Tokyo: Matcha Sweets for Breakfast
Mäneka
Is there any better way to start the day than with matcha sweets? You get your caffeine dose from the tea as well as a natural high from ingesting such wonderfully tasty treats that carries you through the rest of the day. Nakamura Tokichi was one of Linda’s picks for this trip and we visited the location in an upscale mall in Ginza.
My breakfast was a matcha kakigori, which also kept me well-hydrated (read overly-hydrated) throughout our subsequent shopping spree. I opted for no kuromitsu and just matcha syrup for a pure matcha experience. Check out that feathery ice!
Ginza 6 is an exemplary upscale Japanese mall, the kind that makes you want to spend all your money at every shop and still feel like you could go back again the next day and spend it all again. I picked up a few gifts and purchased some white Adidas Primeknit Stan Smiths that are now hard to find in the USA (my current ones are ripping). I also tried on a flowered Japan-exclusive track jacket and decided not to buy it. That may have been a good decision because later I saw a tall gaijin lady wearing pants in the same pattern that were too short on her pencil legs so I didn’t want to match. The large armholes also made me look like a flying squirrel.
Kamala
There are millions of things to do in Tokyo, but in our family we know that Tokyo is all about malls and shopping. Also eating, but typically eating in the impressive basement food halls of fancy malls or at stand-out restaurants on hip streets to shop.
On Saturday, our first day in Tokyo, we had heard it was going to rain and so had planned to check out the Ginza 6, a very chic mall just a few blocks from our hotel. When I asked Mäneka what the deal with Ginza was she said, “It’s high end shopping, where designers have their stores.” That’s what I saw as we walked: YSL and Dior and the flagship Uniqlo and throngs of tourists, many of whom were Chinese, which I found interesting. The street was closed for the day, so people were all over the place taking selfies and eating snacks and lunging after their kids. It turned out to be very sunny and warm, so entering the cool, composed mall was refreshing.
Our first order of business was to head to the top of the mall and find a matcha shop that Linda had taken notice of on Tokyo 2020, one of her and dad’s top NHK shows to watch. It was a very magnificent breakfast dessert feast featuring a matcha parfait tower, extra bitter, that came with a key so that Linda could find out what was inside of it. Balaram and I each had different soft serve match twists in round crispy rice crackers, mine with a caramely hojicha and Balaram’s with a milk. When our plates were delivered, side by side, Balaram was taken by their beauty and said, “Oh, twin peaks!” Mäneka went all in on a very wispy pile of shave ice and a matcha syrup that she carefully poured on.
Then we were drawn in to the many beautiful and well-designed mall shops. We spent a long time in a store full of art items for the home, where Linda and I liked the light wooden mobiles, and Mäneka was drawn to a small, heavy ginger grater. I ended up getting an adorable and realistic looking bread roll that lights up. It emits a warm, soft glow, just as you expect from a lovely piece of bread. I’m excited to find just the right plate for it and set it up in my new place, though I’m sure some day when I’m out of bread and feeling bad about it, the light will taunt me.
We shopped around some more and then had lunch at an Indian mall restaurant, Tamarind! I’m always curious about takes on ethnic cuisines in other cultures and I suppose it wasn’t a huge surprise that the naan was extra soft and Linda’s butter chicken was even more sweet and tomato tasting than usual. The pickles were really tasty, but the highlight for me was my cheese dosa, which was essentially an amazing grilled cheese in a dosa, served with a spicy coconut chutney and a tangy sambar.
By the time we left, we were supremely exhausted, but Linda and Mäneka didn’t feel quite done, because there was still so much more to see. “I could live in this mall and visit all of the stores and try all of the food, and keep going back as they change,” Linda said, excitedly as we went downstairs to get our tax free money back.
Balaram
Saturday is a warm sunny day. After deciding to look for and not liking a coffee shop in the area called Renoir, we went to the Ginza 6, a posh glitzy mall I few blocks from our hotel. Ginza has long been a place noted for high end stores and an atmosphere of luxury. Everything from the materials, the decor and even the elevators is stylish and attractive. We began by going to Nakumura Tokichi, a matcha tea store with wonderful desserts. Yes we began the day with dessert! Kamala and BP had a monaka, a rice cracker ice cream sandwich, which was fabulous. Linda had a maruto parfait, the signature dish with layers of matcha mixed with many other things like popped grain, raspberries and chestnuts. It was complicated enough that it came with a legend to explain the different elements. Mäneka had giant bowl of most fluffy shave ice with a bowl of matcha sauce to pour over it. She enjoyed this immensely! We bought several tea packages to take home.
We spent much of the morning and part of the afternoon visiting stores on several floors to take a look at the numerous interesting items available. The most amazing is the top floor book store with numerous books including very large and gigantic volumes. Snow Peak, an outdoors company that makes ohashi from recycled bats that Linda had purchased some years ago, has a store in the mall. The store has a lot of cool stuff and the ohashi are now more practical with flattened sides. We had lunch at an Indian restaurant in the mall called Tamarind and had some very good food. Mäneka had chicken biriyani, Kamala had a cheese dosa and Linda had butter chicken with a puffy, slightly sweet, bready naan. BP had a plate of pakoras and a vada in yogurt, which was a bit odd in that it was more like a soufflé and a bit sweet, but overall palatable. We all shared the items and got pretty full as there is really no concept of a “doggy” bag in Japan. After a quick stop in the tax free reimbursement office, which was very efficient, we concluded our visit to Ginza 6.
We then walked along the main street in Ginza, several blocks of which are closed to vehicular traffic on weekends. The sidewalks and street were packed with shoppers, several dragging large suitcases into which they would put their purchases. We did go into the Uniqlo flagship store, which was mobbed and difficult to navigate. On the way back to our hotel, we stopped off at Nissan Crossing where beautiful young and women talked about Nissan’s new concept car and a very cool seemingly self driving car without a steering wheel. All so futuristic! Lots of photos and videos were taKen by many packing the small space.
We returned to our microscopic hotel room and then over to the slightly larger one the girls had and hung out. We did watch part of a baseball game, mainly to practice reading the players names in Japanese as listed on the screen and verifying our thoughts by seeing the name in Roman letters on their uniforms. We had a late dinner at a basement homestyle restaurant nearby which had tonkatsu, salads and a fried chicken/vegetable dish that was like a mild sweet and sour dish.