February 11th is National Foundation Day and a public holiday in Japan 🇯🇵 (more about its history in my previous year’s blog post).
It is a day to love and appreciate Japan where last year, we enjoyed Japan’s beautiful nature in Hakuba for skiing.
This year, we decided to enjoy Japanese food and art locally.
How can you enjoy art on an empty stomach? You can’t, so we first headed to Tsukiji area for sushi. Although the lively fish market is no longer where it was, there are still eateries for fresh seafood.
All you can eat sushi: Ginza Maguroya 🍣
We went past the street vendors and went to Ginza Maguroya (maguro means tuna). On Saturdays and public holiday, they offer all you can eat sushi for 90 minutes for 3900yen per person.
As reservation cannot be made, we arrived 20 minutes before the opening and we thought, “lucky, only one group before us!”…until we noticed a reservation sheet on the closed door with a long list of surnames listed before us.
Ginza Maguroya offers around 14 counter seats only and we missed the first round of sitting. Including the 20minutes we waited before the restaurant opened, we waited 1 hour 40 minutes in total 😱.
However, when we were finally let in, even before we sat down, we each had 4 sushi pieces waiting for us…then swiftly 2 more were placed in front of us to get us going.
After that, the hungry patrons called out orders to the friendly and chatty chef who whips up sushi in a flash.
The display in front of us helped us decide what to order featuring the usual suspects including tuna, salmon, sea urchin, salmon roe, red snapper and prawn to name a few. Also, the sushi chef’s recommendation of something unique like abalone and raw shirasu (baby sardines) piqued our interest and the other patron’s request encouraged people to request “the same for me!” which kept the sushi chef busy until the order slowed down as people started to get full.
I’m usually a bit shy to request from sushi chef but we kept ordering until we couldn’t possibly eat more. Excluding the gigantic minced tuna, each sushi were small but I must have ate 25-35 pieces. I was uncomfortably full.
It seemed like many regulars were eating there and I felt like that the chef genuinely wanted us to eat more and more (unlike some all you can eat that purposefully slows down the speed of bringing food to prevent you from eating too much). Not only entertaining and delicious, dining there was a fun experience.
About Ginza Maguroya
Address: 6 Chome-8-10 Tsukiji, Chuo City, Tokyo 104-0045
Opening hour: 11:00-14:00, 5:00-22:00 (during state of emergency will close at 20:00)
Note: All you can eat sushi (90minutes) is only available on Saturdays and public holidays and other menu are not available. Cash only for all you can eat.
Feast for the eyes after feasting on sushi
Our stomach was totally full from one of the most well known Japanese food, sushi 🍣. The next on the agenda was to enjoy Japanese art at The Sumida-Hokusai museum. The modern architecture contains very traditional and historical artworks from the 19th century.
Many people may not be familiar with the name Hokusai, but I’m sure you are familiar with his famous 浮世絵 (ukioe), featuring the big wave and Mount Fuji like this emoji 🌊 and the red Fuji.
Sumida is the name of the area (the river flowing in the northern Tokyo area is called Sumida River) and where Hokusai was born so without researching too much, I assumed that the museum is about Hokusai.
The (tiny) permanent exhibition that costs 400yen to enter follows Hokusai’s life in chronicle with some interactive features and a realistic replica of how his studio looked like where he drew relentlessly as his daughter watched him.
Permanent exhibition included these touchscreen displays where you can add kimono fabrics onto one of Hokusai’s drawings:
However, most of the museum is the special exhibition where you can see the real paintings and ukiyoe which costs 1200yen to enter. We decided to visit the special exhibition as well which was “The Soul of the Brush” when we visited.
In the special exhibition, artworks from many artists from Hokusai’s era (including Hokusai himself) were featured where many of them were 美人画 (Bijinga, artwork featuring beautfiul woman or women) and scroll artworks with intricate details that gave a glimpse into Japanese life in the 19th centuries.
No photography was allowed so I don’t have any photos to share from the special exhibition but there were some English commentaries and interesting ‘recently discovery’ artworks. I particularly found one artwork fascinating where 6 different artists including Hokusai and his nemesis 歌川広重 (Utagawa Hiroshige) collaborated together which made the historians rethink about their relationship. (The artwork is featured on the left hand side of the special exhibition poster where different artist painted individual ladies featured in the artwork.)
Hokusai is famous for this ukiyoe or woodblock prints but it was refreshing to see some of his paintings like the one below which he created for one of the temples.
About The Sumida-Hokusai Museum
Address:2 Chome-7-2 Kamezawa, Sumida City, Tokyo 130-0014
Opening hour: 9:30- 17:30
Closed: Monday
Website hokusai-museum.jp
From yummy sushi to intricate paintings, I was able to appreciate Japan from the start of the day until the end where I caught the metro to get home safely and on time thanks to Japanese efficient public transport system.
I hope you have a good weekend! 👋🏻
Native Expat 
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