Golden Week v2: Beer, Meat and Ice Cream

For our next day in Tokyo, we went on a bit of a festival tour, ending up at three different festivals, one for beer, another for meat, and finally, ice cream. I also got to see some parts of Tokyo I never really had a reason to visit. It was a stellar day with good company. 

Henry and I woke up a bit later and had a bit of a slower start as we mapped out our day. We had wanted to go TeamLab, a kind of art installation, and I asked Henry if he had made a reservation. He said he didn’t know we would need one, and I felt a bit sheepish about having both not having nudged him about it earlier, and also leaving most of the planning to him. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to mind. 

There was still plenty to do in Odaiba, an artificial island near TeamLab, including a festival Henry had read about. We decided to make that our plan for the day, even without TeamLabs, and got ready for our day. 

After breakfast, we headed out to Shinjuku station, and hopped on the train. Now, this was probably my fault, but I’ll blame google maps. Whoever was at fault, we hopped on the wrong train, and ended up at Ikebukuro station. 

Google maps will usually give you the train line, and the platform number, making navigating transit pretty easy. However, every once in a while it will only give you the train line, and getting the right platform is up to you. Even if you think you’ve got all that correct, sometimes you catch the train going the wrong way. I’ve been pretty lucky, and only ended up on the wrong train a handful of times, and this was one of them. 

Although, this turned into a bit of a happy accident. We didn’t really have anything time sensitive for the day, and we didn’t have any other plans that would take us to Ikebukuro, so this was as good a time to explore as any. The main landmark in Ikebukuro is Sunshine City mall, so I strolled through the city with Henry as we made our way there. 

Once we got to the mall I pointed out all the big stores, the ever busy pokemon center, the one piece store, the Bandai Namco store, we even ended up on the roof debating going to the Aquarium. In the end though, we headed back down, but the Pokemon cafe did end up catching Henry’s eye. It was a cute store, and we didn’t want to leave the mall empty handed, so we got a quick snack. 

On our way back we stopped by an entertainment center that had some bowling alleys, but the wait times were pretty long, so we decided to press on to Odaiba. It was about 45 minutes on the train to our destination, which was a nice little break. 

I’d never been to this part of Tokyo before, never really had a reason to come out this way. I’d heard about one of the landmarks, the giant Gundam statue, but that alone never seemed like the most compelling reason to come.

It was only a few minutes’ walk from the station before we were standing in front of the mall, and the giant Gundam statue. I’ve seen a few Gundam anime, but still don't know all that much about the series. Regardless of my limited knowledge, it was quite the cool sight. As we finished taking pictures, we also noticed another surprise in the area. 

What we thought was the meat festival set up, actually turned out to be Oktoberfest! I’d heard from a coworker that they had been last year, but I’ve never been myself. On a bit of a whim, Henry and I decided to head in. We figured we could check things out for a bit before heading onto the meat festival. 

There were probably around 20 stalls offering food and beer, set up around a stage in the center. Neither Henry nor I knew anything about beer, so we found a stall that offered a beer flight and decided to split one between the two of us. Not only do we not know anything about beer, neither of us drink it very often, and it was a bit of a struggle to finish off 5 small beers. 

Once we finished our beers, we headed off to the next festival, one we both liked a lot more, meat. There were another 20 or so stalls, all in a row this time, that each had different cuts of meat available in a variety of forms, deep-fried, hamburgers, grilled, anything you could want. Most stalls cost around $10 for a single serving of their dish, which seemed a bit steep. 

After Henry and I decided on our first selections, got our food and found a table, it was easy to see why. Each dish was tasty in its own way, and felt pretty top of the line. Despite the smaller serving sizes, it was mouthwateringly satisfying, and we both eagerly wanted more. We sampled 5 meat dishes total, filling our bellies and enjoying the festival atmosphere. 

When we felt satisfied with our selections at the meat festival, there was a little bit more sightseeing to do in Odaiba before we started making our way back to Shinjuku, a little taste of France, and the US! Despite being in Japan, we somehow managed to see the Statue of Liberty! 

Apparently, in 1998 Japan designated it the “Year of France” as a way to promote ties between the two countries and serve as a sort of cultural exchange. As a result of that, France gave Japan a small copy of the Statue of Liberty to serve as a tourist attraction, small world!

At this point, our energy was starting to taper off. We felt satisfied we’d seen a fair bit of Odaiba, so we started making our way back towards Shinjuku. However, in Shinjuku, there was one last festival to check out, an ice cream festival! 

By the time we found the festival, it was about an hour or so before the festival was going to end for the day, so the crowd was fairly sparse. This didn’t stop us from finding a stall with some tasty flavors on offer and digging in. In a funny turn of events, Henry found a place featuring an ice cream flight out of the same Hokkaido milk he sampled the day before. I opted for a rich chocolate ice cream myself. 

We dug in, and once again I was delighted. It was a great treat after a long day, and while my selection was quite rich, Henry let me mix it with bites of his ice cream flight. Once we finished we resolved to get one more sampler from a different stall. We grabbed Mango, salted chocolate banana, and frozen strawberry lemonade, if I remember correctly. 

It was a bit all over the place, but between the different bites of meat and ice cream, I felt satisfied for both dinner and dessert. Filled to the brim with treats, we made our way back to our hotel for a rest. This was the midway point in our time here in Tokyo, so we rallied and went out for the night. I’ll spare you the drinking shenanigans, but it consisted of more karaoke, making new friends, and having some late-night famichiki. 

Henry coming to visit really pushed me outside of my normal activities, finding festivals I had never heard about and giving me reasons to visit landmarks I’d always meant to visit, but could never find the justification to go. It was a nice reminder of how our connections with other people really serve to broaden your world, and makes for excellent company along the way. 

It was an excellent day. Although, if I’d known just how much walking we were going to end up doing tomorrow, I might have cut our night a bit short…