Last week was Golden Week here in Japan. It marks the first real holiday most Japanese workers have since the New Year break, and consequently all hotels and travel companies hike up their prices to almost double the norm to try their hardest to make it impossible for anyone to go anywhere or do anything. Tourist attractions have bigger crowds and roads and trains around Japan become even more congested than normal. This year my mum came over to Tokyo for the second time and stayed with me in Kichijoji. Really nice to see her and be able to eat something in the evening other than my current-money-saving-diet of baked potatoes and cheese. We went to some really nice restaurants during the week:

Allt Gott is a nice Scandanavian restaurant in Kichijoji, serving traditional Northern fare (although with the smallest glasses of wine I have ever seen), and was pretty good. Having a menu consisting entirely of strange meats like Reindeer did make ordering a little more confusing than usual…and where do they get fresh Reindeer from in Tokyo? Probably steal them from zoos or something. I thought the Swedish meatballs were particularly good.

Toriyoshi is a nice yakitori restaurant right next to Inokashira Park, that for ages I thought was the ground floor of the Primi Baci restaurant upstairs. They have a beautiful graden entrance and serve good yakitori and lots of it at a pretty reasonable price. Came out at about 6000 yen for a good feed with drinks.

The Kichijoji branch of Mos (Mountain Ocean Sun!! HA!) Burger Classic was also good. Mos Burger is one of the Japanese hamburger chains and is usually pretty good, although similar to other burger chains. The Classic variation is much better. It’s down some steps next to the Armani store in Kichijoji and has a nicely designed interior featuring a shirt signed by Alex Santos. The burgers here are fantastic, towering affairs, completely different from the usual Mos Burger fast food variant, and really require you to eat them with a knife and fork, although I refuse to do that on point of principle. Really good avacado, bacon cheeseburger.

Primi Baci (above) is a really nice Italian restaurant above Toriyoshi with a terrace overlooking Inokashira park. They served really amazing Italian food, certainly the best I’ve had in Tokyo and definitely comparable to that back home. The tomato salad was really good as was the steak and blue cheese sauce. I would definitely recommend going on a Friday night as there is a really hot waitress working there then, and after all, that is what’s really important. The meal was expensive (about £75 quid for three courses), but well worth checking out when one has some money to burn, or when wanting to impress a ladee. Very nice indeed.

It was also very nice of my mum to introduce me to two new (at least, to me) gardens in Tokyo. The first was the Koishikawa Korakuen Garden in Iidabashi (above), just behind the Tokyo Dome. A really beautiful and surprisingly big Japanese-Style garden that will look amazing in the Autumn and when it snows. Really cheap too, at around £1 to get into. Looking forward to spending some more time there when the weather is more appropriate than the current rain. There are lots of nice things to see there, like the remnant of old tea-houses and shrines, most of which were unfortuantely destroyed during the war.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum in Meguro (above), was also a really good new discovery. A little bit more pricey at about 1200 yen for entry to the house and gardens (less for just the gardens), but definitely worth it. They have a really nice lawn outside (a rare thing in central Tokyo), and lots of people were picnicking when we went. The exhibition in the museum, on Scandinavian design and Arabia Pottery in Finland was pretty nice, but completely overshadowed by the house itself. Built in 1933, it was the home of Prince Asaka and his family. The Prince had been taken with Art Deco during his studies in France in the 20s and employed designer Henri Rapin to build him a residence in the Art Deco style in Meguro. The house has stunning glasswork by Rene Lalique and some wonderful marble by Ivan-Leon Branchot and every room has beautiful details with amazing light fixtures. Definitely worth going to, even if the exhibition showing there isn’t of interest. I really enjoyed it and will go again soon.

A good Golden Week then this year, although I am still puzzled as to why women can’t find any nice navy-blue sandals except for some ridiculously overpriced ones from Jimmy Choo? Oh well, another of the great mysteries of the universe I suppose.