How to spend 30 minutes at Nakamise Street, Tokyo?
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If you are visiting Tokyo with a tour group, chances are you will have an opportunity to visit Asakusa Temple and Nakamise Street. One thing to take note is that you probably will not have a lot of time to explore these two places and if you visit these two places on a weekend, oh boy, the challenge has become way higher because this area is packed with people. In order for us to go through the crowd until we reach Kaminarimon Gate, we had to spend around 15 minutes. And since we are only allocated 45 minutes in this whole area (oh yes, are you freaking kidding me), we have to move in an orderly planned manner.
After the tour guide let us roam freely, we quickly explored the alleys to enjoy some street food. If you think you can just eat while strolling like what you do in any kind of street food, you may have to remember not to do that here at Nakamise Street. Eating and drinking while strolling is completely against the rule of Nakamise Street. You can only eat or drink whatever you buy in front of the shop. Yikes, I suppose we have to chomp faster if we want to try as many food as possible here.
Considering that we had to queue before securing our food, being able to eat 5 kind of different food at Nakamise Street within 30 minutes is a satisfying result to be honest with you. However, I did give a feedback to the tour group about this crazy amount of short time given to us to explore the area. Oh well, I’m sure they are not going to do anything about it and it’s not like I’m gonna join another tour group if I’m coming back to Tokyo so yeah, whatever. From all the food shop that we visited within 30 minutes, the longest queue is gotta be at the whipped cream melonpan and Funawa Patisserie. Funawa Patisserie seems to be a famous sweet shop in Nakamise Street as its shop is huge and it even has its own eating area (i.e. a few tables where people can stand while eating their food).
There are actually a lot of shops selling souvenirs too but we totally had no time to even check them out in that kind of time limit so yeah, I hope I have the chance to revisit this street again in the future. But until then, I suppose I have just to be grateful to be able to catch a traditional Japanese cart carrying a couple in Japanese traditional wedding gown. Did they just really get married or is this just a parade for tourists? I can’t be sure but still, happy to be able to catch that. Haha.