Atlanta To Japan: Asakusa With Friends

This morning Chris and Yumi made us a delicious breakfast in a more traditional style: toasted salmon with a fried egg, rice, and miso soup:

We also had some umeboshi (preserved mountain plums) that Chris gets from an old lady he befriended at some point in the past. They were great on the rice, though in very small bits since they were very strongly flavored.

After breakfast we carted all of our luggage onto the trains to get out to our hotel for the rest of our trip. We walked into it and realized we had accidentally booked the fanciest hotel in Asakusa, but it really was incredibly affordable! They took our luggage to be stored until our room was ready (at which point they’d bring it up), and we went on our way to get some lunch. Chris had scoped out a good unagi (eel) restaurant, but by the time we were ready they were already finishing lunch service and closing until dinner. We decided to maybe get some yakitori instead, and ended up at a really great chicken restaurant, though they didn’t serve yakitori until dinner time.

We each ordered something different and they were all delicious.

Teriyaki Grilled Chicken

Karaage (Fried Thigh Pieces)

I forget what this was called - seasoned ground chicken on rice with a tasty egg.

Okyakodon - Chicken and egg mixed together on rice

Some chicken gyoza in a broth

We walked from there to a gelato shop that Chris remembered from when he lived in the area, and we all got some different flavors.

Coffee, strawberry milk, the nut powder they put on mochi, almond, matcha, and yogurt flavor...

We walked around to a bunch of shops. Chris thought he knew some place we could maybe find a tanuki statue for our house, but many of the shops were already closing down at 4pm, and the rest at 5pm.

Kappabashi Dori (not named after kappa, the mythical creature depicted in statue form, but sounds similar so they have it as an unofficial mascot)

We’ll head back out later in the week to check them out, but we soon got tired of walking and went back to the hotel to check out our room. On the way we stopped in a couple sake shops to try and find the special Otokoyama we had the night before, and found a shop where the keeper showed us several similar sakes and even gave Chris and I a sample - it was good enough that we both bought a bottle from him.

My bottle, which we got a sample of

We got a 20th floor room, with a view of Sky Tree, the big lit tower in Asakusa, and it’s a GREAT view.

The Skytree, Sansoji temple, the Asahi beer building... All visible from the room.

I took some fancy night time shots, but I haven’t gotten them off the camera yet. I’ll add them soon.

We sat around and chatted for a while and had a few drinks of sake until we decided to go out to dinner. We had had our fill of Japanese food for a little while, so we decided to go get pizza. A place a few blocks down had great reviews and looked pretty legit from the photos online, so Chris
called to see how busy it was - it wasn’t but they gave him a reservation anyway. We walked on over and sat down at a table with a street view even.

The pizzas were napolitan style, and we selected several to all share. They turned out to be really amazing, and the dough was a nice sourdough crust, like Verasano’s in Atlanta.

This was sausage and canola flower

Artichokes, olives, capers and tomatoes

Prosciutto

We ordered one other but we forgot to take a picture.

It was dessert time, so we walked back over to the taiyaki (fish-shaped filled pastries) shop we had seen earlier and that Yumi was recommending and sat outside watching them make them while wea ate.