By now we had just under an hour before we had to meet for the food tour, that felt like plenty of time so we made our way down to the station.
now Tokyo trains are VERY different from Shanghai, it’s not as easy and there are 2 different types to consider. Now stupidly I thought I knew where I was going and I hadn’t brought the Wifi with me.
BIG MISTAKE, I didn’t know where I was going.
I ended up getting on the yamanote line, which is circular, to Shinjuku only to realise I was going in the wrong direction, well obviously there’s no wrong way, it’s circular, but the longer way.
I panicked, got off and then went to find the one in the opposite direction, then realising that it was probably about the same distance anyway…. AHHH!
We were now VERY late. One other thing I’d under estimated was the distances, according to the subway messages this journey was going to take nearly 40 minutes! We had to meet in 35! I was gonna be late!
I sat on the subway, watching the little dot on my GPS app get closer and closer. I knew roughly where we were going and for the second time this holiday I left Adam behind and ran to the meeting spot. We were 10 minutes late, I knew they didn’t wait!
There was nobody about, we’d missed it. I was so stressed and so tired and hungry I could have cried.
I walked around the block just in case, I’d checked this out on street view beforehand and was pretty sure I was right this time. I asked at the nearest Kōban box if they knew, they didn’t, they just thought I was mental and probably that my Japanese was appalling although I did try lol
I headed back to Adam and tried calling the tour companies office, no response. I tried finding a wifi signal so I could at least try and check the location and time again, nope nothing, why oh WHY didn’t I bring the wifi!
At the point when I was pretty much about to give up, Adam poked me and pointed at a guy just arriving with a big Arigato Japan. “Is that him?” Adam asked
He’d come back for us!
I was so happy and thanked him but he looked rather puzzled.
“I’ve just arrived” he said, “you’re early!”.
Ermmmm
Then I realised what I’d done. I’d put 5pm on my
planner so I’d be early, so I’d be there in plenty of time. I just hadn’t written anything to say the ACTUAL start time and I’d forgotten….
OOPIES
ANYWAY, we made it, plans were still intact, alllllll was good,
Finally the rest of the group arrived. There was a couple from LA, Two american girls teaching in Japan and a gent working in the area from Spain.
We got talking and then off we went to our first stop
The area was called Omoide Yokocho and here we were going to visit a bar to drink beer and eat yakitori, yummy
For some reason I forgot to take photos but the bar was tiny and full of “salarymen” drinking and laughing together.
It was at this point that I realised that me and our tour guide weren’t going to get along, mainly because I was already finding him intensely annoying. He did ALOT of talking about himself and people he “knew” (pile of BS, when pulled up on something, a London restaurant I have been to, he clearly hadn’t a clue despite claiming he “knew” the chef personally) so yeah, this was a bad start
We tried chicken meat, gizzard, offal and heart…. rather surprisingly the heart was my favourite!
Next stop was a restaurant in Kabukicho . we headed passed Godzilla
and the robot restaurant on the way
Kabukicho was a bit of a red light district in the area but there were plenty of interesting bars and restaurants we spotted on the way, if only we had more time!
Finally we reached the restaurant, this was a cute little place and it was FULL of locals.
We tried a few different things here.
I’d love to tell you what most of them are but our guide got bored telling us about himself and was playing with his phone under the table for a majority of the meal. I mean he’d respond if asked but that’s not really the point is it!
This was a pizza with little fish on it… see how pleased I am to try it
Again I was following the rule of trying everything, I drew the line at the mushroom cake though, that was a no no!
Meal over, I was now VERY full. We headed towards Golden Gai.
Now this was somewhere I really wanted to visit, and would have done on my own if we weren’t already doing the tour, but no I thought, let's do the tour, maybe we’ll end up somewhere a little different.
We didn’t. We ended up in a bar welcoming foreigners and that even offered no cover charge to them
Now that’s great, but I’m on a tour, I could do this myself ≈≈≈!
We were allowed to order any cocktail we like here So I ordered a green tea cocktail, easy peasy as the menu was in english…
Afterwards I asked if our guide could show us anywhere else or tell us about golden gai, he tried his best, but it was bizarre. He’d point at a sign with let’s say Aerosmith on it and go “oooo look this is a rock inspired bar with Aerosmith decor” well yes, clearly, how about telling us something rather than pointing and stating the obvious….. argh!
ANYWAY
This was kinda the end of the tour and he was escorting us towards the end point and the metro home. We got talking to the two american girls and they asked him if he’d heard of an open air rooftop night market in the area they fancied.
They showed him the guide book but he hadn’t. They said they were going to check it out. It sounded fun so I asked if we could tag ago, so did the spanish guy and they agreed. So we “thanked” our guide and headed back towards Kabukicho.
Using my GPS and the girls guidebook we managed to locate where it should be but I couldn’t see it. As we were looking up to see the rooftops an arab man approached us and told us he’d show us and promised us a good time… I really didn’t like the sound of this.
He ushered us into a building and into an elevator…
This would be fine right, there was 5 of us, one of him….don’t…. panic
Finally we reached the top and it opened out into this
Now it’s probably not dodgy (in fact there’s a great article on a blog about it here:
ordinarygirlextraordinarydre...t-tokyo-japan/), but the owners were trying to usher us in to buy a drink from one of the stalls and it just didn’t feel 100% comfortable, in fairness it was cheap and full of local students, I just wasn’t feeling it. The girls I think had been expecting a craft market, this was just drink and bar snacks and they weren’t keen to stay either.
Now had I know what to expect I would’t have felt so uncomfortable, I’m pretty ok with throwing myself in the deep end outside of the tourist areas…. when I know what I’m getting myself into this just wasn’t for me and I’m a little glad the girls hadn’t gone on their own..
The guy was gesturing towards a table and everyone else appeared to have frozen (thanks guys!). I told the lift guy we were leaving and after a few firm “no we want to leave, we’ll come back another time” he showed us to the elevator. We all entered the lift, and let out a collective breathe we’d all been holding and giggled.
Now it was late, we were tired. The food tour had been a complete let down, so had the market, I wanted to head back. We said our goodbyes to the girls and along with the spanish guy headed towards the metro.
Now he was really lovely but it was impossible to get rid of him, it felt rude to split up as we were going to same way, we ended up going the whole way back with him
On the way I asked Adam what he’d thought of the tour, he’d thought the same. Considering it had cost £200 for the two of us, TWICE the price of our tour in Shanghai I really didn’t think we got our monies worth, you couldn’t even say that the tour guide was worth it for the insight he gave, he was the worst ever!
So yes, sorry but I’m not recommending it to you peeps! I just wish we had enough time to go back to golden gai ourselves and do it properly
Deflated we headed back to the hotel, today had been a LONG day and hopefully tomorrow wouldn’t be as disappointing