Japan 2023

February 13th, 2023

Our first morn­ing in Tokyo. We first slept in. I was death­ly tired after the long trip and haven’t slept so deeply in a long time - until I was wok­en up at 6:30 a.m. by my alarm clock, which I had left on by mis­take. I fell asleep fine after that, though.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the weath­er was not good on our first morn­ing in Tokyo, it was rain­ing and the rain would last the whole day. Luise observed the sur­round­ings from our win­dow. Even the Tokyo Skytree could not be seen in the fog:

We first went to the neigh­bor­hood to buy some food for our break­fast. At break­fast we then planned the rest of the day.

Due to the rainy weath­er, only indoor activ­i­ties came into con­sid­er­a­tion. We decid­ed to vis­it the “Team­Lab Plan­ets” exhi­bi­tion, which Luise had not yet vis­it­ed either. It is an “expe­ri­ence for all sens­es” with exten­sive video and sound instal­la­tions. You walk through sev­er­al mir­rored rooms with dif­fer­ent instal­la­tions. In parts, you walk bare­foot through water­scapes. It’s hard to describe, but it was a great experience.

On the way back from the exhi­bi­tion it was already dark. Here is a first pic­ture of the Tokyo sky­line at night.

After­wards, we want­ed to go to Shibuya to the famous cross­walk and drink a cof­fee and take a few pho­tos at the Star­bucks on the sec­ond floor. We went by sub­way to there. Arriv­ing at the sub­way, Simone and Luise slumped down tired­ly - I had to stand.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there was just a large con­struc­tion site at the busy Shibuya inter­sec­tion. The spe­cial fea­ture of the large inter­sec­tion is that all pedes­tri­an lights turn green at the same time here. Then crowds of peo­ple cross the wide square from all direc­tions. Up to 15,000 peo­ple cross it every hour. We were lucky and got a win­dow seat in the Star­bucks on the sec­ond floor. There we have observed the hus­tle and bus­tle exten­sive­ly and made many pho­tos, here is one of them:

Because of the large con­struc­tion site oppo­site, the per­spec­tive through the win­dow was not great. In addi­tion, the inte­ri­or lights were reflect­ed in the pane, so that the over­all pho­to­graph­ic result was unsat­is­fac­to­ry. We there­fore decid­ed to try our luck on the oth­er side of the inter­sec­tion. How­ev­er, this also turned out to be very dif­fi­cult, as it rained in one go.

Han­dling the cam­era and umbrel­la at the same time was dif­fi­cult. And then the front lens of my 17mm TS/E lens is pro­trud­ing as well and should not get wet. Nev­er­the­less, I man­aged a nice photo:

The rainy mood with the many umbrel­las makes the pic­ture spe­cial. But it would be nice also in good weath­er. Con­clu­sion: We will come again.

After­wards we strolled a bit through Shibuya. Luise then searched the Inter­net for an Okonomiya­ki restau­rant for us. We found it in a side street on the 5th and 6th floor. We would nev­er have found our way there on our own, and only locals were in the restau­rant. It’s great when you have a knowl­edge­able and lin­guis­ti­cal­ly skilled guide with you!

Okonomiya­ki is Japan­ese event cook­ing. Here the ingre­di­ents were brought indi­vid­u­al­ly, we could then mix them at the table and cook them on the tep­pan grill plate embed­ded in the table. Luise pre­pared every­thing extreme­ly pro­fes­sion­al­ly for us, it was very tasty.

Triv­ia: Okonomiya­ki (jap. お好み焼き) is a Japan­ese dish. Okono­mi means “taste”, ” lik­ing” in the sense of “what you want”; yaki means “fried” or “grilled”. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, okonomiya­ki is fried at the table on a hot iron plate (Jap. tep­pan) with the help of a spat­u­la. The basic ingre­di­ents are water, cab­bage, flour, egg and dashi, with oth­er ingre­di­ents added as desired; they vary depend­ing on the region of Japan. Suit­able ingre­di­ents include all types of meat and fish, veg­eta­bles, mochi or cheese. You mix the ingre­di­ents in a bowl and emp­ty it onto the hot, greased tep­pan, where the pat­ty is cooked through. Okonomiya­ki have approx­i­mate­ly the shape of an egg cake. It is fla­vored with a spe­cial okonomiya­ki sauce and kat­suobushi (dried and crushed tuna). Due to the method of prepa­ra­tion and the vari­able ingre­di­ents, the dish is also called Japan­ese piz­za, how­ev­er, the dish oth­er­wise has no resem­blance to pizza.