Day 20 : Chiyoda, Marunouchi & Yurakucho

I overslept all of my alarms and woke up at 1 PM. I had gone to bed around 6AM so I guess that was still only 7 hours of sleep so I probably should have expected to oversleep at least every once in a while. Nonetheless, I still had to figure out what I wanted to do for the day. I didn't have any coherent plans yet, especially for a Saturday where people would be out and about all day. I ended up looking at all my bookmarks in for places I want to visit in Tokyo and ended up just picking a few of them that were relatively close to each other. This ended up working out pretty well, although my last bookmark was just a shopping mall so I don't even know why I marked it? It looked pretty high fashion though so I was too intimidated to look for anime stuff so maybe I marked it for a pop-up or something.

By the time I got my plans together and was ready to head out, it was around 3PM. I decided to go to the Imperial Palace, but not the palace proper. Instead, I chose to visit the The East Gardens of the Imperial Palace. Mainly, because the actual palace closes at like 3PM so it was actually already closed by the time I left. I'm not so interested in the palace itself for it to matter that much to me, so I thought the gardens would be nice.

One interesting thing was that this was the first place I've visited so far in Japan that needed a bag check to get in. Not an issue at all but I was surprised since it's a park. It's not like you'll run into the Emperor. That's not possible, is it??? Another interesting thing is that I think this was the first place I've been in Tokyo where there were more foreigners than Japanese people, which was surprising to me. I don't know if that's unusual or not for the gardens though.

At least the view was nice while I waited.

Some of the buildings that remain in the gardens are a few guardhouses, like the "Doshin Bansho Guardhouse". Later in the garden there is another guardhouse you can enter that overlooks another area to get a sense of what being a guard might have been like.

There was also a pretty cool looking guard tower called the "Fujimi-yagura Guard Keep". Definitely not something you are allowed to enter though.

The gardens were not super busy, and less so the further you went from the entrance gates. There were people lounging around in the open areas though.

In the actual garden portion, I really liked the tea house which is apparently called the "Suwa no Chaya" which means "Teahouse of Suwa" (Suwa is a Shinto deity).

I don't know anything about plants but it was pretty nice. There were some koi in the ponds but I couldn't get a good photo of them. There was also a really popular waterfall that basically had a line to take pictures! I opted not to but there is the option if you ever go.

One nice thing that happened was that an older Japanese gentleman approached me and asked if I could read the plaque. Part of it was in English and the names were in basic kana so I could read that part but he told me a little about each of the flowers mentioned on the plaque and their other names (sorry dude, I already forgot). He also chatted a bit and asked where I was from, how long I was staying, etc.

Either he was a government plant trying to figure out if I was planning to overstay my visa or he was just a really nice dude. I am going to guess the latter though since right after I thanked him and parted ways, he was onto helping the next unsuspecting foreigner. I usually don't really condone taking photos of individuals but I had to make an exception this time! Luckily he's wearing a mask so you would be able to identify him if you see him in public!

By the time I finished walking through the gardens, it was already almost 5 PM. I couldn't believe that I had almost stayed until the park closed. Definitely give it a couple hours if you decide to pay the ¥0 entrance fee and make a visit.

Unfortunately, my next stop would disturb any calm aura I had gained. That's because I was heading to Tokyo Station, one of the most busy stations in Japan (and busiest by number of trains). More importantly though, it's one of the stations that has a bad reputation when it comes to getting lost inside. Luckily though, this time I didn't come to actually take a train but do some shopping. I figured there was an upper limit to how lost I could get as long I didn't enter any ticketing gates.

My destination was Tokyo Character Street, a shopping street (hall?) in the basement of the station that has a ton of stores related to specific characters or fandoms. I think everything here would be wildly popular, but not necessarily to audiences that I am not a part of. There was everything from the staples Pokemon and Shonen Jump to cute, potentially lesser known properties like Rilakkuma and mofusand. mofusand's mascot cat is particularly cute with the shark outfit. It was really busy so I felt too self conscious to take any pictures here. I wouldn't really recommend visiting unless you are going to be in the station already, it's really crowded and I think the prices are marked up from the same stores in other locations across the city (although I could be wrong).

