Day 7 Tokyo and the fish market
Today was the best day in Tokyo so far. We walked from the
Ginza district to Tsukiji and met Raiko, our guide, outside the Hongwan-Ji
temple. It was a gloriously sunny day and we visited the temple before we set
off on our food tour. The tour was listed as Fish Market, but most of the time
we toured the general market. It was a brilliant opportunity to try a bit of
everything…grapes, teriyaki chicken (where every single part of the chicken,
minus the feet, are made into BBQ skewers), loads of spices and coated dried
beans, a selection of seafood, tea and some wagyu skewers to die for. We saw wasabi in its plant form, before it's ground and made into a paste. We bought some coated coffee beans as snacks but resisted the packets of crispy grasshoppers. We saw the coffee shop that John Lennon (and presumably Yoko Ono) frequented. We even
visited a couple of knife shops as some in our group wanted to but some as
souvenirs for families. Raiko was fantastic, steering us to places that knew
her and would not only treat us royally, but gave us discounts.
After the food tasting tour we visited the actual fish
market, which was interesting. I wondered
where they got prawns as thick as sticks of corn sticks and oysters as big as
my palm. At the end of the tour we visited a local shrine, built to give thanks
for the bounty of the sea that the market thrived on. Even though the area
looked like any normal street, Raiko explained that the whole area was once
underwater and now built on reclaimed land. The tour lasted about two and a
half hours and was worth every minute of it. We headed back into the market for
another Wagyu skewer. They were soooo simple and sooo delicious!
I had learnt my lesson about keeping hydrated and made sure
to keep stocked up with sips of electrolyte drink. I felt so very much better
today and it let me really enjoy the program. We thought it best to work out
the travel arrangements for tomorrow so Johnny checked the documents and route
before we headed to the station for a dry run. We eventually found the right
machine and collected our train tickets. As they did not include allocated
seating, we also found the ticket office and upgraded our tickets. On the
weekend the shinkansen can get very crowded.
On the way home for a rest we again found our way back to that terrific coffee
shop below a Ginza shopping centre and enjoyed an iced coffee and
a rest. Then it was off to the Tenshodo model railway shop just off the Ginza
main street. It was certainly interesting, but Johnny had been buying a lot of
locos etc online recently so there was really nothing there to interest him.
Throughout the day we had been getting the most wonderful photos and reports from Britt’s adventures with Harri. We think a tourist could cheerfully spend two weeks in just Tokyo. It’s a great city.
We finished our first week in Tokyo with a nice meal at a restaurant not 20 steps from the hotel. The Ginza Tenkuni was a beautiful place just beyond the hotel bar. We ordered tender meals that included a mixture of vegetable and seafood tempura over a bed of rice. It was served with a very tasty bowl of miso soup and some pickles. We thought this was also a good opportunity to try some sake. Kampai! But in the end, I think a beer would have been more to my taste. Dessert was vanilla ice cream floating on a bed of coffee jelly. Johnny had a bracken dumpling with black honey. It was a delightful meal with attentive service.
We can sleep in tomorrow as checkout will not be until 11.00. Then it will be a taxi to the station and off to Kanazawa, on the Kagayaki 533 shinkansen.
