Tokyo

My friend and former co-founder Ka-Hing and I entered Tokyo with a strongly optimistic attitude which lasted all nine days of my visit. I previously visited Kyoto, Hakone, and Tokyo (twice) with Kyle in 2014 and have fond memories. From the money changers who gave me origami to the curiously overstaffed train ticket offices who explained the different transit cards with a koan, I felt a different energy immediately. We headed from Haneda to the bAKpAK Tokyo Hostel in Asakusa which unfortunately was quite far from where we spent our evenings. The hostel itself was adequate and inexpensive, with tatami beds and an odd shower, but no Toto washlet which is half the reason to even visit Japan. For dinner, we headed to the nearby Sometaro to make our own okonomiyaki, one of my favorite dishes. Given the preparation the staff does on the ingredients, we had little room for error, but I struggled to create the desired thickness and correctly flip my pancake.

Next, we headed to Golden Gai in Shinjuku, the most famous drinking area in all of Tokyo. It hosts 200 tiny bars across five alleys, each having between 5–15 seats, with some allowing only members but most welcoming all including gaijin. We settled on Cremaster, sharing the name of male anatomy but also my favorite art films by Matthew Barney. Many bars including this one require a cover charge, usually ¥1,000, which discourages bar-hopping. Fortune smiled upon us at Cremaster, with talkative patrons downstairs and a friendly bartender. After some banter, I investigated the upstairs noise and joined a small group singing karaoke and laughing. Obviously several drinks in, they boisterously invited me to join them and we became fast friends after my underpowered but enthusiastic rendition of “You Give Love A Bad Name”. We tried a few other duets but mostly discussed our travels and took suggestions for this visit. I later learned that the group had only met that night, with a wide range of age groups from 25 to over 50, and it was one gentleman’s birthday! Fast forward an hour and Ka-Hing and I returned downstairs to talk to some new guests. One fashionable Indian economist wore an angry heart sweater which I have previously wondered about and he explained it was Comme des Garçons. I could not understand him, perhaps lost in his original Canadian language, but he suggested that only gay men wear this designer, which explains the translation, but I usually see younger women sporting the logo. I also talked to a younger man about his music tastes and he disliked Japanese music at live houses and preferred going to dedicated record stores where you could listen to American LPs on headphones. Different strokes. Unfortunately, we missed the last train home after midnight and were forced to take a ¥5,000 taxi home.

The next day we started with the Edo-Tokyo Museum, my favorite of the trip. Start by walking over a replica of Nihonbashi Bridge into ancient Edo, discussing the different shoguns, samurai, and castles. Several miniature forts displayed how hostile architecture can slow down opponents. Downstairs interested me more with its exposition of everyday lives including activities and expenses of residents. I geeked out over the latter, as one of my favorite books is A Farewell to Alms which explores economic history, and the localized variant gave me insight into Japan’s historical prosperity. The Tokyo zone did a serviceable job explaining Western, post-samurai modernization and I enjoyed several life-size decadal replicas of apartments and which amenities a family might enjoy. I felt uncomfortable in the World War II section which described both the gruesome fire and atomic bombings.

Ka-Hing introduced me to anti-social ramen at Ichiran. Customers buy a ticket from a vending machine then line up 20 deep outside for a cubicle. Ideally customers do not interact with another human; instead, they customize orders via a form, put their tickets on top, the curtain opens up with their bowl, and they serve themselves water. I stereotype Japanese as thin but most ramen places offer a kae-dama option to refill the large bowl with even more noodles. The meal itself tasted great and Ka-Hing got a much-needed respite from my non-stop jabbering.

We wandered Roppongi for some time, an area popular with gaijin, although still perhaps only 1 out of 100 people. We checked out Black Horse which middle-aged women populated, my wheelhouse but not Ka-Hing’s cup of tea, and moved on to a nearby dive bar. The mostly African touts aggressively solicit in Roppongi, but unlike Hong Kong where they push cocaine, they seemed more interested in getting us in the door for drinks. After some argument and a rice ball from 7–11, we interrogated some kids and settled on V2 Tokyo to end our evening with dancing. A curious experience, with plenty of people, but no one dancing before midnight. Everyone waited for the paid staff to dance in the elevated area in the middle and give away wearable blinkenlights, repeated roughly every 20 minutes. The Daft Punk impersonators gave me a good laugh but the Egyptian-themed muscle-bound Adonises pleased the throngs of younger women. Sated with plastic garbage, the crowd began moving, with most women taking turns on the elevated area and men dancing around them below, an odd scene. Three hours and another ¥5,000 cab ride later we concluded our evening.

