Tokyo – Park Hyatt Tokyo
We arrived on the airport limousine to the PHT our bags were offloaded and we were greeted by staff and shown upstairs to check in. At the check in I was presented with my SIM card that I purchased from b-mobile as well as an envelope containing our reservations for dinner, with maps and directions in Japanese.
I truly expected a lot from this hotel and it did not fail to impress. Before I had been researching restaurants to try while I was in Tokyo, I am a bit and I hate to use this word a ‘foodie’ but more to the point I wanted to try things I wouldn’t be able to or easily found in the US. Much to my wives dismay and my credit card companies joy I decided to look at the Michelin guide to Tokyo. I watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi and had wanted to go there, however after looking online about the possible need of a Japanese speaker and his slight disdain for non-native speakers I decided to try Sushi Mizutani instead. For my next wallet busting decision I wanted to try Fugu, why you ask? Because it’s more a bucket list food for me, and also it would make for an interesting story if I really did die by eating it even though I knew I wouldn’t. I researched some and settled on Usukifugu Yamadaya, blowing through close to 1200USD for two dinners in Tokyo would have to be a hard sell for me, but at least we were staying on points and using miles to fly.
It was about a month prior to our departure and I composed an email to the concierge team at the Hyatt and then awoke the next morning to confirmed reservations. Considering these were both 3 star Michelin restaurants and from what I could read very hard reservations I was fairly impressed with the ease of everything. Fast forward now a week and my wife got wind of the Fugu and was put off by the idea, we emailed the concierge again to see if they had anything else my wife could have and if not could she join me as she couldn’t see spending 300USD on a meal she wouldn’t eat. Sadly they responded with a negative, so being the loving person I am I decided that I would pass on the fugu and attempt to find a plan b. Luckily I had some backups in mind and decided to try Ryugin. I also planned for the last night to keep things on the ‘cheap’ (Tokyo joke) and booked Shin Hinomoto a.k.a Andy’s. Another emailed placed and reservations were again made and confirmed.
You’re probably thinking, concierges making reservations should be easy, well sometimes yes, but again these are popular and hard to get. On top of that they were responded to in the same day, often within a few hours.
Back on topic and check-in, we were shown our room which we were using points for thanks to our wedding at the Hyatt Key West two years ago we still had points burning a hole in our respective accounts. Our room was the standard park king room which was well appointed. We dropped off the bags and while I figured out how to get the SIM card to work in my phone my wife changed some money and got to choose dinner for the night. Once I got the SIM to work I felt confident in my manly skills in navigation and headed to the nearest family mart for some provisions. Once the family mart was located, provisions were had and we walked back to the hotel and dropped them off.
What I haven’t explained yet or you haven’t figured it out I am a bit of a xxl man or the typical American, so when I go away I like to buy the weird local chips and or sodas hence the need to go to Family Mart. They let me down in the soda department, but they delivered in the snack area.
Chips – various flavors:
Melon Fanta is by far the best soda in the world:
After relaxing and snacking for a bit we went to local Izakaya, we were given the English menu with not that many options, ordered the chef taster and some beers and soon after many grilled chicken parts started showing up, more beers were ordered and before I knew it 200USD was gone. Dinner was good no complaints from me, my wife complained a bit about the money aspect, but eh I had that “I’m on vacation and I don’t care attitude”. We walked by the hotel and settled in for the evening.
View in the morning:
We had planned on going to Bills in Omotesando, and walk through Harajuku and then head over to Mejii Shrine and then we’ll see where the day took us. Once we figured out how to get a suica card we were off to find Bills and that was a joke, we showed up at 10am and were told to come back at 4pm for breakfast. There may have been a lost in translation moment there but there was a starbucks upstairs and I spotted some crepes back in Harajuku that looked good and just like that plan B was hatched. We finished up our crepes and headed over to Mejii Shrine -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/josh_ma...7633158173561/
Entrance:
After the stroll we took our time getting back to the hotel and cleaned ourselves up for dinner at Ryugin.
Menu and Utensils:
You can view the set here -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/josh_ma...7633162075574/
I knew nothing of the menu as it changes frequently and I was pleasantly surprised when fugu showed up during our sashimi course. If you end up in Tokyo and are looking for an excellent restaurant this is your spot.
The following two days were taken up by heading up to Ueno for Cherry Blossoms, a cruise up to Asakusa, seeing the Sensō-ji Temple, walking around Ginza and Shibuya.
Sakura Season:
You can view the rest of the set here -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/josh_ma...7633162449665/
We had two dinners left, one at Sushi Mizutani and one at Andy’s.
Sushi Mizutani:
I had a small idea of what to expect here and it lived up to the expectations. Sushi would be world class, watching Mizutani-san work and create each piece by hand in front of you is something to see, HOWEVER service wasn’t great. I understand why and I do not blame anyone other than myself for it. From what I have read is that most of the restaurants like this cater to mostly Japanese speaking clientele, and my wife and I not knowing any Japanese except the ‘Korewa nandesu Ka?’ and I felt foolish even attempting to mutter that. I sat stoic watching Mizutani-san work and eating anything he put in front of me without question. Dinner went smoothly and it was over with very little interaction with anyone outside of my wife. Overall excellent sushi, worth the price, I say yes, my better half disagrees.
On our last night in Tokyo we were off to something considerably more casual than the previous nights. We were to dine at Shin Hinomoto or Andy’s as it’s owned by a chap named well…Andy. I let the misses order whatever she wanted for dinner and we would share, I made one single request for Shirako Soup (cod sperm). My wife I assume did not notice that I ordered that, and I hope people are still reading this, if so put the drink down. A few minutes passed, beers were given then tempura showed up and my soup was on the table.
Shirako Soup
My wife looked inquisitively at it. I tried it first and I enjoyed it so I told her to try some and the usual ‘what is this?’ had been blurted out and I declined to answer and told her to try it, well she did and she enjoyed it up until the point when I explained to her what it was.
Post soup:
Taking a bit from Eightblack, there was a lot of arm waving and cursing, threats of divorce flew around and I that I might need to find a pod to sleep in for the night. She dropped her case after dinner when we took a wrong turn and stumbled upon a krispy kreme and me being who I am bought all the odd flavors they had left. We returned the hotel and packed up for our flight down to Bangkok and went to bed as the airport bus would be there to pick us up at 7am. Stay tuned to the next portion as I hope you’re enjoying this.