After a traditional Japanese brunch consisting of fried potatoes and Tonkatsu McBurgers (fried pork cutlets with asian BBQ sauce), we made our way to the Ginza neighborhood to do some shopping.
We went to a few places, but the most impressive was Matsuya, which is one of the grande dames of Tokyo retailers. The Ginza neighborhood store recently underwent a major renovation, and is absolutely gleaming inside and out. Matsuya is what we imagine department stores were like years ago.
It was incredibly well staffed (a feature we have noticed elsewhere in Tokyo) and you could purchase everything from custom shirts to square watermelons.
We also ate lunch at a sushi restaurant above Matsuya. Chris had Nigiri sushi, which is the style where a sliver of raw fish is laid atop a small ball of rice. I tried Chirashisuzi, which we hadn’t seen before. It is a style where the various ingredients and types of fish are spread out over sushi rice in a small box-like dish. It was very good.
Chirashizushi, which translates to "Scattered Sushi"
That evening, we went to the Yasukuni-Jinja Shrine, essentially a veterans memorial dating back to 1868.
For three days every year, the grounds are decorated with over 30,000 lanterns for the soul festival "Mitama Matsuri." It was stunning.
After the Shrine, we made our way to a recommended hole-in-the-wall Gyoza restaurant. Gyoza are boiled or pan fried dumplings that are Chinese in origin, but extremely popular in Japan.
This is essentially the entire restaurant.
Boiled in the bowl on the left, fried on the right.
The restaurant was down a random alley and we were quite pleased with ourselves for finding something off the tourist path. Our smugness was somewhat deflated when we were leaving and noticed a TGI Fridays right around the corner.
Of course there was a McDonalds slam.
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