10am
Woke up
Agenda for the day:
- • Hit up the Itoya in Ginza
- • Lunch wherever
- • Shopping/Walk around Shibuya
- • Fancy dinner for my dad's birthday
Vidur & Varun
Write About Stuff
Japan 2018
Day 2
The Design of Everyday Things
Japan is a goldmine of great design of everyday things. Information is mostly communicated via iconography combined with Japanese text.
At the metro ticket counters.
Elaborate system to indicate which sides the doors are going to open on. Newer carriages just seem to have a digital screen that says "Doors open/don't open on this side"
Ginza
Flagship Itoya
I don't have any pictures of the insides unfortunately, but it's so neat and tidy...and expensive!
Fluffy Custard Pancake
My nose found this place in Shibuya station, on our way to lunch
Lunch - Some ramen place in Shibuya
You buy little tickets at the vending machine outside the door. This system, coupled with the fact that there is no culture of tipping in Japan results in the fact that employees never have to handle money ever. Clean design.
Spicy Miso and Garlic Oil Tonkotusu Ramen - I mean really, that should be all I need to say. It was so damn good. Such a rich broth, tender chashu, perfectly soft boiled egg, and more condiments than you’ll ever need. The condiment jars included pickled radish, shredded vegetables in a super spicy paste, grated ginger, garlic paste, and roughly chopped dried red chilies. To top it off, noodles were free! So as long as you had broth left in your bowl, the noodles would keep coming if your heart (soul?) desired it.
Being in Japan and experiencing ramen in a local tiny shop definitely biases my judgement on the taste of the food. But I want to say I’m being as objective as possible when I rate this pretty inexpensive ramen up there in the top couple that I’ve had including all of the ones back home in San Francisco. The food was served very quickly as restaurants usually only specialize in a couple different broths and have it at the ready for the customer as soon as it’s ordered.
Demolished
Stick of Kobe
Picked up a quick street side skewer of Kobe beef. Of course not the best quality as it was just $12 but was rich and fatty and seared perfectly!
That ramen was incredibly filling...and then was peer-pressured into eating a couple pieces of the kobe skewer by Varun. 10/10 would get peer-pressured again.
Walking around Shibuya
Peach Coke
The only pile of trash we've seen in Tokyo so far
I was wondering how the fire hydrants worked in Tokyo as all I could see was a tall street sign. Turns out the water source is underground as seen here.
Street Art
They can't believe that it's beer
Pocky in all the flavors!
Cherry Blossom
Random living statue street artist
Omakase at Nobu
Courses
First: Salmon with roe in a soy-wasabi sauce, monkfish liver topped with caviar in a _yuzu_ sauce. Peach for palette cleanser. Monkfish is a personal favorite of mine. Really can’t go wrong with it. It’s just so rich and fatty, what’s not to love?
Second (right to left): Soft shell crab, shrimp, red snapper, fatty tuna (o toro)
Third: Sashimi salad with seared scallops with yuzu pepper and yellow fin tuna.
Fourth: Golden-eye snapper along with a flavorful salsa and tempura. Served with a ginger root. This was pretty damn dope. I loved the salsa. It was fresh and colorful with a lot of zest to it. Complemented the fish amazingly well.
Fifth: Wagyu beef in a pepper-wasabi sauce. Absolutely incredible.
Sixth: Cold soba noodles.
It was a pretty good omakase experience. This is the first omakase I have had where the sole focus was not fish but dishes of food. I’m not sure if I will seek this style of omakase out regularly. But if wagyu is on the menu, I’ll be there.
More food at Nobu
Tofu Mascarpone, Garlic Eggplant, Wagyu Steak, Black Pepper Sea Bass, Wagyu Gyoza
Dad’s Second Birthday Dinner
I was tasting random things out of Varun's omakase courses - but since the portions were small, I was trying to cut things in half...with chopsticks. Which resulted in the re-butchering of several pieces of fish, and a general destruction of the plating and aesthetic. Varun almost died of embarassment and wondered if he will be banned from Nobus for life for such sacrilege.
