I miss Tokyo.
Writing this as I fly back to India – evidence that I spent as minimal amount of time in the hotel as humanly possible. As much as I wish I could have written about Japan while events were fresh, there was too much to see and experience. I'll try my best to take you through a tour of this incredible country which hopefully will move it up your list of places to visit. Tokyo by far has established itself as a top 5 city in the world that I have visited – boatloads of energy and excitement, welcoming and accommodating people, spotlessly clean, delicious restaurants and nightlife, and an inherent culture that dazzles the mind.
Last time I wrote I had just made it to Kyoto after a mesmerizing ride on the 300 km/hr 'shinkansen', or bullet train. By my rough calculations, we made the 300 mile trip in 2.5 hours – very impressive. Vans had put me in touch with one of her friends who was in Kyoto for a physiology conference with another one of his coworkers, and since we were looking to get into the same tourist sites in Kyoto/Nara and spend as much time as possible in Tokyo, it would make sense for me to meet with them and go from there. Needless to say, I consider myself very lucky to have been able to find Ankit and Johan, and we had an awesome week in Japan – complete with samurai swords, sake bombs, and singing karaoke with locals. I couldn't imagine doing any of these cities alone, and we had a blast doing it. Looking forward to meeting up with you both very soon in New York.
Kyoto and Nara are full of deep history and awe-inspiring cultural sites. By way of background, Nara and Kyoto were Imperial capital cities back during the first and second centuries before the 'shogunate' was moved to Tokyo. Kyoto is an interesting layout, a relatively modern city and large city with traffic, shopping, a downtown, etc. interspersed with classic Japanese/Shinto/Buddhist temples, shrines, and other antiquated campuses of gates, towers, pagodas, and other structures found in picture books. We spent the day on Saturday following Lonely Planet's 'walking tour' in the Higashiyama district which contain temples, ancient neighborhoods, zen gardens, carp ponds, etc. – walking through the edge of the city in the foothills of green mountains that border the city. The ancient Japanese pagodas and temples are fantastic to tour, and Japan has done an excellent job in maintaining these structures. The colors and layouts of these temple complexes made me think about how calming and cooling the atmosphere must have been hundreds of years ago while paying respects at these shrines.
On Sunday we took the hour long train ride to Nara, another ancient capital city fused in with the modern. On the hit list in Nara was Todai-ji, a temple complex which is still the largest wooden building in the world. Housed inside Todai-ji is the largest enclosed bronze Buddha in the world, which did not cease to amaze. A fun experience in Nara to witness is the deer – evidently deer are/were 'messengers of God' and freely roam the parks and streets in the city. Vendors near the park sell deer biscuits for tourists to literally feed the deer from their hand. Although I've grown up with these animals in Michigan, to this day I've never been so close to this animal – and shy they were not. We were able to pet them, feel their antlers, and witness their jumping abilities up close which was great.
After a fun and rough night out in Kyoto on Sunday night meeting both locals and several Americans living in Japan teaching English, we wearily hopped back on the shinkansen and made it back to Tokyo on Monday afternoon. This might have been the one time we wish the ride wasn't 2.5 hours – we were really looking forward to getting some sleep after coming home in the wee hours of the morning and having to get up to make check out at the hotel. This "sleep when we're dead" attitude really starts to bite you in the ass as you get older!
We decided to stay in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo due to the proximity to hot spots and neighborhoods. As I may have explained before, Tokyo is a fairly large city with an intricate system of metro trains, Japan Rail trains, and private train lines which connect the vast city. From recommendations and reading, it seemed that most of the nightlife and culture was on the west side of the city in the Shinjuku and Shibuya areas.
On Monday night we headed to Roppongi for dinner and to check out the nightlife. Roppongi is known as the touristy shopping and restaurant headquarters complete with bars, clubs, big lights, big streets, and big hotels. I found it to be annoying and not so much Tokyo but really any entertainment district of a Western city. It's certainly a place to see and eat delicious food (both Japanese and international) but is unfortunately full of promotion men and hawkers – many from West Africa and India - trying to get foreigners to come to their bars and gentlemen's clubs. It got to the point where we had to be verbally blunt to these annoying men that would follow us around trying to strike up a conversation and telling us about how much better their club is than the next one.
