Week 3: Music Week Vol. 1 and Garden Redemption

April 12th, 2026

I started the week off strong by doing absolutely nothing until 1pm. I was fine with it, though, because I had some fun plans for the evening.

I ended up going to the same cafe I went to last week near the city office, got the same thing, and it was still good. I didn’t expect it to be any different, so it met my expectations.

The plans for the evening were to go to Shimokitazawa and head to a place called music bar rpm. I went last year on my trip, and had a lot of fun, so I was real excited to go back.

Shimokitazawa is a really cool place. It’s not even close to as busy as some of the touristy areas of Tokyo, but is popular with local young people and is known for food, thrift stores, music, and good vibes. All of those things are definitely there: I got dinner, went shopping and got an awesome Pingu coin purse, went to the music bar, and enjoyed the good vibes.

For dinner, we went to 46ma (pronounced shirokuma—4 is shi, 6 is roku, shiro kuma means polar bear. Japanese people love wordplay!). It was something I had always been hoping I would be able to go to: a true hole in the wall. It’s in an alley that would be sketchy anywhere but Japan, and is impossible to find without a map. When you walk in, there are five chairs total, one person working, and one thing on the menu. So when we walk in, there’s no choosing, she just asks “2 chicken curries?” and you either say yes or leave.

This was easily the best chicken curry I’ve ever had, and probably the best meal I’ve had in Japan so far. It was a really unique spice blend and the chicken fell right off the bone. Absolutely wonderful and will for sure go again next time I’m there.

Just across the street from the restaurant is music bar rpm, a bar that has open jam sessions every night of the week. Last year when I visited I got to play Just the Two of Us on drums with Eddie Brown, a keyboardist who plays for Stevie Wonder and Beyoncé. This time, it was video game music night, and featured a special guest Jake Silverman aka Button Masher, a video game music keyboardist who I have followed online for a long time. I didn’t get to play with him, but I got to chat with him for a bit and he was a real nice guy.

I signed up to play drums for a song and sat in complete and total anxiety until I was called. I still enjoyed the music and being there, but I was absolutely dreading being called. I was worried (same unfounded worry as last time) that it would be a song I wouldn’t know and I wouldn’t know what to do and would completely fumble everything. Luckily, also like last time this wasn’t the case at all, and I asked to do my request and everyone complied. We played K.K. Cruisin’ from Animal Crossing, a game I have not played but love the music from. Ironically, it has the same chord progression as Just the Two of Us, and the guitar player quotes it in his solo.

I enjoyed playing the song a lot and felt much better afterwards and just got to enjoy the night. Lots of great music was played and I’m really glad I went, and will for sure go again. And maybe next time I won’t lose the ticket that lets you order a second drink.

I ended up getting home just before midnight and didn’t get to bed until real late, the latest by far since I’ve been here. I was supposed to wake up early in the morning to meet my Uncle Rick and Aunt Stacy who happened to be in Tokyo and visit the imperial palace, but from some mix of lack of sleep and some food not agreeing with me I ended up sleeping in and taking a rest day. I didn’t end up doing much until the evening, when I was able to meet up with them to go to Lumbini (who would’ve guessed!), to show them my new favorite Indian place. Yummy as always, and was so great to see them because we seldom get to see each other.

I wasn’t back to 100% yet the next day, but it was nice out and I didn’t want to waste the whole day, so I decided to take a walk in a random direction and just follow wherever looked prettiest. By following the green I ended up at Kiba park, a local park which was beautiful, and by the time I got there it was absolutely perfect weather. I walked for a while and just enjoyed the trees, flowers and dogs.

I made pasta and broccoli for dinner, elbow noodles this time. Broccoli roast went much better on the second attempt, and I even managed to not spill hot oil everywhere. It wasn’t perfect, and ended up being kind of too wet when I bit into it, but it actually looked and tasted roasted this time, so I can’t complain too much. I think I just have to use fresh broccoli instead of frozen, which is about the same price anyway and is sold at the local grocery store. Not an issue at all. Will continue to keep you guys posted on this journey of mine.

Thursday’s weather didn’t look like it was going to be amazing (it said it would be feels like 56, cloudy and windy but ended up being sunny and beautiful!), but I needed to do something and that something was going to be to go to Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. It’s not too far and I’ve heard it’s beautiful and doesn’t feel busy because it’s huge. Those ended up being completely true. There were people for sure, but everyone was clustered around the formal garden and Japanese garden, which are less than half of the grounds. The rest of it is beautiful wooded areas and slightly less formal gardens, which I mostly prefer, anyway. There were so many beautiful huge trees, and the later-blooming cherry varieties were in or around peak blossom.

It was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and one of the most interesting things about it is if you look past the edges you’re just in the city. Imagine if Longwood Gardens was in Center City. It’s real weird. I went home after a few hours and was exhausted but in a great mood.

For places like this where one or two photos can't do it justice, I'm trying out a google drive folder that I'll share the link to. If you want to see more photos from Shinjuku Gyoen (highly recommended!!), click me!

That wasn’t all for Thursday, though! In the evening I went back out and took the train to Tokyo International Forum to see my first concert in Japan, Lisa Ono. She’s a Japanese-Brazilian bossa nova singer and guitarist who I didn’t know about until I was searching for shows to see a few months ago and stumbled upon her tickets. I was probably the only white person and only person under 50 in the entire 2,000 people venue, which I think is ideal.

The show absolutely exceeded my expectations. I expected it to be mostly if not all bossa, but it ended up being a lot of jazz with some bossa, funk/soul and rock and roll. It was a fun mix and the jazz and bossa was especially great. She had an American singer with her who sang some Marvin Gaye, and while Lisa Ono was great, I think her band really shined. Every musician was amazing and I think they were the real stars of the show.

