Text 30919, 102 rader
Skriven 2012-11-08 17:18:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: Strings 532
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The Strings is the top several floors of one of the office
buildings overlooking the station. You take the elevator to
reception and then a different one over yonder to the room
area, which surrounds an atrium, very attractive.

The front desk staff were working hard to help a family that
had been out and whose taxi had taken them to the wrong
Inter-Continental hotel after their adventuring, and who
consequently were well positioned to miss their flight at
Haneda, which is only 20 minutes away; but from what I
overheard, they had less than an hour to get there, checked
in, and so on. so we waited a few minutes, upon which our
check-in person was hugely apologetic in the Japanese style.

We got a very pleasant little room toward the upper end of
the hotel with a nice view of the station and the Tokyo
skyline behind. The toilet was first rate, the real Toto
product instead of the knockoffs at the Villa place and the
other IC. Cleanup and then more adventures.

Snackies at the station: red bean paste bun for her, pumpkin
for me. It was the luck of the draw, actually, as there was
no way of telling what was what. I had a slight clue as the
top of mine was adorned with two pepitas artfully arranged.

Yebisu Garden Place, one of the, well, let us just say that
it has a fleece lining. There are a number of celebrity
places represented there, including the 3-Michelin-starred
Chateau, at least nominally supervised by Joel Robuchon.

I'd been looking forward to the Yebisu Beer Museum, but when
we got there it was closed for a private function. I suppose
we could have watched the dignitaries parade in (serenaded
by a band) and sulked, but rather than doing that we walked
around in the drizzle looking for a brew, and, look, what do
we have here, the Sapporo Beer Station (Sapporo owns the
Yebisu brand), which as I understand it is housed in the old
brewhouse. As it was almost dinnertime, and I was getting a
bit peckish, we got some not too costly snacks with our
alcohol. Lilli ordered the "German sausage," hoping it was
going to be a Knackwurst or Bockwurst; instead, it came out
as Bratwurst, flavored with cardamom and pretty much her
least favorite kind of sausage. The mustard was okay to
cover it up. My dish was supposedly Kurobuta schnitzel, but
it was drier, less marbled, and in general much inferior to
what the stuff served at that noodle shop the other day. It
was also about the same price, and when something in one of
the toniest neighborhood in town costs the same as the same
dish under the tracks, beware. I ate part of her sausage and
chivalrously offered some of my schnitzel, which after
trying a hesitant bite she refused with the same observation
that I just made above. With her unsatisfying meal she had
something called Ordina red wine, which tasted like a blend
of Passover wine and nail polish remover - something your
dotty old grandfather might have made in the cellar if he
was particularly incompetent. My choice was the black, which
I was surprised to find was a pretty typical Dunkelweizen
that I'd have found difficulty distinguishing from a German
product. I was sorry to have ordered a large.

Our day passes allowed for travel across all Tokyo's various
lines, so we headed for Asakusa, one of those bucketlist
places - and a worthy one, as it turns out.

The temple precinct is gorgeous at night - I suspect more
attractive than during the day, and the shops that litter
the southern precinct less tacky-looking. I got some waving
cats to fulfill my friend Annie's request (she collects such
oddities), and we windowshopped as the stalls closed - first
the food shops, then the knickknacks; the booze stand was
still open later, but its offerings looked unpromising and
quite expensive.

We walked across the river to marvel at the Philippe Starck
Asahi Flame, known to locals as the Golden Turd, if you find
a picture you can see why, and then continued on toward
Skytree, the tallest tower in the world. It was a longer
walk than it looked on the map (damn these not-to-scale
tourist maps), and it was getting late, and admission is
quite stratospheric, so we gave Skytree a pass and were
content with looking at it from a distance. Picked up a
bottle of red hooch for later - Frontera Malbec from Concha
y Toro, at a 7-11.

We came back on a Toei line subway, connecting to the metro
to Shinbashi, then transferred to one of the JR lines back
to Shinagawa. Here's a question. The Toei line is run by the
Tokyo metropolitan government. The Metro is run by the Tokyo
metropolitan government and is owned by them in partnership
with the national government. Okay, there are probably many
protocol and territorial issues of long standing, so I can
see why they operate separately (cf. United and Continental
and Southwest and Airtran in the airline department), but
why they have separate ticketing systems and pricing is just
incomprehensible to me.

The wine was bearable, not too sweet at least, and certainly
much cheaper than anything we could have got at the hotel.

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