Happy birthday, BB Bagel
8 April 2026. One year ago Bagel arrived. A year and a half ago he was a bump on our Shikoku trip, which is why Minmin ate none of the raw fish. Today he’s in Tokyo, and the whole trip was planned around this one day. After a morning in Tsukiji, the main event.
Lunch at Kitaohji
The birthday lunch was at Kitaohji Yaesu Saryo, a Japanese restaurant by Tokyo Station, and we booked a private room. Best decision of the trip. A tatami room with sunken tables and nobody to annoy, so Bagel crawled the whole floor like he owned it.
Course after course: little boxes of starters, tuna sashimi, then wagyu sukiyaki cooked at the table. Bagel had his own birthday menu, porridge with corn in a bear-shaped bowl, and Minmin fed him while I got a head start on everything else.
The wagyu went into the pot raw and came out as sukiyaki, then crab rice and miso soup. The food was really good, when we got to eat it. This was a proper course meal, and the staff had to keep coming in to check if we were ready for the next one. Why leh? Because we were eating too damn slow. Bagel was crawling all over the room and messing everything up, so every few bites one of us had to put the chopsticks down and catch him back. Kaiseki is supposed to be a slow meal, but I don’t think this is what they had in mind.
Matcha dessert to finish, and Bagel lay down on the tatami like he’d eaten the whole course himself.
Then the photo shoot. The room has a glowing wall with a flower hanging in front of it, and we took a ridiculous number of photos trying to get one where all three of us look at the camera. Bagel gave us one. He stood on the table for it.
The isshō mochi
Then the main event. In Japan, a first birthday comes with isshō mochi, a big rice cake of nearly 2 kg that the baby carries on his back. Isshō is an old measure, one shō, and it sounds like “a lifetime”, so the idea is a lifetime of never going hungry. Ours came in a little knitted backpack, and I strapped him in.
He sat there for a good minute, very proud. Then the mochi won and he went over backwards like a turtle on its shell. He rolled over, crawled off with it, and the mochi won again. Best of three, apparently.
Round three, with Daddy holding on, he made it all the way to standing at the table, next to a pile of little mochi he tried to eat through the plastic.
Erabitori
Next, erabitori, the first-birthday pick. You lay out cards in front of the baby, each one a future: Intelligence, Medical, Artist, Sports, Rich and a few more. Whichever he grabs first is what he’ll be. I laid them out in a neat row, and Bagel crawled over and studied every card very seriously.
Then he picked two: Intelligence and Sports. A scholar and an athlete. A nerd who can run. I’ll take it.
A family photo with his birthday card, and one more at the gate on the way out.
Snorlax
Back to the hotel so the birthday boy could sleep it off. Then afternoon at Nihonbashi: Venchi ice cream, then the Pokémon Center Tokyo DX, where a giant Snorlax sleeps on the floor. Bagel related.
Birthday dinner
Dinner was Denny’s near the hotel, hamburg and omurice, nothing fancy. The birthday boy sat at the head of the table and gave a speech nobody understood.
The day’s haul: a Bulbasaur, a Pikachu and a stack of baby food. Priorities.
Postcard from Kyobashi, Tokyo
Kaiseki near the Yaesu side of Tokyo Station where every table is a private room, so a baby can crawl the tatami and bother nobody. Book ahead for a birthday.