meiji jingu gaien ginkgo tree avenue icho namiki night illumination autumn light-up

Photo Highlights: Two Autumn Leaf Light-Ups

December 4, 2023

To see the fall colors in Tokyo this year, I wanted to do something a little different. Despite its suggestive name, Shinjuku Gyoen’s “Naked Autumn Night Garden” involved no nudity, but rather, light displays from the digital art collective Naked Inc. I caught the event on November 30 before it ended last night. Since it didn’t start until 6 p.m., it gave me time to head down the Oedo Line to Aoyama-Itchome Station first and see the trees along Meiji Jingu Gaien’s famous Ginkgo Avenue illuminated. The light-up there, which also ended last night, started at 4:30, right around sundown. It was free, whereas the Shinjuku Gyoen event cost ¥2,200.

For this outing, I was partially inspired by our trip to Kyoto last fall when we saw a beautiful illumination at Toji Temple one night. It made me realize that, although I had been to many of Tokyo’s most famous spots for fall color viewing already, I’d mostly seen them during the day. The autumn leaves are usually at their peak here around late November to early December.

At Shinjuku Gyoen, you could see the maple trees and London plane trees lit up, but you had to walk back to the Okido Gate, which is a bit of a hike coming from Shinjuku Station. As you can see in these 25 pictures, however, it was a nice break from Shinjuku’s neon and a nice seasonal highlight, even though we’re already into December now and the overlapping season for holiday light-ups.

tocho tokyo metropolitan government building observation deck observatory towers shinjuku

Tocho on Thanksgiving (with Memories of New York)

November 24, 2023

Yesterday, while people in the U.S. were eating turkey and giving thanks, I took a trip to Tocho, a.k.a. the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, to get a vaccine booster. It was my first time doing that at Tocho, which has a couple of free observatories up in its twin towers. I had been to both observatories several times already, and I was surprised when they ushered me onto the elevator to see that it was going up to the north observatory on the 45th floor. They’re now using that observatory as a vaccination site, which may be why the line for the south one was so long, since it’s currently handling twice the number of sightseers.

pizza bar 38th restaurant tokyo mandarin oriental hotel nihonbashi

The Michelin Files: The Tokyo Pizza Restaurant That Ranks Among the World's Best

November 20, 2023

Every year, the 50 Top Pizza World list recognizes the best Neapolitan-style pizza inside and outside Italy. Though a pizzeria in Naples naturally tops the 2023 list, there are also a couple of Tokyo restaurants on there — one of which, The Pizza Bar on 38th, climbed the rankings from #16 to #4 this year.

Located on the top floor of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Nihonbashi, The Pizza Bar on 38th is also listed as a Bib Gourmand selection in the Michelin Guide (though prices are more in the one-or-two-star range). Normally, the restaurant, run by Rome-born Chef Daniele Cason, can only accommodate eight guests around its marble-top counter. However, when we ate there for Sunday brunch last month, it had expanded beyond this setup. The counter was closed off and they had everyone seated in the adjacent dining room of the hotel’s other Italian restaurant, K’shiki.

This may have been because The Pizza Bar on 38th was temporarily serving a special combined menu with Tokuyoshi, the namesake of Chef Yoji Tokuyoshi, who runs Alter Ego, another one-star Michelin restaurant in Central Tokyo. For three days in October, this limited-time omakase (chef-curated) tasting menu allowed guests to dine on the cuisine of two Michelin chefs for the price of one.

imperial palace moat elevated view tokyo midtown hibiya

Photo Highlight: Imperial Palace Moat, Elevated View

November 11, 2023

Until this month, I had never been somewhere with a good elevated view of the moat surrounding the Imperial Palace. The 35th floor of the Marunouchi Building does yield this view, but what you’re seeing there is more the edge of the palace grounds and Kokyo Gaien National Garden.

For its part, Tokyo Midtown Hibiya also rises 35 floors above ground, but most visitors will only ever see the shopping and dining part of the building, which tops out in a 7th-floor terrace. From there and the windows in the lobby of Toho Cinemas Hibiya, you can see the same edge of the palace from the opposite side, though it’s not quite high enough to give a real bird’s-eye view looking down on it.

It wasn’t until I took a different elevator and ventured up onto the 9th floor of the office part of the building that I beheld this view of the palace moat. I was there to pick up my press pass on the final day of the Tokyo International Film Festival, where I screened the closing film, Godzilla Minus One. I filed my review later that night. The US-based editor who approved my pitch happened to be honeymooning in Japan the same week, which just goes to show that the UK isn’t the only place where this country is trending for travel.

Ringu Cabin Windows Glowing America Camp Village Okutama Tokyo

From Amityville to Ringu: The Evil Eyes of Three Houses and One Cabin

November 4, 2023

Halloween is over, but if you’re a cinephile (or dark tourist?) looking to see the house from The Amityville Horror in real life, there are three choices. All of them come with a dose of mundane reality.

I spend a lot of time searching for information on travel locations online, and I’ll often come across a listicle or some other form of clickbait content peddling outdated info. Sometimes, they immediately fail the smell taste. Other times, they’ll have me chasing a lead that turns out to be a dead-end and a waste of time. I hate it when that happens; it’s counterproductive. So, to save the interweb the trouble of going off on a wild goose chase like I did, I’m going to turn it around here and tell the real story of The Amityville Horror houses as they look today, based on some legitimate sources that I found as I was doing my homework on the setting of High Hopes.

