Japan 2018: Tokyo Skytree and Solamachi

After our first breakfast in Tokyo (continuing from my last post) we decided to buy our bullet train tickets for tomorrow (to Osaka) & next Friday (from Kyoto back to Tokyo), which have to be reserved in advance. We found the transit center in Shinjuku Station easily & got the tickets just fine.

The next plan was to visit the Tokyo Skytree and Solamachi, partly because we haven't been there yet & mostly because it contains the largest Pokemon Center in Tokyo! Charlie's google-fu found the subways we needed to take (just one connection) and we had reloaded our Suica cards (passcards to ride trains & subways) so we were set to go! The trip took about 30 minutes, and we walked right out of the station to the Solamachi... which needs some explanation :) In Japanese, there is no "L" sound, although some pronunciations of "R" come close, so when romanising Japanese words, they sometimes choose "L" instead of "R". If you pronounce "Solamachi" as "Soramachi" it sounds like "sky town". And it's the shopping & restaurant portion of the Skytree, so, yeah! Makes sense!

Skytree from right outside the Solamachi

The very first shop we noticed was the Studio Ghibli store, so we headed there first. Studio Ghibli's movie "My Neighbour Totoro", which we first saw (and loved!) when Brendan was four, was what led us down the path to learning Japanese, so it's a very nostalgic place for us. Charlie wanted to look for something cute for a friend who's wife is expecting a baby, and this was the place to find many cute things :) As it turns out, "Totoro" is celebrating 30 years since it was released! Cue photo op!!

Next we looked at a map to find the Pokemon Center. When we got off the escalator, the first shop we saw was filled with what looked like candy... but turned out to be jewelry! It was, in fact, Kyoto candy (boiled sweets and tea ceremony sweets are a specialty there) covered in a thick layer of acrylic & made into jewelry & phone straps- really cute! I was particularly drawn to the "make your own" hairsticks, where you could buy the sticks & charms to hang on it separately. So cute! You will see me wearing them when I get home!

Then it was time to find the Pokemon Center!! And who should greet us at the entrance but Halloween Pikachu riding Rayqueza! Halloween seems to be becoming more & more of a thing in Japan, and there were loads of Halloween themed Pokemon plushies & goods. This was also a really good time to visit because a new Nintendo game featuring Pikachu & Eevee will be released this Fall, and there were so many Eevees & Eeveelutions everywhere! We thought of Brendan constantly because Eevee is his favourite Pokemon. It's anyone's guess who might come home with us to be his new friend. I was pretty restrained, though, since there's not a lot of room in our luggage yet (we will give prezzies from home to the friends we meet here, and then we'll have room!). In truth, we plan to visit the Pokemon Center in Kyoto as well, so it's all good :D I also made a couple of the young women who work there happy when they noticed I was wearing earrings made from charms I'd bought in previous Pokemon Center trips. Pokemon love!

Next, we were ready for lunch. Charlie wanted to have okonomiyaki at some point this trip, and there's no time like the present. The restaurant here advertised vegetarian options, which is rare in Japan, so we went for it.  Okonomiyaki sort of translates as "cooked the way you like it" and is a sort of savoury pancake made with veggies & usually meat or seafood, cooked on a teppan (hot plate) like you'd find at those Japanese steak houses in the US where they throw the food in the air as they cook it. Things are much more restrained here :) We were seated at a table with a teppan in the middle and ordered drinks, then I ordered okonomiyaki made with veggies, mochi (rice that has been pounded till it's like playdough), & cheese, & Charlie ordered one made with veggies & pork. They were pre-cooked mostly, then slid onto our teppan for us to tend until they were cooked through. Deeelish!!

On the way back to the train we looked at a couple more floors of shops & bought some small gifts to bring home. We actually weren't terribly interested in going up the Skytree, which is the tallest tower in the world. I don't like heights, & it had been drizzling, so Charlie thought the view wouldn't be as good today. We did catch a photo of the infrastructure of the tower, which was pretty cool.

I would have liked to stay longer & look around the shops, but we were dragging a bit from jet lag, so back to the hotel we went. When we got back I took a couple photos from our 29th floor window (the hotel is in the top 20 floors of an office building) because it's such a cool view. This time we overlook parts of Yoyogi Park and lots of highrises & apartment buildings. In the second photo, I got a closer photo of what seems to be a high school with a swimming pool on the roof :)

We rested a few hours & then went looking for dinner. I had been hoping to find a tofu-based restaurant that we've been to before, a few blocks away, but when we got there it was gone, so we had tenpura instead. It is a sign of how tired I was that I completely forgot to take photos! (sob!) But we did see a mascot out in from of a shop on the way home, so here it is:

And at night they light up the clock tower in Takashimaya Times Square, which looks really cool:

And now (hopefully) to sleep! Tomorrow we take the shinkansen (bullet train) to Osaka to meet friends!!