seems to be much quicker than HND.

The main tradeoff here is that the it takes about 40 minutes longer by train to get to Tokyo metro area.

In our trip last year, we ran in the train and didn't know seats were reserved and that we had to pay extra.

This year, we were able to refrain from being criminals as our first act in Japan.

All grown up.

We then dumped our bags at our hotel, The B Ginza, which is centrally located in Ginza.

A 10 minute walk from our hotel and we were able to get early dinner at a popular uni rice place in the Tsukiji Fish Market. Normally, this is a 1h+ line. At night, the Tsukiji Market is empty and there's no line to get anywhere.

The tradeoff is that the Uni Rice at night is slightly more expensive.

But, this place is legit even according to people who live in Japan, and they source the most premium sea urchin in Japan.

After that delicious meal, I was definitely not full (it's a bowl of rice with some uni), so we went next door to a popular izakaya chain.

We ordered various fish and their different body parts.

My favorite's shirako AKA cod cum. They do it with a vinegary yuzu sauce, which pairs very nicely with the smooth, creamy, light taste of the shirako. Tastes so good it makes you want to suck off a cod and makes you wish you were a gay fish.

I like this Izakay for 4 reasons:

The food was really good.
The waitress was very nice; it was around 40F and she was very concerned I was wearing shorts & a t-shirt. I just said daijōbudesu (it's fine)
The waitress complimented my shirt is kawaii.
We ordered a ton of stuff for 2 people, and it was still cheaper than the uni rice place for one.

After, we went to a soba place near the hotel. It was one of those places where you purchase a ticket for your meal and then hand it to the workers and they make the meal for you.

December 10th: Pig Whisperer

At 10AM, we went to Koffee Mamaya to drink their milk brew. There's one cheap (700 yen) and one expensive (geisha, 2200 yen). The geisha made the milk brew taste like milk tea and was otherwise mid as the taste was too light. The other bean had more of a floral scent to it.

We also ordered an Americano to go.

Then at 11AM, we went to Sushi Ten Shibuya for Omakase—21K yen for 2 people ($136.32). The good thing about this place is they serve everything. Most omakase you might get some variety of fish and that'll be it. But for this one, it seems you literally get every type of fish on planet Earth and then some. Everything from:

All types of tuna
Unagi
Amberjack
Flounder
Other types of white and red fish
Miso cod
Hand roll with chopped tuna
Lobster
Abalone
Sea urchin
And more

I've never seen lobster nor abalone in an omakase. Let alone together.

After eating the fish, we went to Harajuku to get molested by pigs.

We went to MiPig cafe. This is a place where people sit down, and pigs come to you. If no pigs come to you in your 20-minute slot, the staff will bring one to you to pet. This wasn't a problem though because right as I sat down, there were:

5 pigs on my right side
3 pigs in front of me
2 large pigs that hopped on me
1 more pig to the left of me

There's not that many pigs in the whole cafe. This means with 11 pigs surrounding me, everyone else in the cafe is mostly staring at me, wondering why the pigs won't go to them.

This pig monopoly was soon broken as a big black hog came and pushed all of them away. The staff says this hog is the 'king' of all the pigs and it bullied all the pigs away from me.

After a while, another large pink pig worked up the courage to jump in and sleep on my lap with the black pig. It was peaceful for a while but it started squealing loudly.

Anyway, my original concern was that 20 minutes is a bit stingy and not nearly enough time with pigs. But after the 20 minutes, my legs were cramping from the fatass pigs and it was most definitely enough.

As we were in Harajuku, we had some strawberry cream crepes as well. They are famous for crepes there. Just like how Japan is also famous for cavities.

After Harajuku, we went to eat butter. We had butter ice cream and large butter pancakes with a large stick of butter. We ate it all.

We walked off the butter by doing some shopping. And ended up with 20K steps in total for the day.

But we gained all the calories back and then some as we had tonkatsu ramen in a department store for dinner.

December 11th: Last night in Tokyo

Harbs is a dessert chain store. Successful in Japan, they have been facing issues in other locales. There are a few Harbs in NYC as well, but many locations are closing down. We went to Harbs to eat. We had a couple slices of cake with tea.

We walked around Akihabara for most of the day and looked at various toys/figures. There are also those machines where you pay 200-400 yen and they give you a mystery prize. I scored a Koala March coaster. And Serena got a watch!

We had an early dinner at a yakiniku omakase. It was really good as they served all types of meats and all parts of chicken. My favorite was the chicken heart, which is much juicer and much bigger than the hearts you'd find in the US. My 2nd favorite is a cold-dish: raw chicken liver with raw Japanese egg, with sake on the side to cut through the fatty flavor.

After walking around some more, we hit up the same izakaya again we went to the first night we landed. Despite having seen 100s of customers since then, the waitress recognized me as the guy who wore a shirt at night in Tsukiji.

