Reid Main

This article is a post I originally made on Facebook about our eleventh day in Japan which took place on April 13, 2016. On the 1 year anniversary of our trip to Japan I decided to repost it here on my blog. The original post has been edited/cleaned up a bit but its spirit remains.

All of the arcade games yesterday tired us out so much that we slept in and did not leave the Airbnb until 11:30am. Today we planned to head to Harajuku and visit potentially Elsie's favourite new store, KIDDY LAND. It was basically five floors of the cutest toys you could imagine. Snoopy, Funassyi, Pusheen, Rilakkuma, Disney, etc. Elsie had thought she had died and gone to heaven.

After she finished scouring the entire store, purchasing more than one would have thought was humanly possible, we had worked up an appetite. For lunch we made our way to a gyoza place that was recommended by our Airbnb hosts. Supposedly this placed served the best gyozas in all of Tokyo and after eating there I concur wholeheartedly. We ordered 24 pan fried garlic gyozas between the two of us and devoured them in under 5 minutes. If you find yourself in Tokyo you must absolutely go to Harajuku Gyozaro (原宿餃子樓).

After lunch we went in search of a pop-up cafe that was themed after one of our favourite video game franchises. However, we got distracted again and ended up inside a LINE store instead. There was just so much to see and do in Harajuku. Satisfied with our shopping at this point and still in the mood for some sweets and coffee we decided to check out Tokyo Station for the first time. A quick subway ride later we arrived and immediately became lost in the vast labyrinth that was Tokyo Station. After 20 minutes of wandering we finally found something of interest, a Pokémon Store at the end of a little alley. After buying some more Pokémon merchandise it was almost 4pm and because we were still having no luck finding any good coffee we headed back to our Airbnb to drop off our purchases and rest.

After an accidental three hour nap our appetites had returned and it was time for dinner. Elsie had spotted a yakitori restaurant near our Airbnb when we first arrived and we had been itching to try it so now seemed like as good a time as any. This place served some of the juiciest chicken I had ever eaten. We ordered nine chicken skewers and a plate of delicious grilled chicken topped with green chilies and a side of some native vegetable paste that had the perfect amount of kick.

After dinner it was already 9pm but rather than head home we decided it was time to try our hand at grabbing some random snacks from the nearest 7/11. After gobbling them all down we were finally stuffed. We got back to the Airbnb, threw on Rush Hour on Netflix and winded down until we finally crawled into bed at 11pm.

Tomorrow we are visiting Tsukiji fish market and plan on waking up at 4:30am to queue up at Sushi Dai for supposedly the best sushi in the world.