A good place for grabbing a burger in Tokyo

Just like any other big city pretty much anywhere else in the world, Tokyo is home to global giants like McDonald's which offer burgers for the burger connoisseur who may be on a tight budget. To top that off Tokyo also offers its share of local fast food joints like Mos Burger which is home to burgers with a local twist like the rice bun burger. These are all nice places and all for a quick bite but if you are the type that has a bit finer taste when it comes to burgers I just found a new place in Shinjuku which may be what you are looking for ;)

The J.S. Burger in Shinjuku was the place I found online when I searched for burgers and I am glad I did. The place is right next to Shinjuku JR Station's New South exit so it is very easy to get to even though there is usually a line inside, even during non-popular hours for restaurants like 3 pm, since people seem to know about the quality of the burgers there. I had myself an avacado burger (your typical hamburger with avacado slices) and it was one of the best burgers I ever had in my life. At about 1000 yen a pop with fries on the side it is a pretty good deal and I feel I will be back for more soon.

You can check out their full menu (they have item names in English as well ;)) on their homepage - http://jsb-cafe.jp/index.html.

Shinjuku on Sunday

Last Sunday I was at Shinjuku for shopping and lunch at my favorite Turkish restaurant in Tokyo - Pamukkale (http://www.pamukkale.co.jp/). The area around the restaurant has qutie a few different stores ranging from the really expensive to casual. It turns out they close some of the streets to traffic on Sundays and last Sunday being nice and sunny the whole area was great to walk around in. It felt almost like a European town with people hanging out at cafes and narrow streets. The picture is from the warning sign on one of the streets. They got the English down almost correctly except for two words this time...

Of course for me pretty much the only place to shop in Tokyo is Akihabara but, anyway ;)

Travelling to Hakone（箱根） and then Gora（強羅）, from Tokyo

Hakone is a popular destination for both domestic and international tourists. During local holidays such as the Golden Week it is extremely hard to find vacancy in hotels or transportation short of driving there on one's own - it's a good thing I managed to find both but ideally you would want to make a reservation at least a month in advance. I used Odakyu Travel （小田急トラベル） for booking both the hotel and the train trip but I get ahead of myself. Let's get back to the actual travel...

The hotel I stayed in was in Gora, one of the "hot spring centers" which is about 500 meters above sea level. Going up the mountain is possible using the Hakone Tozan Railway, Japan's only mountain railway. The train follows an interesting path, going back and forth as it ascends the mountain and earning it its name - "switchback". The trip up the mountain takes less than an hour and Gora is the final stop. As there is only one line serving the stops on the mountain the train is almost always full to capacity. The first stop of the line is Hakone-Yumoto （箱根湯本） which is where I boarded the train. Of course this meant getting to Hakone-Yumoto first.

Odakyu has a regular Semi-Express service called "Romance Car" （ロマンスカー） which runs between Shinjuku and Hakone-Yumoto covering the distance in about an hour and a half. There are a few different types of trains used ranging from relatively old (called EXE which literally stands for "Excellent Express") to put in service less than a few years ago (called VSE). All trains have reserved seats, a bar, menus to order food from, and some like the VSE also offer a really nice view as the train is controlled from the "second floor" meaning there is a huge window in the first and the last car to watch the outside.

Waking up around 6:30 am I was in Gora around 10:30 am which is not so bad when one considers how radically different the two locations are - from tight, crowded streets of Tokyo to open mountains. Tomorrow, onto describing Gora and the hotel (which I do a disservice by just calling it a hotel - it was more like an experience ;) I will give a hint - think Kimonos).

Shinjuku (新宿)

I had a very nice post here about Shinjuku that I visited today... But of course my laptop had to be a complete idiot and recognize some weird mouse gesture as automatically going to the previous page. That being the case, I lost everything I typed. I am in no mood to type up everything again so here is the gist. Shinjuku:

• Impressive government buildings they look like they were taken out of an anime movie. I read somewhere it is actually featured in some animes.
  
• Not impressed that much with department stores


• Yodabashi Camera, an electronics store chain, owns 6 buildings in a neighbourhood each one selling a different kind of product (one focuses on watches, another one on computers, etc.)


• The station is linked to the government buildings by an immense passageway which had a lot of closed stores today. Must be because it was a Sunday.