Good evening friends and family! Today marks the end of my first week off work due to coronavirus. I should be back at work next Monday so until then I have a bit of time to do some Tokyo travelling. For my first week off work, I didn’t really get up to very much until Friday when I took a trip with some new friends (shout out to Lisa and John!) to a place called Sarushima Island, which is the only uninhabited island off Tokyo Bay. The island was previously used as a fortress during the Second World War and a lot of war-time artefacts remain!

Sarushima Island is also known as Monkey Island, although disappointingly there are no monkeys. There are a lot of hawks that swoop around the island and one even swooped low enough to take the chocolate muffin out of my hand whilst I was in between bites, which was quite a scary experience.

We took the train from Shinagawa station in central Tokyo to Yokosuka station and then walked fifteen minutes to the ferry port. The ferry journey then took another fifteen minutes and we were able to sit on the top deck in the sun as we approached the island. There was a nice beach, which apparently gets busy in summer, and a cafe/restaurant where you can rent a BBQ if you feel like it. We went for the easy option though and just stocked on some supermarket sushi before we got the ferry across. Given the recent coronavirus scare and the fact that it was a weekday, the island was not busy at all and we spent a few hours walking around the fortress, the “tunnel of love” and the general island area. We lay in the sun on some rocks for a few hours and had some plum wine out of the cartoon before eventually heading back to the mainland in the late afternoon.

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We wandered around the town of Yokosuka for about an hour before we took the train back to Shinagawa. The sun was setting as the train took us from the countryside back into Tokyo, which made for a very scenic journey home.

Once we were back in Shinagawa, we decided to get some soba noodles for dinner. I typed “soba” into my Google maps and a restaurant popped a few hundred yards away. We followed the directions into a very residential area before arriving at a small restaurant. The restaurant’s name was 高輪蕎麦茶房, which according to the picture below translates to Takanawa Soba Sabo. However, you have to type the former into Google if you want to find it otherwise a lot of different restaurants pop up instead.

A Japanese man dressed in a chef’s outfit with a long grey beard and grey hair tied into a ponytail came out to greet us. He was followed by his wife who was carrying a small dog. We all took our shoes off and put on some slippers provided by the couple and we followed them into the restaurant. The restaurant was very small and I’m pretty sure it was part of their house but it was an incredible traditional Japanese experience. There was no menu so straight away we were served tea, followed by a platter of different types of food including sashimi, fried tofu, small white fish and salad. Then we were served soba noodles with a cold broth. The chef told us that these noodles were 100% buckwheat and they were so delicious. He initially gave us small portions because he said that the noodles tasted better when they were fresh out of the pan so he would top us up with a fresh batch when we were finished. The entire meal was so delicious and I will definitely be returning. The bill came and in total we paid one thousand yen each (roughly £7)! Incredible value for such a great meal! 10/10 would recommend.

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Right now it is 10pm on Saturday night and I have just finished my bowl of noodles at home. I am about to leave the house and head to Shinjuku station where I will be taking a night bus to Kyoto for a few days. I haven’t booked my return bus but I’m hoping to spend a few days/nights exploring Kyoto and Osaka before I have to head back to Tokyo to start work again. Thanks for reading!