Tokyo: Day Three

Finally! It's here! Day three of our Tokyo trip...back in May. We've been super busy, and that's going to continue for a while, but I'll try my best to post some more fun from the last few months.

I feel like we did a lot of really cool things when we were in Tokyo, but day three might just have been my favorite. We started the day walking to the train station to head to Ebisu, and came upon this sculpture. It's famous, and often used in T.V. dramas.

When we got to Ebisu, we stored our luggage in some coin lockers and headed to the Yebisu Beer Museum. The museum was pretty nice, but unlike the Asahi Brewery Tour in Nagoya, you have to pay for a guided tour and there is a 400 yen charge per beer "sample." Below you can see pictures from the museum, the tasting room, and the tokens used to purchase the samples.

As you can see Chad was pretty happy (especially in the middle picture on the left where he's being cradled by the Yebisu logo).

After a refreshing Irish Cream Stout from the beer museum, we left for Odaiba, an artificial island in Tokyo Bay. The island has a lot of shopping and many restaurants, as well as a great night view. One of the first things I saw after getting out of the driverless, computer-operated train connecting the island to Tokyo was the Statue of Liberty. Kind of strange we haven't been to New York to see the real one, but there we were, in Japan, looking at this:

We wandered around a bit before finding a yummy pizza restaurant in Decks, a shopping mall with a view of the Rainbow Bridge from outside many of the restaurants and shops.

Kanpai! Sangria and beer--Cheers!

Top-view of my sangria, a Basil Mozzarella pizza, and a Carbonara pizza. Can you see the egg on the Carbonara pizza in the middle? In the bottom picture, the waiter is popping the egg and scrambling it over the whole pizza. The pizza is served piping hot, so the egg cooks immediately. It's actually really delicious!

Lovely salad.

After our late lunch we explored Decks a little more, finding a place where you can practice to be a Ninja Warrior, and a neat floor completely made to look like it's from the 1950's. This floor was probably my favorite part of going to Odaiba because I really love everything about that time period.

1. Check out the "penny" candy store, with old-fashioned treats
ranging in prices all below 100 yen.
2. Canned sodas with vintage designs
3. A general shot of the area
4. Chad and Yasu battling it out, playing an old arcade game

There was also a haunted house, a screen showing old-time cartoons, palm readers, and several souvenir shops. There were both fortune tellers reading palms and electronic ones, like the one pictured below:

(You put your hand in its mouth)

There were also fortune machines. Yasu seemed to be having bad luck over the trip when it came to drawing positive messages from fortunes, so he tried this one:

It totally reminded me of Zoltar in the movie "Big." Yasu put in money, and the dragon pulled out his fortune, did a dance, and then dropped it for Yasu to retrieve. It was cool to watch, but Yasu read his fortune only to find out it hadn't changed!

On the bright side to Yasu's fortune troubles, when we left the 1950's floor, we got to see this great view of the Rainbow Bridge:

Made us miss Mackinac!

It was getting late and we still had to pick up our luggage from Ebisu before catching our night bus, so we decided to head back. When we got to Yebisu, we decided to grab dinner at a ramen restaurant called Chabuton. We were intrigued by the sign on the door advertising "Veggie Ramen." Isn't that ramen blasphemy? We decided to check it out--little did we know that some REALLY amazing ramen awaited us!

Dinner is served! Beer, gyoza, and--for me!--Veggie Ramen.

Chad was jealous of my Veggie Ramen, and no one can blame him. I ordered the egg, but the basic ramen doesn't include it. This was seriously the best ramen I've ever tried. So vegetable-rich, and so yummy! We were sure to ask the ramen chef for details: was there really absolutely NO meat involved? Even in the broth? Why haven't more ramen shops started serving Veggie Glory?

His answers? Yes, the ramen has no meat, even in the broth. It's a vegetable broth, and the ramen recipe took over 10 years for the restaurant to perfect (which may be why other restaurants haven't started serving it. Or it might be because people don't believe in ramen without meat).

I left feeling like I had made a huge discovery, only to leave it behind...possibly for all time. But wait! The restaurant is a chain! And it is not only located in Ebisu, but very near to our company's headquarters in Kanayama! Hurray! Accessible Chabuton! I don't know what could have made a better ending to our Tokyo trip.

(Well... actually, a shinkansen ride would have been nice instead of the night bus, but you get the point.)