Breakfast adventure! Grabbed some things from the konbini. Still not sure what I ate?

First stop of the day: the Meiju Shrine. A huge, beautiful green space right in the heart of the city,  we were shocked when we walked up. The trees are giant, the city noise drowned out and – since we got there early – hardly any people. It was so unexpected and great. Plus, we’re pretty sure we saw the emperor! (A guy in a pretty serious get up, with security and a line of monks scurrying behind him being lead into a random tent set up on the grounds of the temple. Count it!)

This shrine and park is dedicated to the Emperor who opened Japan to the west, the current Emperor’s great granddad. People dedicated trees that were hand planted, and the garden was designed so that it will re-populate itself. It’s only 100 or so years old but it’s already got tons of indigenous species growing and you can’t tell at all most of it was transplanted.

Still in green space mode, we headed toward the Shinjuku gardens. We popped out of the metro talking about lunch and my gut said EAT HERE:

There was a guy in the window making the actual udon noodles, a line (but not too long!) of Japanese people waiting to order, and a quick how-to in English of the ordering process.

I got noodles with a raw egg (unexpected from the picture!), with only a tiny bit of hot water left from cooking the noodles. John’s noodles had broth and a poached egg. You could also choose pieces of tempura as your side, cafeteria style. I was a little weary about the raw egg but the hot noodles cooked it a little and it was delicious. The noodles were the perfect texture – thick and not too chewy. It was a great lunchtime score!

Across the street was the Shinjuku Gyoen (means garden), which had this green house filled with all types of plants and flowers. The grounds also housed traditional English and French gardens, but we were most interested in the traditional Japanese garden area. There were manicured but natural looking plants, flowers and trees, with some tea houses, ponds with koi and people relaxing or picnicking everywhere.

At one of the tea houses, we paid a vending machine for a tea ticket and went inside. It was a plain room with hard wooden benches and plain wooden tables. We were each served a tiny sweet – not sure what the filling was, but I suspect red bean. Then we were served each a bowl of matcha. It was nice to check it out, but we suspect tourist trap! Or we just weren’t there during traditional tea time.

We headed to the metro again only to find one of the greatest vending machines so far. It was cold drinks, you could choose with or without ice (we did some experimenting to find that out!), and hot drinks. It poured it into a cup and then a little door opened automatically. I got a small cup of Coke with no ice, and John got a cup of grape juice with ice. It was the perfect tiny treat! Neither of us was brave enough to try the corn drink, though!

We were on a tall, steep up escalator when we saw some familiar faces headed our way on the down stairs. The rest of our crow hopped back on the up escalator and we joined the rest of the tourists in a two story Starbucks to watch The Scramble. It’s a crazy five section intersection called Shibuya crossing.  The funniest part was watching tourists cross it with selfie sticks or stopping to take pictures in the middle of the road.

Next we headed downstairs to the Food Show, like a fancy food hall. We watched a girl make takoyaki, which are balls of fried dough with a piece of octopus inside. There were $8 apples and $140 cantaloupes. We tried cheesecake, sweet red beans (no thanks!), a tiny spoonful of roe so salty that it was spicy (!) and fish of all different preparations.

We had dinner in a neighborhood called Ebisu. Again, went with my gut and popped in this tiny restaurant. It wasn’t quite full of people and we were sat at the counter, but the longer we say we noticed more and more people were coming in with reservations. First we were served a plate of cabbage with some sort of fish/soy sauce stuff drizzled on, then more yakatori: this time we got smoked cheese with grilled bread, shiitake, chicken thighs, chicken wings, asparagus wrapped in pork, okra, and pork back with wasabi. It all came out at different times, and the guy would just hand the skewers to us as they were done cooking. Simple, delicious and fun.

“Arigato, arigato! Domo arigato, it was so great, awesome dude!” (I got a little excited) And this guy, who basically hadn’t indicated he knew English or anything, said “See you tomorrow!” It totally made my night.