Travel advice isn’t something I’ve taken from social media before, but on the run up to this trip I had collected a number of interesting places.
One of these was a pancake house that was famous for its light and fluffy soufflé-style pancakes. The Instagram videos showed brightly coloured syrups, fruit and wobbly towers of golden-looking pancakes, so I was intrigued to see if we could go for breakfast. The only trouble was that it was so popular I would need to book a table. And to book a table I would need to join a long queue. And every morning the queues start forming long before the shop opens. So this meant that for pancakes, I had to get up at 6:30 to go on a 30 minute walk and train ride to stand in a long queue… in the rain.
While that doesn’t sound too early, I pushed it as long as I could before getting up, hoping to squeeze in as much sleep as possible. We have been spending entire days walking around for two solid weeks and last night I didn’t get to bed till gone midnight! Why was I getting up so early to go and stand in the rain?!
And yet, despite the hammering rain, there was a long queue of people standing neatly under their umbrellas. I thought some would be put off by the weather but clearly not. I joined the back of the line and after 30 minutes finally made it to the front, where I saw nearly the entire day’s bookings had been taken. 16:30 was the last booking available before they closed at 17:00. I had just made the list and returned to the AirBnB as the bleary-eyed team was waking up, triumphant in my pancake quest.
Now it was time to actually get breakfast and Aimi had found a tidy looking waffle house. These were very tasty, especially since I added avocado to the bacon and eggs combo. But the best thing about Perth Sandwich was the black swirly artwork on the walls of the toilet. It was drippy and cool!
From here we said goodbye to Laura and Nath who went off to get tattoos… somewhere. And we headed to Takeshita Street again to show Kai the anime and manga artwork store. We spent a long time here again looking at the art. Kai was just as awed as we were.
While looking around a capsule machine shop, I had a code brown moment. I took off back towards a shopping centre and if there had been any queue, we would have had a sticky problem. Luckily, the men’s rarely has a line and my comfort was restored in short order. To avoid a more thrilling episode than desired, I abandoned Kai and Aimi without notice. Now, without internet, I had no way to contact them so had to lurk around Starbucks to piggyback off their WiFi to find them.
Continuing our roaming around Tokyo we made our way through the expensive part of Shibuya. All the shop windows were shiny and the mannequins of clothes so ugly only rich people must like them. Kai said he felt like they were so expensive he was worried he would be charged to look at them. But judging by some of the styles on offer, I think they should pay us to put up with it. Whatever happened to tight jeans and strappy tops being sexy? I don’t want a coat that looks like the torso of a red Big Bird who’s wearing giant bubble wrap shoes.
But the buildings are cool and one that I knew of had a rooftop garden overlooking the street. We must have arrived at the perfect time because the sun was finally out after a morning of torrential rain and now blinding us while trying to take a selfie. It was also about lunchtime so we went to the food floor and all of a sudden I got very excited to find another bánh mì shop. I got so excited I bought two – delicious, juicy, fluffy and crispy bread rolls filled with meat, crunchy veg and coriander – that I forgot we had a pancake date very soon!
It was too late for one of the bánh mìs, he was a goner. But I saved most of the second one for later and no sooner had Nathan and Laura arrived with their newly bloody inked bodies, we took off. Across town to the pancake place we arrived a little early.
Was it worth the hype?
Yeah, sort of…
They certainly were the most fluffy, light and fresh pancakes I’ve ever had. But a little underwhelming for the 6am start. Maybe the staff and I were a bit tired after a whole day, but we sat outside with a menu where they took our order and then, when shown in, they were nice but clearly over-it with regard to being 100% full every day thanks to Instagram influencers. The fact that both Justin Bieber and Boris Johnson have their autographs on the wall bears testament to how far and wide the pancakes are known.
We took some good photos and saw them making the special pancakes but honestly we were in and out pretty quickly. The fresh fruit was nice and the strawberry smoothie was very refreshing.
