[COLUMN] Marty’s Tokyo Travelogue #2 | by Marty Sliva

My Tokyo adventures continue, and I’m happy to report that this is still the perfect city for wandering around (averaging 11 miles of walking each day!), turning a random corner, and stumbling upon something absolutely incredible. That might be a serene park, a fantastic meal, an unforgettable bar, or a big ol’ Gundam.

On the nature front, my two favorite parks so far have been Inokashira Park and Yoyogi Park. Inokashira is home to the Ghibli Museum, which you need to book tickets for well in advance, and I sadly missed out on because I am a bit garbage at planning for holidays. However, the park itself is a gorgeous, sprawling stretch of nature filled with A+ views, lovely ponds, and forested walking paths galore. I also spotted a few shrines adorned with the Mitsuuroko family crest, which I used as the header image above and might look familiar to some of you.

Inokashira Park is also one of the places you can visit with your pals in Persona 5, so gold star in my book. And speaking of Persona, I did my due diligence and made a pilgrimage to Sangen-Jaya, the neighborhood that Atlus took direct inspiration from for Yongen-Jaya, your coffee-slash-curry home in P5. Though the laundromat and bath house across the street has sadly closed, the alley still delivered a great sense of strange deja-vu, seeing as how it’s somewhere I’ve spent so much time exploring digitally. A similar surreality hits me having my hotel be in Kabukichō, which was the inspiration for Yakuza’s Kamurochō. Video games – they’re like real life, but fake.

Back to parks, the second standout was the beautiful Yoyogi, which bridges the space between Harajuku and Shibuya. Given that a lot of the stores I wanted to visit in Shibuya didn’t open up until 10am-12pm every day, parks like Yoyogi are a great way to spend a peaceful early morning before diving into the chaos of the more bustling neighborhoods.

Japanese J. Jonah Jameson is going to be VERY upset.

There are also plenty of vending machines scattered throughout all of these parks, so it was nice to be able to get rid of some of the embarrassing amount of coins I had in my pocket at any given time on a can of coffee (hot or cold), or an excellent Japanese beverage like a C.C. Lemon or Pocari Sweat. Some of the park vending machines even had a bin to toss your cans/bottles afterwards, which is pretty much a unicorn here.

As for food, spoilers — literally everything I’ve consumed here has been delicious. But a few early standouts have been the cheap perfection of Gyoza no Fukuho on a rainy afternoon, the soul-replenashing curry at Bondy, and the alarmingly great tacos at a spot called Tacos Trap’.

And you make fun of me for having Mexican food in Tokyo, I always like sprinkling in a western-style food choice for every few Japanese spots I visit. And seriously, these tacos were probably the best I’ve had outside of California. The carnitas and birria melted in my mouth. Also, the restaurant has a printed out walkthrough guiding customers on how to eat tacos, which teaches you all about squeezing your lime and how to properly hold a taco while taking a bite – super cute stuff. 

Moving from solid (snake) to liquid (snake), as a sucker for a good bar, I’ve loved randomly passing by a spot that looks like it has a good vibe, and popping in for a drink or two. My hotel is just off Shinjuku’s Golden Gai, which is famous for housing over 200 micro bars crammed into a few packed alleyways. Most of them only seat half a dozen people or so, and many of them have a specific theme such as horror movies, the Olympics, or The Rolling Stones. Highly recommend a night rolling the dice and hopping across a bunch of these.

Hell yeah, robos.

But my favorite bar so far was a random spot I walked past on the way to dinner in Roppongi called BadaBing. Contrary to its Sopranos-coded name, it’s a super chill bar/art gallery space, and I ended up becoming fast friends with the bartender Haru, an artist whose work was on display, and an older couple. None of them spoke a lot of English, and I don’t speak a lot of Japanese, but we bonded over a shared love of hooch and showing pictures of food on our phones. Good stuff all around.

On the less-boozy side of things, I stood under the Unicorn Gundam at Tokyo’s DiverCity plaza, and something they don’t tell you about Gundams – they’re big as hell. I’m bummed that I’m a few years too late to have seen the full-sized classic RX-78-2 Gundam from the original series before it was taken down, but you know what they say…you’re Gundamned if you do, and Gundamned if you don’t. That’s a thing they say, you don’t have to look it up.

For my next column, I’ll dig into the rest of the nerd-centric shopping I’ve gotten into, including the good (a Nintendo, Capcom, Sega, and Pokemon store all named right next to each other), the bad (Akihabara has lost its mojo), the surreal (wandering through an eight-floor MEGA Don Quijote in Shibuya at 5am, and the wonderfully surprising (a hipster boutique with their own EarthBound line). I’ll also probably write another column on the secret Nintendo cafe/bar/cozy museum I visited that’s owned by a former employee of Nintendo from the ‘80s and ‘90s. It’s filled with photos, memorabilia, and stories of video game history, and was one of the highlights of my trip so far. 

And like I mentioned last time, I’ve been taking a bunch of (probably poorly shot) videos on my iPhone throughout my trip, which we’ll turn into a neat travelogue vid once I’m back in Wisconsin, or as most call it, Tokyo West.

• Check out Marty’s Tokyo Travelogue #1