Travel diary - Weekend in Tokyo!

I spent this weekend in Tokyo and it was quite fun. The good thing of living for a slightly prolonged period of time in Japan is that once you've taken the "touristy" and "must-see-ish" stuff off your list you can just go to Tokyo and chill without the feeling that you need to rush or see everything before you leave.

For this trip I was accompanied by my friend from Spain and another friend I've met while living here, who's German. He's a very chill dude and usually goes to Tokyo in the weekends so he already knew a few cool spots to hang out in.

While both my friends had already traveled there on Friday, I instead made my way to the capital on Saturday. Making my way from my dorm to Sendai station was a nightmare, the taxi prices rose almost 1000 yen more because of the rain (a few stupid drops, mind you) and the taxi also was incredibly slower than average due to an amount of rain that was not even enough to make the driver turn the windshield wipers on. This made me have to pay 15€ for a damn 10 minute ride that was made in 20 mins and also arrive just when the 10:25 shinkansen had just departed, which damned me to wait an hour for the next train. I also forgot my headphones at home and had to buy some at a New Days conbini, which costed me 1500 yen (mine are bluetooth and I got them at threepy for 500, so yeah...).

After this big and unnecessary spending of money, I had quite the peaceful shinkansen ride and arrived to Tokyo at around 1pm. Making my way to Harajuku station, I had to traverse all of Takeshita street carrying my bags and pushing seas of people to finally meet with my friends. We decided to have lunch at a café that for some reason belongs to Brita. Yes, the water filtering jug company. I had an avocado burger and a honey lemonade for about 2000 yen. The burger was very nice, the most resembling of the kind of burgers you'd eat at a non fast food restaurant back in Spain I've had in Japan, and the lemonade was refreshing and nice. The day was quite hot and rainy, so the food and drinks were perfect for the situation.

From here we split up since my spanish friend was meeting with some friends, and me and my german friend went around a few shops in Harajuku. I was finally able to gather courage and enter into a jirai/ryosangata store (Noémie, in case you're curious), but I was seriously overwhelmed by the ambience and underwhelmed by the quality in the clothing, so I ended up leaving sadly empty-handed. We then went to rest at a café where I tried quite the interesting drink , a violet and blueberry latte, which basically tasted like a blueberry milkshake with quite the tasty and sugary violet milk cream on top. It was funny when we were then told to regroup at yet another café, where this time I tried quite a tasty tiramisú double waffle. I've realized that the Japanese version of tiramisú has less coffee and opts for a more cheesy and thick mascarpone cream, alongside soft and light whipped cream.

For dinner we went near Sendagi, where our Airbnb was, and found quite the small chinese restaurant that was still open despite the hours. We were welcomed by tons of Mao Zedong memorabilia and quite the grumpy chinese couple that argued while they prepared our food. It was the tastiest, yet spiciest fried rice I've ever had. I feel incredibly bad up to this day for the fact that the aftertaste of spice made me be unable to finish it all and had to call for the help of both my friends. My stomach hurt so bad afterwards we were considering if I'd be the first person to die from chahan. It would've been my pleasure, honestly.

The following day I woke up quite late (my fault, I forgot to set up an alarm and my friends felt too bad waking me up), so we had breakfast along the way as we took a train to Yokohama. I had already been there before when my family came to visit, but revisiting it was good because I was able to see the red brick warehouses which I couldn't see before. The day was quite hot so we ended up refraining from eating at the Japan Burger Championship, which was being held that day in quite the sunny spot next to the warehouses. We then went to Chinatown where we decided to opt for Chinese food again, this time for our lunch. I was able to rejoice in quite the juicy yakigyozas with a delightfully thick crust and an amazing dish that combined tasty mapo tofu with a delightfully flavorful fried rice. We met with a friend of our german friend and had some coffee before we headed to a second-hand bookstore that was quite charming and sold mostly translations to japanese of foreign books.

After returning to Sendagi we decided to go back home, with thoughts of refreshing before heading out to either Ikebukuro or Shinjuku for some dinner and bar-hopping. However, as we set foot back on the street, we were hit with heavy rain that drenched us from head to toe as we ran around the neighborhood getting rejected from restaurant after restaurant (even some that were said to still be open at their doors), until we stopped by a small ramen shop that was hosting a birthday party. They gave us free champagne and we met some very interesting people there, including a brazilian couple that just like us was looking for food and shelter from the rain after minutes of roaming around. It was quite the good experience, topped with great and heartwarming food.

For our last morning there, we visited two places that the barkeeper last night reccommended us around Sendagi. First was Nezu shrine, which had some turtles around the river which made it the more endearing, and then we went to have lunch at a café that was themed around the "sound of rain", and where we had to whisper and try to not make much noise. We had a traditional japanese shokudo meal which was absolutely delectable, and I finally got to try chazuke (although the dashi version, I still need to try the one with tea). They also had quite good sweet matcha, I'm still trying to find out what was the sweetener they used for it, it was syrupy and light.

Afterwards we separated for a while, so me and my friend went to Akihabara and shopped around a bit before rounding up and going back to Tokyo station where we took the bus home. After quite the chill 6 hour trip on a bus that had seat curtains to separate you from the other people, we arrived back to Sendai. I was so tired I decided to ride the train back home immediately.

Overall, it was quite the great trip. I enjoyed the experience of a more local-ish, hangout focused trip rather than the usual sightseeing travels I have been engaging on since arriving here. It made me enjoy my friends' company a lot, and I believe it overall was a great time.

I still need to go back for Kichijoji, though.