It rained! It poured! We took a cab to breakfast rather than walk the 14 minutes from our hotel. That’s how I got my credit card suspended by BMO, as no act of laziness goes unpunished, but more on that later. When I said it poured, I mean 4 o’clock tropical rain level. It was noisy, and you couldn’t walk more than a block without getting water in your shoes and your pants sticking to your thighs and shins.
Thanks to our cab, we made it to breakfast at Sushi Zanmai in the old fish market (Tsukiji Market). We got there because it’s close, and we were told the fish portions are bigger there. When it comes to chutōro and, especially, ōtoro tuna, bigger is better. Sushi for breakfast remains at the top of my list of why Japan (Tokyo at least) is awesome.
After breakfast, the gray weather got me feeling tired. Sleeping 12 hours a day and essentially eating for the other 12 hours for seven consecutive days is a tiring job, don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.
We decided to head back to the hotel and address the email I received from BMO’s security department. The rest of Tokyo was feeling exactly like us (lazy), and both taxis and Uber were in high demand. The expected wait for our Uber was 27 minutes for a 13-minute walk or a 9-minute drive. Faced with the choice between waiting under an awning for half an hour or walking in the rain for 13 minutes, we chose to walk. Boy, did we get wet. Thanks to our hard shell, our core, arms and head remained warm and dry, but pretty much everything else was drenched.
As promised, my rant. So my credit card is called a MasterCard World Elite card. Not too sure why it’s called Elite, it really just means you have travel insurance built in. It’s marketed to travellers. As you might have guessed, I travel quite a bit, so I fall squarely within their target market. It is the second time my card has been suspended while I travel. The first time I was in Europe, I was buying plane tickets from the local airline. It was not an insubstantial purchase, I’ll grant you, but it still fits what someone who travels would do. This time, when the local taxi app (JapanTaxis) took the 0.01$ payment to ensure that the card was valid, the security algorithm went all: “oh no! Some taxi company in Japan might be used to commit a fraud and I must protect my customer who’s been in that country for days now; better block his card and make him call us”.
I have to thank BMO for teaching me how to dial internationally. This time around, I’ve learned that the easiest way is to go with +1, then the number. The + replaces the international dialling code. To make it on an iPhone, hold 0.
Anyway, after 15 minutes waiting in line and a 5-minute conversation in which everyone involved avoided pointing out the irony of protecting a traveller from a $0.01 fraud in a country well known for its low crime rate, I was allowed to use my card again.
With the rain still pouring, we forwent the modern art museum and waited for it to stop for a couple of hours. We watched Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations episode on Osaka and learned that the city has a word for “eating until ruin,” and its people seem quite food-centric. Our kind of people! We also made our second restaurant reservation of the trip to have Kobe Beef in Kobe. How much more meta can you get?
The rain finally stopped a little after 15:00. We jumped into our wet shoes and headed to a nearby teahouse for a little something to eat and to drink plenty of tea while we waited for dinner.
Diner was Yakitori, grilled skewers of a great many things. As they grill at the bar, the restaurant is a little smoky, smelling of charcoal, evaporated fat, and grilled meat. Don’t let that stop you. It’s a fun experience and delicious, if a little salty, as everything seems to be marinated in soy sauce. We had duck, chicken wings (open-faced on a skewer), peppers, bacon-wrapped asparagus (sadly, they don’t really know what actual bacon is), chicken skin and simply chicken. You’ll notice the chicken quite a lot, as it’s the main meat in Yakitori. With a delicious side of rice and vegetables, it was a great meal.
Tomorrow we’re leaving Tokyo again to make our way to Matsumoto and its castle.