For the past few days, I have been eyeing this solar-powered toy at the Family Mart. It is a sushi chef figure, and its head and hand bob back and forth like it's slapping a nigiri. I finally decided to pull the trigger as it's my last night in Tokyo.

Another 20K steps.

Nagoya

December 12th: Just let us get seated!

The next morning, we took the bullet train to Nagoya. It was only about a 90-minute ride. This hotel is special because it was the same hotel Serena & her family stayed at on one of her final trips with her late grandma.

The place is pretty spectacular and the views are amazing. As one of the tallest buildings in Nagoya, you get to look at the entire city. Not only that, you get to see the Shinkansen pulling into the town's main train station. At night, the view is even nicer with everything lit up, and a calm blue lighting up the railway.

For lunch, we went to a famous unagi rice place. They serve a mountain of unagi with rice. And there's a specific way to eat it. First, you divide the unagi rice bowl into 4 quadrants. Each quadrant will be scooped into a small bowl. And for each quadrant, you will eat it slightly differently:

Just with rice + unagi
Rice + unagi with toppings (green onion, wasabi)
Rice + unagi + toppings + broth
Pick your favorite way to eat from the 3 above.

Nagoya is much more peaceful than Tokyo and we mostly spent walking around / window shopping at huge department stores.

We had early dinner at a famous tonkotsu place. It was for 5PM reservation. But for some reason they let the first table in but not us. We waited patiently until 5:20PM and we snapped and insisted on being seated. They gave a weak ass excuse of why they didn't seat us: they are behind preparing food for another guest.

But there was only 1 table seated.

And when we sat down, the food came flying out of the kitchen immediately.

The food was good and it is probably famous because it is pretty inexpensive. Maybe $20s USD per person, except you get an appetizer, a full blown tonkatsu (6 cuts) with a bunch of rice and sauce, and a dessert, and a drink.

But their inability to seat us is kind of dumb. Even if you didn't have food available, you can still seat your guests instead of making them wait outside. Though this is Jap culture norm: if things are not perfect, they won't proceed. There is no room for flexibility and being adaptable isn't a skill they value.

We walked around a bit more and I got some milk ice cream to end the day.

Another 20K steps.

December 13th: I stopped counting calories

Had an early lunch and ate wagyu rice. They only allow for 2 reservations, and Serena was able to score one of them ahead of time! So we got seated first.

Tons of beef, and even more rice. We ordered 3 bento-like portions. The waitress was concerned and said

Rice volume

I pointed to my stomach and said

It is OK. I am big

I honestly don't know what cut is what out of the 3. This is because wagyu is high-fat content anyways. But the 3rd bento we got looked cool: it is a sphere that's separated into 3 layers. The first layer is wagyu beef tartare (you get a raw egg you can mix it with). Second layer is wagyu + rice. Third layer is salad. Also had miso soup, rice, and toppings on the side.

The other 2 bentos is basically the same thing, minus the tartare and the salad's on the side, separate.

There's a specific way to eat this.

Which is the exact same as the unagi rice. Except instead of the 4th way to eat it any way you like, they only recommend you eating it the first 3 ways.

Rigid.

We walked around department stores a bunch, which is convenient, because our hotel is inside of one. We looked at various places, like Tiffany's, to get inspiration of what designs to buy on Tao Bao.

I got more milk ice cream at some point.

We wanted to get into a popular place that has cheap, yet high-quality sushi. Unfortunately, there were 13 people ahead of us. So we just kept the ticket and had udon next door instead.

The udon is good but a bit too salty for me. Though it was very filling as there is a lot of soup.

Once we were done, there were only 3 people ahead of us. But we still had to wait for roughly 20 minutes before we were allowed in.

I was already a bit stuffed from the udon, so we only got:

A full sushi + nigiri set
Various nigiri and sushi on the side
Extra sea urchin
A tuna nigiri set
Finished off with a set of otoro.

We basically ordered until we were filled to the gills and it was only $60 total.

Later on, after walking around some more, I got more milk ice cream from family mart. Though this came from a place called Jersey (ew) Milk Company, and the milk is not nearly as smooth.

We ended the day with 4 days in a row of 20K+ steps.

Fukuoka

December 14th: Good WiFi is SciFi in Japan

Woke up to take a 3 and a half hour Shinkansen to Fukuoka. Despite claiming there is WiFi on the train, it is slow AF. I wanted to watch a 22-minute video. After an 63 minutes, I was only able to finish 15 minutes of it. It just kep buffering and disconnecting. A lot of this is due to many lengthy tunnels on the route and no repeaters inside. While this is an amazing infrastructure feat as lengthy tunnels are extremely hard to build, the lack of WiFi in 2024 is barbaric.

I finally gave up when I had to eat something and use the bathroom.

I eventually was able to finish the rest of the 7 minutes just in time for the train to arrive to Fukuoka.