After two weeks of adventuring through India and Nepal, we were ready for a little rest and relaxation. We spent the next two weeks meandering about Thailand, including a week of hanging out on the amazing beaches on the island of Koh Samui. The story of our travels through Thailand are best told through photos, so please enjoy a snapshot of the beautiful Kingdom of Thailand.
I’m self-diagnosing a case of selective attention deficit disorder. It’s brought on my projects that aren’t particularly interesting to me. Treatments include watching baseball, going for a run or doing just about anything else.
I have a couple of those projects on my plate this week, so I decided to remove the distractions. I loaded up my computer and headed to Starbucks to work for a bit. There’s plenty of good workspaces around town, but the coffee giant is the only one that offers free WiFi.
The closest Starbucks in Kawagoe Station is usually crowded with commuters and since the station is our transportation hub, I wanted some new scenery. I pulled up Google Maps and plotted out some of the other shops in the area. That landed me in nearby Fujimino City.
Fujimino is the first stop on the express line toward Tokyo from Kawagoe Station, but we’ve never had reason to go there, so this was a good chance to explore the area a bit. I arrived around lunchtime and had plotted out a couple potential lunch spots.
I chose Arcturus Cafe, which I’m told by Wikipedia may be named for the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere. Macrobiotic cafes like this are one of the few safe bets for a vegetarian meal in Japan.
I chose one of the two tables in the solarium at the back of the restaurant. Outside, rose bushes and other greenery pushed against the glass. I ordered the curry set. Japanese curry is available nearly everywhere, but it’s made with chicken, so it’s usually on the no-fly list. Potatoes and mushrooms took the place of the chicken. It was fantastic!
Arcturus also bakes its own bread using a naturally fermented yeast. The soup and salad set is served with fresh bread and coffee. I can’t wait to go back to try it.
After lunch, I headed to Starbucks to actually get some work done. The Starbucks is about 10 minutes from the station, so the crowd was pretty thin in the early afternoon with most of the customers coming through the drive-through.
After I finished my work, I popped into the Aeon department store down the street. I remembered from a trip to the Aeon near Costco that they have a large liquor section with a decent selection of craft beers. Sure enough, they had three different choices from Oregon’s Rogue Ales & Spirits. I took one of each: Hazelnut Brown Nectar, Dead Guy and Shakespeare Oatmeal Stout.
I tried to make a joke with the cashier that both the beer and I were from the same place. She laughed and said a whole bunch of other stuff that I didn’t really catch. Can’t win ’em all…
My projects will keep me busy for a few more weeks and I plan to use my new method of navigating the area by Starbucks locations to find a few more new gems.
The great thing about a city like Tokyo is that you never run out of things to see. After a brief Tokyo rut, we’ve recommitted ourselves to crossing things off the “to-see” list.
First item off the list was the historic Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo’s Chūō Ward. Tsukiji is a popular tourist spot, but it’s also a working wholesale fish market. Visitors rub elbows with local chefs picking through the freshest (in many cases, still alive) seafood in Tokyo.
Inside, hundreds of vendors crowd into a warehouse. The smell of the sea greets you from a block away. The aisles are narrow with just enough room for one-and-a-half people to pass through. Tourists alternate between snapping photos, sidestepping fish-water puddles and dodging the turret trucks that zip down the aisles. Old-school wooden carts roll through more slowly, loaded with some of the larger ocean fish and offering a hint at the origins of the market.
Fish markets in Tokyo date back to the 1600s, but the current incarnation was built in 1935 after its Nihonbashi district predecessor was destroyed in the Great Kantō earthquake in 1923. In November 2016, the market will be moved to nearby Toyosu to free up the current location for development prior to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The butchers worked with surgical precision, carving the large fish into perfectly-weighted fillets and making paper-thin slices for sashimi (raw fish). Many used “knives” that more closely resemble a samurai sword than anything you or I have in our kitchens. The four-foot long blades made short work of the even the largest tuna.
After awhile, the aromas inherent in such a place started to take their toll on our stomachs. Occasionally I’ll come across Japanese food that makes me second-guess my vegetarian choices, but the fish market was not one of those places.
We headed outside for some fresh air and a short walk over the Kachidoki Bridge to our very favorite farmers market in Japan. Market of the Sun is Japan’s largest regular farmers market and has the most unique selection of local produce, goods and snacks in Tokyo. We left with a couple varieties of honest-to-goodness rye bread and a hearty beet, both nearly impossible to find in our local area.
A couple blocks away from the market, we checked off another of our Tokyo to-dos with a visit to Monja Street. We’d first tried monjayaki during my birthday weekend in Asakusa. This two-block stretch of restaurants in the Tsukishima district features almost exclusively monjayaki and okonomiyaki shops.
Although it was proper lunchtime, most of the shops were still closed when we arrived. We found one with several people inside and ordered a monjayaki and an okonomiyaki—best described as savory Japanese-style pancakes. The waiter started our monja on the table-top grill, but we took care of the okonomiyaki ourselves. Check out the video below to see us in action!
There’s only one thing anybody wants to know right now…
Did you do anything for Golden Week?
I’ll concede there’s a small chance this topic is only relevant among people living in Japan and, if it’s coming up in English, it’s only a hot topic among 0.01 percent of the population. But hey, that’s my demographic!
We started our Golden Week with a weekend trip into Tokyo to visit one of our favorite farmers markets and hit up the Cinco de Mayo Festival at Yoyogi Park.
Chichibu is our favorite place for outdoor adventures in Japan. It’s about an hour away by train and is usually pretty quiet. However, during Golden Week, thousands of people descend on the otherwise sleepy town to see the shibazakura or mountain phlox at Hitsujiyama Park.
We milked every last second out of Golden Week, heading out on the last day of the holidays to nearby Hanno for some hiking. We found a very non-touristy spot called Koburi Pass. We befriended a couple of older Japanese ladies at the train station, one of whom nearly missed the train when she went upstairs to get us some local sightseeing pamphlets.
How did you spend Golden Week? Leave a comment below!