Tokyo, Japan

It's been a while since I last posted. In the last 2 months I've started a new job, survived the remainder of the Toronto winter (lost a few years off my life expectancy), adjusted to living in a central city shoe-box, and visited Hawaii, Portland Oregon and Niagara Falls. This post is taking a few steps back to November 2016 when Eric and I completed the last leg of our SE Asia trip in Tokyo, Japan.

Trees with roots sticking out of the ground at the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. 

It was a shock arriving in Tokyo after spending 4 weeks in Vietnam and Laos. I anticipated arriving to a bright, lively, modern and busy city, based on Singapore and the impressions I'd gained from Japanese game shows and anime (classic and somewhat shameful western mistake). Setting these expectations, my subconscious suppressed the actual facts I knew - Japan has an ageing population partially due to over-work, from which people occasionally die (karoshi - literally translating to "overwork death"), and a growing trend of social isolation (hikikomori). Our first observation was that, at 11pm on our way to the city centre, the train was full of silent, very tired looking people in suits. No chickens. No scooters. No yelling. 

Learning the history of Tokyo at the Edo-Tokyo museum. 

Wandering around Tokyo during the day is a peculiar experience. The malls and most streets we walked through were close to empty. Even when there were people and traffic around, the near silence remained. We saw very few children, and except for one park we visited, there were no youths just hanging around making noise. The infrastructure including buildings, roads and train systems were well maintained and efficient, though all seemed as through they had been built in the 90s. The cumulative effect was that of a post-apocalyptic scenario, in which you wander around wondering if you’ve missed a memo about evacuating.  

Should we start running?

Tokyo is difficult to get around, mostly due to the fact everything is in Japanese. This seems pretty obvious, but I’m warning you now, if you go to Japan with a travel buddy, prepare for tension driven by the Japanese alphabets. It was like constantly being in an escape room. Want lunch? Solve this puzzle. My remaining knowledge of Hirigana (the easiest alphabet) from high-school did not help one bit (though I did feel clever when I recognized the odd “ka” and “shi”).  On one occasion, we identified a restaurant by matching the characters on several signs to the characters written on Yelp. Fortunately, all train stations have one version of the map in English, so its only a matter of finding the map and you’re set.

The Harajuku district, where everything is pink, fluffy or candy. 

Our first priority in Japan was to visit the Akihabara Owl Café, a place where you pay to hang out with owls for an hour (basically an owl brothel). We arrived at a non-descript building in the afternoon, where we were handed a booklet with their menu of available owls, and detailed instructions for how to look after your own pet owl. When they let us inside, we sat down at tables and selected the owl we would like to hold. Owls are weird animals. They manage to look superior, indignant and crazy at the same time, making you feel like you are either the most stupid thing on planet earth, or you are about to get your face clawed off. 

Eric's barn owl was having nothing to do with our cute couples photo. 

Tokyo comes alive after dark. Huge fluorescent signs light up out of nowhere creating a continuous rainbow dotted with giant posters of pretty popstars (guys and girls). The streets fill up with people leaving the office, apparently for the first time that day. In our most notable night-time experience, we visited the Robot Cabaret in Akihabara, a tourist show that had been recommended by Eric's friend Michael. We were nearly blinded by the largest collection of robots, colours, and rhinestone covered walls on planet earth. I did not know it was possible for anything to look like so much - for so many visually stimulating things to be in one place. It was like tequila shots for the eyes. The show started with bright lights, loud music, giant robots and chicks dressed as hypersexualised video game characters/animals. We spent the whole show with our mouths open repeating “wtf” as actors riding robots staged wars and parades, inclusive of indoor fireworks.

Is that an actress dressed up as a jungle defender, playing an electric guitar, riding a giant snake robot with another actress playing a dead villain in the robot snakes mouth? Yes, it is.

The Kawaii Monster Cafe. An overwhelming tourist experience. 

I would definitely go back to Japan but next time, would want to spend time outside of Tokyo. I got the sense it was not representative of the rest of Japan, and that there were cooler things to do outside of the concrete jungle. 

Bonus wtf picture: a game at an arcade where you win prizes for catching live goldfish.