My visit to Tokyo 2018 (20)

From Taito looking east one can see the Skytree

A location map of Taito

On the third of November I walked around Tokyo’s Taito district (台東区) and enjoyed some local food as lunch and dinner. I considered it at an in-depth visit to this place. Taito district was a region that tourists seldom visited because there was no tourist attractions. My purpose was to see it first hand to know how the local people bought their daily food.

CCS. Many customers came here by bicycles

CCS had a lot of fresh fruit

In this district, there was a supermarket the CCS (Consumerism Convenience Store) and a chain food store, the Kawachiya ( 河内屋 ) which supposedly to be a food/wine wholesaler. The CCS sold all kinds of daily food items, from vegetable to fruit, from fish to sashimi. I noted that CCS was a popular place for local families to buy their daily food as during the rush hours it was full of customers. One special item of this supermarket was its fresh deep-fry items: fish, chicken and potato etc. There was a fresh sea food corner when one could buy a large piece of tuna and asked the staff to cut it into small pieces for you.

 

Kawachiya. Customers often came here by bicycles

Kawachiya was different from CCS in several areas. It sold mostly packed food or refrigerated food such as meat products.  While there was no fresh fish, vegetable or sashimi, there was a wine corner where one could buy different brand names imported and locally made spirit; and also popular Japanese sake.

In this district several things were noted. I noticed that many people here, both men and women loved riding their bicycles to work or to do their daily shopping. Many drove their bicycles on the pavement instead of on the road. Also, there were a lot of small BBQ food stores selling take-away strings of chicken meat at a price of 100 yen. I also found a small restaurant that customers had to stand while eating, the so called Risshoku(立食). 

I bought rice-omelet from this sore

The rice-omelet is beautiful

There were also many food stores selling take away bento (お弁当) or sushi tray. From some of these local shops I bought one オムライス(rice-omelet) and some sushi.

The take-away sushi that I bought