Okay, so I didn’t get up super early today. Failure again. I got trapped in the warm, fluffy cocoon again (fueled by jet lag) and was lazy until around 9am when I finally headed out the door. The first stop was out to Asakusa, to see Senso-ji again. That temple, pagoda, and the Nakamise shopping street in front of it were one of my favorite places in Japan, and it honestly hasn’t changed a bit. Hell, they’re still selling a lot of the same stuff from 15 years ago. I guess if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! I did pick up a new door curtain and coin purse, and ate what seemed like deep fried mochi with a chocolate center, and then some regular strawberry mochi, and then I stopped for some tempura udon. I have a feeling I’m going to gain back all the weight I lost in Europe at this rate!
Before leaving the temple I picked out a fortune card, which ended up being the second best one you can get. I then stopped by the shrine next door and did it again and got the same prediction, so at least the two are consistent. I got back on the subway to Ueno Park and visited the temples and shrines in that area for a while. I was thinking about going to Shinjuku or Akihabara for a bit, but both of those areas are mostly shopping and I already spent way too much money, so instead I went to the hotel to rest my feet, eat some delicious oden soup, and change my clothes.
Once it was dark, I made my way to MariKar Shibuya, where you put on character onesies and ride around in go-karts throughout the city. I picked out Pikachu for my onesie, and opted for the hour tour. I think an hour was perfect. They have 2 and 3 hour tours that take you on the Rainbow Bridge, but I think the novelty of it would wear off after an hour, 2 tops, and my old back wouldn’t be able to handle it. Besides, they have one in Osaka too so I could try that! It was really just a blast, and my riding partner Godzilla was funny as hell. After the ride I swung by Family Mart for an egg sandwich and headed back to the hotel for the night. I also decided to just eat the kitty cake pop I got in Harajuku the other day, which was delicious too. Tomorrow I leave Tokyo and head out to Kamakura. My fortune said I would have good luck in my travels going south, and that was already my plan so huzzah!
To be honest, what makes me love Japan isn’t necessarily the endless ancient buildings or sightseeing opportunities or shopping or other touristy stuff…it’s the language, the culture, the people, and the little comforts and quirks and complete unexpected randomness. For example, I love that you can order from a machine, and you push a button when you need something instead of having a waitress. I love that everyone lines up and takes turns, I love the deep soaking tubs, the weighted blankets, the funny TV shows even if I don’t understand it all. How people respect and care about each other but also don’t give a fuck and come up with the craziest, wildest stuff. That’s what I enjoy about being here. So when I woke up this morning at 6am to my alarm going off I couldn’t be bothered to move from the cocoon I had made myself with this glorious cooling weighted blanket that’s standard here. I pretty much dozed in fluffy comfort (but with a firm pillow and mattress underneath because orthopaedics is a priority too) and watched NHK for 3 hours, just enjoying being here and not running around. FYI, the music for the weather forecast section of the news literally has not changed in 15 years. Plus, funny enough, they were doing a segment about Hikone Castle and how it was built and its history and stuff, so I took it as a sign to stay in and watch. Finally my stomach decided it was time to get up, so I got dressed and headed to the Starbucks at Shibuya crossing and had a mocha while watching the insanity down below for a while. Then I hopped on the train to TeamLab Borderless.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Tokyo already and seen most of the big tourist sights, but there have been some new additions in the last 15 years that piqued my interest so I specifically came to see those. TeamLab Borderless is a fully immersive art exhibit using light, sound/music, mirrors, temperature, smells, and touch to really get people into their exhibits and see how beautiful they are. They don’t give you a map, and the entire area is in darkness with juuuust enough light along the floors to not trip over your own feet, the idea is you go in and explore. There are rooms with strands of LED lights and mirrors floor to ceiling that make it look like it’s raining, a lantern room where I almost smacked into a mirror because you get so distracted, a balloon room, smoke light room, glass projection room, flower garden room, a digital waterfall, so so many rooms I’m still not sure I got them all even though I was there for over 2 hours. Still, I think I did except for the birds nest which had over an hour wait, so I headed out and waved quickly to the Rainbow Bridge and took the train back to Shibuya.