Ended the day with a matcha-flavored lava cake
A Google Photos Montage
The Design of Everyday Things
Japan is a goldmine of great design of everyday things. Information is mostly communicated via iconography combined with Japanese text.
At the metro ticket counters.
Elaborate system to indicate which sides the doors are going to open on. Newer carriages just seem to have a digital screen that says "Doors open/don't open on this side"
Ginza
Flagship Itoya
I don't have any pictures of the insides unfortunately, but it's so neat and tidy...and expensive!
Fluffy Custard Pancake
My nose found this place in Shibuya station, on our way to lunch
Lunch - Some ramen place in Shibuya
You buy little tickets at the vending machine outside the door. This system, coupled with the fact that there is no culture of tipping in Japan results in the fact that employees never have to handle money ever. Clean design.
Spicy Miso and Garlic Oil Tonkotusu Ramen - I mean really, that should be all I need to say. It was so damn good. Such a rich broth, tender chashu, perfectly soft boiled egg, and more condiments than you’ll ever need. The condiment jars included pickled radish, shredded vegetables in a super spicy paste, grated ginger, garlic paste, and roughly chopped dried red chilies. To top it off, noodles were free! So as long as you had broth left in your bowl, the noodles would keep coming if your heart (soul?) desired it.
Being in Japan and experiencing ramen in a local tiny shop definitely biases my judgement on the taste of the food. But I want to say I’m being as objective as possible when I rate this pretty inexpensive ramen up there in the top couple that I’ve had including all of the ones back home in San Francisco. The food was served very quickly as restaurants usually only specialize in a couple different broths and have it at the ready for the customer as soon as it’s ordered.
Demolished
Stick of Kobe
Picked up a quick street side skewer of Kobe beef. Of course not the best quality as it was just $12 but was rich and fatty and seared perfectly!
That ramen was incredibly filling...and then was peer-pressured into eating a couple pieces of the kobe skewer by Varun. 10/10 would get peer-pressured again.
Walking around Shibuya
Peach Coke
The only pile of trash we've seen in Tokyo so far
I was wondering how the fire hydrants worked in Tokyo as all I could see was a tall street sign. Turns out the water source is underground as seen here.
Street Art
They can't believe that it's beer
Pocky in all the flavors!
Cherry Blossom
Random living statue street artist
Omakase at Nobu
Courses
First: Salmon with roe in a soy-wasabi sauce, monkfish liver topped with caviar in a _yuzu_ sauce. Peach for palette cleanser. Monkfish is a personal favorite of mine. Really can’t go wrong with it. It’s just so rich and fatty, what’s not to love?
Second (right to left): Soft shell crab, shrimp, red snapper, fatty tuna (o toro)
Third: Sashimi salad with seared scallops with yuzu pepper and yellow fin tuna.
Fourth: Golden-eye snapper along with a flavorful salsa and tempura. Served with a ginger root. This was pretty damn dope. I loved the salsa. It was fresh and colorful with a lot of zest to it. Complemented the fish amazingly well.
Fifth: Wagyu beef in a pepper-wasabi sauce. Absolutely incredible.
Sixth: Cold soba noodles.
It was a pretty good omakase experience. This is the first omakase I have had where the sole focus was not fish but dishes of food. I’m not sure if I will seek this style of omakase out regularly. But if wagyu is on the menu, I’ll be there.
More food at Nobu
Tofu Mascarpone, Garlic Eggplant, Wagyu Steak, Black Pepper Sea Bass, Wagyu Gyoza
Dad’s Second Birthday Dinner
I was tasting random things out of Varun's omakase courses - but since the portions were small, I was trying to cut things in half...with chopsticks. Which resulted in the re-butchering of several pieces of fish, and a general destruction of the plating and aesthetic. Varun almost died of embarassment and wondered if he will be banned from Nobus for life for such sacrilege.
Ended the day with a matcha-flavored lava cake
A Google Photos Montage