Japan — Part 1 (Where to stay and what to eat)

Yoongfook

I recently travelled with my girlfriend to Tokyo, Japan for 9 days. It was the most amazing and eye-opening trip ever. Here’s a quick summary of where to stay, what to eat, where to go, and the Japanese culture.

Where to stay

Types of accommodation

We stayed at an AirBnB apartment for 7 nights and hotel rooms for the final 2 nights during our trip. There was enough amenities at both places to experience how it feels living in Japan.

There were heated toilet seats with electric cleaning spray, bath scrubbing towels and deep Japanese tub to soak after scrubbing.

At the AirBnB, we had to abide by Japanese ‘house rules’ like taking off your shoes at the entrance and also not to be too noisy to not bother your neighbours.

Apart from AirBnB or hotels, you can choose to stay at a ‘Ryokan’ which is a traditional Japanese inn where you sleep on a Tatami and they serve you a traditional Japanese Kaiseki meal. Oddly, the traditional Ryokan always ends up more expensive (~$150 pp) than staying a hotel ($~130pp) or an AirBnB apartment ($80-100 pp)

Areas to stay

We chose to stay within walking distance from the center of Shinjuku. This makes it easy for us to hang out late in the city at night visiting bars and ‘Izakayas’ and have a nice stroll home afterwards.

Accommodation within city areas can be quite expensive so you might choose to stay in one of the outer suburbs (Shimokitazawa or Koenji are our favourite hipster neighbourhoods) to save costs and take the train into the city. It is really easy to take the train in Japan with signs in english, helpful attendants, and also fast and cheap ($2 per trip). Google maps public transport is also fully supported so you can just type your destination into Google maps and it will show you all your transport options

What to eat

Food in Tokyo is insanely great. I had some of the best meals of my life. It doesn’t have to be expensive too. I am proud to announce that we scored a total number of Zero Michelin stars during our whole trip, even when Tokyo has the highest number of Michelin starred restaurant in the world (226 stars). We researched the best-rated restaurant in each category of food by locals and came up with this list of cheap-eats and tried them all!

Tonkatsu (Breaded deep-fried pork cutlet)

We tried a couple of different tonkatsu and curry tonkatsu places in town and the best by far had to be Maisen Tonkatsu in Harajuku. On our first visit we had the Kurobuta (Black pig ~$35) and on the second visit we had the normal curry tonkatsu ($15).

To be honest, unless you are a tonkatsu fanatic, they both taste pretty similar. The secret lies within the crust/breadcrumbs. They manage to perfect the crumbs and the ‘crush’ you get when biting into the tonkatsu is heavenly. They also have the best homemade sauce to go with it. To me, it tastes kind of like a thickened version of Coca cola.

If you order the $35 dollar set, you will get a Yuzu sherbet (ice cream) after you finish your meal. If you are ordering a set that does not include the ice cream, I highly recommend ordering it ($1.50) as it is the perfect way to finish your meal — not too sweet or overpowering, just refreshing.

2. Sushi

Before this trip, I had doubts on how much better sushi can get. After all, it is just a piece of raw fish with a ball of rice. Boy, was I wrong. The secret of sushi lies within the rice. In Japan (if you go to the right places) the chef makes and serves your sushi piece-by-piece, right in front of you. The rice is still warm when it reaches your mouth, given you consume it within seconds of being handed the piece of sushi.

It will be the most amazing sushi in your life. It spoils the idea of having ‘sushi’ outside of Japan, forever. The combination of still-warm rice (human body temperature), freshly selected fish from Tsukiji fish market is just heavenly.

At Tsukiji fish market (where all the fish in Tokyo come from) We did not queue for the insane 3 hours needed to have a 15 minute lunch at the popular Sushi Dai. However, we queued for a mere 15 minutes for a sushi bar right beside it called Okame. Speaking with some of the locals here, they said that Okame used to be really popular before Sushi Dai got its Tripadvisor/Social media fanbase. To be honest, I do not think queueing 5 hours for 10 pieces of sushi is really worth it and Okame is just as good. Order the chef’s recommendation of seasonal fish (Omakase) with additional serves of ootoro and ikura (salmon roe).

If you are not heading to Tsukiji market near Ginza, the next best thing would be to order sushi one piece at a time at a standing sushi bar in the city. Our favourite was Uogashi Nihon-Ichi. They have branches everywhere but we went to the Shinjuku branch twice.

As I have mentioned, you have to order the sushi piece by piece. As the chef hands you the 2 pieces after ordering, pick it up and eat it within a few seconds. Once your done eating, order the next piece and repeat. Here’s my favourite progression:

Maguro (lean tuna) > Chu-toro (medium fatty tuna) > Oo-toro (fatty tuna) > Saba (Mackerel) > Hamachi (Amberjack) > Hotate (Scallop) > Negi toro (tuna +spring onion hand roll) > Ootoro > Negi toro

3. Ramen

We tried a lot of ramen — from neighbourhood $5 ones frequented by locals to really rich fishy broth tsukemen at Fu-unji. Our favourite was a from a restaurant that have now also opened a branch in Hong Kong — Ichiran Ramen.

They only have one item on the menu — classic Tonkotsu ramen from the 60s with their own spoonful of chilli sauce.

Our advice is to order the full spoon of chilli and the noodles firm. It will be the best bowl of ramen you will ever have.

4. Tempura

We travelled to a small suburb Koenji to hunt down more thrift shops and vintage goods. Koenji is a really local suburb and most of the menus are in Japanese and the people here do not really speak english. It gives you a real feeling of what a local Japanese neighbourhood feels like. In this suburb, we found the best tempura so far.

‘Tensuke’ in Koenji is run by a really friendly owner who speaks good english and chinese. He seats around 8–10 person at a time and serves your tempura piece by piece onto your tasting plate. With all the food prepared right in front of your eyes and the performance, it will be the best tempura you will have ever eaten.

Order the chef’s recommendation (Omakase) which includes different root vegetables and plants, fish, shrimps. The course ends with a piece of ‘tempura’ egg on top a rice covered with a kind of sweet sauce (I suspect Mirin) which is just just so mind-blowingly good. Definitely worth coming back for more.

5. Yakitori (Char-grilled skewers)

While most Izakaya places in Tokyo serves good yakitori, one of the best place to drop in is at Omoide Yokocho in Shinjuku (Memory Lane/Piss Alley). They grill your skewers on-order, stick by stick. Balanced by the perfect amount of salt, seasoning and marinade, it is the perfect snack to accompany a cup of sake or beer.

Most of the restaurants will have an english menu on request but they can sometimes be quite unfriendly to foreigners as they have limited seating. They also charge a cover fee for foreigners (~$3–6).

If you are not a big fan of internal organs, you need to be careful as some places specializes in ‘horumonyaki’ which the Japanese believes to make one full of stamina. Just make the hand gesture that you are not keen to eat something that comes from within the body 🙂

This post is getting long! I should stop here but in Part 2 of this post i will talk about places to visit and also some useful Japanese phrases we learnt and the Japanese culture.

Japan — Part 1 (Where to stay and what to eat)

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