We had plans to go hit Inakaya to celebrate Scott's birthday, so we wanted to take it easy during the day. It wouldn't do to be too tired to eat out, after all. We first went to the East Imperial Gardens. It's an easy trip to make and it's free admission. You receive a token which you turn in later, presumably to track how many visitors they get in a day. The gardens were as much about carefully maintained bushes, trees, lawns, and ponds as they were about flowers. It was incredibly quiet thanks to being shielded by walls of trees and some walls which remain from the ancient fortifactions of the castle which once stood there. The occasioanl helicopter flying overhead was the loudest thing we heard while in there.
From here we took a cab to the Sword Museum and took some time to browse around. I was fascinated by finally being able to see the various differences in blades which I'd only read about. I'd also not seen examples of the various colorations and 'shapes' which appear in the metal as a result of the crafting and tempering process. Of course we didn't linger there TOO long because after a while the blades did all tend to blend together and it was really just one good-sized room of blades to see.
We walked over to the park where the Meiji Jinju shrine is. The park itself was great, but we went back through the path through the woods to the shrine. It was techcnically the back way as we didn't come in the broad path under the torii. This is the shrine to the Emperor and Emperess who were instrumental in opening Japan to the West. After looking around there and buying some little health charms from the shrine girls, we wandered to the iris garden nearby. The pond was very pretty and the edge had some shaded benches where we rested for a while. After getting a bit wet from feeding the fish (they really thrashed around to get that food) We went back to the hotel to freshen up.
We went towards Roppongi and had quite a time trying to find the restaurant. The problem was that the sign was written in a script rather than 'printed' so it was hard to compare to what a guidebook said it should look like. Eventually some random guy with a phone asked us if we needed help. He called the restaurant and then told us we were on the right block. We looked around in confusion and then asked this guy hosing down a porch-like spot. We'd been standing right out front.
Inakaya is a restaurant in the robutayaki style. The 'chefs' sit on tatami mats against a wall with their small grills in front of them. They are surrounded by a semicircular arrangement of various foods in baskets. (with the baskets arranged on ice in the case of items such as meat) The customers sit at a low counter which then runs along the outside of this semicircle; you need only point at something and it's prepared for you. The chefs use paddles with long handles to retrieve the baskets and even serve bottles of beer with them. This was the first time I'd ever had a 'whole fish' grilled for me; it was a red snapper and it was fantastic! The only other specific thing I recall having was some okra .. and some beers.
Some businessmen next to us were served a HUGE crab. Well, it was half of a crab and that half was HUUUUUGE! That half of a crab served five people. I still don't know what the heck it was, but I wanted to try it sometime. :) The night was still young and we wanted to go find some more drinks. We wandered down past the various clubs and restaurants heh, I still remember the one club with the dressed-up guys out front standing on either side of a couple of 'bunnies' wearing raincoats. Anyway, farther on down we found a German bar with a lot of really good beer. Yum! I wrote the name down as Berndt's Bar. After a few beers, it was getting late and I think we were all solidly done for the evening.