7/18/2023

Hello Blog Readers,

After touring Hakone, we took a Shinkansen to our final destination: Tokyo. The largest city on the planet. You wouldn’t guess that it’s the largest city on earth though unless you were stuck in the crowds at Shinjuku, Shibuya, or Tokyo Station. My travel companions and I were pleasantly surprised to learn that Tokyo is a very balanced city of endless districts with each one offering its own unique architectural style and culture, and none of them being overly crowded with people. In terms of population density, I’d say Tokyo feels more like your typical Midwest downtown area in terms of building sizes and number of people on the street, but just spread out forever in all directions. Think of an endless downtown Omaha or Louisville…an endless downtown Omaha or Louisville that is EXTREMELY clean and that (but for maybe a few spots in Shinjuku) almost always feels safe.

We navigated our way to our hotel in Asakusa and got ready for our evening. The hotel was nestled in a neat area consisting of a wide variety of restaurants, bars, and shops, and even though the rooms were tiny even by Tokyo standards, the place was clean and convenient, and the staff have been very accommodating. It’s a great little hotel, which we should have known going into it seeing as it was recommended by Minami – the daughter of the sushi chef in Kyoto.

Our first stop was Burger Revolution Tokyo- a new, premium burger restaurant that has been getting a lot of hype in Japan. The burgers were good and cured the feeling that we had been eating too healthy the past few days, but the place itself was a bit too touristy. Just about everyone in the place was a 20-something, loud American tourist.

We next took a cab and headed over to Shinjuku’s famous Golden Gai strip to go bar hopping and see the night scene of Tokyo.

For those of you who don’t know, Golden Gai is a seemingly endless strip of small, traditional Japanese bars that cater to tourists and locals alike. It has this fantastic, gritty aesthetic that looks like something straight out of Blade Runner. We found a somewhat classier bar in the neighborhood and chatted with its bartender for a while. We then went out and stumbled upon this back alley walkway which is used as the setting in this great scene in the movie We Couldn’t Become Adults on Netflix. It’s a fantastic Japanese film – one that I’ve watched several times now at this point. Without ruining too much of the movie, the movie is about a financially successful, but single man in his 40s who is exploring in his mind all of his past failed relationships and where they went wrong. In the walkway scene, this walking path is portrayed as some beautiful, nostalgic, and romantic spot where the main character first kisses who will later become just another one of his exes. Yet in real life, Sam, Trey, and I quickly saw that the walking path is in fact this dingy, dirty place with rats and sketchy people everywhere. It totally makes sense and fits the overall theme of the movie where the man is leaning too heavily on the past that he’s romanticizing, which is the real reason why he’s single.

After seeing Golden Gai, my brother-in-law wanted to see something with a bit higher energy, so we traversed Shinjuku and made it to the recently opened Namco Arcade in Kabukicho Tower – basically a massive video game and crane game place for adults. The neon lights, loud music, and alcohol created an almost overwhelming atmosphere. It was really fun though!

After all of the festivities, you’d have thought that I would have slept in the next morning, but I happened to wake up early, so I decided to grab breakfast at a Starbucks near our hotel and wander around Asakusa. The short, morning adventure paid off as I stumbled upon an important shrine in Tokyo – the Sanno Inari Shrine, one of the only buildings to survive America’s fire bombing of Tokyo during World War II. It was an awesome thing to see, and since I was there early it was literally just me and two other people who were there. One of the people kindly took a photo of me at the torii gates.

Sam and Trey eventually got up and got food, and the three of us then just played tourists for a few hours, taking in Tokyo Tower and Shibuya Crossing, and grabbing some great ramen for lunch. We also checked out another Pokémon Center, seeing as we’re now in the Kanto Pokémon region, but we didn’t buy anything there because the line to buy things was…two hours long!?!?

Next we went back to the hotel and went our separate ways for the afternoon. I really wanted to visit Akihabara…but I needed clothes again for the night and next day so I instead walked a mile from our hotel in Asakusa over to a mall with a Uniqlo, which is a clothing chain store here in Japan. The walk took me through a park and showcased some nice neighborhoods here in Tokyo.

Finally our group regathered for a last night of food and drinks here in Japan. It was all delicious!

This week in Japan has been an amazing experience, and I’ll be doing a more detailed blog of my thoughts on the country soon. I wish that I could stay here…heck, I wish that I could live here, but sadly it’s time to head back home. In fact, I wrote out this entire blog entry while navigating the check-in and security lines at Haneda Airport. I’m now at the gate and, as long as everything stays on time, I should be back to the United States soon. Thank you for keeping up with us during our travels through Japan! Until next time.

Cheers,

-Rob