Tokyo. Top of the charts. Number one on the list of places to visit. So many movies, books, anime, and more are based in this far away city. We worked our way through Southeast Asia and Central Japan to finally end here, my most anticipated destination. Tokyo - City of the Future.
We arrived in Tokyo slightly groggy from the day’s activities around Fuji, with the slight remains of a hangover. Not far from the Kanda train station, we found our way to the studio apartment that would be our home for the next eight nights. We stretched our budget a bit to get a cozier accommodation because we would be here twice as long as any of the other stays in Japan, so it was larger than any of the places we had inhabited. It had tiny towels for some reason though.
The area around the apartment was pretty neat with many small restaurants and bars lining the alleys. In the evening, these would mostly fill with businessmen in small groups. Sometimes they would sing drunkenly in the streets but, for the most part, it was a low key part of town. We found an excellent ramen shop that we returned to several times during our stay. To eat there, you order from the machine in the front, then you pay (like at a vending machine) and take the ticket to the person behind the counter. This was novel to us. Each time we returned, Melissa had the same exact turkey ramen dish. To be fair, it was delicious.
A typical night in our neighborhood. Not a whole lot going on most times.
Right near our neighborhood - street Mario Kart! It's very safe to zip around the streets of Tokyo like this.
Wandering north from our neighborhood, we would run directly into the nerd capital of Tokyo - the Akihabara District. This place is filled from top to bottom with anime figures painted four stories tall on the sides of buildings. Multi-story arcades are filled with young men smoking and pounding away at keypads and controllers. There are toy stores, comic shops, retro gaming arcades, and more. You can even rent go karts and pretend you are in a life-sized version of Mario Kart. Really, anything a geek could want in life was scattered across the area. We ventured into a few of the places, more for the novelty than anything else. I’m a nerd but I’ve never quite given myself over to the lure of anime and multi-jointed plastic toys. After wandering through a hobby shop for an hour, I did question why I never got into miniature painting and collecting. I think I may have liked it. During our time in Tokyo, we ambled through Akihabara a few times and there were always a few new things to look at.
Hey everyone, Sega is still something that exists!
Giant anime everywhere in Akihabara.
Play games here. Many, many stories of games. Taito Stations are all over Japan.
Toys sure have gotten extremely detailed. And expensive. They have pretty golden wings though.
Don't touch anything in this place.
We spent a couple of our days strolling around and taking in the architecture of some of the high-end shopping areas. Melissa had read a NY Times article on the trend of big brands hiring all-star architects for their stores in the famed Omotesando and Ginza neighborhoods - also known as the Champs-Élysées and 5th Avenue of Tokyo respectively. Since we dress like traveling hobos, I was a bit self-conscience walking into stores selling $200 t-shirts because we were obviously not going to purchase anything. There weren’t many customers in the stores in general though so I think the bored looking sales staff were excited for anyone to come through. There are some really amazing and bafflingly built storefronts. It was fun to see how an architect’s dream comes together when they are given a bit of free reign.
Further wandering took us to the Tokyo Tower, which is basically a smaller, orange Eiffel Tower and through a shrine-filled graveyard where the last Shogun of Japan, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, and some of his family are laid to rest. We tried to walk through a park to the river one day but it was closed when we got there. Instead, we went up the World Trade Tower and watched a bunch of people take pictures of the sunset. And I mean A LOT of people with big ass cameras and tripods. Speaking of tall buildings, I was surprised that Tokyo felt less like walking through steel canyons than places like New York or Hong Kong do. I’ve always imagined a super tall, neon lit skyline, but that wasn’t the case. As far as a large city goes, there is actually a lot of breathing room.
A cross between the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge. We did not enter this place.
It got even more crowded as sunset neared. I was sitting and drawing in front of a window, clearly irritating a person who wanted to set up his tripod where I was.
One night, we decided to take in the much hyped Robot Restaurant show. An old college acquaintance had just been there and recommended it. We made our way to Shinjuku, which is actually a bit on the seedy side, and dropped into line for the show. First, we were shown into the waiting lounge where we ordered a beer and listened to a Daft Punk impersonator play Cyndi Lauper acoustic covers. A strange choice for the venue methinks. There is space for a full band but none was present.
Signage for Robot Restaurant definitely makes sense. It's colorful, I'll give it that.
I kinda wish that this robot person was playing that awesome harp instead. The guitar is not futuristic enough.
