Tokyo Food Trip - Overview

Tokyo and Greater Kanto: Eight Day Self-Guided Gourmet Tour

Well, as you can guess from the title. I must admit that the main motivation behind this whole trip was the prospect of sampling a large variety (and amount) of Japanese cuisine I'll have no chance of finding anywhere else. There were the legends of steaks that melt in the mouth or poisonous fish that offers the remote (but real) chance of an agonizing slow death. And there were the photos of the seemingly endless rows of brightly-lit drink vending machines, and street side carts of charcoal-barbecued chicken surrounded by huddled salarymen. As a huge fan of Japanese culture, the allure was just so great.

Quality vs Cost

So after persuading my wife we took more than six months to carefully plan out our trip to Japan. The point here is "Once In A Lifetime." We're a young couple and money is tight for us. Considering that we do not plan to travel to Japan frequently (accomodation isn't cheap, and neither is a Vancouver flight to Tokyo for two), we want to make the most of our time and money spent in Japan and leave no regrets of must-see places unvisited or must-try cuisines untried (although...if I only had once more day...). And the point isn't about going to the most acclaimed (and expensive) restaurants (although I did seriously think about planning a meal at Iron Chef Nakamura's restaurant at Ariake). A cheap and simple meal may offer an experience of a lifetime (check out our Day 3 meal at the Ramen Kokugikan in Odaiba). Again, the point is "Once In A Lifetime." And no regrets as we look back.

Why Tokyo?

Why did we choose Tokyo? Actually, I originally planned to go Kansai since I wanted to experience Kyoto, but my wife reminded me that it was to be our first trip to Japan. And Tokyo (apologies to all Osaka-lovers) is simply one of the great metropolis of the world and I realized I would deeply regret if I missed the chance to see Tokyo. The fact that it's easy to find cuisines of all Japanese localities within Tokyo (let's see, we had Hokkaido uni, Hiroshima oysters, Kyoto-style kaiseki...) made it an easy decision.

Pre-Trip Planning

As mentioned above I took many months of planning and research, mostly done on the Internet. I learned two years of Japanese in junior highschool, but somehow still couldn't read all the katakanas and had no real chance of speaking or reading any Japanese for the past twelve years. Researching itinerary and restaurants on the Internet became a great way for me to re-learn my vocabularies and practice my reading. With my knowlegde of written Chinese I knew most of the Kanji already, so it was a kana and grammar exercise. Browsing restaurant guides such as Gurunabi and Hotpepper became my daily habit. Although I got to admit, my speaking and listening ability remained at the single-word-phrase level before the trip.

We had the local travel agency booking two 3-consecutive-night stays at the Shinjuku Washington Hotel for us with one unbooked night in the middle, allowing us to take a sidetrip to Hakone (which was the most excellent idea...check out Day 4). The entire itinerary is listed at the Quick Navigation Guide.

Planning Strategy

The main strategy in planning the itinerary was to identify the particular varieties of cuisine we wanted and finding the corresponding specialty restaurants with good rating and/or a lot of history. Then we arrange these restaurant visits around our sightseeing spots and shuffled the sightseeing times such that the restaurant visits always occured at lunch and dinner time. Kind of backwards isn't it? Well, it was a gourmet trip after all so that's how it went.

And one more thing. At most upscale restaurants in Tokyo, a particular meal at lunch is most likely way cheaper than the same meal at dinner. The dinner portion may be a little bigger and/or contain a little more variety and/or aesthetical arrangement. But I assure you the lunch portion would more than fill up an average adult. (I don't know who propagated that idea that Japanese meals are small in portion...that's quite far from the truth in Tokyo.) There are some varieties of food which are difficult to find for lunch (fugu/pufferfish comes to mind), but otherwise consider our strategy: Save the expensive Kaiseki course and Matsuzaka steak for lunch, and have cheap yakitori and ramen for dinner!

This travel journal here mainly presents what I saw and experienced during the trip, and may not be helpful at all as a guide. If you have any particular question, email me and I'll try my best.

Alright, Kanto here we go...