2014

Our next couple of days in Tokyo were spent exploring, just getting to know the city a little bit better. We’d take the subway to a neighbourhood and just walk for the entire day. The weather was divine and there was so much to take in – the scramble on busy street crossings, the laid back charm on quiet little lanes, the hipster cafes filled with spiffy work types on their macbooks, and the marvellous food places that made our tummies very happy.

I’m going to be ambitious and attempt to squeeze 4 days of Tokyo into one post, let’s see if we make it.

Harajuku

Harajuku, specifically Takeshita Street, is the place where all things kawaii descended to and made their home. The very essence of kawaii resides here. It’s a fairly short street but it was like walking into a cotton candy cloud of cute. I stepped into a shop filled with pink, fluffy bows hoping to pick out something for Kirsten but I momentarily blacked out from the explosion of pink things around me and had to make a hasty getaway.

Even the food in Harajuku was cute. We picked up 2 crepes from Marion Crepes, which were superb. Most of the crepes I’ve had were just drizzled with chocolate sauce or banana caramel but in Harajuku, they take giant soft, fluffy crepes and stuff them with your choice of strawberries, mangoes, bananas, caramel, chocolate and ice-cream. That’s how I’m eating my crepes from now on.

Truett’s favourite was the Calbee store, the shop where cute happy potatoes are blissfully eating their fried potato friends. That little potato on the right looks like he doesn’t know what’s coming.

Um dude, I think you’re next.

Incidentally, we visited Harajuku on Halloween and we discovered that people go all out with the costumes there. Almost every other person we passed by had fake blood coming out of their eyes and mouth, it was very impressive.

Omotesando

Not far from the action of Takeshita Street is Omotesando, a little neighbourhood with a totally different vibe. It was very artsy and hipster, with hair salons, bookstores, studios, art galleries and cafes.

We had coffee and desserts at two cafes back to back. The first was Lattest, your typical hipster coffee joint. You can tell how hipster a place is by how hard they slam the milk frother thing when they make the coffee. This one definitely had a lot of slamming going on. The coffee was just ok, but it was a nice change of vibe from all that overwhelming kawaiiness we just experienced. It was like being back in an environment I could understand.

Just across the street was another cafe/bakery place that we just had to try. I’m not sure if the name of the shop was Bread & Espresso or if they were advertising the items on sale but it’s just opposite Lattest cafe, you can’t miss it.

It was a small place and we had to queue 30 minutes to get in. We’re divided on whether the wait was worth it. The coffee was disappointing but the french toast was amazeballs.

Ginza

Ginza isn’t particularly interesting. You’ll get the huge malls, the designer boutiques and not much else, but to make up for it, the food is exceptional. There are a whole bunch of Michelin Star restaurants clustered in Ginza so we figured we’d have lunch at one of them. The one we chose was Sankame.

Sankame is a tiny restaurant (just 4 tables) that serves traditional Japanese food, sort of like what you get if you visit a Japanese relative at their home, except this is made by a very good chef. For about $25 per person, we had a set of appetiser, sashimi, grilled fish, rice, soup and dessert. Not fancy but homely and delicious, just the way I like it.

For desserts at Ginza, we went to Henri Charpentier, a beautiful place with beautiful cakes. The decor was gorgeous and we had as much fun enjoying the ambience as we did with the desserts.

Shibuya

Our final stop in Tokyo city was Shibuya, where you’ll find the madhouse known as the Shibuya Crossing. It’s a massive intersection where hordes of people are crossing the street every couple of minutes. We crossed it up and down in various directions just for kicks; it was strangely therapeutic to be part of that ebb and flow of human traffic.

Shibuya is also the home of Hachiko’s statue. Okay the story of Hachiko is really sweet but the popularity of Hachiko is beyond me. We walked past the statue and people were crowding around trying to touch it so obviously we had to take a photo with Hachiko. But I’m not sure what the fuss is about, maybe it’s a Li’l Sebastian type situation (Parks and Rec reference!) and I’m Ben.

Foodwise, Shibuya has a lot of gems. We had breakfast at Uoriki Kaisen Sushi, where we enjoyed fresh, affordable sushi.

We also had coffee at Streamer Coffee Company (another hipsterish joint with more mediocre coffee), a cheese tart from Pablo (yums!) and ramen at Ichiran Ramen, literally a hole-in-the-wall establisment where we sat in booths and noodles were served via a hole in the wall.

Alright, we made it, phew! I thought it was turning into a food blog halfway through the post but it’s quite impossible to talk about Tokyo without talking about the food because THE FOOD.