Rather than bury the lede any further, I’ll just say that the three houses associated with The Amityville Horror look nothing like they did in the movies or any old black-and-white photo you may have seen from the 1970s. This is a case where the sign in front of the house should really read, “Hopes Dashed.” As a consolation prize, however, horror fans can do what I did and spend the night in the cabin from Ringu, which almost looks more Amityville than the actual Amityville houses do now.

hachiko square sign shibuya halloween 2023 canceled

Photo Highlight: Shibuya Halloween Crackdown

October 29, 2023

In the wake of last October’s fatal crowd crush in Seoul, South Korea, city officials in Shibuya, Tokyo, have let it be known this year that the Halloween street party is over. In years past, the area around Shibuya Crossing would overflow with a crowd so thick that it could leave you shoulder-to-shoulder with costumed people, swaying back and forth as if in a game of tug-of-war. That’s what happened to me, anyway, when I first wandered into the crowd back in 2015. A serious bottleneck occurred on the sidewalk between the Q-Front building (pictured above) and the subway exit outside it. Imagine the feeling of being almost knocked off your feet and trampled in a slow-motion stampede.

Considering that, it’s understandable why Shibuya would want to keep itself from becoming a danger zone like Seoul’s Itaewon neighborhood last year. During the day, you can still see the occasional guy dressed like Spider-Man hanging around the crossing. However, signs like the one above are currently up all around Hachiko Square, walling off the statue of the titular dog completely. Security personnel nudge people along to keep them from loitering or leaning on the signs, some of which trumpet the message, “You can't see Hachiko from Saturday, October 28, to Wednesday morning, November 1.”

On a separate but perhaps not entirely unrelated note, the popular Tsutaya and Starbucks in Q-Front, with their windows overlooking the crossing, are also due to close on Halloween for an extended renovation period lasting into 2024.

tsuta first michelin star ramen yoyogi-uehara tokyo

The Michelin Files: A Ramen and Gyoza Shop Starter Pack

October 25, 2023

Tokyo has more Michelin-starred restaurants than any other city in the world. The current count is 200, and when you factor in other Bib Gourmand, or value-type, restaurants, that brings the total number with Michelin recognition up to 422. No wonder Anthony Bourdain once said, “If I had to eat only in one city for the rest of my life, Tokyo would be it.”

As its name implies, “The Michelin Files” is a series where I’m documenting my experiences with some of those Tokyo restaurants that have been featured in the Michelin Guide. I can’t claim to have my finger on the pulse of the city’s culinary scene, but I’ve dined at a growing list of featured restaurants, and I’m always looking to broaden my horizons more.

In the last edition, Tokyo’s only three-star Michelin sushi restaurant was up for discussion. This time, we’re going to the opposite end of the price spectrum to look at a mix of five ramen and gyoza shops, which will get you fed without breaking the bank. Three are from the 2023 guide, but two are also from the 2016 guide, when a ramen shop received a Michelin star for the first time anywhere.

Photo Highlights: Skytree After Dark

October 18, 2023

Until last night, it had been a few years since I was over to see Tokyo Skytree after dark. It’s on the east side of town in Sumida, and I don’t even think I’d been over there at night since before I got my aging iPhone X in 2018.

Obviously, half a decade in iPhone years is a lifetime, technology-wise. Already that model of phone, which was heralded as top of the line, feels like a dinosaur in the face of the three-eyed iPhone 15. But the Skytree is still standing, and here are three pictures to prove it. This attraction is still popular enough with sightseers in Tokyo that it was sold out last night when I swung by there after dinner at a local yakitori restaurant. The meal took me to a back street behind the office tower just east of the Skytree, and I had never seen it from that angle.

Yesterday, the wi-fi was down in our apartment building for part of the day, so I did a very analog thing and brought a bag of books across town with me to trade them in at Infinity Books. It’s a store in Sumida with a large selection of English books. The nearest stations are Asakusa or Honjo-Azumabashi on the Toei Asakusa Line, with the Skytree being one more stop down from there at Oshiage Station. I got seven dollars in store credit for five old books that I would have otherwise donated to the library. It was enough to swap out for a big, used, 775-page door-stopper of a novel that will probably keep me occupied reading for weeks to come.

sushi yoshitake tokyo international film festival food truck — The Sushi Yoshitake food truck at Roppongi Hills Arena in 2015.

The Michelin Files: Sushi Yoshitake, Tokyo's Only Three-Star Michelin Sushi Restaurant

October 11, 2023

Update: 12/18/2023. It seems I caught this restaurant at the raw, fish-tail end of its three-star run. In the 2024 Michelin Guide (which I’ve written about now for Explore), another Ginza joint named Harutaka has dethroned Sushi Yoshitake as the capital’s reigning three-star champ. Sushi Yoshitake still has two stars.

I first ate Tokyo’s only current three-star Michelin sushi out of a food truck. That may sound like a contradiction of culinary trappings, but in hindsight, marrying fine dining with street food was a good place to start my Michelin journey. It’s a journey I’ve accelerated of late, using the famous restaurant guide to seek out new dining experiences in Tokyo. And it’s a journey that peaked last night with a more formal, sit-down meal at Sushi Yoshitake in Ginza.

'Star Wars' Cinema Concert at the Tokyo International Forum

October 7, 2023

This time last week, Japan’s oldest symphony orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, was performing one of two cinema concerts in accompaniment with a screening of Star Wars: A New Hope. The concert venue was the futuristic Tokyo International Forum, where lighted walkways lead into Hall A, a double-tiered, proscenium-style theater that seats over 5,000 people.