This was our second rainy season in Japan and I don’t regret repeating a season. I think I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: If you can’t go to Japan during sakura season, go for the rainy/hydrangea season and you’ll hardly miss those delicate pink blooms!
We spent a day in Kamakura visiting three temples that are known for their hydrangea blooms. Japan has so many varieties of hydrangea and it’s always fun to see the different colors, shapes, and sizes.
Naoto, who was clearly in charge of his own packing, was basking in the bamboo forest and enjoying the blooms almost as much as I was.
I think we were a little early for peak hydrangea season on this particular day, but it wasn’t too hot and humid and it wasn’t raining so I think we planned it perfectly, even if by accident!
Ok, how about a little break from the present day? Let’s go back to Japan where we ate this meal a year ago today!
On our first day in Tokyo last spring, we decided to go to Tokyo Station where we could go to the Travelers store and to the post office in Kitte (a shopping center just across the street from the station.) We visit Kitte almost every trip (I’ve talked about it before here.) because the post office usually has the best stamp and merchandise selection. And in the mall area, there’s a great tenugui store. (I should probably talk about my little seasonal tenugui collection sometime!)
We knew we wanted some kind of noodles for lunch. One of Tokyo’s most famous ramen places is at Tokyo Station but like last time, the line was too long for us to wait. So, Naoto asked the woman working at Travelers if she had any recommendations and she pointed us back to Kitte for tsukemen. (If you don’t know what tsukemen is, this post might help! It’s similar to ramen except the noodles are served separately and cold and they are dipped in the thick soup broth. To me, they are the perfect way to eat a ramen-like meal in the summer!) Naoto looooves taking recommendations from people, so we decided to take her suggestion and go to Matsudo Tomita Memban.
When we got there, the shop wasn’t open yet, so we debated about getting in line, but we did. Fortunately, we were second in and beat the huge rush of people who lined up behind us! Unfortunately, we were second in line behind some know-it-all from New York who tried to impart his Japanese traveling knowledge upon us. He was one of those people who talks at you and he just assumed we had never been to Japan before based on…nothing. He had read about this noodle shop in on a travel website and couldn’t stop trying to tell us where else we should go in Tokyo. I checked out of the conversation almost immediately and Naoto did a lot of nodding and smiling. Needless to say, the New Yorker was quite surprised when Naoto started speaking to the chef in Japanese and carrying on a conversation with our server.
We both got tsukemen. In the broth was a slice of char sui (pork), bamboo shoots, fish cake, and seaweed, but you could add on additional toppings. (Naoto got additional toppings and a larger serving!) The noodles were perfect–chewy and delicious and the thick, salty broth clung to them for the perfect bite every time. We were so pleased with our lunch, Naoto went back and thanked the Travelers woman for her recommendation.
I should also mention that this is an English friendly place to visit–you order at a ticket machine that has an English option so no worries about translations. It was all very seamless, even if I didn’t have my own personal translator by my side!
How cute are we in our little slurping noodle bibs?!
It wasn’t until we got back to the hotel that night that we realized how famous the noodle shop was! It’s the Tokyo version of a very popular tsukemen restaurant in Chiba, Chuka Soba Tomita, considered Japan’s #1 ramen shop, where people line up for the tsukemen at 7am! Owner Chef Osamu Tomita trained at Japan’s original Tsukemen restaurant, Taishoken in Tokyo, and he’s featured in the documentary Ramen Heads, which I highly recommend if you like ramen and food journeys. Kitte recruited him for their “ramen street” in the basement of the mall. What a lucky get for them–and for us!
I ate a lot of sandwiches in Japan during our last visit. Sandwiches in Japan are among my favorite things. (This should be a #JDIB post…I need to look through my pictures.) To commemorate the many sandwiches, I bought this “sando” letter set while we were in Okinawa.
Last week on Instagram, Assembly of Text did a little challenge for writing a letter about your relationship with bread. My pen pal, Nic, and I had a little online chat about the challenge but I decided to write her a bread love letter, too. Then I remembered that I have a little collection of bread stickers to share. I bought these at Loft a couple years ago and found them tucked away in my Japan hoard drawer. They have a really nice texture and really pretty, soft illustrations of Japanese bakery items, including strawberry bread, which I regret to say I’ve never tried.Aren’t they so cute and carby? I had these little cats with cakes envelopes so I figured they are on-theme enough. The silver foil fork and the tiny paw reaching for the cake slay me. The sandwich letter set isn’t made for a verbose letter, but it was enough room to tell Nic all about my love of sandwiches in Japan. Also found in my Japanese hoard drawer…these washi bread stickers! They’re made of washi, so they have a really pretty transparency. It’s hard to tell from my pictures, but the colors are almost neon, which makes the browns of the bread much more fun. I used these to decorate the envelope.Then I remembered this Japanese pancake washi tape I bought in Tokyo that would fit in with the carb theme. I stuck a little piece on the envelope flap and wrote #carbmail on the envelope, though I really like #breadmail better.
