{"id":479,"date":"2011-09-27T22:33:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T03:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/?p=479"},"modified":"2014-08-21T12:50:50","modified_gmt":"2014-08-21T17:50:50","slug":"tonkatsu-point-cards-and-burning-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/?p=479","title":{"rendered":"Tonkatsu, Point Cards, and Burning Eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"

This was my first full day in Tokyo<\/strong>. I started with the hotel buffet<\/strong> for breakfast. 1,200 yen for all you can eat, either Western or Japanese style.<\/p>\n

Some of the Western stuff is a little odd<\/em>, but it’s good enough for me. Plenty of yogurt, and a decent strawberry sauce. Other stuff was available, of course: poached eggs, “baking bread,” whatever that is, Japanese-style bacon and sausages that don’t taste like either bacon or sausages, and some good croissants and OJ.<\/p>\n

The most important points here are that: I didn’t have to make it, and it was right there in the hotel, so I didn’t have to find a place to eat breakfast.<\/p>\n

It’s the most important meal of the day, you know.<\/p>\n

Point Cards<\/h4>\n

Belly filled, I headed off to Kinokuniya <\/strong>in Shinjuku <\/strong>to get my JLPT application<\/strong>. It wasn’t too difficult. Just ask at one of the desks and you can get an application.<\/p>\n

I also picked up a Kinokuniya point card<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

That’s one thing you should definitely do while in Japan– pick up point cards whenever you get a chance<\/strong>. They’re very handy. You get points for every purchase, and then you can cash them in like money. A lot of times, though, they expire at the end of the month, so be careful. Better to use them as soon as you can, especially if you’re just on a short-term visit.<\/p>\n

You may need an address and phone number for the point card. If you decide to specify one, well, I leave that up to you.<\/p>\n

Ginza<\/h4>\n

Application in hand, I headed off to Ginza <\/strong>to do some shopping. First I stopped off at Itoya<\/strong>, which is my favorite stationery store. It’s 8-9 stories full of interesting stuff to buy.<\/p>\n

If they don’t have it, you don’t need it.<\/p>\n

I was looking for the a calendar similar to the kind I picked up 4 years ago, which is a standard yearly calendar on nice paper with a traditional Japanese woodblock print on it. But after combing through the store and the annex, I had no luck. I spent an hour wandering around, because Itoya is a great place to just wander around and look.<\/p>\n

I managed to find double-sided sticky tape. I’ll need that for my JLPT application. (To attach the photo.)<\/p>\n

It was soon time for lunch.<\/p>\n

Rengatei<\/h4>\n

In the US, I usually watch a show called “Tokyo Eye” that comes on TV-Japan<\/strong> on Saturdays, and they did a show on a Ginza eatery called Rengatei<\/strong>, which is famous for being either one of the first, or the first place to serve tonkatsu <\/em>in Japan. (Sorry, I can’t remember which.) It’s been in business since the 1890s, if I remember correctly. I’ve been dying to try their tonkatsu<\/em>, and thanks to remembering to star the place on Google Maps<\/strong>, today was my chance.<\/p>\n

Their tonkatsu <\/em>comes with a pile of thinly sliced cabbage, and I ordered some rice and lemonade to go with it. The sauce they have is a bit thinner than the usual tonkatsu <\/em>sauce. I poured it on the side, and dipped the katsu <\/em>in it, as well as the cabbage.<\/p>\n

It was a great tonkatsu<\/em>. I’ve never had anything that light and crispy. The regular is 1,300 yen, and the large is 2,000 yen.<\/p>\n

And it’s worth it.<\/p>\n

Kyukyodo<\/h4>\n

After that, I went to Kyukyodo<\/strong>, because I still hadn’t managed to find those calendars. Kyukyodo is a very nice stationery store, but it can get pretty expensive. The 3rd floor still has a nice gallery<\/strong> full of calligraphic art. This time there was a display of calligraphy carved into wood. There were some really interesting pieces there. I spent some time talking to the dotients in my broken Japanese.<\/p>\n

On the second floor, they had some nice seal carving knives, and some great-looking calligraphy books, but nobody was interested in helping me, and I wasn’t interested in carrying them all over Japan, so I decided it was probably for the best.<\/p>\n

I’ll get that stuff in Nagoya.<\/p>\n

Marunouchi & Maruzen<\/h4>\n

I got on the subway and rode to Tokyo Station<\/strong> to go to Maruzen<\/strong>. Maruzen’s always a pain in the butt for me to find. I spent a good 10-15 minutes lost around there looking for it. I did the same thing four years ago, too.<\/p>\n

Google Maps wasn’t much help, because once I was underground, there was no GPS signal, and one building is a lot like another. I did find it eventually. I didn’t buy anything, though. Again, the issue was the whole “Carrying books all over Japan” thing.<\/p>\n

I inquired about the BJT<\/strong>, or Business Japanese Test<\/strong>, because I was thinking about taking it as a backup to the JLPT, but nobody there had ever heard of it, and didn’t know where to get the forms.<\/p>\n

I suppose I can ask at Yamasa when I get there.<\/p>\n

After that, I headed back, since my eyes were starting to hurt, and it was getting late.<\/p>\n

As the evening went on, my eyes were\u00c2\u00a0really<\/em><\/strong> starting to hurt. I stopped by the drug store kiosk in JR Shinjuku and bought some Visine, and tried it when I got home.<\/p>\n

Eyes On Fire<\/h4>\n

Using Visine was a big <\/em>mistake. It made my eyes burn even worse.<\/p>\n

My eyes have been hurting ever since I got off the plane, and they’ve only been getting worse. So I decided to use Skype to call my insurance company’s overseas “OMGHELP” number. They were very helpful. They told me to go to any doctor I wanted to, and they would pay the claim when I got back, so long as I filed the right paperwork, and I had a year to file the claim.<\/p>\n

Awesome.<\/p>\n

They even told me the papers to get from the doctor, and not to worry if the papers were all in Japanese.<\/p>\n

If you’re ever in that kind of a bind, make sure you get the paperwork taken care of.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I spent a couple of hours trying to find one of the “recommended doctors” on their website, but it was kind of a pain in the butt. I never found any of them in Google Maps. I’ll probably just ask at the front desk in the morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was my first full day in Tokyo. I started with the hotel buffet for breakfast. 1,200 yen for all you can eat, either Western or Japanese style. Some of the Western stuff is a little odd, but it’s good enough for me. Plenty of yogurt, and a decent strawberry sauce. Other stuff was available, […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[117,3,5],"tags":[308,490,312,828,143,25,489,313,314,487,488],"class_list":["post-479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-japan-trip","category-travel","tag-ginza","tag-insurance","tag-itoya","tag-japan2011","tag-jlpt","tag-kinokuniya","tag-kyukyodo","tag-marunouchi","tag-maruzen","tag-rengatei","tag-tonkatsu","category-117-id","category-3-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=479"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1541,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions\/1541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stupidamericantourist.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}