TL;DR: Still kind of jet lagged, we did some light tourist stuff and then met up with a friend Kenji to go out with a Tokyo crew. Tokyo nights end when the sun comes up.
We woke up at 7am. After two minutes of staring at each other in the living room we all mutually decided to go back sleep.
930am A correct start for our first free day in Japan! It began pouring rain. We argued for a bit and then grabbed the Airbnb umbrellas and left to find a cafe. We ended up at Cafe Ecla. They had a French toast with a flan on top of it[1] I didn’t want to go that hard into cultural immersion right off the bat. I went with a breakfast Neapolitan Spaghetti Marinara[2] with a hardboiled egg on top to ease in. That came with some of the best drip coffee I’ve had in a while.
My basic Japanese was getting better and the waiter here helped guide us on how to order things- the bare minimum is point at the menu and say “koudosai” but we hit him with a “Kohi Kodosai” (coffee) and he laughed. We ordered an uber but realized most of the Ubers in Japan are private car services and they take ~15 min to get to you, unlike the instant NYC pickups we are used to. “Arigato Goisaimas” on the way out.
We decided to head to Ginza to check out this art aquarium and grab lunch. This is like the Soho (NY) of Tokyo. Lots of luxury shopping and lots of cafes. The streets were really nice, especially in the rain. Great vibes.
These clear umbrellas are everywhere around Japan and almost everyone has them- when walking into a cafe you leave yours outside and it seemed like everyone just grabbed whichever one on the way out. It’s possible I misunderstood this rule and stole an umbrella.
We had ramen for lunch. Standard Japan trip stuff everyone talks about so I wont (I’m Different). You click a button and sit at a counter, eat and go. It was really good, the noodles had the perfect texture. Nothing surprising here. Onto the rainy day activities.
Great cool yea I had ramen.
They give you a bib so you can slurp.
Art Aquarium Standard tourism stuff, it was really well done. Lots of interesting installations of goldfish. It was a great way to spend an hour and worth checking out. Poor lil guys. Videos below [3].
Instagram fodder
BEAMS We were right next to the BEAMS store, a really cool Japanese brand. They opened one in LA and it is constantly sold out of every single garment they carry. It’s been a goal of mine to come here and stock up for a while. They sell lots of other brands in their store like north face purple label (also exclusively Japanese and very hard to get overseas). I bought 5 pairs of pants. Hypebeast heaven.
BEAMS!!
Around 5pm we ran face-first into a jet lag wall and took the subway back home. I snuck in a 2 hour risky nap. 5pm naps are the devil’s nap, they ruin nights.
Thankfully my 9pm alarm rang and it was time to go out.
Taking the subway to Ebisu [4]. It’s just like New York except not shitty and theres a way smaller chance of someone attacking you (maybe) [5].
Kenji
Our friend Ally has a cousin named Kenji who lives in Ebisu. We met up at the Ebisu station at 11pm. I dont think theres a way to describe a night out without it coming off as cringe so here are some highlights:
Kenji
He was nice enough to bring us to his friend Asa’s pregame. There was beer pong.
Bento boxes on the street. Logistically necessary, charmingly japanese.
Choose your character.
I have no idea how I ended up in this room.
DJ. They’re the same everywhere.
Club. They’re kinda different here.
I snuck a bottle of soju into the club so my new friends would begin to know who they were dealing with.
Dylan taking an extraordinarily long time to get the 12th round.
We taught our friends about the classic NYC move of stealing lightbulbs from clubs and we think the concept has legs in Tokyo.
I swear there were girls with us they’re just always out of frame .
It was raining all night.
4am we decided to get ramen and stopped at 7-11 on the way for some Strong ZERO[6]. This shit is like Japanese four loko. It shouldn’t be legal but I think the movie Shin Godzilla was about not bogging down the government with the red tape of banning cool stuff. Thank you Japanese government for allowing this to exist.
Sandy lives in Brooklyn and proved that when she went full New Yorker on the dude serving us ramen and chewed him out in Japanese, with what I imagine was a heavy NY accent ala- Pacino.