We began anew with the Yūshūkan, or Japanese military shrine and museum. The latter has a contentious reputation since it provides a heavily revisionist view of history, including describing various Japanese invasions as incidents and presenting even World War II as defensive. I learned that the United States stopped exporting oil before the war which provoked the Japanese since this would defuel their war machine. The Japanese used Kaiten, or suicide torpedos, in addition to the more well-known kamikaze planes, with the former requiring less experience to navigate. The museum honored both kinds of soldiers with various earnest letters written to their parents. Ka-Hing learned some alternate history during his youth in Hong Kong and I could hear his giggles as he worked his way through the exhibits.

We walked around Akihabara for some time, home to the otakus, and briefly stopped at a maid cafe. My memories of this cultural experience proved fonder than the reality and Ka-Hing was having none of this nonsense, despite valiant attempts by the staff. We headed to Yellow Submarine, one of the largest stores for anime, gaming, models, etc., which impressed me. Star Wars enjoys much popularity in Japan and the store dedicated an entire section to Rogue One merchandise. The over-18 area was not subtly separated from the rest and this was my first time spotting otakus in their native environment. There but for the grace of God go I.

We scrambled Shibuya for a while and Ka-Hing introduced me to yakitori, or Japanese skewers, where I had the so-called pleasure of trying nattō, or fermented bean curd. This is definitely an acquired taste and pleases neither the nose, tongue, nor imagination, and I strongly suspect it upset my stomach. We ended our evening in Nonbei Yokocho, or drunkards alley, in Shibuya, which has similarities to Golden Gai although smaller scale and with more traditional Japanese motifs. We met a pair of interesting women there, one of whom lived in America for five years and could engage me in higher-bandwidth discourse compared to the pidgin conversations I had all week. Japan has many wonders, although beer is not one of them, so I worked my way through the whiskey cabinet, enjoying Yamazaki, Hakushu, and Hibiki, all part of the sprawling Suntory brand. Myths about hand-made ice balls proved true and our bartender picked away at a cube before smoothing it with water.

The next day started with failure since the National Museum closes on Mondays. We walked around Ueno park, admiring the dried-out lake and a Torii hallway, and had lunch at the train station. This had an interesting combination of ramen and curry and was one of my favorite meals, although wearing bibs to protect our clothes felt silly. We took a train down to Kawasaki, getting turned around a bit, but finally arriving at Anata No Warehouse, a replica of Kowloon Walled City. This reminds me of some dystopian cyberpunk grotto and the designers allegedly flew in garbage to perfect the look. The warehouse is actually an arcade and I played a few games of Mario Kart and the original force-sensitive Street Fighter before Ka-Hing schooled me at Dance Dance Revolution.

Heading back to Tokyo, we sought out the Shimbashi area to find a standing bar and chat up salarymen. We succeeded in having dinner at Kagaya, a restaurant featuring performance art, or perhaps the other way around. While I enjoyed our meal, the waiter/owner dazzled us with robots, costumes, puppets, drawings, songs, and accents. I cannot capture this moment other than to say it pleases me to live in a world with this kind of creativity.

We finished with a drink at Bar Anis which cemented my newfound appreciation of Japanese whiskey, although I feel like lacking Japanese language skills finally impeded my drinking pleasure. I suspect that this bar was higher-end than most, with our bartender sporting formal clothes and hipster glasses, and his business card is definitely more impressive than any with my name! Some cigar smokers lit up and we took an early leave. We failed some more trying to find a drink around our Asakusa neighborhood and the rain drove us home. We concluded with some rice balls and 7–11-branded Suntory beers, which provided for a relaxing time.

Once more, with feeling, we headed towards the National Museum, hosting a variety of historical Asian art. Honestly, this is not my cup of tea but features teapots, scrolls, swords, and more Buddhas than you can shake a chopstick at. I enjoyed the idyllic garden midway through the exhibits whose exit is easy to overlook. We kicked around Ueno for a bit and visited Ameya-Yokochō for trinket shopping. We then headed to Shibuya for more gifts but we only found decorative fans or Great Wave of Kanagawa shirts. Amazingly Tower Records still exists in Japan and seems to do tidy business! This shopping district had tons Christmas lights lining the street although all the pedestrian overpasses were closed presumably to avoid overcrowding.

We had a quick meal then headed for New Material Night at the Double Tall Cafe. The comedy was mixed, with entirely expatriate talent, although the audience included a lot of native Japanese who wanted to practice and improve their English. The host created an audience-participation web app which we tepidly used to remove faltering comics. We spun around Roppongi for a bit before I remembered that Hackers Bar was located close by. Unfortunately, the evening was a bit dead without the resident JavaScript hacker demonstrating his craft and only two uninviting girls at the far end of the bar. The bartenders chatted us up and let us play a mini Famicon, similar to the Nintendo Entertainment System, and we enjoyed a few games of Ice Climber and Pac-Man. This was a solid theme bar, of which Tokyo has myriad, and I recommend checking out the “Kernel Panic” and “Blue Screen of Death” cocktails.

Wednesday we focused on seeing the Miraikan emerging science museum. It is located on the artificial land in Koto and connects to the mainland via the Yurikamome, the first fully-automated transit in Tokyo. Crowds push to the front car to take in the view, especially the 270-degree turn to gain elevation. The museum itself is gorgeous, with a 6 meter LED globe showing a variety of weather and climate conditions. One of the attractions is an hourly show by Asimo, a life-like jointed robot who walks and gestures in convincing ways. The exhibits themselves held my attention, including interactive demonstrations of pollution, genetics, illusions, and a variety of inventions. Kōtō City itself lacked any further interests, so we headed towards Roppongi to kill some time at Satei Hato, a hipster coffee shop. I had forgotten the Japanese love of coffee and especially how Blue Bottle sourced their third wave hocus-pocus from Japan.

Next, we had the pleasure of meeting the s3fs maintainer, someone who I had previously only interacted with professionally via GitHub. Takeshi was a great host, treating Ka-Hing and me to sushi and drinks, but the main course was an extended discussion about our respective lives and cultures. While I made an effort to talk to strangers during my visit, this evening stands apart with learning about work, vacation, family, hobbies, open-source software, Tokyo, and frankly, everything! Ka-Hing, the consummate ladies man, took off early to go on a Tinder date, but I spent the entire evening and met one of Takeshi’s coworkers, and both conspired to take me to a burlesque show. The name suggests more in the imagination than in reality, with dancers wearing full-size bathing suits and leg warmers, and some of them had legitimate vocal and dancing talents. I was the only non-Japanese attending, not so unusual, but the crowd of perhaps seventy dressed much better than me or my companions, as this seemed like a salaryman hangout. Several offered me their business cards and asked me to email them which seemed unusual. The finale included the staff blindfolding me and taking me on stage with the dancers, then receiving a special dance from two men in unconvincing drag! Afterward, the dancers walked around soliciting tips and posing for photos, slightly different than the states as the smallest note is ¥10,000, so the club helpfully sells smaller denomination fake scrip. Properly inebriated at this point, we shared a taxi back to our respective homes.

Thursday was Ka-Hing’s last day in Tokyo, so we shuffled hostels and I moved to a guest house in Meguro. The location improved over Asakusa, only two stops from Shibuya on the JR, but had a 15-minute riverside walk to the station which challenged me later in the evenings. We both were slowing down after a non-stop week and struggled to figure out lunch, eventually settling on Korean bibimbap. Lacking a plan we went to Excelsior Caffe, the Japanese Starbucks, and decided on hitting up the samurai museum. This interested me more than I expected, with a giggly but informative tour guide and a reenactment of samurai practice. Winding down Ka-Hing’s visit, we had our last drinks at Route 66 in Golden Gai, an American-themed bar and one of the few open at 5 PM. Coincidentally we both went to Shinjuku station to part ways and paused for a few moments to scrutinize a map of the huge station. An incredibly friendly older woman rescued us from our confusion and walked with us over five minutes across the entire station to ensure we did not get lost!

Sending Ka-Hing on his way, I stopped off for a quick ramen bowl and headed to O-Crest, part of the sprawling O-Group megaplex of music clubs. I believe that O-Crest is the smallest and the venue hosted maybe 40 people, curiously a majority were women over 40. The show starts and ends early, roughly 6–10 PM, so I missed the opening act, but the middle of five bands, Sanada Hideto, impressed me the most. I met Rodion, a friendly Russian programmer, and the only other non-Japanese attending, who gave me some background on the musicians and the club. Afterward, I made an aborted attempt to find the Blue Grotto after it had already closed, ending up in a Domo office park!

Without my traveling companion, I slowed my roll on Friday to sleep in and catch up with friends back in the States. I also planned to join my new Russian friend for all-night dancing so I wanted to adjust my sleep schedule. I explored Meguro a bit more then headed to the Blue Grotto which really impressed me. In addition to the main alley of larger lighted trees in Yoyogi Park, the commercial area leading up to the park has smaller trees also aglow. Japanese seem to have made Christmas their own with tremendous displays and curious traditions like KFC with your girlfriend on Christmas Eve.

I went to another comedy show at Tokyo Sports Cafe which improved over the previous new material night. I chatted up two native Japanese, one a man in his late 60s and another woman in her mid-40s, both of whom I strongly suspect wanted to practice English. The latter repaired to an English pub with me and we shared a drink while discussing our world travels. She surprised me by sharing her exploits in Bali, something of a stereotype for Japanese women, and perhaps thinking better of it, abruptly left me puzzling over the interaction. A nearby salaryman was only too happy to take her place and we talked about politics for some time until he offered to treat me to a burlesque show. Not again!

