hanzomon to shinjuku

Been wanting to walk this route ever since I saw the road back in 2019

From Chidorigafuchi it goes straight to Shinjuku

The interesting thing is the number of the road did not change, only the naming changed from Kojimachidori, to Shinjukudori to Koshukaidori!

We started from Hanzomon Station and made our way to Shinjuku

Love this mosaic! inside the metro Hanzomon station

There were lots of cool buildings to see along the way...this was a Starbucks

The curvy building was a Korea Center

huge fire station with a fire museum located in it also

stumbled upon a dragon ball z pop up at marugame udon

lunch at suzuya

one of their popular items is their tonkatsu chazuke, which we heard about from Satoshi's friend, O, many moons ago

this dish started as the makanai (family meal) at a time when there was no microwave to reheat food

the workers wanted a way to "reheat" the tonkatsu and came up with chazuke

Nowadays, the tonkatsu comes out on a hot plate 

choose your sauce, we chose their shoyu based sauce

the tonkatsu is drizzled with this sauce, then topped with cabbage and nori

when you are ready to eat the tonkatsu as chazuke, ask for the tea

there are also some pickles and miso soup, for you to eat with your tonkatsu

it was a nice but different experience and different, we were glad to try it

this shop also serves regular tonkatsu and other fried items, if chazuke isn't your thing.

After lunch, Satoshi had several things he wanted to check out before his upcoming tours

We were lucky to see some early blooming cherry blossoms in front of the Tokyo Prefecture Offices

And a beautiful weeping cherry near a university

Even if the weather was sunny it was still a little chilly

Suzuya

1-23-15 Kabukicho, 5F

Shinjuku, Tokyo

Hours: 11:00-23:00