Hakone & Tokyo | Japan, Part 3 of 3
And now, part three of three, completing my posts on Japan! If you’ve missed out on the previous posts, just scroll to the bottom for the recap. For the last five nights of the trip we finally stayed in the same place instead of city-hopping, and we got to see a bit more of Tokyo at a slower pace. Our one side trip was to the neighboring town of Hakone, known for their hot springs. Here we are, wandering around Hakone:
We visited a hot spring resort called Tenseien.
Donning our yukata.
We wandered the streets of Hakone before and after our hot spring soak. This mochi shop had a very delicious black sesame mochi.
Back in Tokyo, we headed to Torishige, known for their yakitori, but not just in regular chicken skewer form. Pictured below: pickled pig’s ears, pork meatballs in peppers, chicken liver, chicken meatballs, pig intestines, some chili powder, and a wagyu steak that was amazingly delicious, but happened to cost $60…
We made some new friends at Torishige. While we were sitting at the end of the bar, the man with the mustache sitting to my left introduced himself as Hiro, a doctor who sometimes visits the U.S., and he offered to help translate for us and order all our food. This might seem crazily fortunate, and it was, but to be honest, this is exactly the kind of thing that happened to us every single day of the trip. We experienced such generosity and kindness from everyone we met throughout this trip– it sounds like a cliche travelogue thing to say, but I can vouch for this literally. Day one in Tokyo, a man on his way to work waited five minutes with us at a gate and then personally walked us to Rokurinsha, the ramen shop we were looking for. We asked a man in the Osaka subway to confirm our directions, and when we got off the train several stops later, he found us in the station and made sure we knew where to go next too. People constantly went out of their way to help us, and we would not have survived the trip without it.
Thursday, we headed to Tokyo Skytree, the relatively new tower with shops in the bottom floors and an observation deck 350 meters up. The lines to get tickets are insane– we went in the middle of a weekday and it took 40 minutes, though they had plenty of entertainment on these animated screens. I can’t imagine what this place is like on a weekend!
The elevator ride up to the observation deck is a great testament to Japanese engineering as well. It only takes sixty seconds and is the smoothest ride you’ve ever felt. Without even feeling like you’ve started moving, the doors open and you see this view…
Tokyo is just such a huge city, it’s difficult to conceptualize just how many people live in these buildings that just go on and on as far as you can see.
Bottom up, top down.
And then we ran into Dorit, a friend from high school in Ohio– RANDOMLY ON THE STREET IN TOKYO.
For dinner that night, sushi in Roppongi with Jesse’s friend from high school, Jason.
Friday, we kicked off the day with tonkatsu at Maisen. I love that my relatively basic set meal was just still this elaborate and even included sashimi.
This was one of my to-do’s– a free view over Tokyo just across from our hotel. It’s the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Offices or the TMGO building, and they have two observation levels that are open to the public. I stayed until dusk and was rewarded with these beautiful soft pastel hues just as the city lights came on:
Tokyo is such a beautiful city.
This was the grand finale of our fantastic adventures in Japan: dinner at Bohemian. A bit of backstory– Jesse happens to be one of the foodiest foodies that I know, and he is a regular at Bohemian in New York City, so visiting Bohemian Nishiazabu, the original, in Tokyo was a must-do on his Japan list. It became clear very quickly that we were getting special treatment from the kitchen and were in for a memorable meal.
Bohemian happens to be tucked away in a little residential neighborhood, down an alley and hidden between two buildings. Inside the narrow building there is a bar on the first floor, and on the second floor, just one fire pit table that seats eight (we got this table for our party of three) and a bar that seats four. There is just one bartender and one chef manning the whole operation. Chef Kazu took very good care of us.
Also, we were finally meeting up with Jessica (so it was Anna, Jesse, and Jessi), who had helped us with a lot of our planning leading up to the trip and even during the trip. She was a friend of a friend of mine, and we felt like we had come to know her very well without having actually met until the very end of the trip. 
There are too many great items to mention them all, but you can see them all below. We had a funny moment when Jessi was complementing the tomatoes as the most perfect tomatoes she had ever seen, but one of the three had the slightest of blemishes, and of course Chef Kazu immediately took it away and replaced it with a perfect one.
All of the grilled items were prepared impeccably right in front of us. Some of my favorite dishes: the gigantic pieces of sashimi, the uni over a bean curd soup, the mushroom topped with neverending overflowing salmon roe, the steak, and of course, all of the grilled fish. Ok I think I did name pretty much everything… The sake and the special soba-based rice wine were also great.
This is actually one of the simplest parts of the meal that I still dream about to this day. Jessi demonstrated for us all. You crack a fresh egg into a dish, add a bit of soy sauce and beat it, eyeing it for a specific color, and then you pour the egg-soy sauce mixture over your bowl of rice. So. Good.
Afterward, Jessica took us on a little stroll through Roppongi Hills, which was beautiful at night.
I don’t quite understand the gigantic arachnid sculpture, but here it is.
Jessi and Jesse.
Tokyo Tower by night.
And finally, the trio.
So, that’s it for now! Thank you again to Jesse and Ho Chie for being my partners in crime, to Akane & Gimpei for inviting me out to Japan to shoot your wedding, and to everyone who helped with the trip from beginning to end. It was a fantastic adventure, and I hope to be back again soon!
Japan Roundup:
