Tokyo Lights
22nd to 28th October 2016
If Nepal was the detox, with its copious nature, healthy eating, and tiny doses of internet, Japan was the re-tox!
The last 2 weeks have been a whirlwind of sound, taste, and sight. There's a lot to cram in for our time in Japan, so we've broken it into a few posts, starting with this, highlights of Tokyo.
What Tokyo feels like....
You could say "Tokyo is buzzing", but in the same breath say "Tokyo is calm". True, there are colourful neon signs and tinkly jingles pretty much everywhere you go. There are people everywhere - nowhere is deserted by any stretch of the imagination. Everything works though. Everything is well-organised, with the metro system being the perfect example of this. People have an air of being content. They are happy to queue for things, rarely seem hassled, and there is a sense of life working well in Tokyo.
We spent 5 days in this city that is packed with intriguing details, every kind of food, and enough colours and sparkles to satisfy even my rainbow-loving levels. Even though we explored it until our little feet were tired and our bellies full to the brim, I feel like we probably only made a tiny dent in the adventures you could have in Tokyo.
Here are some of our best bits, excluding what we ate and drank, which gets its own post (as is only right and proper!).
Street Walkers
In between our activities, we just walked and walked (and ate and ate!). Each of the neighbourhoods in Tokyo has a distinct personality. You can almost feel the change in style and atmosphere as you walk from one to the next.
The best-known district is probably Harajuku with its candy cane colours, J-Pop music pumping out on the streets, and of course, the Harajuku girls and Lolita girls dressed in their larger-than-life style. Harajuku is fun for a while, but it's a little overwhelming and you can't help but feel you should be wearing platform heels, false eyelashes, and a frilly pinafore to truly fit in. Nick didn't have his platforms with him, so we moved on...
As you move to Shibuya, the mood shifts to a more relaxed, city-cool style. Shibuya is filled with shops, restaurants and bars, and its a place to feel at ease rambling about. It gives a feeling of where Tokyo is going and growing, what the future of this city will hold.
Shinjuku is massive! It's home to Tokyo's red-light district, Kabukicho, fancy shopping streets, and side lanes where you can (and we did) find pokey little ramen restaurants that serve you tasty bowls of noodles.
Akihabara is known as a haven of 'geek culture' (otaku). It's crammed with electronics megastores, and manga billboards and bookshops.
Ginza is as swanky as they come. We ventured here to sip coffee at Cafe Al Ambre, where a 102-year old coffee wizard has perfected his style of coffee for eons.
Ueno is home to some truly great museums, and it was here, while sauntering through Ueno Park (picture a local park that happens to have shrines and a vast lake filled with lily pads and swan pedal boats), that the following incident occurred. I spotted a crowd of 50 or so people - business people, kids, senior citizens, every walk of life - running, as if for their lives. "Feck!" I thought " there's clearly a fire or something going on". I pointed it out to Nick, and after a beat he realised what it was. They were running towards a rare Pokemon, which was where we were standing. Their faces when they arrived was something to see - some mildly embarrassed but pleased, some already looking for the next spot, and some just filled with the pure happiness at finding whatever Pokemon it was... This is the time we live in people. Pokemon Go is uniting communities :)
Asakusa felt like a preserved bubble of Old Tokyo. We arrived here at dusk on our last evening. It felt like the perfect time to be there, steeping in the smoky incense of the Sensoji Temple and sampling little treats from the market stalls on Nakamise Street.
Sushi Workshop at Tsukiji Fish Market
Tsukiji is a huge fish market, a piece of living, breathing Tokyo history. It's scheduled to be moved to a new location soon, so I'm pretty grateful that we got to see it in the original spot.
Our morning included wandering around both the outer (more tourist-friendly) and inner (hard-core fishy business) markets, buying fish and ingredients for our sushi making workshop.
The bustle of the market was intoxicating. It moves fast, so you need to stay on your toes! These people are on the clock, and they need to keep the fish at its best and moving.
I had to take my first draft for Tsukiji and move it to a post all of its own, as there was just too much to write! Check out Sushi Workshop at Tsukiji Fish Market for more.
Robot Restaurant - embrace the madness and the neon
How to describe Robot Restaurant? Hmmm, well you take mid-80s power Eurovision music with just a splash of Bowie from that era, combine it with the most fabulous, hammiest panto you can imagine, and mesh that together with some serious Transformer-esque robots... and you're halfway there. It's insane, and we loved it!
Over 90 minutes, the performers and robots put on a crazy show that started with a kind of psychedelic tribute to Kabuki (this was my favourite bit, with loads of drumming that gave me goosebumps. Not to mention the fact that the girls had the best rainbow wigs I've ever seen).
It moved on from there to a very panto-orientated story of forest fairies and creatures versus evil invading robots in a battle for earth kind of storyline (just go with it, this is pure Tokyo).
After that, we had a bit of a Michael Jackson medley, with black-clad dancers covered in neon wires.
Then, they went for broke in the final stage - a stream of fantastical robots and performers (at one point there was someone in a horse mask riding a donkey robot).
Studio Ghibli Museum
Ghibli is Japan's Disney. If you've seen Spirited Away, you've seen a Studio Ghibli movie. The museum is in a large house, in a tranquil suburban park in Mitaka.
If you're into animation in any way, or if you have kids, this is an magical way to spend an afternoon in Tokyo. You roam around this house, filled with room after room of colourful treasures. My favourite part was the rooms filled with sketches and colour swatches and curiosities that recreated the animation studios. Nick's favourite was the movie theatre at the end, where we could watch a 15 minute Studio Ghibli movie. We both loved the rooftop garden, with a sleepy, lonely robot overlooking the town of Mitaka.
Karaoke!
We had to... we couldn't visit Tokyo and not do a little bit of karaoke.
So we did, we booked a room at Karaoke-kan in Shibuya for 2 hours, ordered drinks, and prepared to bring the noise. Honestly, 2 hours wasn't enough! We loved it! We crammed in as many cheesy hits and classics as we could muster, with Bohemian Rhapsody, Toto's Africa, and Pride (In the Name of Love) standing out as stellar performances. We loved it so much, we went back on our last night in Kyoto for more.
Tokyo Snapshots
- Total sensory overload at Takeshita Street, Harajuku (think Gwen Stefani, early 2000s amplified by a million).
- Tiny kids in colourful kimonos heading to weddings at the Meiji Shrine.
- Cheerful jingles at every metro station, each one unique. They are designed to alert sleepy commuters to where they are, and give those who have arrived on the train a sense of achievement that they've made their train.
- A call of greeting from chefs and waiters when anyone enters a restaurant ("irasshaimase!"), and a loud chorus of "arigatou gozaimasu!" ("Thank you very much!") when you leave.
- The smell of the sea mixed with smoky cooking smells and a very fast pace at Tsukiji Fish Market.
- Standing on the back of a small loading truck at Tsukiji Fish Market with the 6 others on our tour as a friendly fishmonger gave us a lift to his stall.
- Quiet, dusky streets in Mitaka (a suburb, where the Studio Ghibli Museum lives), walking and watching people go about their evening chatting and cycling.
- Shops for everything! We passed shops solely dedicated to selling fire extinguishers, globes, and many shops only selling socks.
- The quiet calm of our ryokan (traditional Japanese guesthouse), and sleeping on tantami mats (basically a comfy futon).
- Wishing several times a day that we could speak a decent amount of Japanese, and being so thankful that the Japanese are so friendly, helpful, and patient.
