Asia Trip 2023 Day 3 - Jazz on High
After a week in Tokyo for Jenn and about five days for me, today marks our last full day in this wonderful city. We woke up today with a very limited game plan. It was raining pretty well when we woke up so we went to the gym on the top floor of the Park Hyatt and got a good workout in before going downstairs for breakfast right before they closed at 10:30. Jenn had a salmon eggs Benedict and I had two eggs over easy with sausage and coffee. A really nice start to the morning on a rainy Sunday.
By the time we left our hotel a little after 11 AM, the rain had stopped, making the walk to the subway station much easier. Our first destination today was Tokyo National Museum an art and relic museum in Ueno Park. We had read it was one of the city's finest museums, so we wanted to check it out. After a 10-stop subway ride, we walked through the park and into the museum. The two-story museum housed a lot of ancient relics, samurai garb and swords, artwork, and pottery. It was quite different from the hundreds of European museums we’ve visited with the grand portraits and landscapes. Everything here was far more muted with lighter palettes and a lot less grandiose. The museum also wasn’t filled to the brim so within an hour we had toured the entire place and made our way through the gift store and back out to the park.
From there we walked back through Ueno Park and back on the subway to go to a modern art museum a few miles away. We arrived at Mori Art Museum thirty minutes later and took the elevator 50+ floors up to the museum entrance. This museum was far more in our wheelhouse and reminded us of a small MoMa. There were some truly brilliant pieces here. One in particular was a series of thousands of small red LED lights that all flickered at different rates and intervals representing the different lengths of human life and existence. For some reason sitting there staring at these red lights twinkling impacted me. We spent far longer at this smaller museum before walking through its gift shop and taking the elevator back down to the ground floor.
At this point, it was late afternoon and we decided it was a good idea to pack it in and go back to the hotel. We walked through the mall past some beautiful street art and into the subway. After perfect navigation on the subway our entire stay I accidentally put in the wrong hotel in Apple Maps and had us go about 6 stops in the wrong direction before realizing it getting out and luckily taking the same subway line back in the same direction. Eventually, we were back at the Park Hyatt where we went to go for tea again but were turned away because it was full. Instead, we went back out and got Starbucks without an umbrella only to have it start a downpour on our walk back. That will teach us!
To wrap up our time in Tokyo we decided to stay at the Park Hyatt for the rest of the evening and have dinner at the New York Grill. We were fortunate to get a window seat on the 52nd-floor restaurant. Jenn started with a glass of white wine and I had red. We started with their scallop appetizer that they were nice enough to split for us. It was fantastic. For our main course, Jenn went with the fresh tagliolini pasta with lobster and tomato garlic sauce that she loved. I had to get a Japanese steak so I went with the Kagawa Olive Fed Beef Sirloin that was out of this world. Both here and the Teppan a few days ago made me a full believer in Japanese steak.
We had asked the concierge to also book us at the New York Bar which was made famous by the movie Lost in Translation and was around the corner from where we had dinner. When we wrapped up our dinner they escorted us over to a table a few away from the main stage where an incredible jazz group was playing. Jenn got a French 75 and I had a gin martini. It's moments like these sitting across from Jenn in her beautiful Rebecca Taylor red dress that will be engraved on me until the day I die. It was such a beautiful moment, such a surreal experience to be in Tokyo 50+ floors above the city listening to incredible jazz, drinking amazing cocktails, with the love of my life and best friend. Gosh, life can be so great sometimes.
