Tokyo

Day 1

The Theatre Coffee

The first thing I consumed in Tokyo was a soy latte. I was in the Hikarie Mall, which is attached to the Shibuya train station. The mall has around 10 floors, and there are 3 coffee shops distributed around. The elevators in the mall have a really cute voice. I think the only other elevator I’ve been in that talked to me was the Twitter building elevators, but this one was cuter because it was in Japanese. The mall also had a juice place which sold a lot of familiar american vegan snacks.

The first cafe we tried was on the bottom floor and looked a lot like blue bottle (so much that I’m pretty sure they ripped off their logo, cups, and everything else about them), but they didn’t offer soymilk. The second one was a success, so we never visited the 3rd one.

The Theatre Coffee made a really good soy latte with cute latte art, but it was a bit pricey.

Pure Cafe

David had eaten dinner at Pure Cafe before and wasn’t impressed with their food, so we decided to just order dessert only. It was one of the only places open before 11am, so it one the contest for next destination. The cheesecake was quite good. It used a peanut butter crust, which was unique. They also had gluten-free items.

Hanada Rosso

Macrobiotic Vegan Restaurant

Brown Rice Cafe

100% vegan restaurant and organic when possible. This was mostly temple cuisine.

Day 2

Ainsoph. journey

This salad parfait was so cute that I’m going to start making these at home. The dressing that came with it was so delicious that if anyone at the restaurant spoke english, I would have tried to buy a bottle to take with me.

David ordered some sort of marinara with rice.

I ordered pancakes with ice cream and whipped cream. The ice cream tasted like rum raisin. The garnish included some berries that had a familiar taste but didn’t look familiar. The staff spoke very little english here, but the menu was partially in english.

Rainbow Bird Rendevous

This was one of my favorite restaurants in Japan…quite possibly my very favorite. It’s 100% vegan, GMO-free, and free of refined sugars.

Cute ceiling decor

Potato croquette

Veggie burger

This soft serve was the best one I had during my stay in Japan. Tokyo serves soft serve ice cream with cereal in it. This one had corn flakes. I’ll be trying this at home.

Day 3

Harajuku

Harajuku has a few people…like one or two.

A lot of the malls in Tokyo had cute floors.

Deus Ex Machina

My favorite coffee shop in Tokyo was in Harajuku. It’s called Deus Ex Machina. They have soy lattes and do cute latte art. Kurt thought it looked like lumpy space princess.

A trend I noticed in “hip” coffee shops in Japan were copper piping sinks. I saw this in at least 3 different cafes.

One of the only times we got stuck eating at a restaurant that wasn’t vegetarian and didn’t have an English menu or any English speaking staff was in Harajuku. We ended up at a place called Oriental Recipe and Cafe that’s around the corner from the Tamagachi store at the end of Takeshita-Dori.

Luckily, I pasted a bunch of Japanese characters into my journal before the trip so I could point to characters. The restaurant had a vegan salad or this vegan curry.

They also sold cute kawaii heart-shaped vegan snacks that we bought and ate later on our train ride to Okunoshima.

Giant Black Cat

David read on twitter that there was a giant black cat in the Shinjuku train station puking out presents, so we obviously had to go to get souvenirs for Josipa. Here’s a flipagram of our visit.

Kuumba du Falafel

I went to Kuumba du Falafel for dinner. There’s just one guy who works there and not much seating, but he spoke some English and was able to make us a falafel plate.

Day 4

Island Veggie

This vegetarian restaurant was recommended to me by Eidelyn. I wasn’t going to go because Happy Cow listed it as vegetarian, but she assured me that most things could be made vegan, so we went for breakfast. It was hard to find places open early in Japan because places typically open later and stay open later at night, so I was super excited that Island Veggie was open before 9am.

I ordered a chocolate peanut butter banana shake.

David ordered a ham sandwich and it came with a free coffee. This sandwich was less than 700 yen, making this one of the most affordable options I found in Tokyo.

The decor inside was super cute too. And their bathrooms had the potty showers that we all come home from Japan missing.

Tokyo Tower

The Tokyo Tower is only 1 or 2 stops away from Island Veggie, so we decided to check it out. The tower itself wasn’t very interesting. It’s a super tall tower. However, because it was in Tokyo, it had all this other cute stuff, like a One Piece themed cafe and store!

