During our trip to Tokyo last week, we stayed in an area called Uguisudani. It was on the Yamanote line, in our price range, easy to get to from Narita Airport and close to Ueno (which has a lot to offer when travelling with small children), so we chose an Airbnb there. What I didn't realise when choosing our accom here, was that is was basically a whole suburb of love hotels. 

Anyone who's been to Tokyo, especially Shibuya, has probably walked past a love hotel or two. They're mostly recognisable by some gaudy lights and a sign out the front indicating the pricing by the hour (rather than a simple nightly rate, like any other normal hotel), and photos of the various themed rooms they have inside. When you go into a love hotel, you can either check into a room using a machine, or often if there is a reception counter with actual human staff, their faces and yours will be separated by a screen so you can keep your anonymity.

Anyway, if you've ever walked through Love Hotel Hill in Shibuya, Uguisudani was even more packed with love hotels. Our apartment building was only one of a few I saw in the whole neighbourhood. Everything else was love hotels.

I actually found it quite entertaining, watching the couples walking out, wondering what their story was. The names of the hotels were also hilarious. Most memorable was Oriental Passage, P-Door and C Heaven. Use your imagination kids!

This past weekend, I was in Tokyo with some vegan friends, and I wanted to give them the best Tokyo experience possible. I had heard about the Ain Soph restaurants and wanted to get to at least one of them. I decided on Ripple, because who doesn't love a good dirty burger, and these looked the business!

The menu <3

We arrived there at around 12:15, and were lucky to grab a table (we were a group of 6), even though it's a pretty small place. The menu isn't huge, which I liked, so we decided on the cheese burger and the crispy "chicken" burger. Everything on the menu is vegan, even though it sounds like it isn't.

The burgers were tasty and I really loved the fries. The vegan cheese they used was really good. it was really melty like real cheese. If you're a vegan and looking for some junk food, I think it's worth the effort to get here, although I wasn't completely blown away by the burgers, which is probably just because we had eaten at Gub Gubs here in Okinawa a few days before, which makes probably the best burgers i've ever had (and that's including meat burgers too!).

Cheese burger and cheese fries

I was really surprised when, while we were cooking dinner, there was lots of drumming and music I could hear coming from nearby, so I took the puppy out for a walk to see what was going on. I came across a festival of a couple of hundred people watching a big group of Eisa performers dancing and drumming to a live band! The atmosphere was absolutely amazing, and I think it was the best thing i've seen since living here in Okinawa. There were so many people there; kids in yukata and families sitting around drinking or dancing to the music. As soon as I arrived a bunch of kids ran up to me and spent the whole time patting the dog.

Unfortunately I only had my iPhone with me, so the photos below aren't amazing. I've also included a video at the bottom of a bit of the performance.

This flag says "Nakadomari", which is the name of my neighbourhood.

Ollie was a hit with the kids