So that about wraps up Tokyo city for us. It was a nice easy first half of the trip before the real fun began at Disneyland and Disneysea.

Stay tuned for that!

Tokyo has been good to us and as with all amazing trips, we were sad to leave but we’re back home now and the nicest thing about having a blog is that I get to look at all the photos again and put it all up and relive the best parts a little bit.

It’s absolutely the best way to end a trip.

I suppose we should begin at the beginning. A red eye flight in to Tokyo with a baby? NO NEVER AGAIN. We bought bulkhead row seats with extra legroom (worth every cent!!) and a bassinet so I was hoping there’d be more of this going on.

Sadly, that was short lived. Mostly it was this.

And then this.

And then it was pacing up and down the galley with him like 200,000 times. After what seemed like an eternity of suffering wherein I could no longer feel my limbs, we finally arrived at Narita airport.

“What?? We’re here already? That was fast!” – baby Theo

NO IT WASN’T.

My arm was so numb and trembly I couldn’t even take a photo of Theo without excessive motion blur.

Everyone says cabs are ridiculously expensive in Tokyo (and it is!) so we took the Narita Express train to Shinjuku station and walked the rest of the way to our hotel. While hauling luggages, a stroller, a 6-year-old and a baby (who refuses to sit in the stroller) up and down escalators + staircases. We’re hardcore like that. Okay, it wasn’t that bad – we stayed at the Century Southern Tower Hotel, which was like 3 minutes from the station. It was actually a fab hotel – great location, good size, comfy room, I’d absolutely stay there again.

Shinjuku is bustling. All the time. There are malls everywhere: Takashimaya, Isetan, Lumines, Odakyu, and an 8-storey Tokyu Hands. We spent most of our time there browsing the shops and stopping at various eating places along the way. Speaking of food, the food in Tokyo was incredible.

If I had to sum up Tokyo in a sentence, it’d be SO MUCH GOOD FOOD AND SO LITTLE STOMACH SPACE. It seemed like for most of the trip, we were moving from one food place to another. It’d be SUSHI for breakfast, then DESSERTS!!, then COFFEE!!!, then MORE DESSERTS??!!, then RAMEN!, then YAKITORI, then I’ve lost track of the number of meals I’ve eaten and it’s only 3 in the afternoon.

Also, Japanese are like Singaporeans in that they love to queue up for delicious food. We must have spent hours queuing up for food this trip. Some were so worth it, we were like “ZOMG HOW DOES ANYTHING THAT DELICIOUS EVEN EXIST??” coupled with high-pitched Japanese foodgasm proclamations like those you see on food programs. Other stuff were just ok and some were totally overrated but I guess that’s all part of the fun. And the thing is, after you spend 45 minutes in a queue, it makes you a little crazy so you can’t just order 1 portion of whatever it is you queued up for and walk away. You feel like you need to eat more to make up for all the queuing time so you order extra portions and eat till you can’t breathe or think straight.

The best food we had in Shinjuku was this yakitori stall along Memory Lane.

It’s a tiny street filled with yakitori stalls and the delicious smell of meat on a grill. We settled on a stall with this sign. I guess you can’t go wrong with a sign that says Best Yakitori Restaurant. And an English Menu? Take my money already.

It’s a no nonsense kind of yakitori place run by a super sweet little old Japanese lady. You choose your meat (or vegetables, if you’re into that sort of thing) and she grills it right in front of you. It was delicious.

My two boys were so fascinated by the furious grilling action happening right in front of them.

The shop lady was so sweet, she kept gesturing at Truett to eat his food and when she saw all the meat we were eating, she was horrified and gave us a complimentary plate of spinach. She was like “this is unacceptable, here, just take this vegetable and eat it, you don’t even need to pay for it.” Typically, I’d just pick at one strand of spinach to be polite but she was so motherly and she gestured at it several times so I was good and ate my vegetables.

After that, it was only right to round off the night with desserts from a cafe at Lumines. We had a chocolate cake + tiramisu while Truett polished off a whole berry tart all on his own.

Exhaustion aside, day 1 in Tokyo was turning out to be quite excellent.

Next up, Harajuku and the rest of Tokyo!

We’ve been having an amazing time in Japan and I’ll be posting more about the trip but first, here’s one on doing Tokyo with a baby.

