musashi-koyama - 武蔵小山

I went on a run this morning around the nearby park as usual (“as usual” - er, I may have skipped a week, shhh), and being both lazy and the kind of person who really likes to optimize time usage (so I can get an extra minute of watching Youtube shorts in, of course), I’ve noticed I’ve been cutting my workouts shorter and shorter, without cutting corners of course. My watch has a preset training program to hit my running goals, and many days it starts with a 5-minute warmup, then a distance-based run (today’s was 4km), then a 5-minute cooldown. My goal is to finish the workout exactly at my apartment front door, which I successfully accomplished once, and it felt so good. I thought I had solved the optimization problem. My routine is: walk then run to the park, lap the park a bunch (taking different laps every time for some more fun and variety), then run home. For some reason I remembered the perfectly optimized day as having 1km left in my run before heading back, so I tried that out again today, and it was a gross overestimate of the actual distance home. I still had 0.5km left rounding the corner of the last main street before heading home, which doesn’t even include the 5 min cooldown. So I went down a new path and realized, huh, this neighborhood actually has a lot of cool stuff! There’s an onsen, a nice bakery, izakayas - until now, we’ve spent the majority of our time in Palm (the giant covered shopping street) because it just felt like the one-stop-shop for everything I could ever want, but only now did I realize that there’s lot of really cool places outside the mall too.

It might sound kind of dumb and silly that I haven’t even seen the stuff in my own neighborhood yet, but Tokyo neighborhood layouts are really confusing (not grid-shaped), and non-touristy shops often don’t have listings on Google Maps. I haven’t looked too deeply into Tokyo zoning laws yet, but I think everything might just be mixed-use zoning, so you’ll find a surprise restaurant tucked inside a very residential area. It’s actually super cool, but understandable that there are things I simply haven’t seen yet just sitting in my backyard. Another reason why I haven’t explored this area that much yet is because I don’t know anyone who lives here. Everyone I’ve been meeting lives elsewhere in Tokyo, and so I find myself spending a lot more time in the more centralized, popular locations like Shibuya. And it kind of makes sense, because it’s a little bit far (honestly it’s not that far, but having to walk 10 min, then take a transfer to get almost anywhere isn’t great). I definitely have a huge recency bias, but I think this is my favorite neighborhood in Tokyo. Has a really good density of stuff, not touristy or bougie at all, very walkable, etc. I wonder if there’s a way to meet people specifically in this neighborhood (I have been using Facebook groups and Meetup, but that typically captures people across Tokyo). If anyone has thoughts, I’m all ears.

I forget if I mentioned this already, but we have a different teacher every day of the week, and Wednesday is my favorite teacher. We did a little calligraphy session/competition today in class which was super fun - I thought I’d do okay since I know how to write Chinese, but I was so wrong. Our teacher said we can choose any kanji we want, so I chose 難 from 難しい (muzukashii), which means “difficult” in Japanese because I thought I was funny. Well apparently my class is full of jokesters - a few people looked up “most difficult kanji” and attempted “taito” (which literally can’t be rendered on my computer) and 𰻞 (biang, like biang bian mian for those familiar with the Chinese dish). These characters are the kanji-equivalent of inventing the world’s longest word just because, and not that it actually needs to be this complicated.

my pretty ugly 難

the winner of the competition (the one on the right) was Chinese, but even some completely non-asian students’ writing looked better than mine…

On my way home, I walked though Palm, and there are two breeder shops (one for puppies, and one for kittens) in the mall that I’ve been meaning to take videos of, so I finally did it. Enjoy :)

I had been eyeing this Tonkatsu place for a while - Mochi Buta Tonkatsu Taiyo which seems like from the reviews, people have been traveling far to get to. Again, another gem right in my backyard. I haven’t gone yet because people say you need reservations, it’s only got 8 seats, lines are long, etc., but I was eating by myself today and I was home pretty early so I figured now would be my chance. The restaurant was completely empty when I came in close to opening, so that was nice. I just got the standard ロース (rose? i.e. loin) cut (maybe I should’ve read this guide first instead of brute-forcing my tonkatsu learnings), which I’ve found I prefer, but the restaurant also has a higher-quality version available which I want to try next time. The pork was good, but the breading and the fry was sooooo light and crispy. However, the restaurant put the tonkatsu directly on a bed of fresh cabbage salad (which they added microgreens too - a very nice touch), but my pet peeve is soggy tonkatsu. Many tonkatsu restaurants will serve tonkatsu on a semi-circle cooling rack on top of your plate, which I absolutely love, and I thought putting it on cabbage might encourage more airflow than putting it directly on a plate, but the cabbage was wet, so I think it was even worse. Anyways, that was my main gripe - otherwise, the atmosphere was so nice with the chef frying the tonkatsu directly in front of me (and a completely empty restaurant, that was both very cool and really intimidating. I sooooo wish I spoke Japanese). It was a really nice experience, I think much more of a nice night out than the standard everyday fare, and there is probably equivalently good tonkatsu elsewhere in Tokyo, so please don’t ride the subway for 40 min just to come here, as one reviewer did (they still gave 5 stars…but…I think tourists can be a little delusional haha).

would rate this place 8.5/10.

Afterwards, I went to the local onsen, which I also discovered people come to from all over Tokyo, because apparently the water is golden as opposed to the other Tokyo onsens, which are more brown/black. So many hidden gems in Musashi-Koyama! This onsen is actually quite nice - it’s small and was crowded as the reviews stated, and a part of me wonders if the restaurant was empty but the onsen was crowded because it’s pretty darn cold in Tokyo right now. ¥550 for onsen only, I went with the ¥1000 onsen + sauna package deal. The onsen temp was only 41°C so not super hot, but it was nice being able to go between sauna (super hot - I was dripping sweat after like 5 minutes) and onsen. The onsen had jets and the weird ultrasonic massager thing that feels like getting tased - it is not clearly labeled so it totally caught me off-guard. There’s an indoor and outdoor section. This onsen doesn’t provide soap, so BYOS. They do provide a towel (I think potentially only for the sauna). Anyways, this was definitely a great onsen experience, and the only thing I would do differently next time is go later in the evening so I can roll into bed all cozy and warm, because I reaaaallly wanted to take a nap after coming home.

I don’t even know if it’s worth posting this photo - I’m just too embarrassed about taking pictures in public like a dumb tourist that I can’t wait for the nighttime long exposure to do its thing…