A Friday in Tokyo

Very conveniently Henrik had some meetings in Tokyo Friday morning, leaving us no excuse for not celebrating Barbaras birthday with a Tokyo getaway.
We have been to Tokyo briefly during our pre-visit but due to its 12 million people, these to be found in many curious categories, there is so much to see here – with out even looking at the sight and museum lists.
Tokyo can seem as quite a big mouthful, especially for someone who should be wearing glasses but isn’t, who could get lost in Copenhagen after having lived there for 10 years and who easily get distracted by fun little details. It took Barbara less than 15 minutes to get lost…in the rain…. And less than 5 minutes more to find a Starbucks, where she thought she could get a grip of the situation.
From there, she pretty fast found her way to the Ginza area, which is the glitzy glamorous shopping district of Tokyo and where you find the Worlds top designers represented. But to find a specific shop in Ginza was more of a challenge.
Looking at the map, looking in the guidebook, trying to find landmarks, readable signs. All while it was raining. No success.
Eventually a helpful man, Mr. Makoto came to her rescue. He invited her for a cup of coffee and a sandwich at a nearby coffee place, showed her where to buy a cheap umbrella and walked her all the way to the lost shop. If that is not sign of the Japanese’s kindness. What is?

Later we met up in the local Illums. We stocked up on our Danish cutlery that have been taken of the Danish market and went to the Shibuya area. Shibuya has its contrasts. One part of it is the embassy neighbourhood filled with French restaurants etc. Another part of it is the hip youngsters paradise. The energy is bustling with the centre being a huge crossroad, where thousands of people cross every few minutes with their super cool hair, high heel boots, glitzy mobiles, trendy bags, miniskirts, funky suits and well dressed dogs. All the buildings are plastered with huge plasma screens, and the neighbourhood counts several Karaoke palaces, noisy Pachinko places, mobile phones sale stores, gothic jewels and clothes stores, huge music shops and endless many cafes, bars and restaurants.
Whenever we went for a stroll there, we completely lost our breath and stopped talking to each other. The environment had us enchanted.

We found a hotel, and went restaurant hunting. As you might have noticed earlier, finding a restaurant and figure out how to order can be quite a challenge.
Somehow we ended up at a really cool place and somehow we managed to let the waiter know, that he could decide what we should eat. He brought us Teriyaki Chicken, Eggs and Daikon (Japanese radish) boiled in some sort of black thing and he brought us beer and Sake.
Normally you get a small cup, or as we have tried in Denmark and Brazil, we get a square cup made of lacquer ware and you know you should drink of it. This time the waiter first put a lacquer ware cup on the table. Then he put a glass inside it. He poured in the Sake in the glass, eventually it worked as a fountain and filled up the lacquer ware as well.
Two glasses in one. Had never seen that one before!

We ended the nice evening at the 40th. floor of the Cerulean Tower. We had a couple of cocktails and a snack (turned out to be little dried whole fish) while staring out the huge windows giving a perfect night view over Tokyo’s endless skyline.