29 October 2019
New and undercover
Eating pasta in Shin-Koiwa
It was still raining when it was time to head out for dinner. My challenge was to go somewhere in Tokyo I had not been before. That part is easy, Tokyo is the largest city in the world and despite all the times I have been here I doubt I have even seen 10% of it.
The hard part was to find somewhere that would have places to walk and look at things that are undercover. I headed to Google maps and started scrolling. Ueno is in the Eastern part of the centre of Tokyo, so instead of moving closer to the centre, I went further east, across some rivers and eventually ended up at Shin-Koiwa station, which has a traditional undercover shopping street running off of it.
Getting to Shin-Koiwa is easy, it is on the Sobu line, the shopping street is right across the slippery rain soaked road from the station.
The rain meant that people were riding their bikes through here to avoid getting wet, while still carrying an umbrella and using their phones all at once. Very dangerous.
I decided I best find some dinner and wait the rain out. No jokes at all in todays update, just the facts. Meanwhile, right now, its stopped raining.
Now to plan what to do tomorrow.
Here it is in all its glory. A place to escape the rain. Most of the shops were still open, and most of the shops were shops, not old closed down shops or storage spaces.
I selected a pasta shop for dinner. They only serve one kind of pasta dish. They grind their own meat and dry their own pasta on site. I liked the look of it. I was hoping they might feed an entire animal into the grinder, but unfortunately, they did not.
And I liked the pasta, a lot. A great thing in casual Japanese restaurants is the size selection. It is quite common to be able to select from S, M, L, XL, XXL when ordering your meal from the ticket dispensing machine. Yes this may be a traditional old fashion all made on site pasta shop, but you still have to order from a machine. No one ever talks in Japan.
The back streets on the far side of the station were also quite interesting. The usual pachinko parlours, massage parlours, just a lot of parlours really.
I have no idea why, but Shin-Koiwa was advertising these ugly MonChhiChi characters everywhere. There was even a MonChhiChi park somewhere. Imagine your main claim to fame being these ugly bear creatures with their name containing consecutive h's.
I like it when train platforms have a view. Not of the girls, of the shops behind it. Although thats some impressive shoes they are wearing to look slightly taller than 3 feet 0 inches.
Last photo for this evening, just because I had not taken many photos, the impressive line up of food places inside the barriers at the Ueno station. There are at least ten places I would eat at inside the station, including cake and crepe shops, as well as at least 5 bookshops, and somewhere you can buy live crabs to take on the train with you for entertainment.