The first time I visited Japan was during December of the previous year which meant a nice cool temperature. This time, arriving almost two months earlier, it was a sauna.
Earlier in the year I read in one of architect Christopher Alexander's books about a certain building he and a few others designed and constructed in Tokyo, so I went and took some photos of it. It's a nice building that blends in well. Behold the Emoto Apartment Building, constructed in 1987. The exact location was incredibly hard to find and I had to use the Google Maps 3D view to search for it.
I wonder if the bike has stood here all these years.
After the walk to and from the building in the humid and sunny 35°C weather I was drenched in sweat and overheating and so decided to have the first bowl of ramen in a year.
A bowl at Ramen Hidamari (麺や ひだまり) in
Sendagi.
Pretty building outside the hotel.
I spent the rest of the day recuperating from the flight.
My airplane neighbour had been a Norwegian who was also into programming so naturally we talked a bit and decided to hang out the next day. We had Japanese curry in Jimbocho and peeked around the bookstores. There's a large one there called Kitazawi which has a ton of old books on topics ranging from history to political science to philosophy to fiction and everything inbetween. I didn't buy anything because I didn't want to lug around books for the rest of the trip, but if you ever go to Tokyo I highly recommend visiting it.
As the sun set, the friend I was to travel with arrived and we went straight for our most coveted restaurant in all of Tokyo, which is Ramen Ibuki in Itibashi. It was a 40 minutes metro ride plus a short walk, each way, from our nearest station in Nippori, but worth it. They serve an extremely thick and powerful broth made from dried sardines.
Sardine broth noodle (Niboshi) bowl at Ramen Ibuki.