After a few glasses of plum wine from a tetra pack - what should not mean that the taste was bad, my face already turned a bit red and a nice conversation with a couple from Australia, my friend finally arrived at the Hostel. A very kind friend ;) (She is now my girlfriend and live with me in Germany :)))))
After a bit small talk we decided to go to an 'Izakaya' (居酒屋). We walked a bit around in the area of the hostel, so in Asakusa. Very nice was that my first impression was 'its extrem easy to find a nice resturant'. Maybe to some of you this seems bit strange, but believe me, when you ever visited Germany you know what I mean. In Germany it's always a challenge to find a place for a nice and cheap dinner or even just a nice dinner. It is really normal to me to google a place before I leave my flat with friends to have a dinner somewhere. Compared to that in Japan you need never to think about the location to have a meal. There are millions of restaurants where you can enjoy a very good and cheap meal. The problem with this is maybe that it's a torture to choose one of all the good looking mini restaurants.
Anyway - after walk a moment along a bigger main street we (she) found a good one. At this point I like to explain how this looked like:
There are big commercial lights at every entrance side of the buildings (see pic below).
By the way this is the place where we went for dinner.
If you are not be able to read Kanji or at least Kana you will never notice that in this building is a nice Izakaya in one of the upper levels.
So we took the elevator and went into the restaurant. Wow ... from outside it looked like a cheap type of restaurant, so I thought it will look inside like this as well. But I was so wrong, it was (form me as a German) kind of luxury. Very comfortable and cute. There where not like in Germany tables everywhere and everything is open. It was separated in small separee's. We took a seat in one of them.
Next thing that was different to me. I could smoke inside because every separee had its own flue. Good for me in this moment - surly I was very nervous because of her :-)
The waiter welcome us super friendly and directly give us his full attention. He brought us a small computer to order things.
Of course I had no idea what to order so she did. Because of the fact that she is vegetarian I don't wanted to eat meat and told her to order what she like to eat. My eyes became bigger and bigger when I saw that she added more and more pure vegetables to the order list. Just cucumber, beans and other stuff!!!
Then the alc tab...finally. I was really looking forward to drink some Beer to become bit loose. So - ASAHI SUPER DRY!!! - the best beer for me on earth! And I am German that means a lot..haha
So soon the first glass was empty before the food could reach the table. To my surprise ... her's as well. Ah - additional information - on a later moment she told me that a building close to this Izakaya (really just 300 meters down the street)is the headquarter of the Asahi company.
And??? Do you notice something? Yah! The hole building is a big beer :)))))
Super cool - at least for me ^^
With the second round of beer the food was served. Yah ... now I had really big eyes. OMG ... Green ... so green! Pure green beans. I never thought what you see on the pictures on the tablet is exactly the same you will get :-)
But!!! This beans ... I couldn't get enough of those! They do something with the vegetables. They are definitely not pure. Some kind of Japanese spice vinegar makes them taste super delicious.
So at this point I want to recommend to everyone - go to an Izakaya drink Asahi beer as much as you can and eat all vegetables you can find on the menu. Sounds super strange but believe me it's worth it!
After a lot of beer and a lot of green stuff we left the restaurant. A few 'Arigatogosaimasu' and 'Gochisousama' later we were on the way back to the hostel and made plans for the next day.
Sightseeing, sightseeing, sightseeing!!!!!
I noticed that I didn't showed the hostel so far, so here it is:
I can tell you with a clear conscience... this Hostel is absolutely good. Really friendly stuff and clean. The rooms are typically Japanese size so don't expect big rooms.
It is located in the north-east of Tokyo and really close to the Asakusa Temple and Sky-Tree (more to these in next article). Ideal for a sightseeing stay.
On the website is a very detailed description of the way from the subway station to the hostel. (Absolutely needed and useful for travelers with no Japanese knowledge!)
And with a rate of 4600 Yen per person a night is it not too expensive.
So...that's it ^^
[Finally I could find the motivation to finish the first day of my Tokyo travel. In fact I love to remember this time and to share my impressions with you. So I will continue this article till the end. I hope I can finish it in this life ... haha]
