Shinjuku: Okonomiyaki restaurant & wonderful views of Tokyo

Today I went into Shinjuku to meet up with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law (who live in Tokyo). I hadn't seen them in ages so it was really lovely to spend some time with them again.

We met at Shinjuku Station. This station is massive, and extremely busy - in fact it's the busiest train station in the world, apparently, with over 3 million travellers passing through it every day. I can well believe it! In addition to various different train lines, it has a huge range of shopping and eating options. For lunch we went to a restaurant serving a speciality of Osaka called okonomiyaki - ultra-thick savoury pancakes of batter mixed with various ingredients, cooked on a hotplate in the middle of the table. There are lots of different sorts; we chose and shared three - a pork one, one with cod roe sauce (which doesn't sound that great, but it was basically taramasalata which I love, and worked very well in the pancake) and one with chunks of either octopus or squid. Each one had other ingredients, too, such as chopped onion, cheese, noodles or extra raw eggs with unbroken yolks, to be poured over the pancake within the cooking process.

The waiter brought over our drinks, the pancake ingredients and small accompanying salads at the same time, and got the first two pancakes going for us straight away, mixing the ingredients and starting the cooking process on the hotplate. The salads were small but a perfect accompaniment; lettuce, grated Japanese radish (non-peppery, which was nice) and a cold, sweet and tangy carrot sauce.

As soon as the pancake mixture had been arranged on the hotplate, what looked like a saucepan lid was placed over it, to trap any condensation as part of the cooking process, I assume, and/ or prevent any liquid from spreading out too far. Then the waiter left us to it. We had egg timers to tell us when each pancake needed turning over. Before serving them from the hotplate, we drizzled over mayonnaise and another type of sauce and then sprinkled on flakes of fish (bonito, I think) and smaller ones of dried seaweed. All three of the pancakes were delicious!

I also had something for pudding which was called almond tofu although the texture wasn't like any tofu I'd had before - it was a lot like panna cotta. The taste was very much like it too - milky and sweet and delicious. It had red berry sauce on top.

We went to a tower next, stopping at a takeaway bubble tea café on the way on Sunsuk's suggestion. Mine was actually iced coffee, though, rather than tea. I'd seen bubble tea places around in London before - it's a trend which came from Taiwan originally - but had never tried it. It was nice, a novelty and I'm glad I tried it, but I think I'll stick to normal iced coffee in the future.

The tower we went to had a free observation deck on the 45th floor, with amazing views over Tokyo. Gobsmacking! I already knew that Tokyo is one of the biggest cities in the world, but it was still breathtaking to see it spreading into the distance in every direction. We could see Tokyo Bay far away, and a mountain range in the distance too. Graham pointed out where we'd have been able to see Mount Fuji if it hadn't been so cloudy.

To go up the tower and down again we we were ushered into and out of the lift by a uniformed usher wearing white gloves, and before going up we had to provide our temperature by holding our wrist against a machine. The usher bowed deeply as the lift doors started to close before our journey down.

We headed back to Shinjuku Station after that, as we had to make a move for home. I saw this interestingly-shaped building on the way and we also passed through a tunnel with what appeared to be photos of Tokyo from the local tourism board on the walls.

Before going through the ticket barriers there was enough time for a quick stop at Japan's version of IKEA, which is a bit cheaper than the actual IKEA (of which there are at least two branches in Tokyo). I didn't get anything then, but will bear it in mind for the future. Upstairs from there is apparently the biggest and best English language bookshop in Tokyo, if not all of Japan, so I'll definitely be going there too!

I had to be home by 6pm in order to be in during the delivery period for my Japanese bank card and National Health Insurance card, which the company had kindly arranged redelivery of on my behalf. They both arrived OK, thank goodness.

In other news, I've discovered some more delicious items from 7-11 to add to the ones I mentioned in my previous post, namely melonpan (a large sweet bread-based bun with a sugar crust on a serrated top which looks a little pineapple-like) and 'strawberry & condensed milk' (chunks of condensed milk-based jelly in condensed milk-based sauce, with strawberry sauce on top). I've unsurprisingly become a big fan of the coffee milk, and discovered that vending machines here can give you hot or cold versions of canned coffee, depending on if you get one from the rows with a red stripe by the price label (hot) or the one with blue (cold).