From here Laura and Kai left us for some alone time back at the house. She claims it was to change shoes… something to do with them rubbing on her new ankle tattoo. Kai was going along to help her off her feet… In the meantime, we went across town again to take a look at the Ghibli clock.
All the buildings are pretty personality-less glass and steel towers, but tacked into the side of one of them was a huge organic shaped and rusty metal clock. It was giving severe Howl’s Moving Castle vibes with mechanical bits and clawed feet. Unfortunately we faffed around too long taking photos and looking for the Eki stamp so we just missed the musical performance. It will have to remain a thing to come and see next time.
We briefly took a look at the ruins of a castle turned into a park before walking back to the train station to go back all the way to where we had been earlier.
This is because once seen, in a rare display of willpower, we had put off exploring the Harry Potter shop without the other two. They didn’t take long to show up and so the bubbling excitement was released under far more pressure than I realised!
We had been to the Warner Bros Harry Potter studio tour a couple of years ago and their exhibitions were amazing but the shop was a little lacking. This shop, and the time since we were there, had given rise to loads of inventive Potter merch! A bit of VPN action later and we found out that, given the exchange rate, most things were a decent chunk cheaper here than at home which completely validated our choice to go a bit mad.
Quite late in the evening now, the butterbeer tavern upstairs and personalisation station were closing soon so we shot up there and dug around first. Aimi and I both had a butterbeer ice cream (which tasted suspiciously like caramel) to raise our sugar and energy levels to dangerous heights. I was very tempted by the sorting hat, but it was huge.
We messed about pretending to be a moving chocolate frog card and bowing to Buckbeak. We cast spells with the wands on display and petted the cooing animated pigs dotted about. There were so many details like the pixies making mischief in amongst the theming, letters on fishing line fluttering around in the air conditioning wind and trees lining the dark forest themed escalators with owls swooping past. It was really good!
There were nifflers and brooms and Buckbeak keyrings, all sorts of Christmas tree decorations and horcrux pendant charms. They even had what looked like Ollivanders movie set with deep brown wooden bookshelves piled high with higgledy piggledy boxes of wands. Close by was a semicircle desk of green suede with all the different character and special edition wands laid out waiting to choose their wizards.
I picked up a solid chocolate frog – solid being the critical word. This was a hefty lump about the size of your closed fist and took some satisfyingly messy gnawing to eat. Of course when everyone picked one out of their basket at the end of shopping, Aimi felt left out and so dove back in to get one before the shop shut.
It was so good that when we finally got outside, we realised the time. It was too late to go and see what I had planned for my last night here; the light show on the Metropolitan Building! This will also have to remain for our next trip.
But the Harry Potter night was not over yet! We went to a metro station that had been set decorated. The columns had been painted and textured to look like stone with gargoyles of each house mascot. There were paintings along the walls and a red carpet up the stairs. This led to a huge model of a time turner. At the top was an unfurled letter inviting Harry to Hogwarts with Hedwig swooping overhead and all around the walls were painted “shadows” of pixies and other characters like Crookshanks, Dobby and Peter Pettigrew.
The details were staggering and made a really nice end to the night.
Now really quite late we made our way back to the AirBnB gaily chatting and dribbling chocolate frog into my beard, until we were unfortunate enough to come across something rather horrid.
I don’t think the two lads meant to do it, but they were horsing around while walking a little long-haired dachshund. For some reason one chased the other and ended up dragging the dog a short way, before dragging the dog really quite a long way and then letting go of the lead in favour of chasing his mate at full speed down the road.
It happened so fast we couldn’t do anything but watch the poor dog being dragged around the asphalt. Once released, Aimi ran up to the dog who was unsurprisingly scared and now bleeding from its torn up paws. All of us dog lovers, we were so angry. I called them back with my best “scary Matt” voice and gave them a talking to in English with lots of international sign language. They didn’t know what we were saying but the big angry white man made the message clear.
Once they were looking suitably sheepish there was nothing we could do really other than give them back their dog. My only solace is that it was an excess of energy and youthful ignorance rather than deliberate harm. It was quite an upsetting end to what had been a nice night.