Tokyo, I love you (especially your food...)

So finally I have made the trip to Tsukiji.  Wasn't going to get there at 4:30am, so we decided to go to be in time for a late sushi breakfast at around 11am.  The outer markets were buzzing with people - lots of businessmen, chinese and korean tourists, a few token westerners and us (but we were greeted with "ni hao" by a few of the vendors, so were considered chinese tourists).

A lot of stalls selling kombu, seaweed, seafood (in various formats: dried, cooked, frozen, raw), tea, spices, kitchenware, etc. What I was most looking forward to were the sushi restaurants, and they were everywhere!  Most had a person outside spruiking when we were looking for a place, and after looking around at various modern ones and some empty ones, we decided on one that was traditional looking and pretty popular with a nigiri menu.  After the shambles of the "exciting super chef's special" at the sushi dinner a couple of nights ago, we decided to keep it tame and go for the moderate 10-piece, what we called the "menu for beginners".  Essentially it had some of the more basic ones including  lean and normal tuna, tamago, cod roe, sea urchin, horse mackerel, prawn, and scallop. Much less risque!  Most of it was melt in the mouth and it's one of the meals that make me just love Japan.

From Tsukiji we went to the National Museum at Ueno.  Spied some red bean fish waffles so had a snack-u on the way.  After getting a drink from one of the ubiquitous vending machines which said the temperature was 4 degrees celsius, it suddenly felt freezing!  Gotta love ignorance.  National museum was nice, very pleasant - warm, free storage lockers, plenty of seats and not busy!  Ideal.

From Ueno we headed home to Shinjuku to have another snack-u, this time at Afternoon Tea, a (you guessed it) cafe selling tea and cakes in our hotel building.  Tea is really expensive in Japan... 1 cup was almost $10AUD!  Lisa ordered a special "fruit tea" which we suspected to be hot breakfast juice.  What was more surprising was that it came with actual fruit pieces, including floating banana, orange and apple.  Very bizarre, probably the most surprising thing I've seen (food-wise) here.

Fruit tea... with fruit!

Tonight we went to Roppongi to see the Mori Art Museum and the Tokyo city view.  Surprised at how many non-asians there were there, I'd say the asian:non-asian ratio is higher in Box Hill! The view was really nice, better at night than during the day.  Mori art museum was impressive, very focused and edgy.

Tomorrow is our last day in Tokyo.  This means shopping and karaoke. I miss Tokyo already!!!