Japan - Day 11 - Tsukiji Market
This morning it was raining and looked like it was going to rain the entire day. We met up with our tour guide, a Japanese college student here in Tokyo. He showed us around a near by Buddhist temple. It was very interesting to see the inside and learn about some of the local customs regarding prayer and worship. After the temple we headed over to the famed Tsukiji market. The market is a sprawling mass of retail vendors, covering a few city blocks. There are nearly 500 vendors selling everything from fish, vegetables, wagyu beef, knives, ceramics and everything in between. We meandered through the vast array of stalls for a couple hours tasting samples and looking at the interesting things for sale, all while trying to avoid the rain. The last stop of our tour, our guide took as to a fish cutting demonstration where we got to watch a chef cut up and present a fish. Afterwards we got to use the fish to create out own fish bowls and then eat them. It was a fun experience!
Capy Neko Cafe / Strange Food
After our big morning at the market, we took Matthew and Nico to another animal cafe. This one was a capybara and cat cafe. It was really hard to get a reservation there so only Matthew and Nico could go. They had so much fun! When we met up with them again afterwards Nico had the biggest smile on his face. While Matthew and Nico were enjoying the animals, Lee and I found a tiny little restaurant around the corner where we enjoyed a couple of drinks while we were waiting. As we were sitting there, we kept seeing the cook make, what I thought looked like cherry tomatoes, except they weren't. Lee browsed through the menu and found it. It was barbecued chicken ovaries. Lee pressured me into trying it. The cook brought it to us and explained you are meant to eat it all in one bite. So I did, the visuals and texture were not appetizing at all, nor was the popping of the ovaries when I bit down, but the flavor was actually quite good. It tasted like creamy eggs. Would I do it again? No thanks.
Karaoke / Golden Gai
Later that evening we headed to Shinjuku for some karaoke. They have huge buildings here dedicated to just karaoke, the one we went to was a six story building with all the floors dedicated to karaoke. They do karaoke differently here, it's a private room, instead of a public thing like it is in the US. We stayed for 2 hours, enjoying drinks and food and singing our hearts out. Matthew especially enjoyed the experience. Once we finished singing we sent the boys back to the hotel with Nana in a taxi. Lee and I then headed to the Golden Gai, the area we went earlier in the trip. We did some bar hopping and met a bunch of locals and some tourists as well. We had so much fun. We visited five establishments and finally made it back to the hotel at about 2am. It was such a packed day!