Tuesday turned out to be probably the best full day and night in Tokyo. We started the day by touring the Imperial Palace, a humungous park in the middle of the city full of moats and gardens of which a small portion is open to the public. The Emperor and Empress (ceremonial heads of state) presently live here, although I don't believe civilians can get anywhere near let alone see their living quarters.
We then visited the Yebisu/Sapporo museum which has a great tasting menu – highly recommend the stout. From there we headed to Shibuya, which was my favorite area of Tokyo. A friend of mine from Japan recommended that we eat at a ramen restaurant called Ichiran, which through Wi-Fi on the streets of Tokyo we managed to find. Ichiran is a very fun restaurant concept to witness, and one that we had several conversations of whether it could work in the States. After walking downstairs off the street, you come across a vending machine where you insert money and press buttons containing what you want to eat – ramen (extra 100 yen for green onions), rice and eggs, beverage, other snacks, etc. After the machine dispenses your tickets, you head inside the restaurant which has individual booths with a stool, a setting to eat, and a curtain. You hand your tickets to the "chefs" behind the curtain (if you have a thing for "seeing" who makes your food, this is not the place for you!) and 5 minutes later, voila, a hot piping bowl of ramen and whatever else you ordered shows up. You basically eat in a private, individual booth, and 20 minutes later, get up a leave. That's it. Efficient, delicious, and interesting.
Shibuya, and many places in Tokyo, is Manhattan-busy. There is a massive crossing where thousands of pedestrians go several different ways, shopping galore, big screen TVs, colorful shops and restaurants, and fashion! The people in Tokyo is the main reason why really why I did not want to leave Tokyo and wanted to witness more. Ankit and I spent several hours in a mall on our last day and the outfits, clothes, hats, accessories – everything – is like no place I've ever witnessed.
A really funny anecdote is about the "English" shirts that every shop sells and which you frequently read and laugh about on the streets. It seems that Tokyo fashion designers randomly pick words out of the English dictionary, artistically place them on a shirt, and sell it for a hefty margin. You see some of the weirdest English lines and statements. Trying to shop for these shirts is hysterical – it's hard to tell which one is funnier. What's even more hysterical is that the people who buy and wear these shirts have no clue whatsoever that the clothes they are wearing make zero sense! But – it still sells! Tokyo!
We decided to try out nightlife luck out that night in Shinjuku. After eating we visited a pub where we befriended a few local Japanese that knew a combined 15 words in English. Including our 10 words in Japanese that we learned, it was a solid group full of laughs. Ankit, Johan, and I had heard much about the karaoke culture in Japan - and karaoke joints are almost every other building on many streets in Japan. (As a quick aside – there are karaoke joints and guitar shops everywhere in Tokyo. It really made us think about Tokyo real estate and how all of these places stay in business. Would love to dig out the economics behind these places…). We decided that we needed to make karaoke with locals happen in Tokyo – and happen tonight. Unfortunately the Japanese guys we met didn't want to karaoke without female counterparts. So…we walked over to the other side of the pub where two women were enjoying a few post-work Guinnesses and actually got them to come over to our side of the pub and join us! Things were happening – but, could we persuade them to karaoke?
Needless to say, the rest of the night will go down in history as one of the most fun karaoke experiences of my life. We ended up renting out a private room with our glorious, Guinness-filled crew of 8 and sang until the wee hours of the morning. Japanese songs + American songs + Japanese-American songs + tambourines + maracas + popcorn + edamame + unlimited beverages + Japanese locals = the best karaoke night ever. It happened. We did it!
The hip hop culture is huge in Tokyo/Japan. On our last night in Tokyo after an awesome sushi dinner (where we managed to teach our waitress how to sake bomb), we visited a hip hop lounge. I was really impressed with the DJ's knowledge of classic, lyrical hip hop tracks. I went to talk to him during the middle of his set to tell him how impressed I was with his selection, and he mentioned that he doesn't get that a lot. You certainly can witness the love people have for the hip hop culture in what they wear on the streets – breaking gear, colorful Nike's, Bathing Ape and Triple Five Soul gear, etc. I had to dig up as many DJ Krush songs I had on me to get myself in the Japanese hip-hop mindset – I highly recommend a visit back to him for those that are fans, it's rather refreshing.
Looking out the window right now as we fly over China (I just brought up a map of the world – I'm wondering if we'll fly over any snow capped Himalayas?!), and can't help but smile about my trip to Japan. The irony it that my trip started off as a place to "cross off the list", but now has become just the opposite – a country I will look forward to visiting more in the future.
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