After we left the Imperial Palace, we had some time before our lunch reservations so we wandered around that area for a bit.

Tokyo is like 9 cities melded together, and each one has a slightly different feel to it. This one felt more business like, with fewer shops and little streets. But we found a tiny Shinto temple hidden amongst the skyscrapers.

Shinto feels like a good religion to have if you’re going to pick one. There’s very little nonsense about whether there’s a God, I haven’t read about any particular hatred towards any particular minority group, nor about them coming to your door and asking if you’ve cleansed yourself today.  Sean and I learned the cleansing ritual at the Emperor Meiji’s shrine, so I performed it here. I’m not terribly spiritual, but once in a while it comes upon me, and I think that some of my more religious friends who might be reading would really enjoy Shinto as a thing.

We had reservations at a little sushi shop near Shibuya. This place had recently been reviewed by a blogger who lives in the area, talking about how authoritarian the chef is, how he likes it his way, but how his way is meant to bring you the most happiness about the food, and how he’s a warm guy at heart.

This was the most intense meal I’ve ever had. First off, this older married couple who run the place are fantastic. Such cool people. The gentleman would make a piece of nigiri, put it down, and insist that you eat it immediately. Where upon another piece would be almost instantly placed on the plate in front of you. It felt frenetic, like you couldn’t keep up.

At the end, the lady asked if we wanted more and we said maybe 1 more. 4 pieces later, they had opened a bottle of sake and he was drinking with us, shared bottles of this seaweed-based paste, more sake, more paste, strawberries, and all this after we’d indicated that we were done eating!

This was a great experience!

We went back afterwards to meet up with Sean, as he had decided that he didn’t want to join Nik and I for this meal. This is going to be a 3 post day, as I have a few photos of the Tokyo Skytree that I just don’t want to shove into this post!