Exploring Tokyo

I’ve heard so many amazing things about Japan growing up, and I have so many friends who rave about Tokyo nightlife and food nonstop, so I’ve wanted to visit for as long as I could remember! So when the opportunity to visit/work in Asia finally arrived in September 2016, I made sure to make Tokyo the first leg of my journey! 

The flight from New York to Tokyo is pretty long (~14 hours), but as soon as I got off of the bullet train from Narita, I knew I had made the right decision! The first thing that I noticed traveling around Tokyo was how incredibly well everything worked, and how immaculately clean the buildings, subways, streets and everything else was kept. It was super impressive.

I always heard this would be true, but it’s certainly different to see it in person than to hear about it from friends. Along the same lines, trains always arrive exactly on schedule (they apologize if the trains are even a minute delayed), stations are easy to navigate, and the people are incredibly friendly and will go way out of their way to help you.

We stayed at the Intercontinental ANA hotel, which is a cool hotel next to nightlife in Roppongi and upscale Toranomon Hills. The view to the city was fantastic, and I absolutely loved the meals that we had, which were a mixture of Japanese and Western cuisines. I've always been a major fan of Japanese food, especially sushi, ramen, mochi and everything under the sun that’s matcha! 

I must admit that I went a little overboard with my matcha and food enthusiasm and I was eating everything green in sight, including lattes, madeleines, ice cream, chocolate, and puddings, among other things.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the non-matcha dessert options in Japan are legendary as well, and there are entire floors of malls like Mitsukoshi that are filled with nothing but tasty, tasty desserts! Mind blown. 

I’m enclosing some of my favorite things from my trip (below), and I’d love to hear if you guys have any favorites as well that you’d like to share in the comments!

Food

*Sushi – Miyaba, Arai, Tokami, Daisan Harumi. The easiest way to find great sushi, ramen, et al is to hit up Tabelog, which is a better local version of Yelp, and sort like this. Anything that has over a 4 rating in Tokyo will blow your mind. 

 Some spots like Saito (the no.1 on this list) no longer take new customers and/or require existing customer intros, but you can just ask your hotel or credit card's concierge to reach out to all of the ones you like with a few days notice, and that ought to do the trick. I'm also in love with super cheap, low brow sushi ("kaiten" or conveyor belt sushi), and there's a pretty good chain for this called Ganso Zushi. My friend Engin's recommendation Sushi No Midori is also good for this. 

 I've also waited at Tsukiji fish market (now located in Toyosu, which is accessible via the Yurikamome train) early in the morning to eat at Sushi Dai and Daiwa and those are truly amazing, inexpensive (think $25), and they never disappoint, but you have to get up at 5:30am or earlier to do it. Don’t go on the weekend, otherwise you might get swamped by hungry tourists, but the fish is some of the very best you can find anywhere! 

 *Ramen – I like Ichiran a lot and it's open super late, but Tabelog disagrees with me. There are super antisocial privacy stalls and it’s great when you’ve had a night on the town and you just need to bury your face in amazing ramen.

*Kaiseki – this is a multi-course tasting menu and elegant sort of meal. Sadaya for steak (and some seafood) is a really fantastic choice.

*Cocktails – Gen Yamamoto far and away the very best cocktail experience I've ever had, although it's impossible to book these days. 

*Dessert – if you want to get overwhelmed with a million different types of awesome dessert, super expensive gift fruits (e.g. square watermelon) etc., I'd suggest checking out the *full floor* dessert levels in the various shopping centers (e.g. Mitsukoshi, Takashimaya, Isetan). 

Parks

I was really impressed by picture perfect, incredibly manicured gardens that are interspersed throughout Tokyo, and there are 6,000 different gardens in total covering 1,000 hectares. Tokyo residents picnic and drink sake in the parks, and also go to observe the cherry blossoms in the spring. The most popular parks in Tokyo are Yoyogi Park, Kyu-Shiba Rikyu Gardens, Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, Imperial Palace East Garden, Arisugawa-no-miya Park, and Ueno Park, among others.  The parks are inspired by traditional zen principles, and it's extremely relaxing to walk around, listen to birdsong, and have a traditional tea ceremony.. 

Nightlife

There’s a lot of amazing nightlife in Tokyo, but it’s often best to go with Japanese friends or colleagues if you can so they can help you to navigate the sea of options and occasionally tricky entry policies. If you go to very upscale or off-the-beaten path places, you may hear "Japanese only" because they're worried they can't explain the rules, and the rules actually matter to them a lot. 

Check out Gen Yamamoto and Star Bar in Tokyo for craft cocktails, which are my top two favorites. For clubs, check out Womb, Geronimo, and R2, and although it's touristy these days, I really like barhopping around all of the mini bars in Golden Gai. In the Golden Gai area, Bar Saru is amazing, tiny and the bartender behind the counter has a massive stockpile of Japanese 80s music lps, and you can just tell him what sort of music you like and he'll play it for you; and there's also a pretty good collection of Japanese whiskeys. If you're looking for activities that are on the more unusual side, I've got some recommendations like these: Reddit1, Reddit2