rinshi-no-mori park (林試の森公園)

Visited the nearby park early this morning and it was so beautiful. Lots of people running.

Of course, we went back to the mall. Ate at Spice Cafe, an Indian restaurant that we totally thought was Japanese curry since I only read the word “curry” on the outside and didn’t examine further. Was very good, we’ve been super impressed by the naan in Tokyo so far - they are freshly cooked in a tandoor (and are teardrop shaped, that’s how you know), which is pretty fun because you can actually see the tandoor in the restaurants. Since real estate is precious, the kitchens are in the dining area, so you can see everything. Even with the tight spaces, I really appreciate the commitment to only delivering the best food with the best equipment no matter how small or ordinary the shop is.

look at that cheese pull

I got the butter chicken katsu curry which was kind of a fun blend of Indian and Japanese styles, the curry itself tasted a bit like a sweet tomato soup, which is not exactly what I wanted but it went really well with the cheese naan, which was basically like a grilled cheese. Miles got the vegetable keema curry which looked really good…I realized I was desperately craving vegetables. Curry was 7/10, butter naan was 9/10.

Eating out all the time is really hard, even if the fast food is way healthier than in the US:

this meal was ¥600 ($3.81)

I just have to have more fresh vegetables in my diet (that isn’t shredded cabbage). We went to the nearby grocery store and did exactly that.

Grocery stores work a bit differently in Japan too, will likely make a post about that in the future as well.

We also went back to the park later in the afternoon and the park was full of families and small children playing with kites and on playgrounds (one of the playgrounds had a zipline), and slightly older kids riding unicycles and doing soccer tricks. We even saw a large group of adults doing some activity that we couldn’t really figure out, it seemed like a field day or relay competition of sorts? One day when we get good enough at Japanese we’ll hopefully be able to ask people directly. It was such a fun, vibrant atmosphere, and it was great to see public spaces being used so extensively and physical activity being a key component of social life.