It Had To Be Said

I love Tokyo, but I could never live here. When I visit cities like San Francisco, London, and Los Angeles, I envision what life I might create or stumble into. I daydream and pretend -- the coffee shops I would become a regular at; the special spots I would bring a girl I really like; the new strangers I would turn into old friends. I can't quite get to that mental spot when it comes to Tokyo. Don't get me wrong, I love this city and I plan on coming back, which I feel says a lot considering its distance from home and the other amazing places I have visited over the years. But while the reverence the people here have for tradition and values is really cool from an outsider's perspective, there's something about that makes it difficult for me to imagine myself living here. Everyone here is exceptionally nice and polite, which to me just comes off as being disingenuous. I learned of a saying earlier in the week, which is the 7 faces and 3 hearts of Japanese people. Basically, it speaks to how people here build walls around their feelings, emotions, desires, goals -- they're true selves. I don't think I could live among that attitude. I find something admirable and recognizable about just putting it all out there, to expose yourself in a way that makes you vulnerable. I find strength in that.

Still, I love Tokyo. After the hilarious nightmare of finding our Airbnb on the first night, Yavar and I grabbed some food and crashed out just after midnight. Maybe it was the jet lag or the excitement of being here in Japan, but I was up at 6:45am, ready to take on the city. Armed with a backpack of chargers, cables, power banks, and my laptop, we set out for the day around 8:00am. Shinjuku wasn't far from our Shibuya Airbnb, so we walked around aimlessly until we found a Starbucks. I know, I'm sorry, I do kind of feel guilty that our first stop was a fucking Starbucks, but it's familiar and it has WiFi, so it meant we could get caffeinated while we formed a plan of attack on our day. After about 45 minutes, we picked a direction to go in and left.

We hit up the Tokyo Government Building first as its two towers are known for their spectacular views and it seemed like a good way to get a sense of scale of the city. Unfortunately, there was too much smog to be able to see Mt. Fuji 130km away (80 miles for you Americans), but there was pretty much a 360-degree view of Tokyo that was incredible! Having just been in LA last week and seeing the city sprawl for the first time from Griffith Observatory, I was impressed by how vast Los Angeles actually was. Ha! Tokyo puts it to shame. By a lot. A lot, a lot. It was just city as far as the eye could see and not just sprawl but vertical growth as well. There were so many skyscrapers and they're all so interesting and unique from one another. Vancouver's homogeneous glass look could learn a thing or two here.

So Shinjuku is basically divided into two sections with very different feels from each other. The Tokyo Government Building we were in was located in the financial and business district of Shinjuku -- very clean, very expensive, lots of interesting architecture, but kind of boring otherwise. There just wasn't a lot of the bustling action we were looking for, so we eventually wandered to the other section of Shinjuku to go to the Samurai Museum. I had mixed feelings about it -- I am naturally skeptical of everything and the number of things that seemed like replicas, particularly the canvases and artwork, felt a bit off. We had a young lady give us a guided tour, but she seemed to only be able to stick to her script and wasn't really able to field most of the questions we had. Maybe it was a language thing, but I'm not so sure. The whole thing felt a bit amateur, so Samurai Museum is probably a generous term. Even so, we got to try on some "authentic" -- dubious, but whatever -- samurai gear, hold a katana, and watch a short demonstration by a modern samurai of the different stances. Worth the price of admission.

Yavar and I made plans to meet up with Robinson, a local gaijin that Yavar employed at EA and whom has been living and working in Tokyo for the last 6-7 months. I was thankful to have an English-speaking local to chat to about the culture, the people, and to get some hot tips on what to do and see while we were here. We headed to a local British-style pub where locals mix with expats and foreigners. As we talked about Japanese culture, Robinson cut us off at some point, "you have no idea how happy I am to be able to talk to you guys right now". I suppose it should have been obvious, but even English-speaking Japanese people don't have that deep understanding of the nuances of the language -- the ability to detect sarcasm, pick-up on puns, or relate to Western cultures and concepts. It really gave me some perspective, as I've been thinking about if/how I'm going to be able to deal with being a solo traveler for the majority of this trip. I'm a social butterfly. I need people -- friends, people I connect with on some intimate level. Sure, I know how to meet people and have fun, but my highs are high and my lows are low. Celebrating my 30th in Australia by myself near the end of Around The World Tour 1 was depressing as-fuck...and that was only 19 days long! How will I deal with being away on day 30... on day 60?! Robinson has been doing this for nearly 7 months under much more difficult conditions (remember, 7 faces and 3 hearts). Maybe it's different, maybe it's not, but, whichever it is, I gained a ton of respect for him that night.

The next day, I was on a mission for ramen. Despite living in Vancouver for nearly 9 years, ramen is a relatively new thing in my life (Sherrie, thanks again, I am eternally grateful) and was only introduced to me this past winter. Since then, I've tried all the top spots in Vancouver, so I was eager to find the best in Tokyo. Enter Ichiran Ramen, which received the honour of being both recommended by a friend and being voted #1 ramen in Shinjuku. After a reasonable line-up (sidenote: every ramen place in every city always has a line-up...that's how good ramen is), things got weird. For some reason, there is very little human interaction here in Tokyo. If there is an opportunity for a machine to replace a person, you damn well better believe it's already happening in Japan somewhere. Much of the food I've ordered as been via a machine and Ichiran was no different. Ichiran takes things to another level though -- you order and pay for your food via machine, take the tickets the machine spits out, fill out a piece of paper with checkboxes for how you want your ramen prepared, and take those to a cubby that you sit at. At this cubby, there is a small window, maybe a foot high and two wide, where you pass your tickets and paper to a pair of hands. These anonymous hands bring you your ramen, pass it through the cubby, and unfurl a tatami mat to cover the mat, so you may slurp in the utmost privacy. I think I kind of loved it. Anyway, the ramen was so good, but I also came to the conclusion that Vancouver has some really dope ramen that is comparable to here.

Which is a great segue into my next topic... I believe Vancouver has better sushi than Tokyo. There, I said it. It had to be said. This isn't a completely fair statement -- there's probably zero bad sushi spots here in Tokyo whereas there are definitely a few in Vancouver, so the average quality is . The nigiri here is also fantastic and I had some fatty tuna nigiri that blew my damn mind, but there is very little here in terms of creative sushi rolls. Maybe it's a Western thing, I don't know, but there's not a lot of special rolls going on here like tempura rolls with avocado and cream cheese. I did, however, get to experience Genki Sushi, which is the #1 sushi place in Shibuya. The sushi was great, but what really sets this place apart is the ordering system, which is, you guessed it, via a machine. When you sit at a table, you order on this iPad-like device and whatever you ordered magically appears via a conveyor. It was cool.

I have so much more Tokyo to talk about, but I'm bagged. Back later.