I met up with Rodion and a large group of us headed to Alife, a three-floor dance club in Roppongi. This club better matched my western tastes and I enjoyed bouncing between the lower two floors for dancing and relaxing. The upper salon played hip hop and hosted a few private parties including two sumo wrestlers. After 5 AM the music died and subway service resumed so I followed the herd stumbling to the station. One woman in heels slept while squatting against the wall, impressing me with her balance.

Saturday I joined the city-wide Tokyo metro puzzle which gives amateur sleuths a 24-hour Metro pass and a booklet of puzzles to solve by using various physical clues in and around the train stations. I find this incredibly clever and several of the puzzles stumped me for an hour, some by a novel interpretation or combination of items within the packet, others made much harder under the cover of darkness. The second of four missions had nine interlinked puzzles, one of which stumped me, and I instead worked backward from the final puzzle to cheat the meta-solution. Spending so much time in the subway I noticed the many vending machines, usually selling mediocre coffee. I worked my way through most of these during the week and recommend none of them! I could not confirm rumors of naughty vending machines selling unmentionables. I started around 4 PM and solved the first few puzzles over a late lunch and did not realize that I skipped dinner until midnight when the subway starts to shut down! Thankfully I managed to return home without an expensive taxi.

Sunday I resumed the puzzle and with daylight’s help managed to finish by 3 PM. Again the puzzles impressed me and I needed liberal use of the hints to solve the final mission and second-to-last puzzle. The final puzzle required three-dimensional thinking and I had a chuckle solving it over a rice bowl at lunch. I saw perhaps 100 other people solving puzzles during my weekend even though the game launched three months earlier. This blows the San Francisco-based Amazing Race out of the water. I had some dead time moving between the many subway stations and reflected on how well they work compared to the San Francisco equivalents — fast, clean, abundant, and quiet. Everyone cooperates, from orderly lines on the platform to standing on the left side of escalators. Proper signage reinforces good manners and similar American advertisements would have mustaches or worse drawn on them.

My evening plans included meeting up with Fumie in Ebisu, a new friend who I first met in Nonbei Yokocho earlier in the week. I definitely had a Lost in Translation moment, as she could speak English well from her years at an American university, and I appreciated the companionship. I often felt mute during my visit and having a fully-conversational 30-something discussion about dating, travel, and life pleased me. I learned about the existence of herbivore men, unintentionally a slight against vegetarians, but actually a criticism of modern masculinity. Another highlight was Bar Martha, a whiskey bar with an impressive record collection and vintage analog music equipment. Unfortunately, they prohibit photos and a bartender chided me for using my American-volume voice. After three bars and too many drinks, we bid our goodbyes, and I had the brilliant idea to go to another watering hole in Meguro, Bar TINA, in part due to its curious tagline. I chatted up a few college students via pantomime and Google Translate and had a long discussion with the bartender about our favorite bands. At some point, the regulars left and the bartender’s bartender friends arrived so it became an open bar. After a few free drinks, I remembered my flight the next day and barely made it back to the hostel. I have snapshots of standing in 7-11 numbly staring at rice balls and struggling to provide exact change to the patient graveyard shift. Thankfully I slept well and managed to make my flight early in the afternoon! I definitely prefer Haneda airport over Narita, with its better train connection and more relaxed atmosphere. I bought one last rice ball for the road and bid a fond sayōnara to Tokyo.

A few Japanese asked if I would move to Tokyo and I have mixed feelings about this suggestion. I have debated relocating to Berlin temporarily, perhaps for six months, based on a previous positive experience there and a desire to more deeply connect with another culture. While Tokyo is definitely my favorite city to visit, and my two trips here stand tall among my memories, I wonder how Japan would wear day-to-day. I feel fortunate to have so many positive experiences with its residents, in part due to a robust white privilege. While I enjoy this, life in Tokyo does not feel real to me in the way San Francisco does — surely the novelty of and patience for a helpless gaijin would wear thin. I also feel circumspect as an American white male allowing an Orientalism fetish to influence my thoughts, especially given the visible minority of my peers who unabashedly express such sentiments. While I could make do as a tourist with only English and maybe twenty mispronounced Japanese words, my verbal interactions felt like wandering in a Japanese desert from English oasis to oasis, and truly living in Tokyo would require either learning Japanese at a ruinous time expense or settling for expatriate culture. Finally, I strongly suspect the software industry lags far behind San Francisco. Takeshi expressed frustration about the nascent free software culture and the startup scene appears non-existent to me. I feel like any such move would require bringing my job with me, either via an understanding employer or expanding on my consulting work. I will ponder this more as life unfolds. For now, thank you Tokyo for a great time and extra thanks to Ka-Hing for making this trip more fun together than I could have on my own!