I tried to go to the cafe, but they didn’t offer soymilk. The word for soymilk is tonyu, so I basically just got into the habit of walking in everywhere and saying “tonyu?” None of the themed restaurants and cafes I tried to go to offered anything vegan.

Since we got denied at the cafe, there’s a park nearby that we walked around in.

La Petite Pattiserie de Mirayne

This vegan bakery was a huge disappointment. Do not waste your time going here. The first time I went, they were closed. The second time I went, they were out of mostly everything.

We got the black pepper crackers and the lemon cookies, and they were 1,000 yen for the tiniest containers! But after going all the way there twice (it was out of the way of everything else), we had to buy something. The pepper crackers had wayyyyy too much pepper. Here’s Jack carrying the bag of overly priced baked goods.

Lima

Lima is a health food store with an almost all-vegan cafe. We came here to look for snacks for our trip to Bunny Island, but we ended up staying and eating lunch. I highly recommend this place.

And then after eating, we found all these snacks to bring with us to Bunny Island.

HangOut

This all-vegan bar was so good that we came back twice! San Francisco really needs a vegan bar. The things I loved about this bar were that the food tasted better than bar food in the states (for instance, I ordered an amazing salad both times with watermelon radish and roasted kabocha squash), the employees spoke english, the menu was in English, and the menu had pictures so you knew what to expect.

Gyozas

The Bloody Mary didn’t have a garnish, but at least I was able to order one at night.

This rainbow salad could easily be the best salad I had in Japan.

Some type of mockmeat

Rilakkuma Store in Harajuku Kiddyland

Day 5

T’s Tantan

T’s is located inside the Tokyo train station near the Keiyo street exit.

It’s super clean and modern inside. They don’t have a bathroom but the bathrooms in the train station are fairly clean. I got in the habit of carrying my own soap and washcloth in my purse since oftentimes the train station bathrooms didn’t have soap or hand dryers.

T’s was probably the most affordable vegan place I found in Tokyo, so I ate here like 5 times. My first time was breakfast. Here’s a video of me periscoping the inside of the restaurant.

I ordered the shoyu ramen almost every time. It was just so delicious and perfectly filling. If you go for breakfast, you can add a coffee for 100 yen (around $1)!

Across the hall and to the left is a bakery.

Boulangerie La Terre

They offer between 2 and 5 sweet and savory vegan options each day. It’s all in Japanese, so you have to be able to communicate with the staff. By the end of my trip, I knew the words for butter, milk, eggs, meat, and fish, but I’ve forgotten them all already.

Day 6

Tokyo Skytree

Almost everyday in Japan was sunny and a perfect 70 degrees. However, the day we visited the Tokyo Skytree, it was a foggy day with a bit of rain.

Luckily, the skytree is basically a huge 10 story indoor mall so we stayed warm and dry. The disney stores there are so much cuter than ours. There was a conglomeration between Disney and h. NAOTO to make a Nightmare Before Christmas line.

I really wanted this bat purse, but it’s too small to be practical.

You probably think that the 4 Rilakkuma stores I’ve already visited were enough. You’re wrong.

Who’s hiding in the bushes?

Sasaya Cafe

This was one of my favorite restaurants in Tokyo! They understood english well and had an english menu.

They had a good selection of desserts.

Day 7

Sol’s Coffee

These baristas were knowledgeable about SF coffee roasters like blue bottle.

I liked the cute mirror in the bathroom.

Pokemon Center

Sanrioworld Ginza

Disney Store

I like how the Disney store looked like a castle.

Day 8

Tomato was an awesome fabric store located in the Nippori district! It had a ton of cute fabrics, and the best part was that they played poppunk music while I shopped (Milencolin, Pennywise, etc.). Here are some of the cuter fabrics I spotted.

Komaki Shokudo

This place was pretty disappointing. I wouldn’t go back, and I would advise against going. The service was bad. The food was just whatever, except that it was quite expensive.

After eating, we tried to visit some themed bars and cafes that were near the restaurant but nobody had soymilk, so we didn’t stay. So, instead I had the fun time of trying to buy stamps and mail postcards and letters. And since you asked, yes, Tokyo does have stamps with Hello Kitty on them!!!

While at the airport, I made a list of things I would miss about Japan. One thing not listed is how much nicer the airport lounges are in Japan than in america. The food was labeled with allergies so I could determine some things that were vegan, and I made a mimosa.

Here were some of the souvenirs I bought myself in the Ueno district of Tokyo and other random places here and there.