Unagi and Sicilian SeaSalt Gelato

Well I'm in Tokyo right now, for a brief 48 hours. My flight landed earlier today and after a looong 110 min airport bus ride, I finally reached the New Otani Hotel. The hotel is as lovely as I remembered, and much to my surprise, there was a mobile phone waiting for me when I checked in (since Japan does not use the GSM network). I have very considerate colleagues! Of course, all the instructions for the phone were in Japanese and I'm embarrassed to admit that it took me a good 5 mins before I could figure out how to turn the phone on!

It was fast approaching the dinner hour, so I decided to head out to a large department store. The concierge suggested that going to Shinjuku would be the fastest bet. He gave me a very brief set of instructions - either because I projected an air of familiarity and confidence with the Tokyo subway system (unintentional, of course!) or because any nervous person would have asked him 10 more questions. Either way, I was armed with a Metro map and headed out to take the Marunouchi line to Shinjuku-sanchome (a 160 yen ride). I do like taking public transport in foreign cities so enjoyed myself immensely, even the part where I had to jam myself onto a packed train as the doors practically closed on me.

I picked Isetan as my Depāto of choice and entered on the basement level. I forgot to bring my camera on this trip so I couldn't take photos of all the wonderful food in the basement food halls - that's my favorite activity in Japan, wandering through the basement food halls of the big department stores. There was a huge cakes and pastries section - where all the names of the Japanese bakeries were French, yet they far outdid the French in terms of presentation and appeal. The cooked food section was also huge. I restrained myself to buying candy and pretty packages of rice crackers.

I headed upstairs and picked up some Hello Kitty items for the kids, plus an array of Japanese Harry Potter memorabilia. Let's hope it's not all freely available in the US, since I would have lugged everything back for nothing!

I finally realized I was hungry and headed up to the 7th floor - known as "Eats Paradise". I picked the unagi restaurant and had a lovely unagi setto, with some unadon, maguro sashimi and a few other exquisite little side dishes. It was a great meal and I sat by myself at the bar. I noticed that there were quite a few unagi price points - I picked the middle set of course!

After eating everything on my tray, I headed back down to the basement and stopped at Mario Gelateria - the Japanese take on gelato. I had the Mediterranean Orange (essentially a blood orange flavor) and the Sicilian Seasalt (a creamy white gelato that was slightly salty and had little bits of almonds). I actually liked the Sicilian Seasalt better than the blood orange flavor! There was also a Blue Seasalt gelato in a lovely pale blue shade, but I just wasn't feeling that adventurous.

Finally my body started communicating to me that 24 sleepless hours was just a bit much, so I headed back to the hotel to do a little email before calling it a night.