After getting some ramen, I strolled through part of Yoyogi Park and headed to Meiji Jingu since Google said it was open until 6pm, but when I got there at 4pm they were just closing the gates. Guess it’s sun up to sun down this time of year. No biggie, I walked a little further and went to Takeshita Street in Harajuku. It’s not Sunday so I only saw a small handful of the “Harajuku girls” but I did find the Totti Candy Factory and got one of those ridiculously gigantic cotton candy cones. Thing was 3x bigger than my head. People that know me know I can handle a lot of sugar, but even I couldn’t eat all of that. I also found a place selling nice chopsticks and had him engrave my katakana name onto them.
I passed on the exotic animal cafés, I’ve heard horror stories about them and keeping the exotic animals in poor condition…but I did come across a pet pig café. I figured pigs are domestic, so it was probably okay, plus I had never pet a pet pig before. There was only a 10 minute wait so I stuck around until I could go in. They had 6 or 7 pigs running around and they were adorable. They mostly came to me for ear scritches but there were four that had found their way into the laps of people with black pants (ALL black pants, they didn’t seem to care about anyone else with any other colors on, just FYI if you go!) They were cute, and seemed happy enough. I’d still eat them if they were made into bacon though.
Afterwards, I wandered back to the hotel to take advantage of another of those little comforts I mentioned earlier, the famous Japanese deep soaking tub! After being in Europe and Thailand where they favor showers over tubs 95% of the time to the point where they don’t even have tubs, getting into that deep soaking tub was like heaven. I relaxed and searched stuff for my next destinations until I started to get pruney. Now I’m going to try to go to sleep early so I can wake up super early tomorrow!
JAPAN I AM IN YOU! My God as soon as I stepped foot off the Narita Express at Shibuya it all hit me at once. The neon lights, the endless chatter, the hustle and bustle, the smell of noodles and curry and all sorts of food and desserts of every flavor everywhere…it was like coming back home. I didn’t realize how much I missed it all until just now!
My flight out of Bangkok left at 8am so I had to wake up at 4am to leave at 5am. I forced myself to stay awake during the flight, so by the time we landed in Japan at 4pm I was starving. For some reason an American coming to Japan from Thailand alarmed the customs person (HA!) so I got pulled off to the side to check my backpack, but of course there is nothing bad in there and her asking questions led to me telling her about my trip around the world. She asked if I had been to Japan before, and I told her I used to live here in college and used to be able to speak Japanese conversationally fluent but not so much anymore, so then she switched to Japanese and let me practice for a bit (it wasn’t busy at customs today).
I figured once I got here I’d remember things fast, but I didn’t expect just HOW fast. It’s all coming back to me, like riding a bicycle. Before the end of the night I was at a shoe store talking with the older staff who didn’t know English, since I needed to replace my non-waterproof walking shoes that I threw away in Paris. At first they didn’t seem sure if they should help me, but then I called them over and started asking questions and stuff in Japanese and I think the main guy helping me was surprised at first and then seemed happy and ready to assist. Then again I was buying his stuff so, eh, may be unrelated. The point is I got some decent, inexpensive waterproof walking shoes for the next 24 days and didn’t need to use a word of English nor any charade games to get them.
Prior to that I went to Ichiran for some ramen, but after getting my shoes, walking around Shibuya at the crossing, and saying hello to my old buddy Hachiko my stomach decided it was still hungry. I stopped and got a small udon serving…but although my stomach was now full, my eyes and mouth were still hungry so I got some sushi and an onigiri from 7-11. I had to remind myself that I was going to be here a while and didn’t need to eat everything RIGHT NOW. It was past 9pm at that point, so I hiked back to the hotel to start booking activity tickets for the Tokyo area. This is going to be awesome!