When we first considered the option of bringing a 3-month-old Theo along to Tokyo, it seemed like an insane idea. But the thing you need to know about us is that we have these insane ideas and then we just do them. Sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t and sometimes, right in the middle of doing it, we’re all “WHAT DID WE JUST DO??!!” but then it’s too late and we figure out a way to roll with it.

Thankfully, this is one of those yay, it worked out times. Sort of. So if you ever decide to do Tokyo with a baby, perhaps this might help.

1. Contingency planning. 

Have back ups. And back ups for your back ups. The baby will have a massive blowout kind of diaper situation at the most inopportune times and you will need to be prepared. At any given time, I have a stash of back up baby supplies with me and another set of back ups with the husband.

2. Bring a stroller. 

Navigating the streets of Tokyo and the subway system with a stroller is surprisingly easy. People walk fast and it gets crowded but there are strollers everywhere so we were in good company. We brought along a Peg Perego that’s comfy enough for sleeping, plus it doubles up as a nappy changing station for those emergency situations I was talking about earlier.

3. There are nice baby rooms in malls. Use them. 

We spent most of our time at the touristy places like Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ginza and Harajuku so I can’t speak for the other areas but all these places have big malls and these big malls have great baby room facilities for nappy changes and baby feeding.

4. Breastfeed on the go.

I wasn’t sure if breastfeeding in public would be an issue in Tokyo but turns out, totally not a problem. I fed Theo everywhere in Tokyo – in the middle of Shibuya Crossing while being flanked by 5,000 people; strolling along Takeshita Street in Harajuku; in malls, restaurants and cafes. Whenever we stopped to eat, the baby ate too. So far, nobody has even given me a second look so I’d say it’s gone very well indeed.

5. Finding diapers in Tokyo is harder than it should be.

I thought that Tokyo, being the land of Goon and Merries, would have diapers available everywhere but diapers almost impossible to find here. We spent 2 days combing supermarkets, comvenience stores, drugstores and malls in Shinjuku and nothing… until we got to Odakyu and found 2 packs of Merries diapers hidden in a drawer on the 9th floor. HIDDEN. IN A TINY DRAWER like it’s a super secret prize in a ridiculous treasure hunt.

We asked like 5 people for omutsu until finally, a nice lady brought us to a corner and started digging around in a drawer for it. There were only 2 packs left, both in size S. It’s a tad small for Theo’s fat thighs but it seemed like these were the only 2 packs of diapers left in the whole of Shinjuku so GIVE IT TO ME I’M TAKING IT.

6. Have some serious skills.

There are some skills you need to have before you decide to venture into unfamiliar territory with a baby, such as changing a poopy diaper in tiny confined spaces. We were having desserts at Henri Charpentier when Theo decided to make the big poop. The toilet, while gorgeous, was tiny and didn’t have a changing room. I thought of changing him in the stroller but this wasn’t the sort of place to be seen scraping poop off a baby’s bare bottom. The nearest changing room was 5 minutes away in the rain.

So I did what I had to do while sitting on the toilet seat with the baby propped up on my crossed left leg. That badass move totally deserves some kind of advanced nappy changing award.

7. Relax and have fun.

Even with the most detailed plan, things will sometimes go wrong. Babies will get cranky and fuss and be upset and it’s ok. The first night in Tokyo, we were recovering from a red eye flight and I had already been up for 48 hours. Baby Theo decided he wanted to stay up till 3am to fuss, before sleeping in 45 minute stretches for the rest of the night. But after that terrible, terrible night, he’s been sleeping like a champ, one night for a record 6 hours straight.

***

Traveling with a baby can be challenging but I’m happy to have him here with us. Feeling his sleeping baby weight on my chest as we strolled down the streets of Tokyo exploring new places felt just right.

At just 3 months, this baby already has all the makings of a jetsetter.

We’re heading to Tokyo with Truett and Theo tonight and I’m going to miss this face and this face so much.

It doesn’t get any easier, having to leave kids behind when we travel – but with 4, I’m not even going to pretend like I so much as considered the option of bringing them all along.

This will be Truett’s swan song before he gives up school-skipping privileges and goes to Primary 1 next year so we figured we’ll bring him for a quick getaway to Tokyo Disneyland and Disneysea. Ok maybe it’s me who wants to go to Tokyo Disneyland but he’s going to have a blast too. And baby Theo needs his milk machine(s) so by default, he gets this round.

Truett is really bummed that his BFF/little sister won’t be coming along. “I’ll miss her so much I’m definitely going to cry,” he said while hugging her tight. They’re spending their final hours together being stuck at the hip till we leave. These 2 are so dramatic.

Be back with updates later in the week!