This was a fun little morning activity that made me look through my stash to see what could fit. It also reminded me (yet again) that not every letter needs to be long and in detail about my day or about staying home or pandemic fears. As a matter of fact, it was a nice break NOT to talk about the weirdness of now.
Hisae and Norio (Naoto’s sister and her husband) took us out to dinner in Shibuya while we were in Japan. They live in Mie, which is quite a bit away from Tokyo, but they took the shinkansen to spend an evening with us. It was really fun to hang out with them. Hisae is so sweet and Norio is kind and funny. We haven’t seen them both together since their wedding many years ago! We have seen Hisae on all of our other trips to Japan, but we haven’t seen Norio in years because he is so busy working. The izakaya, Takumi, specializes in Niigata food. You may remember that Niigata is where they grew up. My favorite thing about izakaya eating is that you can order tons of small plates and try a bunch of different things. We had kaarage (fried chicken,) shrimp tempura, amazing sushi, and pickled eggplant.And smoked fish, cartilage and sperm sac…just kidding, I did not eat the cartilage or sperm sac.Then there was noppe, a vegetable stew, and tomago (egg) with herbs. Our last dish was this fried tofu with scallions which was really good, but really oily and rich…a good dish for drinking. At the end of the meal, they brought out a huge tray of noodles and we each had our choice of dipping sauce. I got the tomato dipping sauce which was really unusual, like nothing I’ve had in Japan before. It was a rich red and super concentrated with tomato flavor. I ate soooo many noodles because I liked it so much. I haven’t been able to find a good recipe like this online but I’m sure trying!
I think this is all I bought during the Pen Pal Stationery Tour…
Above is what I bought at Yamada. The library stuff is my favorite and I restocked my stash from our last trip. I couldn’t resist the avocado handkerchief for Naoto. And those green things are stickers modeled after a famous notebook company, Japonica, that every school kid knows. And I just realized that the little bird and mountain notepad snuck in here, but I bought it at Tonarino. (It’s too dark to re-take the pictures now!) At Tonarino, besides the notepad, I stuck with mostly their in-house designs. And the sumo eating the hot pot (chanko) is the only thing I bought at Sublo 36. (I told you I had regrets.) And finally, some fun new and vintage papers from Hachimakura. I’m excited to use some of these in my Traveler’s Notebook. From the top left: the red shrine is an old tobacco box from the Showa Era (1926-1989) that I want to display. The Moon Pencils label is a pencil box label. The geisha girls are matchbox labels from the 1920s. Below that, is old play money. (Isn’t it so fun and colorful?) The sheer pink and white things are nouget candy wrappers, also from the Showa Era. I liked the onsen symbol on them. And the circle labels are liquor shop labels from before World War II.
(Thanks to Naoto for translating all of that for me for this post. He and Geof stayed outside while April and I shopped so we were on our own to make our purchases!)
Believe it or not, we only had ramen once while we were in Tokyo. I know, I know…what a waste of our visit during the cold months! But seriously, there is so much to eat in Japan…it’s hard to not explore a thousand different cuisines there! We found Afuri near our hotel in Sangenjaya. (It’s been there since 2014! How were we sleeping on this for so long?!) It’s a chain, so you can find them all over Tokyo (and even in Portland!) Their specialty is yuzu ramen, so you know I was a happy camper eating here!It’s the kind of ramen shop where you order at the machine and get a ticket to present at the counter, but it’s a fancy computerized ticket machine with pictures! (Also, pro-tip…you should choose your meal on the menu outside and then go to the machine when you know exactly what you want…otherwise you look like a dumb American, not that I would know how this feels…) I had the Yuzu Shoyu Ramen, which is a chicken and dashi shoyu (soy sauce) broth with all of the traditional ramen toppings. It may have been my favorite chicken broth ever. It was bright and citrusy because of the yuzu but the shoyu made it a little bit more robust. Naoto had a special dumpling ramen that I couldn’t find on the website.
Now writing this, I’m totally in the mood for ramen.
