Tokyo, Japan - Day 2

What we did:
- Slept in, refreshed and ready for another day! Hangovers somehow don’t exist on vacation.
- We grabbed a quick coffee and headed to the Shinjuku neighborhood for the day! This is the area of Tokyo that simply doesn’t sleep and you can find the streets packed with businessmen by day and creatures by night.
⁃ We waited in line for our first Wagyu burger right when it opened! Absolutely lived up to the hype - simply mouthwatering meat and some great teriyaki seasoning. Trent, per usual, got half of Steph’s burger, further solidifying her plentiful leftovers as the single best part of the relationship.
⁃ From lunch, we did some wandering through the streets. The sensory overload of neon lights and packed streets will never get old. Stopped in the famous Don Quijote discount store and another tea shop.
⁃ From there, we enjoyed respite on the grounds of the Shinjuku Gyoen national garden. This is the mecca for cherry blossoms in the spring. We voted these gardens less pretty than Kyoto’s though.
⁃ Walked over to the grounds of the Meiji Jingu temple afterwards. Absolutely massive forest with another cool temple made for a nice stop. Impressive that they have maintained such a large forest smack in the middle of the biggest city in the world.
⁃ Nearing 5pm, we headed back to shibuya where we pregamed dinner with some delicious gyoza and whiskey ginger highballs. Another superlative awarded for the hands down best gyoza we’ve ever had 🙌
⁃ From there we perused some shops and went to our reservation at another super legit sushi bar. Another superlative awarded here for best tuna sushi we’ve ever had - literally melted in our mouths. These awards are not given out easily, the food here is simply that good.
⁃ After dinner we went out for drinks in the hopping Golden-Gai neighborhood of Shibuku. This place is wild!!! 5 square blocks of tight alleys literally stacked full of 7-10 seater bars. Every bar is a different theme, some welcoming of foreigners others very much not. Cannot emphasize more how small and packed these bars are. We spent a good 30 mins walking the alleys, a bit intimidated, trying to figure out which one to go to. The point of the small and intimate nature of each bar is to force conversation among patrons so we wanted to find one that would work with our vibe.
⁃ Finally we landed on a welcoming spot packed with some Brits. We wedged our way into a corner spot at the long bar and spent an hour plus chopping it up with a nice Spaniard currently living in New Zealand. Always fun to talk to foreigners, we were entertained by his fear of going to America because of all “the guns”. He also was appalled at the US workweeks and lack of PTO - he certainly has a point, we don’t have siestas and 40 days off. But scoreboard buddy, check the GDP figures.
⁃ At this point we were edging close to midnight and decided to call it a night and head home. We voted this our favorite end-to-end eating day of the trip! Everything was a smash hit.

What we ate:
- About Life Coffee Brewers - corner coffee shop window. A couple of cappuccinos later and some Branson bread and we were ready to explore Tokyo!
- Shogun Burger - Casual Tokyo burger chain selling burgers made of wagyu beef. As is typical in Japan, you order at the kiosk and then go to your seat for your order to be delivered to you. Two wagyu burgers and some fries really hit the spot after a few days of lots of noodles.
- Gyoza Bar Niku-Jiru Totsan Dogenzaka Branch: after getting rejected from this place the night before, we gave it another try around happy hour and it was so worth it! Basement gyoza bar serving a variety of gyozas and highballs, known for their drinkable gyoza but our favorite ended up being their pork gyoza. This was the first time we tried a Japanese whisky ginger highball and we proceeded to each have two more. It’s safe to say that we were on a whiskey ginger highball kick for the rest of the trip. Vibes are high!!
- KINKA sushi bar izakaya - this was the “nice” sushi spot we booked for ourselves in Tokyo and it delivered! Right in the middle of the center of Shibuya, a very classy joint on the third floor of a major restaurant street. we stayed safe with salmon and tuna nigiri and this was definitely the best tuna sashimi we have had the whole trip. We ordered another set of tuna sashimi it was so good! We also ordered edamame and lobster miso soup. The miso soup came with a lobster head sticking out of it and no spoon so you had to get uncomfortably close to the beady eyes of the lobster in order to drink it. Top it all off with some matcha old fashions and we had a great sushi night! Will be dreaming about that tuna for months to come.

Fun Facts:
- Tokyo, Japan has over 160,000 restaurants. This makes it one of the largest and most sophisticated restaurant markets in the world.
- Every single street in Tokyo has multi level buildings with shops, restaurants, and living spaces. Most of the restaurants we would pass had 6-10 seats in them which made us wonder how they all stayed in business. Japan offers various government grants and subsidies to support small and medium-sized businesses, including restaurants, covering costs like rent, advertising, equipment, and employee labor, making it more accessible to entrepreneurs. Additionally, a lot of the restaurants are family run or deeply embedded in the local community.
- Tokyo has the most Michelin-starred restaurants in the world. As of February 2024, Tokyo had 194 Michelin-starred restaurants.Les mer