Places I'm Visiting: Tokyo 2025 Day Three

Day three in Tokyo started with a visit to the bank to deal with a bank card renewal that was handled very slowly, which resulted in a very late breakfast. While Japan is often startlingly modern, quick to create and adopt innovation, it can be maddeningly inefficient and slow to abandon outmoded practices; the banks are a perfect example. A visit to the bank here is all too often about waiting while a lot of paper gets pushed around. I left feeling cranky, but my mood was much restored by dim sum at Tim Ho Wan, in Shinjuku. Living near San Francisco, we are never too far from top-notch dim sum but this was every bit as good as any I've ever had near home or Hong Kong even. 

After brunch, I picked up a couple of records at the Shinjuku Disc Union store in the Shinjuku San-chome area and by then it was already time to meet friends for cherry blossom viewing, chugging quietly up the Meguro River, starting near Tennozu Isle and turning around at Taiko-bashi, the famous Edo-period bridge often depicted in Woodblock prints of the era (although because the river becomes shallow near the bridge, we viewed it from a distance). The blossoms were pretty, as they always are. 

Coincidentally, and happily, the boats for the river cruise leave from a pier within walking distance of Pigment, a store I've wanted to visit for several years. It specializes in the raw pigments used in traditional Nihon-ga style painting (but used also in Western oil and acrylic paints). One wall that runs the entire length of the store is lined with jar after jar of powdered pigment in every color imaginable. The pigments include both modern synthetic versions and traditional pigments derived from minerals and other sources imported from all over the world. Another wall shows the various resins, oils, and other binders used to transform raw pigments into paints and inks. Another section of the store displays hundreds of different kinds of brushes, including Japanese hake brushes, brushes for calligraphy, and brushes for Western style painting. The store also has a small selection of ready-made drawing inks, pastels, and paints. I chose 12 small tubes of acrylic paint for use in my collage work. Well worth a visit if you find yourself in Tokyo even if you're not an artist but simply have a curious mind. Pigment is on the first floor of the Harbor One Bldg. at Higishi-Shinagawa 2-5-5.

An izakaya-style meal nearby rounded out the day. Particularly memorable was the bowl of soba noodles I had with a rich, smoky duck-based broth.

Places I'm Visiting: Tokyo 2025

 Back in Tokyo for the first time in about a year, I did little on my first day beyond meeting up with my wife for a stroll up Kagurazaka to La Gratitude, a petite French restaurant run by a friend and her husband, where we had a perfect meal washed down with a tasty bottle of Grenache from the south of France. The label made a point of noting that it was produced without added sulfites. I can't say I noticed a difference because of that, but the wine was good – an exemplary expression of the grape. The more I drink Grenache wines the more I realize that the flavors I enjoy in Southern Rhône wines are as much a function of the grape as they are of the terroir. 

On day two, I got some business out of the way, talking to prospective clients as I go back to being a freelance translator, retiring from full-time work as an in-house translator for a major European bank. We spent the morning in Shin Okubo, in the area around the station, which is known for its sweets shops, Southeast Asian restaurants (including many offering Halal foods for muslim customers from countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal, and India) and also for "love hotels" – hotels with rooms for discreet meetings available by the hour. We found a satisfying lunch at a popular Korean restaurant called Tejeonde that sported a confusing menu – a perfect example of the Japanese tendency to cram as much text and as many pictures as possible into the available space. Say what you will about the Japanese aesthetic sense, but graphic design is not a strength here. The food was good if not the presentation of the choices. 

Along the way, I spotted a vending machine that sells nothing but sweet crepes. There's virtually nothing you can't find in a vending machine in Japan. Later, walking around Shinjuku, we tunneled through Omoide Yokocho, a narrow alley lined with tiny shops and restaurants. 

In the evening, we joined some old friends for a ride up and down the Sumida River on a yakatabune (a long, low, covered boat that  serves food and drink on river excursions, a tradition that goes back hundreds of years). The cherry blossoms visible along the river are near full bloom. Rain today and yesterday has held them back, but clear, warm weather tomorrow is expected to bring out a flush of new flowers. I'm looking forward to seeing the flowers tomorrow and to visiting some of the record stores in Shinjuku. 

The boat departed from Shinagawa. Shinagawa is an area of the city I didn't frequent when I lived in Tokyo, but it was never a very fashionable district and it always gave the impression of having been left behind, but since I last was there it has been completely redeveloped – like so much of Tokyo. Today, there's hardly an old building to be seen.