Tokyo: Hokkaido food festival + Shibuya

This is the sixth recap for LOHOjapan, my 3 week trip to Japan with my boyfriend. After exploring Yokohama, we have another full day of exploring Shibuya.

First, we check out of our Airbnb in Shinjuku. We booked it for 6 nights and really enjoyed the convenience and location. However, we also booked 2 nights in a hotel in the Akasaka side of Tokyo to be closer to other attractions in our itinerary for later on.

Hotel: Henn na hotel Tokyo Akasaka

Akasaka is more of a business area so the hotels and restaurants are more targeted towards businessmen.

The first thing we notice upon arriving at Henn na hotel is their front desk.

LOL WTF right?

My boyfriend doesn’t even notice because they look so real. As we are approaching them, he whispers to me, “Wow, she’s so pretty.”

They move and blink and the corners of their lips sometimes curl up to a small smile. The move their necks and eyes around as if constantly looking around the lobby.

We approach them to check-in, but because we arrive earlier than the check-in time (3pm), the robots are not able to assist us. All they have is a paper blocking the machine to tell us to return at 3pm. We store our luggage in the lockers and return later.

When we return, the paper is no longer covering the machine. We approach the two robots and they both bow (!!!!) and start speaking to us – first in Japanese and then in English. They welcome us to the hotel and tell us to refer to the machine for instructions on how to check-in.

We follow the instructions on the machine and scan our passports. When we do this, an automatic message pops up telling us that a real staff will assist us. Within 0.01 seconds someone comes out from a door to our left and helps us finish the check-in process.

The entire check-in process is quite simple and we receive our room keys through the machine. My only worry is coming down to the lobby to buy a drink from the vending machine late at night and seeing those robots standing there staring at me.

Omg the room we get is on the 9th or 10th floor and it is huge. There’s enough room to open 4 full-sized suitcases if we want to and we can leave them open too. The bed is huge and the washroom is huge – everything is bigger than the Airbnb we stayed at the nights before.

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Lunch: Hokkaido Food Festival

We see on Facebook events that there is a Hokkaido Food Festival happening today at Yoyogi Park in Shibuya, so we decide to go for lunch. We are super excited because Hokkaido is known to have amazing food. Specifically, they are known for their milk, potato and seafood (crab) exports.

The festival is kind of like the Richmond Night Market. They have a bunch of food stalls, a concert stage and a section of stalls where they sell produce (just vegetables and other products).

The first food we try is this beef, ikura (fish eggs) and uni (sea urchin) bowl for $20 USD.

The picture looks really delicious but the actual size of the bowl is pretty small. Nevertheless, the beef was super fatty and soft and the ikura and uni were sweet and flavourful.

The next thing we buy is some deep fried squid ($7) – not the best as we waited too long to eat it after we bought it.

Next, we try the a Hokkaido snow crab stand. We opt for a giant crab leg grilled and baked outside for $20. I find the crab meat to be slightly too moist if that is even a thing – it doesn’t feel as fresh as I expect it to taste.

Of course, we also try some butter scallops for $3 each. They are soaked in butter.

And – my favourite – potato croquettes! We tried a meat one and a potato one for $2.50 each and the potato one is so much better. The inside was so soft and fluffy – like the most amazing hashbrown to ever grace my lips.

And lastly, we end our day off with some melon ice cream ($4-5). Fruits in Japan are pretty crazy good. I don’t even like melons but this melon ice cream is so sweet and delicious.

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Things to do: Meiji Shrine

Yoyogi park is right next to Meiji Shrine, one of the most popular shrines in Japan. Its large forest area is very refreshing as it sits in the middle of dense buildings and towers.

We walk through the long roads into Meiji Shrine. We stop by what we believe is a box of fortunes and pay 100 yen, but unfortunately it is a box of useless poems. Ugh. You can also buy charms for different things, like for school, love, money, etc. We decide not to buy any because there is a specific shrine in Kyoto my boyfriend likes to go to buy charms.

There’s an area where you can write your wish on little wooden boards, but aside from that our visit to Meiji Shrine is quick.

Dinner: Ebisu yokocho

Ebisu is an area in Shibuya and yokocho means “alleyways off to the side of a main street”. There are tons of retro alleyways in Japan that offer intimate bars and seating. A sense of pub-hopping, if you will.

We meet our friend, Cherie, who is currently living and working in Japan for a few years. She leads us into a sliding door that takes us into a hallway filled with rows of tiny pubs and restaurants.

Every pub will offer you a complimentary appetizer but you do need to order a drink along with your food.

Forgive me because I have no idea what any of these little pubs/restaurants are called. We sit down at one that Cherie tells us is famous for horse meat.

We order raw horse sushi and raw chicken. We pray to the lord and eat.

I eat the seared horse sushi, but all 3 of us think the horse meat just taste like normal raw beef. It can taste slightly more gamey, but in general it does not taste bad.

The raw chicken sashimi is cut up into little strips with a cold dipping sauce. It strangely reminds me of the Chinese jellyfish dish.

After we finish these delicacies and a round of highballs, we skip over to another pub and sit down. The new pub is known for fish, so we order two scallops, deep fried oysters and an assorted sahimi platter.

The scallops are again cooked in butter and taste very similar to the ones we had earlier at the Hokkaido food festival.

The deep fried oysters are large and come with two different mayo and mustard sauces. They are deep fried well and super juicy on the inside.

The assorted sashimi platter looks and tastes amazing. It comes with a bountiful amount of scallops, clams, red snapper, tuna, salmon, ikura (fish eggs), and uni (sea urchin).

I don’t remember how much it is but it is so worth it for the amount of uni you get. Everything is fresh and sweet.

We also have 2 rounds of beer and highballs before we leave.

Dinner… again: Yebisu beer hall

So we decide to just have 3 dinners lol. We want to continue drinking and eating but decide to leave Ebisu yokocho and visit a beer hall.

Yebisu beer hall has a European look and feel to it. The interior is decorated like a German beer hall and all the staff are also wearing traditional German-looking uniforms (Heidi dresses).

They have a wide variety of Sapporo beer and also their own Yebisu beer, which I think is kind of cool.

We order chicken karaage and a margarita pizza.

I originally think 4 pieces of chicken karaage is not enough but I seemed to have forgotten we’ve eaten dinner already lol. Anyways, their chicken karaage is huge for each individual piece.

The margarita pizza is decent but it’s nothing like the pizza you see in America. The size itself is pretty small, like a small cake. The toppings are minimal but it is exactly what we want (something lighter and smaller).

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Thoughts on day six

Pretty crazy that we had 3 dinners in one night lol. Ebisu yokocho was a very interesting experience and a lot of fun if you like drinking. Again, the spaces are very small and the tables are very close to each other so if you like big private open areas for dining, this is not the place for you (and actually I think Japan is not the place for you lol).

Meiji Shrine was pretty but not the most fun thing we did today. I was expecting a much larger shrine with more things to do. Definitely a nice walk, especially since it is right next to Yoyogi Park.

The Hokkaido Food Festival was a lot of fun! We wanted to attend a Japanese festival to see what it is like. We imagined fireworks and wearing yukatas but it was honestly too hot for that and why would I wear a yukata to eat anyways. The people were super friendly and there were lots of food options to choose from.

Stay tuned for my next post and follow along with the other recaps!
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Sincerely, Loewe