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Where can I find crispy, pan-fried bacon similar to a certain international style?
if u have a costco membership the kirkland thick cut is the move, 4 packs of 500g for around 2500 yen and it crisps up proper in a cold pan. for smaller runs, precce in azabudai hills & the basement at isetan shinjuku both carry imported US & danish brands in the chilled case, just read the label for "thick cut" or "smoked" and not "loin". also worth knowing japanese bacon is often wet-cured so pat it dry before frying or it steams instead of crisping
kaldi coffee farm is hit or miss but their smoked bacon from denmark shows up pretty regular, the 200g pack runs about 600 yen. what actually works better for me is asking the butcher counter at peacock or life to slice the block bacon thick, like 5mm, they do it for free and it crisps way better than the pre-packed stuff. also fwiw cheap bacon crisps faster, the fatty supermarket kind at 300 yen a pack works fine if u cook it from cold in a dry pan and pour off the fat as it renders.
tbh the gyomu super store brand bacon is surprisingly decent for crisping up, its not thick cut but if you cook it low and slow it gets pretty crunchy. the key is the dry cure vs wet cure thing, wet cure steams. also check hanamasa if you have one nearby, they sell big packs of american style bacon thats actually smoked and firm.
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What are the large metal sculptures located in the city?
the ones in ueno are by tetsuya ishida i think, cast bronze not steel, and theyre actually a stegosaurus & a couple others near the fountain by the museum entrance. if ur seeing chrome-looking dinos elsewhere it might be the stuff around odaiba, takashi kobayashi did some big kinetic pieces out there. also check shinobazu pond side, different set, easy to mix up
There's a set people often miss near Kasai Rinkai Park, on the way to the aquarium. They're welded scrap metal, more abstract than dinosaur but with obvious spines and tails, made by a local machinist collective in the late 90s. Not on most tourist maps, and the salt air off Tokyo Bay has rusted them into a nice orange brown.
If you want the actual dinosaur-sculpture pedigree, the ones at Ueno are the anchor and everything else is basically imitators or coincidence. Worth walking the Shinobazu side first, then crossing to Kasai if you want the scruffier, uncurated version.
if its the ones by the yokohama line stations those arent dinos at all, theyre the tetsujin 28 robot statues that pop up around kobe & a few got licensed for tokyo promotions. the permanent one people photograph most is in ueno but theres a smaller steel tetsujin near the tamachi station redevelopment, put there around 2014 for a local festival & never taken down. check the base plate, if it says something about mitsuteru yokoyama ur looking at robot art not dinosaurs