But seriously, what the heck is even happening here? They must have emptied every Spensor's Gifts in Southeast Asia to deck this place out.
After this, we were led to the main performance area which kind of resembled an elongated basement with four rows of stadium style seats lining each side. The first row, where we were seated, is directly on the show floor and they took some time to explain that we should watch for close encounters. I knew some of the robots were pretty large and I wondered how they would fit in the somewhat confined space. The answer is that they barely do. Some of the actors nearly bashed their heads on the overhead pipes during the performance.
The performance itself is a loose environmentalist story of forest creatures fending off alien invasion. Although I was laughing and smiling throughout the entire show, it definitely has the seams of a lower level production. Several of the creations are literally held together with duct tape and the whole thing is pretty over the top. The thespians give it their all though and I think everyone had a great time. Some people describe it as the craziest thing they’ve ever seen. I’m not sure if that is true but it was definitely a unique and enjoyable experience. Worth $80 each (or even the $65 we paid for the special online price)? Maybe not. But how often are we going to be in Tokyo to see this kind of thing?
This robot implores you to buy popcorn, beer, and soda between sets. He spins around too.
We left there and visited the newly opened Ren: American Bar & Cafe, Robot Restaurant’s sister bar. The decor is just as obnoxiously over the top as Robot Restaurant but only features a 90’s cover band and a giant screen with a Las Vegas flyover video on repeat. We enjoyed some half-price beverages from our show tickets and soon retired into the brightly lit Tokyo streets.
It wasn’t all neon lit robot craziness for us. We managed to get to the outskirts of Tokyo a few times. We visited Nippori, a lightly traveled tourist destination which has a street where merchants sell all kinds of cat related merchandise. Although, we only saw one actual cat while there. Another day, we fell back into our retiree lifestyle and went to an Iris Festival at Mizumoto Park, located far enough from the city that we could not even see the skyline from there. As per usual, we were well below the average age group visiting that day. It was a beautiful day for walking and sitting and drawing for a few hours.
A "lightly traveled" area in Tokyo looks like this.
There were a lot of iris' at the Iris Festival. I'll spare you the 100 pictures we took of them.
It was a whirlwind tour of the city over eight days. We shopped through Tokyu Hands, which had some weird stuff but also came in handy for some extra pens (something I’m evidently obsessed with) and new sketchbooks. I got a hackjob haircut and crappy shave, which was a disappointment. Melissa and I spent several hours serenading each other in a few different karaoke rooms. The Tsukiji Fish Market is a must see spot so we spent a few hours wandering around the fish stalls, stopping occasionally to jam some tasty treats into our faces like unagi skewers, tamago cakes, and mochi cream things. We circled the Imperial Palace on our last day but ultimately decided not to go in. All in all, I felt we saw a great deal of the city.
Tokyo is a very metropolitan city. It has everything you could ever want from one of the largest cities on the planet - restaurants, entertainment, shopping, world class transit, great people, and more. I think, for that reason, it felt a bit underwhelming. We’ve been to a lot of really great, large cities and, at times, it felt like this could have been any one of them. One of the things that sets it apart from a lot of other cities is that it’s a wonderfully clean and safe place, as I felt all of Japan was. And maybe that’s why Tokyo left something to be desired. We had already been through some of the other major cities in Japan.
Parts of Osaka and Kyoto felt more crowded and vibrant, like I expected Tokyo to be. Tokyo did ramp up the amount of happy songs and cute cartoon characters. When a train arrived or a door opened, these events were accompanied by a little melody and a rabbit illustration welcoming you. It's a highly organized city, as the Japanese culture has seemingly always been, but they also have found a balance between childish whimsy and adult productivity.
Hello Kitty construction edition because of course.
I think there are around 160,000 restaurants in Tokyo. They are stacked 10 high along a lot of the streets. In comparison NYC has 24,000 and Paris has 40,000.
This is known as one of the busiest intersections in the world.
I wouldn’t use the word “disappointing” to describe our visit it because rarely does something live up to such high expectations. It was still a fascinating city and I’m extraordinarily glad we went there. Overall, I think we could have spent a few less days there and maybe some time exploring another area of Japan.
Japan was a truly amazing and unique experience. Even though we were there for 25 days in all, we could have definitely used more time to explore the Land of the Rising Sun. If only to have more of their delicious food! I would absolutely recommend visiting and I expect that we will return to the country sometime in the future.