Posts by ChelsieRae

Tsukiji Fish Market, Shibuya, and Shinjuku

Posted by Chelsie on May 23, 2015 in Japan, Tokyo | 4 comments

Wow, what a day! I’m sure you will see from the pictures that we covered a lot of ground in our first day and saw many very diverse sights.

We started off at the Tsukiji fish market, a huge sprawling complex made up of the inner fish market and the outer food and kitchen wares market. The pictures don’t do the size and impressiveness justice. The smells are out of this world and the diversity of snacks, seafood, sushi, knives, etc. etc. etc. is amazing. The first thing that caught my eye (or maybe more accurately, my nose) was some delicious bubbly, porky soup. They had a quite a line going so we made a note to try back tomorrow. It only took us about 2 seconds to agree we would be back tomorrow, and that was before we even tasted anything.

Next we wandered on through the maze of vendors and spotted a woman selling beautiful raw oysters with a bit of sauce (ponzu?). It was a delicious and fitting first bite in Japan and was likely the freshest and tastiest oyster I’ve every eaten. We purchased the smallest ones and they were absolutely HUGE. Then it was off to find some real breakfast which of course at the fish market means one thing…sushi! Andrew, John, Micah and I enjoyed a beautiful bowl of toro (fatty tuna), uni (sea urchin) and roe. Delicious and quite a steal at only 10 bucks. We definitely would have paid at least three times as much at home for that quality. After some more browsing, and even more snacking (warm omelet, skewered squid with eel sauce, crunchy Japanese snacks) we headed over to the inner fish market where the actual seafood is sold. This part of the market doesn’t open to tourists until 9:00 a.m. (it was only 8:00 at this point), but Micah had done some research ahead of time and found out that if you tell security guards “kaimono” (I’m shopping), they will let you in. With our most confident demeanor, we tried it and guess what? It worked! Even with Andrew and John’s giant cameras, they let us in although I will say that they looked pretty skeptical. “The fuzz” as we called them tried to track us down multiple times, but we evaded them pretty easily in the crowded and overwhelming market. The market itself was an intensely-packed jumble of vendors and buyers and sold about every kind of seafood you can imagine, and even lots you wouldn’t imagine. Crab, giant tuna, live octopus, just about every mollusk, sea snails, monkfish liver, tiny quid, medium squid, giant squid, whole fish in thousands of varieties and with the clearest eyes you can imagine, live snapping turtles, sea urchin, sea cucumber, and the list goes on and on. The market stretches on for what seems like a mile of crowded tiny walkways where there is barely enough room for one person to pass at a time. Also, there are motorized carts that workers zoom around on at breakneck speeds and if you are not careful you can easily meet your doom. Good thing there were a few of us. More eyes means we could watch out for each other and yell or grab an arm when a cart was zooming by.

After all that excitement, we headed back to the hotel around 11:00 to rest a little before taking the Subway to Shibuya to see the famous Shibuya crossing and witness teenage Japanese fashion at its finest. When we first exited the station, we had a little trouble finding the right intersection, but once we did it was incredibly recognizable. Shibuya is one of the busiest pedestrian crossings in the world and every few minutes, when the walk light turns green, hundreds (maybe even thousands) of people rush to cross the street in every direction imaginable. It was amazing to me that with so many people, there weren’t any collisions. We had a fun time crossing in every direction before deciding to find some lunch. We settled on a fun ramen spot where you order your food at a machine and then the waitress brings it for you. It was actually a great system for us since there were lots of pictures and we don’t speak Japanese. The ramen was delicious. Great broth flavor and consistency and the noodles were cooked to perfection.

After enjoying the madness of Shubuya, we decided to head a little further north to visit Meiji-Jingu Tokyo’s most famous Shinto shrine. It was a stunning and peaceful shrine nestled in what seemed to be a pretty large forested area right outside the city. While we were there, we got to see two wedding processions which were really beautiful.

As if we hadn’t seen enough already, we topped off the night with what can only be described as a “bat-shit crazy” (Andrew’s words) robot show in the crazy Shinjuku nightlife area. We saw it on one of Anthony Bourdain’s shows and knew our visit to Tokyo wouldn’t be complete without it. It was basically an hour-long assault on the senses with lasers, robots, loud music, girls, dancing, drumming, animatronic animals, someone in a panda suit riding a plush cow, epic battles, clowns, costumes and lights galore. Take a look at the photos and see for yourself.

Cheers!

Andrew and Chelsie

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We have arrived in Tokyo!

Posted by Chelsie on May 22, 2015 in Japan | 10 comments

After a long day of travel we are finally here. Haven’t seen much yet, but tomorrow we will be out bright and early exploring the fish market. In the meantime, here’s a picture of our view from the hotel room. That is the stunning Tokyo Tower lit up in golden lights in the background. Hopefully we will get a chance to ride to the top while we’re here.

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NOMA Post Coming Soon

Posted by Chelsie on Mar 16, 2014 in Copenhagen, Denmark | 2 comments

Sorry guys! We have been so busy and Andrew has been commandeering the laptop every night to write a Law paper that I haven’t had time to do a blog post. Our trip to NOMA, Rene Redzepi’s critically acclaimed restaurant was so amazing that I’m having trouble putting it into words so for now I am going to skip that one and move on to our other activities. Here’s a few photos to whet your appetite though…

 

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Getting our bearings straight

Posted by Chelsie on Mar 13, 2014 in Copenhagen, Denmark | 6 comments

I posted a quick post earlier to let everyone know that we got here ok, but I did want to elaborate a little bit on how our day went. We checked in with plenty of time into the new Tom Bradley terminal at LAX which was really beautiful, but smaller than I expected. After meeting up with our Copenhagen travel buddies John, Jessica, and Nicole we grabbed a quick dinner at Umami Burger and boarded the plane. As you can imagine, the flight was long, but we had pretty easy trip otherwise. The brand new Boeing Dreamliner is certainly a marvel to behold. Not only was it beautiful and roomy inside, the performance was incredible as well. My favorite parts were the dimmable large windows and improved pressurization system that reduces jet lag. We all felt less weary at the end of the flight than other trips we have taken. For more information on the plane, check out the link here.

We got through customs at the airport pretty quickly and before we knew it we were hopping on the metro to our hotel. Danish is a difficult language so we were laughing at each other trying to pronounce the names of the metro stations. The one closest to our hotel is Kongens Nytorv. When the stop came up it sounded nothing like it looked. Oh well, by the end of the week I think we will be experts.

After freshening up at the hotel we decided to wander around a bit because the weather was beautiful. The sun was just starting to dip low in the sky and cast and orange hue to everything along the canals so we took advantage of the beautiful light to take some pictures and explore the neighborhood. We wandered along Nyhavn with it’s canals, boats, and colorful buildings until we came to Strøget, one of Europe’s longest pedestrian shopping streets. It was there that we found a great gastropub called Tight. Mussels, fois gras, burgers, and schnitzel. Mmmmmm. Afterwards we found a stand peddling chocolate-dipped waffles which we enjoyed on the walk back. Inevitably, the chocolate ended up everywhere including all over my face and white shirt.

After a quick local beer at the hotel bar we headed to bed. It’s about 10:00 p.m. here and we are exhausted, but on the plus side I think we are quickly acclimating to the new time zone. Tomorrow is an exciting day because that is when we will be dining at Rene Redzepi’s world-renowned restaurant Noma. More to come!

Cheers, Chelsie & Andrew

 

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