Despite heading to bed at around 10:45 PM, I woke up at 2:45ish AM. She woke up soon after, so we decided to start our day super early. After getting dressed, and delaying our leaving, we headed out at around 3:30 AM. I have never been out this late/early in Tokyo before. Our hotel in Asakusa wasn't relatively busy during the night, and it was definitely dead at this time in the morning. Unlike Canada though, I felt safe walking down the streets at this time.
Our first stop was at a 7-11. I was looking for their strawberry butter sand tree snack, which is essentially two butter cookies sandwiching a strawberry filling. They're addicting and my dad seems to have a soft spot for them as well. Maybe it was too early, but they didn't have any in stock at the 7-11 we stopped at. Nevertheless, we left after purchasing some smoothies and drinkable yogurt. I'm not sure why I never tried purchasing a smoothie for a convenience store in Japan before, but I was definitely missing out. All you need to do is purchase the cup from one of the freezers. Once purchased, just go up to one of their smoothie machines and scan the barcode. After following some simple instructions (ie: remove the plastic cover/lid and insert it into the machine), you get a wonderfully blended smoothie. I got a green/vegetable one and it was perhaps one of the best smoothies I've ever had. What made it better was adding the drinkable yogurt to give it a nice tangy touch. (Though I forgot the name/brand of the yogurt.)
After heading out of the 7-11, we headed to one of the 24h Don Quijotes in Asakusa. At 4 AM, it was empty which made shopping a pleasant experience compared to other hours of the day. We spent nearly two hours to ourselves, shopping all sorts of products from snacks to supplements. I felt sorry for the cashier when he had to bag our items into the custom bags that Japan have to prevent you from consuming products while in Japan. It must have taken at least 10-15 minutes for him to organize everything. Once done though, we headed back out and to our hotel. It's not often that I see the sunrise within a city. I remember that it was slightly foggy, so Skytree was slightly obscured.
After heading back to the hotel, I changed back into my PJs and took a short nap. After waking up, it was time for breakfast at a small restaurant, Misojyu, that specializes in rice ball/onigiri meals. There was a bit of a lineup, even though we got there when it just opened. Fortunately, it was a short wait, and that it wasn't too hot out yet. After getting in and placing our order, we headed upstairs to their second floor to wait for our meals. Like a lot of Japanese homes that are older (I think the newer homes aren't as bad), the stairs were quite steep. We both got the same set: pick of rice ball, tofu, half a soft boiled egg, chicken, some daikon, and miso soup. I picked a roasted salmon onigiri, which was very subtle - unlike convenience store onigiri I feel. The tofu stood out for being silky smooth, while the two pieces of chicken were tender and full of flavor. The miso soup didn't really stand out for me, but it was still relatively good.
After breakfast, we headed back to the hotel since our next location: Ginza, wasn't quite open yet. Deciding that we didn't want to waste any time, instead of resting, we headed to the nearby supermarket to stock up on more snacks and cooking ingredients that you can't get back home. We dropped off our shopping before we headed onto the subway to enter Ginza. We stopped inside Ginza Six, a large shopping complex that kind of reminds me of an upscale Core Shopping Centre we have in Calgary. We stopped by 10FACTORY, which housed all sorts of orange/mikan drinks and products. Having been to Ehime prefecture the year before, it brought back vivid memories of various orange products. After getting some dried mikan rinds and a bottle of juice, we headed for lunch.
Lunch took place at Ningyocho Imahan - a place that specializes in serving sukiyaki or shabu shabu cuts of wagyu. It was an upscale restaurant with top notch service. As always, head to these restaurants for lunch instead of dinner since you'll pay less for a very similar menu. We were shown to a small room that had about 5 tables. Maybe it was the time, but we were in a room full of tourists/non native Japanese. Feeling a bit leery, since I often associate places with no Japanese present as being tourist traps, I was fortunately mistaken. We got one order of their assorted meat sets and one high quality set. We had a personal chef/waiter the entire time as he cooked and explained what he was doing. I was thoroughly impressed by the attention to detail, especially using a napkin to cover our bag/backpack from potential splashes. We started with an appetizer that consisted of two small dishes that I had no idea what they were, but they were extremely good. Soon after, our chef brought out the vegetables and meat. For the assorted set, there were two types of wagyu from two different regions. If I'm not mistaken... one was from Matsusaka? I can't recall where the high quality beef was from either, but it sounded like it was similar to the assorted set. Either way, the beef was amazing. I'm not sure what type of egg they used for our sukiyaki dip, but it complemented the meat extremely well. Each slice of meat was also placed with certain vegetables to make it aesthetically pleasing to see. At the end, we got a fried rice dish made from the leftover beef fat - making it taste magical. To finish off our meal, we got a piece of mango pudding and yuzu sorbet (I think it was yuzu). Throughout the meal we got two different teas (Hojicha and Genmaicha are my guesses... I'm sure the second one is Genmaicha based on the roasted rice taste), which is different. Overall, I had to say that it was probably my most favorite meal during this trip.
With our stomachs full, it was time to add more debt to our credit cards. We headed to go shop at Uniqlo and Loft. I never got the chance to explore the flagship in Ginza back in 2023, but had the chance this time around. Despite it being tall, I felt each floor to be quite small and cramped. It doesn't help that there were a lot of people shopping. I did end up purchasing some clothes to add to my teaching wear (I've been wearing mostly polo shirts from Uniqlo over the past 3 years). Our next stop was Loft, which is a flashy version of Muji in my opinion. There's always lots of cool things to see, with some items being reasonably priced. We ended up purchasing a new portable fan here, which had a cooling pad in the middle. I also ended up purchasing some very expensive badges/keychains that had dogs embroidered since they represented the dogs we had back home and in Hong Kong. With our Hulken bag filled with various items, we headed back to the subway. I got off earlier since I made a pit stop at Akihabara to look for items, while my girlfriend went back to the hotel to drop things off and to rest.
Unfortunately, despite trying three different stores, I wasn't able to find what I was looking for. Akihabara was as crowded as I remembered, but with less maids trying to pull clients into their maid cafes from what I remembered. Not wanting to spend more time in the heat, I went back onto the subway to head back to Asakusa. Before making it all the way back, I stopped by Nakamise shopping street from some treats. Granted, it may be higher than normal since I view this area a bit of a tourist trap, yet the snacks can be quite good here. I got some flavoured peanuts from Ozawa Seijiro Shoten and another place that I forgot the name... Anyways I got warabi mochi here.
After heading back to the hotel and resting for a bit, we headed out for dinner. She was craving oysters, so we headed to Chika no Iki (I believe that's the name). We got some drinks, along with an oyster platter and some... oyster spread and crackers. I'm not a huge fan of oysters, so I didn't eat as much. I have to say though, the small oysters in the oyster platter were a lot better tasting than the huge ones. The oyster spread and crackers (not sure of the name of the dish) was really good though. It has a subtle oyster taste, unlike eating raw oysters directly.
Once we finished, we headed back to our hotel, though during rush hour. Feeling quite tired, we headed to bed relatively early. According to my sleeping app (Pokemon Sleep), I was running on 3 hours and 38 minutes of sleep. As I age, I definitely feel the lack of sleep more and more. If I'm not mistaken... I think I passed out at around 8:40 PM.
A day full of shopping and eating! It felt weird shopping so early, but a full and productive day! I've added pictures throughout the entire post since it's wordier than usual.
A picture of the oysters! The XL one was huge!
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