Day 4: Tsukiji, Ginza and Tokyo Dome City

Today I decided to do another walk from Tokyo Walks: See the City Like A Local. I chose "Walk 5: Tsukiji, Ginza, Chiyoda & Tokyo Dome City" because I had remembered liking Ginza last time I was in Tokyo and because I didn't have any better plans already.

In order to facilitate ease of actually going to each destination in order (to reduce distance I would need to walk), I made a small travel helper Android app that I loaded with all of the destinations I wanted to visit. When I select a destination, it uses Google's cross-platform Maps URLs to launch Google Maps straight to the directions screen. It takes a bit of upfront effort to get the address for each place but saves time when I am actually walking around and makes it less stressful to figure out what I am doing.

Here's a video example of using the app (click to play since autoplay wastes data lol):

After I loaded up my schedule, I took the train towards Tsukiji. My first stop of the day way as Italy Park, a small park with some tasteful nude statues. The area was pretty cool around here and I thought that the park contrasted well with the Shinkansen (bullet train) line above it.

I then walked to Hamarikyu Gardens, which is adjacent to Italy Park but separated by a highway, so you have to walk a bit to get to the crosswalk. It's a paid park, but the entrance fee is cheap at only ¥300. This park is pretty big and it was nice to see some people were walking around in Kimonos.

A kind of running theme for today was seeing nature juxtaposed against the backdrop of the Tokyo skyline. It does look really cool though.

One of the more interesting things at the park was a couple of intact Kamoba (I think that's what they are called), which were structures used to hunt waterfowl in the past (with the help of falcons!). This helpful diagram was provided:

After exploring the park for a while longer, I headed back to the Tsukiji Outer Market. In the past, the Tsukiji Market had been primarily known for the Inner Market, where auctions and the majority of the shops were located. Now, that has all been moved to the Toyosu Market, leaving the only the Outer Market still intact.

I arrived well after regular lunch time, but the outer market was still fairly busy. I will say that the shops seemed rather pricey and I think it may be a tourist trap now, since the majority of the perusers appeared to be foreigners. That being said, I still wanted to try having some food from the market so I stopped into a Chirashi shop and had ordered a Tuna bowl with a side of Salmon.

The fish was good and I liked the tuna on the left the most out of the 3 I tried there. I had forgotten to take a picture of the menu so I can't remember what cuts of tuna they were. The tamagoyaki (egg) was also good and I hadn't been sure if I should eat the leafy garnish or not so I ate that too. It was actually a bit spicy (?) so I was worried I wasn't supposed to eat it but apparently it's just a shiso (AKA Japanese basil) leaf and you are actually supposed to eat it. TIL!

After thanking the staff and getting "nihongo jouzu"-ed I left the market and headed for a more modern market experience - Ginza.

On the way to Ginza, I stopped into a Buddhist temple that way really big and really nice. It smelled good because of the burning incense and there were some priests (maybe) sweeping up the area in their full priest (maybe) garb.

From here, I was determined to make it to Ginza or at least only stop for a quick pastry or two, but actually got stopped by a metropolitan government worker, which shocked me. I definitely would not have expected getting called out to by a Japanese person in Tokyo in English as I walked by. Weird.

She wanted me to take a survey about some digital signage they have in Tokyo, which are sort of like the digital directories they have in malls but for the entire city and has more features like an events directory, etc. She walked me through the features and asked if I would use it, and why I hadn't before, and if I had any suggestions for how to improve it. She thanked me for my input and gave me a travel guidebook and an ema-shaped eraser as thanks for my hard work. Otsukare!

After I made it to Ginza, I almost immediately wished I hadn't. I had forgotten that I have literally no interest in high fashion so there was basically nothing for me to do LOL It was cool seeing all of the upscale shops and people driving lambos and stuff but definitely not my forte. I guess I could have stopped in Louis Vuitton or Hermes and got something to jump-start my fashion career, but since I was just wearing a t-shirt and Nikes they probably wouldn't have even let me in!

I did end up going into Ginza 6, a "luxury shopping complex" that has a pretty nice interior

It also has a rooftop garden that I had only known about since I had been there before the first time I was in Tokyo, almost 5 years ago.

The garden is a nice place to relax and has a small shrine on one corner and a pretty decent view of the city all around. I wouldn't say the views are spectacular though - Tokyo Tower is largely blocked by taller towers separating them and Tokyo Skytree is a bit too far away to be mega-cool. The rooftop is on level 13 or 14 so it's not so much taller than the surrounding city.

After I left Ginza, I made a quick stop to visit Godzilla.

After a quick greeting, I walked through Hibiya Park, which was nice and lively, on my way to the Imperial Palace. Stepping onto the palace grounds was really weird because the scale of everything changes so drastically. The palace grounds are really wide open, which is strange after walking through a crowded building-filled area like Ginza. Another juxtaposition.

It was a little hard to capture but the structures that were on the grounds were huge. The stone walls for example, felt really imposing. I began to wonder if the emperor really needed such a big residence in middle of the most populated city in the world (citation needed). I am pretty sure the emperor still lives there at least, but I think that the imperial grounds are an important part of history for the Japanese people so I doubt they'd want to fill it in with a bunch of buildings anyway.

Unfortunately, like yesterday, I had an issue with the public-accessible areas being closed due to it being after 5 PM by the time I arrived. One thing I am noticing in Tokyo is that attraction-type places such as gated parks, museums, the palace, etc., all close at 5 PM. I'll need to start to plan a bit better and look more closely at hours of operation going forward!

By this time, I was actually getting super tired and still had to complete the longest stretch of walking for the day, without even getting the respite of visiting the Palace or other things I had planned to do in the area that ended up being closed as well (National Museum of Modern Art, the Science Museum). On the bright side, not walking to the museums did cut the length of my walk down a bit!

I slogged my way to Tokyo Dome City, an entertainment complex that has lots of shops, a baseball stadium, and even a ferris wheel and roller coaster! Maybe even more surprisingly, it has a Taco Bell.

I was really tired but determined to not get stuck on a train in rush hour, so I dutifully browsed every shop hoping to make it to around 7 PM. I thought about grabbing dinner but was still so full from my late lunch that I couldn't stand the thought. I only needed to make it another hour.

I could not make it another hour.

Shamefully, I made my way to the station and sardined myself onto a train and made it back to the apartment, laid down and cooled off for a bit.

After a bit, I got hungry enough to get over myself and head back out into the world in search of sustinence. Too embarrassed to go into the convenience store for the second time in a day, I decided to visit an Indian place nearby that has an unusually high rating on Google Maps (most things in Japan, in my anecdotal experience, are not rated very highly), Kumar Dhaba. I think it's really new because the reviews only go back two months and some of the reviews have a "get in before it's popular" mentality.

This was actually a very good experience! There was only one other patron at the time and two people working in the kitchen - it's the type of shop where there are mostly only counter seats looking into the kitchen area. The food itself was really good and I liked to see my naan get made right in front of me. The shopkeepers were very friendly and one actually knew English really well - definitely better than my Japanese. He apparently was born in the states but moved to Japan when he was very young, which I thought was interesting. The other patron also joined in and we talked about various stuff and they seemed pretty impressed that I was working US hours because I had mentioned that i was heading to work afterwards (it was around 8 or 9 PM local time). They were also pretty good at English which I was a bit surprised at but it was a welcome surprise for sure!

I didn't take any pictures there but it looked exactly like it did on their Instagram, although I only got the Saag Paneer. I would 100% recommend this place if you ever end up in the area, the food is good (I can't vouch for authenticity though), and the atmosphere was also really nice. I will probably go back at least once before I head back to the US!