Today is the last full day we have in Tokyo. While having our lunch at Yoshinoya the day before, we actually saw on their menu that they have some interesting breakfast sets. One that caught my eye was a bowl of tofu + egg on top of rice. I love tofu, and I love egg, so in all honesty I found it really hard not to order that one. There is a Yoshinoya that’s on the way when we walked from our hotel to Shinjuku station, so we popped in to the outlet. I was contemplating whether to order the small bowl or the medium one, as I was worried that I couldn’t finish it if it wasn’t good if I ordered the medium one. But I ended up still ordering the medium one – can’t blame me, I’m always hungry in the morning! Bruno ordered the same as me, but the smaller sized version as he’s not a morning person.
When our set came, I was totally intrigued by how it looked like. I just can’t figure out what exactly is on the rice… doesn’t really looked like tofu, doesn’t really look like proper egg… just looked like a mixed mash of… stuff. Nevertheless, I gingerly took one mouthful with my chopsticks (they don’t provide spoon there even for rice), and was subsequently blown away by the taste. Yes, blown away. It was THAT GOOD. OH. MY. GOD. My brain totally cannot comprehend how does simple ingredients like onsen egg, tofu, barley (I think?), bonito flakes and rice could taste SO GOOD together. I gave up trying to think about it, and just focused on feasting on this superb breakfast. It’s, hands down, the best breakfast I’ve ever had in my life. And I’m being absolutely serious here. It’s a dish that I would really specially fly to Japan just to eat it.
After the absolutely satisfying breakfast, we then went on our way to find Shinjuku Gyoen. You know, it’s not even easy to find it if you don’t go from the Shinjuku front gate. We ended up going a bit in circles, before we went into a random 7-11 to ask for directions. The guy who asked spoke PERFECT English (he looked like he’s from Mainland actually) to us and PERFECT Japanese to his co-worker. I was impressed!
Anyhow, we followed his directions (which was rather like a shortcut somewhat that involved walking in backalleys and small streets in a residential area in front of people’s homes), passed by several vending machines that were randomly erected on the streets (I really had no idea Japan had so many vending machines everywhere), and finally we reached Shinjuku Gyoen Sendagaya gate. We paid for the admission (yup, it’s not free), grabbed a complimentary map in English and proceed to stroll along the pathways. It was still quite early in the morning, like around 9.30am when we reached, so there really wasn’t many people around. It was cold (as usual) and windy, but it was a rather surreal experience walking in this huge national garden. They’ve thoughtfully curated slightly different themed gardens and landscapes, but all still rather “Japanese”. I had thought initially that since winter came early in 2016, we might see all dreary and leaf-less trees, but lo and behold, we saw koyo! Autumn leaves! It’s just a small part of the garden that still have koyo, but the vibrant colours still blew me away.
We then wandered to the rose garden, which I read previously in Tripadvisor that some visitors complained was empty due to the early winter. However, I still saw the roses bloomed nicely! I’m starting to wonder if the visitor did visit Shinjuku Gyoen at all?!
We spent almost the entire morning at Shinjuku Gyoen, something which surprised both of us. I thought we’d be there for max an hour or two only, but we were there for nearly four hours! We just simply love their ponds, their zen gardens and wood bridges, and to be honest we would love to spend more time there, if we hadn’t had the rest of the day planned. Here’s some of the many photos I’ve taken, but do check the link below the post for the whole album of today’s pictures.
After leaving Shinjuku Gyoen from the main gate, we popped over to Sekaido to take a look at their art supplies. But Bruno was generally not that enthusiastic about buying art supplies from there and bring it back to Singapore, so we just walked one round on the ground level and left. There are more levels (it’s the whole building!) to Sekaido, but we didn’t look at them. For lunch, we went to a random ramen shop in one of the alleys next to the main road, but unfortunately it wasn’t really good. I mean well, the ramen and broth are good, but the egg. It’s a hard boiled egg! Oh what blasphemy is this?! =(
This trip, we actually decided to skip Akihabara and head straight to Harajuku, because we thought the shops at Harajuku might suit me instead. But eh…… probably the crowd just simply put me off. I wouldn’t even want to step into the alley if not for the fact that we wanted to check out the Calbee+ shop!
We managed to find Calbee+ after walking with the crowd for quite a while, and we just joined the cashier queue straightaway while picking up the various boxes of potato chips along the way as the queue moves. LOL! Calbee potato sticks/chips are sooooo nice! Especially those that you buy in Japan, omg the potato taste is so fresh! It’s not cheap but… nothing’s really cheap in Japan anyway!
After Harajuku, we went on to our final stop in Tokyo – Nikinokashi. Do a google check, and you’ll find that all websites that talk about Nikinokashi would be – cheap tidbits! I tried my best to google for proper directions before our trip, but I still kinda screwed it up when we were there. We alighted one stop away, and had to walk quite a bit of distance to finally get to the shop at Ameyoko. But golly, their prices for Japanese tidbits were really cheap! We ended up getting a lot of food souvenirs (mostly mochi) from this shop actually, because they are just so cheap! I’d definitely head there again if I ever come back to Tokyo. I need to buy more of those Moonlight cookies for my mom!
Our dinner was at a disappointing tempura soba small restaurant next to Ueno station. Meh. Burh. Bad experience. So bad that I don’t really want to talk about it. Ugh.
Anyway, we bought more wild veggies instant soup before we went back to the hotel. Hot soup for the night in such chilly weather – yes, please!
For more photos on this day, please click on my Flickr album link here.
For Japan Trip 2017 itinerary / content page, please click here.
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