We woke up early (as usual) this morning and headed to Glitch Coffee for our final visit (to the Osaka location). Since we were early, we headed upstairs to check out a tiny art exhibit featuring some pieces…
Artist Gabi Brewer’s Monstruopedia exhibit
Artist Katsunari Shishido’s exchibit
Hinako Ouchi’s exhibit
Masaki Tani’s exhibit
We headed downstairs where we picked up two coffees including a Columbian Risaralda Milan (Niu) with a butter-vanilla scent and creamy finish that stands out as one of our very favorites.
We caught the Shinkansen back to Tokyo, arriving a a little before noon.
How complicated are these train stations? So complicated that Akemi, who has lived here most of her life, still gets confused trying to find her way around.
Met up with my cousin Matthew who took the three and a half hour flight from Guam to hang.
Despite the fact that we’re going out for sushi dinner tonight, we opted for a causal sushi lunch and Tsukiji.
I went with the tuna sampler in addition to some a la carte nigiri…
…and the anago (sea eel).
It was a cool day today, but the sun out and there was very little wind – a nice change from blustery Osaka.
On the recommendation of Ozberk, one of my followers on X, we took a stroll over to Turret Coffee that bills itself as “The Most Outrageous Coffee Shop in Japan”. Not sure what was outrageous about it, but I thought their matcha latte excellent and their Turret latte very good, although Akemi found it a tad too strong for her.
Creepy children’s statue
Akemi had booked herself a late afternoon spa treatment, so she left me (and my cousin Matthew, and his girlfriend Natalie) to fend for ourselves for dinner – after making dinner reservations and walking me over to the place last week so I would know where it was. But still, on the night, I got confused and could neither remember the name of the restaurant nor the correct floor. I could have sworn it was the third floor but the only restaurant on the third floor was an Indian eatery. The third floor of the building next door housed two businesses, a bar and another bar that was closed. As we headed back to the first building, I could feel the panic beginning to brew. Was I destined to become one of those Wester tourists who books a restaurant and then no-shows and ends up on some sort of Japanese restaurant blacklist?
We checked the fourth floor of the first building and – lo and behold! – discovered a sushi restaurant. I informed the waitress that I thought I had a reservation and gave them my name, “Joseph”. She confirmed they did, in fact, have a reservation for Joseph. Despite this assurance, I asked her to double-check and, even after she had done so and seated us, I couldn’t help but wonder if we hadn’t taken some other Joseph’s reservation and would be forced to relinquish our counter seats when the real deal showed up.
As luck would have it, however, we were at the right place (or the other Joseph ended up a no-show), so we enjoyed a pretty good sushi dinner along with this fantastic sake pictured above.
I told Matthew that I would be picking up the bill and expected a battle so when I spotted the waitress about to set a wooden box down in front of Matthew, I pounced, snatching it out of her hand – to everyone’s shock. Because, it turned out, it was not the bill but Matthew’s dessert.
Anyway, we got it sorted out and I paid in the end.
On the way back to our hotels, we stopped by Manneken, this tiny shop that sells delicious waffles. They shared a chocolate waffle while I got the decadent “rich chocolate” variety. I’ll be honest. This afternoon and tonight’s sushi was great, but that Manneken waffle was the best thing I ate today.
Tomorrow, Akemi is meeting her friend Hikaru so it’ll be Matthew and I (and, possibly, Natalie if she’s not too busy) going to Pizza Seirinkan in Naka-Meguro, my favorite pizza anywhere. They open at 11:30 a.m. and close at 2:30 p.m. – or whenever they run out of dough. The initial plan was to do a bang-bang, pizza followed by a steak sandwich at Wagyu Mafia, but my cousin no longer eats beef so I guess we’ll have to settle for I Am Donut instead.
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