On the way back I stopped in a supermarket and got some Haagen Dazs ice cream, the first real ice cream I’ve had since I’ve been here. A nice treat for an eventful day where I took over 21,000 steps.

After a long eventful day came a chill uneventful one, where I called some friends and did laundry. I played some mario party with some roommates and won, which is always a joy.

I was booking a hotel for when I go to Kyoto in May with two roommates a few days earlier, but stopped because I wanted to figure out exact plans. When I had them, I went back to book the room and every single hotel on the website went from about 300 dollars total to over 8,000. I know it’s common to mark things up after you’re looking at them a second time, but some of these hotels were marked up over 100x. I tried changing my VPN, clearing my cache, going in incognito, and nothing worked to change the prices. So I used a different website, but it said my card declined every time I tried to check out even though I didn’t get a text about any fraud alerts or declines. So finally I copied the exact hotel I was trying to get into the first website, and it gave me a reasonable price like the first time I checked, so I quickly bought it before they could change it up on me. That was a fun hour.

Saturday was going to be a day going to Enoshima, an island about 2 hours south, but I found out they have a public hot spring which I really wanted to go to, but tattoos are banned (tattoos are traditionally associated with the yakuza). So today’s mission was to find tattoo covers. For the morning I just chilled out and played bass, and in the afternoon I headed up to Kinshicho to go to Don Quijote, or Donki. It’s a real interesting store and if you haven’t seen it before, you should look up what it looks like inside. They even have their own theme song!

I found what I was looking for and went to get dinner at CoCo Curry House, a fast food curry chain that I had heard good things about. It was pretty good, better than Sukiya but more expensive and further away. I’ll probably go again at some point, but I’m not fiending to go back.

I tried on the tattoo cover at home the next morning and it was hilariously bad. Not only was it much darker than my skin, but you could totally see my tattoo through it. Oh well, I figured I’d just wear a big shirt and try to hide it while I’m in the onsen.

I got out at about 10:30 to go to Enoshima, a small island you can walk across in half an hour. It should be about a 2 hour trip, but I left slightly later than I wanted to and ended up missing an hourly train by about 10 minutes. So I waited for a while and ended up getting to the island a bit before 1:30. It was so beautiful, it almost looked fake while I was walking across the bridge to get there.

First thing to do was to get lunch. I walked along the first street you get to when you arrive, and went in a restaurant that had oyakodon on the menu. It was pretty good—the chicken was just okay but it’s hard to mess up a bowl of rice, eggs, onions, and chicken.

After lunch I meandered to the coast, which is rocky, not sandy. I had a lot of fun jumping across the rocks to get along the coast, which is something I don’t think I’ve done since I went to the Catskills many years ago. I definitely need to find somewhere where I can do something similar (rock climbing seems cool, but it seems like mostly upper body? I like the jumping). I found a cool little cave and just enjoyed the ocean breeze for a while.

I kept going and expected to be able to make my way up to the main part of the island from the coast, but there was one gap that was too long to jump over so it just became a dead end (I later realized if there were way to cross that gap, it was the only obstacle in my way to making it to the stairs to get up on the other side). Oh well, more jumping for me. It’s not quite as fun the second time, but still a good time.

After making my way back the way I came, I walked over to the Samuel Cocking Garden, the main reason I found the island (it was part of the spreadsheet!). The walk over was not easy, and had to have at least 15 flights of stairs. But when you get up there it’s great views of the water, and apparently when the sky is really clear you can see Mt. Fuji. I did not have that luxury.

I passed a shrine on the way over which was nice, and made it to the garden. It wasn’t as fabulous as the last two I went to, but that’s just because it was so much smaller. The island it’s on probably isn’t even the size of either of the other two I went to. There were still plenty of pretty trees and flowers to look at, which is all I ask.

In the area, I must have seen at least 15 anime cosplayers. They were everywhere. I guess there are good photoshoot locations, but it looked like an anime convention around there. Not complaining.

I stopped in a cafe to get food because I wanted to eat dinner at home but needed something to tide me over. I got french toast, and it was decent but kind of just tasted like scrambled eggs on the inside. I didn’t even know that was possible. Has this happened to anyone before? Undercooked? Too many eggs? I don’t know.

After leaving the garden, I made my way over to the other coast that I couldn’t make it to earlier. It was on the west side of the island, so the sun sets over the water. I was thinking about waiting for it, but I’m glad I didn’t because it ended up getting cloudy and not having any sunset.

I finally made it back to the front of the island to the spa which had an onsen, the thing I was looking forward to all day to heal my sore body. I wore a big shirt as planned which barely covered my tattoo and made it in fine, and then while I was in the actual onsen (which everyone is naked for, in case you didn’t know), I either wore my towel around my neck/arms to cover it or just crossed my arms and covered it with my hand. It made things a little less relaxing, but that’s only bringing it from 100% relaxation to 99%, because this place was lovely. It had a big hot tub area and then a smaller area for the actual hot spring which was about 110 degrees. It was so nice and it really made all of the walking worth it. I only ended up staying an hour, because it isn’t quite as easy to stay for a long time without a buddy to talk to. I left relaxed and they never knew I had a tattoo. I’m a winner.

That was all for week 3! Things have been real nice so far. I’m definitely still missing friends and family and pets but it’s been nice to video call some friends and family and see the pets when I can. I’m not telling anyone to stay up too late, but if you do happen to be up late you should totally text me cause it can get a bit lonely after 1pm.

Next week, classes start and I have one fun excursion planned. Should be a pretty nice, chill week.

Until then. Have a lovely day.
-Dan