After leaving the station, I was approached by someone asking if I could help them for a sec. I was immediately on guard since in the US this would definitely be a scam. She asked to use my phone and I mentioned I didn't have Japanese SIM card but she just wanted to call someone on Instagram because her phone was dead. I was pretty sure I could outrun her if she just ran off with my phone so I let her use it. Unfortunately, she couldn't get ahold of her friend but I did get confirmation later that they managed to meet up.

But since she lost her wallet at the station and also had her phone die on her when she went to look for it, I wonder if she's a bit of an airhead? Just kidding, they seemed nice and afterward mentioned if I needed any help while I was in Tokyo to reach out since they've been living here for a while. Pretty cool.

My next stop was a fancy mall called KITTE Marunouchi, pictured below. It was actually all girls clothes and nothing interesting at all. The interior looked nice though! At this point, Tokyo got really windy and I felt bad because some receipts that had been in my shopping bags flew out into the street. Thanks to Mother Nature, I had become a litterer, a criminal. Since I felt running out into traffic would be a bad option, I just hoped that the Japanese criminal system would forgive me.

Around this time, the sun was beginning to set and I still had ground to cover.

As such, I took one last look at the red brick of the Marunouchi Station Building (part of Tokyo Station now) surrounded by the soulless corporate high-rises that surround it.

My next stop was actually just the Yurakucho Marui mall, so I was surprised to find that there were food trucks and quite a crowd at the Tokyo International Forum convention center. I didn't know at the time but I think it was the aftermath (?) of a classical music festival called "La Folle Journée Tokyo 2023". It would explain the vendor selection, which was heavy on wine. Anyway, I had wanted to get some food because I was kind of hungry but ended up just getting a darn good chocolate rum banana crepe.

After that, I walked the remainder of the way to the mall. At which point I realized I didn't know why I had it bookmarked. I felt that I should eat out once today (rather than going to the convenience store) and saw that there was a Sushiro restaurant very close by. I had been wanting to have Sushiro because it has a lot of qualities I would want in a Sushi restaurant

• Fresh sushi, made to order
• No interaction with the chef to embarrass myself
• Can sit down and order in English without having to worry about looking like a glutton to the waiter since it's automated delivery via conveyor belt

At Sushiro, you interact with a kiosk when you enter to get put on the wait-list and then when your number is called, you seat yourself at the table or counter spot mentioned. Perfect! I had actually installed the Japanese Sushiro app and got in line ahead of time before I walked over since the wait was like 45 minutes or so. But I misunderstood what the app was saying even with the help of Google Translate and didn't realize I still needed to check in with the kiosk after I was physically present. After waiting the full 45 and realizing the estimated time was staying at 5 minutes for the last 15 minutes, I checked the kiosk and sure enough I was seated right away. So keep that in mind if for some reason you also decide to download the Sushiro app.

After sitting down, I was just able to get right into ordering. I ended up eating like 20 pieces of sushi for around $20 and it was really good. I think my single favorite piece of fish I had was grilled chutoro (tuna), the bottom middle one in the photo below.

Note that this is actually a special set that does not come on the conveyor belt. The ones from the conveyor are round and color coded based on price tier (yellow then red then black). I only had the lower two tiers (other than my special set), but they weren't lower tier fish. I had all of the main things, tuna, salmon, shrimp, eel, and even egg (tamagoyaki is actually so good, basically a dessert). But in addition, there were some combinations I hadn't even realized would be good. For example, one of the more eye-catching items on the Sushiro menu (for me at least) was "Grilled Salmon & Mozzarella".

It was actually really good! I for sure recommend trying it.

When you're done attacking the fish and using all of the kitchen's plates, you just use the tablet to close out your order and then take the ticket you received at the start to a self-checkout machine. Very streamlined and nice!

4 yellow plates, 5 red plates, and 1 ¥1210 platter. Each small plate has either 1 or 2 pieces of Sushi so you can do the math!

I left full and satisfied with my decision, even if I ended up waiting a bit longer than I needed to.