Ninja tea!

I have now been in Japan for a year! Hard to believe how fast time goes by. I still have so many things to see and do that I decided to make a list so that I don't get to the end of my tour and have regrets. As you may remember, one of the items on my list was to go to Ninja, the ninja-themed restaurant here in Tokyo.

This restaurant is sneaky! It hides, with a simple door in a black wall. To get to your table, you have to go through "ninja training", which is basically walking through a dark, low corridor that goes up and down and around, and then you have to call out the secret ninja password to lower a bridge and then go a bit further before entering the seating area, which looks like a Japanese fortress.  

A friend's drink

Cheesecake :)

The menu is on a scroll, and the dessert menu is SECRET - i.e. it's written on a little piece of paper that they burn up after you place your dessert order. Drinks can be fun, and the food was quite good. The whole thing is a bit pricey, but it's a really fun experience.

The waiters are all dressed as ninjas, and they do a little magic show right at your table. Everything is "ninja this" and "ninja that" - including "ninja tea" with my dessert.

And when we left, our ninja waiter jumped out with the following:

All told, a great evening!

View from the Shangri-la

The following weekend, I went out to afternoon tea at the Shangri-la with a group of ladies who are getting ready to leave Tokyo at the end of the month. The Shangri-la's afternoon tea was on a list of the Top 5 afternoon teas in Tokyo. I'd been to two of the five - the Ritz Carlton and the Peninsula hotel - and this was a nice opportunity to go to a third.

The tea was quite nice, with sandwiches made with good breads, scones with clotted cream and lemon curd, and lovely sweets. When you drank all of your tea, you could choose a different tea if you wanted. And it all ended with a little cookie and a chocolate.

After tea, two of us decided on the spur of the moment to try to go see the Tokyo fireworks. Japan loves fireworks. In the U.S., we're very happy with a 20 minute firework show. The Tokyo fireworks are 90 minutes. They set off more than 10,000 fireworks. It's HUGE. Because we decided to go spur of the moment, we had a series of obstructed views, but it was still fun to see!