Our next stop (after lunch) in the Pen Pal Stationery Tour was Sublo 36. It’s a tiny shop and it was verrry crowded. And like, Yamada, there are so many products in little cubbies and drawers, it was kind of a challenge to shop when you’re basically on top of the next person. I’d love to go back on a quieter day because I’m having regrets about not buying some things! I didn’t get many pictures inside Sublo (which is up these quirky stairs by the way) because it was too crowded for my photographer and I was too busy shopping and trying to stay out of other shoppers’ ways. They have a lot of original products (you can see them here) that I totally didn’t take advantage of buying when I was there.After this, Naoto had discovered that we were a short walk away from Karel Capek tea shop so we took a stationery break. I’ll write about Karel Capek in another post–it’s the cutest. On the way to the train for our next stop, we bought some gyoza from a very busy gyoza shop in the neighborhood. Delicious! (Oh and that’s April’s partner Geof. He and Naoto were the best sports about stationery shopping all day!)At the end of the tour was Hachimakura, which we’ve visited before. April and I delighted in the vintage papers in this tiny shop. We finished the tour with dinner at a little izakaya near Hachimakura. We ate cabbage with yuzu dressing, bacon with grain mustard, tomago, fried mozzarella dipped in honey (It was soooo good I need to try this in America,) wasabi chicken, cucumber dipped in miso, and we drank beers and yuzu drinks. It was the perfect meal to end a really fun day. Until next time, April & Geof!
A crazy fun fact about our trip to Japan: it coincided with my pen pal April’s trip to Japan! We didn’t have a ton of time together, but we did spend an entire day doing a Pen Pal Stationery Tour along the Chuo Line out to the outskirts of Tokyo. Naoto and I did some of these shops last time, but I wanted to revisit them, particularly Hachimakura and Yamada Stationery, and to visit a new shop or two. Yamada is one of my favorite shops in all of Japan. They have stationery lines that are unique and harder to find in Tokyo. Their merchandising is so good. As you can see, there are so many nooks and crannies to explore and find more papery goodness! Some of my favorite things are on the rack above. They have a whole library line with washi tape, stickers, library cards and pockets, buttons…it’s all so good! Next stop was Torino where they don’t allow photography inside. (Don’t tell on us because apparently we took a few last time we visited…oops!) Fun fact: Naoto left his phone on the ledge outside of Torino and we didn’t realize until we’d traveled all the way to the next station. We thought it was gone forever, but nope…it was still there. No one touched it! It was very stressful in the moment, but afterwards, it gave us all a laugh, and of course reminded us that Japan Does It Better!
I’ll be back on Monday with part two of our day together! Hopefully it will be sunny enough this weekend for me to take a few pictures of my purchases.
It took two tries (thanks to new year closings) but we made it to the mt lab (mt labo) towards the end of our trip. The shop is so spare and clean…it was seriously a dream place to shop. All of the washi tapes were organized by color. (You know how I love to ROY G BIV things!) The regular tapes were in clear cylinders all along the left side of the shop. It was so hard not to buy every single one. There was a whole table of limited edition tapes that can only be bought at this store. They had these new clear sheet stickers that can be used to add a pop of color to clear trays, phone cases, or whatever you want. I didn’t buy any of them, but they were neat! They also had these fun, one-of-a-kind collage bags made of mt banners from different special mt events throughout Japan. Isn’t that such a cool way to reuse something that would normally end up in the trash?One of the other cool features of the store was the tape cutter that cuts rolls of washi tape into different thicknesses. They were nice enough to do a demo for us. First they rolled the tape onto the cardboard tube.
After that they cut the tape into thin, medium, and thick rolls. It was neat to see the pattern of the master tape change based on the width of the tape.
They sold all of the different widths at the counter. This is the face of someone who was shopping in her merchandised zen.I think I was pretty restrained in my purchases!
Every year we explore Sangenjaya more and more and find all sorts of great little gems in our hotel neighborhood. We always talk about staying someplace else but I really just love going back to the same spot and since we’re still finding things we love there, why not?
This time we found this cute little Italian spot and it was one of the best meals of our trip. (I know I say that a lot…but seriously, the food in Japan is almost always amazing.)For starters, we got these cinnamon coated fava beans that were delicious and weird and just a tiny bit sweet. And we got a salad with chicken and yuzu dressing…it’s hard to ever say no to yuzu. We were really intrigued by these Italian gyoza on the menu. They were filled with regular gyoza fillings (cabbage, pork, garlic, ginger) but were topped with fresh tomato sauce and Parmesan. When we ordered them, I thought they’d have a different filling, something more…Italian? But they were really good and we want to recreate something similar at home. Another dish we want to perfect at home is butter shoyu pasta…this one had cremini mushrooms and chives on top…it’s umami heaven. If we ever find a good recipe, I’ll share it here. And of course we ordered margharita pizza…Japan really does a charred crust so well.
Neither of us remember what cocktails we had to start…we really need to be better about writing our little food diaries down since it’s something we enjoy so much on our travels. But my second drink was this filllllled to the brim glass of sparkling wine and it was delightful. We also had tiramisu for dessert and failed to capture it, but it was the perfect end to another perfect meal in Tokyo.
kimberly ah 