We got to start this day later than the previous because we really didn’t have anything planned. We did the western breakfast when it opened at 7am and waded through the screaming vultures that poured into the restaurant at that time. I had a French child headbutt my elbow several times while getting through the lines. It was certainly a wonderful experience.
From there we traveled back to the temple at Asakusa by subway and toured the area again. I took another run at the fortune sticks and this time came up with only a bad fortune rather than the lowest fortune. I again tied it off to let the spirits take care of it. If you wonder why I didn’t finish the fugu or don’t gamble, that’s why… From there we did some quick tourist shopping at the temple area. My brother will love the model I bought for him to build. Then we headed back by subway to the hotel to regroup and drop off everything we bought.
From there we took the subway back out to Ueno and took a quick look at Ueno park and then visited the Tokyo National Museum to see the Tokugawa Special Exhibit. We spent a couple hours in the tour. It was very very crowded and Japanese people can be a bit pushy in crowds so we found it better to hang behind them and look over them. I feel like a giant over here and I’m not really all that tall. In any event the exhibit was series of pieces chronicling the rise and end of the Tokugawa Shoganate. There were several armor and sword pieces, a lot of art and calligraphy, some kimonos and other articles of clothing, some noh theater masks, some various tools and other miscellaneous pieces from the era which stretched around 200 years. They did not allow pictures at the exhibit unfortunately so I didn’t get to take any. I did enjoy it once we broke past the initial room because though it remained crowded it thinned out a bit and we were able to see either.
After the exhibit we took the subway into Tokyo station and arranged our tickets to Himeji.
I need to point out a small anecdote here. On Monday we saw a woman at a desk with a placard that had the title Guest Relations Manager. We thought that perhaps she was the information person so we asked her a question about what we were going to do and she explained that she was actually the hotel manager. She was very nice and her name is Marina. She actually if from England but Japanese so she speaks English with more of a British accent. In any event when we told her we were going to Himeji she said that there would not be enough there besides the castle to see. She said that we should also go to Okayama which has a castle and garden and we could probably also reach Hiroshima and see that and that would get us through the day. Either Okayama or Hiroshima are apparently about a half an hour from Himeji and we could return from Hiroshima very late. Apparently there is a ferry to an island outside of Himeji that would be nice to visit as well. We are going to play it mildly by ear. She wasn’t fond of Himeji because she said that there were a lot of steep stairs and such. We may like it a bit better than her. If we find that it is a quick visit we’ll decide where to go from there.
To continue on with the Marina saga, when we got back from Ueno and Tokyo Station she was there and we asked her where a good place to get Kobe beef was. She told us there was a place not far from the hotel called Kaji that doesn't have it's name in English on the sign that does Teppan-yaki that is really good and he does Kobe beef. She said we needed reservations for it. We ended up talking to her for a while because he was not yet open and we couldn't make reservations. She talked to us some more about getting out to Okayama and Hiroshima. We did a bit of a bounce around then went upstairs to rest for a bit. When we came back down we tried to use the information desk to make the reservations but she caught us and we started talking again. She called and told the guy to be good to us apparently. She then offered us tea and coffee, and in Brien's case koko (hot chocolate) on the house and we went into the coffee shop and talked to her for the entire time that everyone wanted to get cleaned up. We made reservations for 6:30pm and she had to call him and tell him we'd be late by the time we left.
Kaji is a tiny little place in a back alley that if you weren't told to go to you would never find. It is a teppan-yaki style restaurant which means the chef cooks on a grill right in front of you and serves you from there. We all order the "Kaji Special Kobe Beef Course" which was really expensive but by the end I don't think any of us cared. There were a series of vegetable courses including radishes, onions, pumpkin and potatoes. From there it was on to the Kobe beef which was the best beef I have ever had in my life. He cooked mine rare like I asked and I think their mediums were more like medium rare but they didn't seem to complain. The marbling on the beef was incredible and it felt like butter in the mouth. He really didn't do a lot of seasoning, just some garlic fried underneath it which was browned and served alongside it. The large fat bits he saved for later. When we were done with the main beef course he fried the fat into cracklings, I don't know what else to call them, and we ate those too. It was absolutely delicious. From there he fried up to brown some minced garlic and mixed that into some fried rice which was also incredible. I ate the seconds on the rice. We also got a a soup but I didn't eat mine because I was basically stuffed by then. He also served us a coffee which was really flavorful. I was impressed with the entire meal beginning to end. We drank two bottles of cold sake with it. I would highly recommend Kaji to anyone who visits Tokyo.
After gorging we returned to the hotel and played Pokemon (it was a joke thing) for a bit then retired for the evening.
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