Tokyo
A Christmas Day view of Mt. Fuji
After a holiday trip described as a tad more than a crowded, chaotic whirlwind, it’s fitting that we ended our time in Japan in what may be the nexus of crowded mayhem: Tokyo. And if the streets of Shibuya and Harajuku weren’t going to be daunting enough, we sprung a Christmas surprise on our boys: 2 days at Tokyo Disney and Disney Sea, the California Adventure to Disneyland’s, well, Disneyland. We traveled from Kyoto via an efficient and oh-so-smooth shinkansen train to Tokyo Station and stayed over two nights in a quiet neighborhood one stop from Shinjuku.
Despite the Tokyo-at-Christmastime throngs of shoppers, salarymen, and tourists alike, we hopped the train over to Shinjuku station- the main, and I do mean main, station in Tokyo1- and undertook the must-see pilgrimage to witness Godzilla’s head at the top of the Toho theater (catching a showing of “Moana 2” while we were there). Afterwards, we lightly supped on some yellow curry at a flashy Thai place called Bangkok77, which seemed confused as to whether it was a restaurant or a club. Shinjuku things, I guess.
And things, indeed- a bustling district of towering skyscrapers- a relatively seismic-free ward in Tokyo that has allowed architects to dream ever higher. In addition to the tallest skyline in Tokyo, the area is known as a party haven- home to bars, clubs, shiny arcades, even more shiny pachinko and gacha parlours, and everything else under the sun (or neon, as the case may be)2. By this point, we either embraced the crowds or ran screaming for the countryside- and a bucolic view wasn’t in the cards, not this trip. So we forged onwards and homewards.
Drinking early morning coffee in relative quiet, we spent Christmas eve-eve- the 23rd- with some old students from our teaching/dorm-parent days in Hokkaido. Having cut our teeth at the whole “parenting” thing with these teens a decade ago, it alleviated some worry as to parenting my own children, as these (now grown) kids have turned out beautifully- I guess my cooking and parenting style wasn’t too bad ;). We spent the afternoon walking around the charming and overlooked Musashino neighborhood, home to charming little shops, restaurants, and alleyways. A lake made for swan boat rides and pizza cooked out of an old VW van completed our afternoon. As our old “dormies” hadn’t seen the Shaffer fellas since they were babies, there was a lot of catching up to do, and Musashino is a lovely neighborhood for it.3
Christmas Eve day was spent at the Imperial Castle. A tranquil, massive ornamental park dedicated to the memory of the many emperors, past and present, who have resided there, the park, though gutted with tourists, never felt crowded: getting to sit on a bench overlooking a lake, next to a small man-made creek and waterfall… if I lived here I would make it a weekly excursion, so good was it for my soul and peace of mind. We only visited the east garden. Note that access is limited to tour groups (“plan ahead!” the old Japanese saying strikes again!), open to the general public only on Jan 2nd and Feb 23rd (the Emperor’s birthday).
We had Christmas Eve dinner at the glamorous Outback Steakhouse- Disney and its sister park are over an hour trainride from central Tokyo, on a fairly isolated peninsula- so beggars can’t be choosers when it comes to “Disney Tourist fare” though we did have a Hitachino brew with our Bloomin’ Onion, so that was nice.
Christmas morning, at a one-room Japanese hotel, with a child who still believed in Santa was no easy task… but Santa did make it, loaded up our stockings with some great Don Quijote4 items, elaborate and goofy Japanese chocolates- and JAWS bath bombs5. Dad even got a bottle of Nikka whisky- my northern Japan favorite. A memorable Christmas morning, away from the comforts of home.
After our morning of Christmas presents, the boys got their
big” present- a day spent in Disney lines, feeling underdressed and not matching like all the other families there. Highlights included: original “Tower of Terror” and “Splash Mountain” (so problematic!), not knowing enough Japanese to parse what the hell they were saying at Star Tours and “Nightmare before Christmas” Haunted Mansion rides, and witnessing the Baymax dancers (enthusiastic, cultish fans dancing to a “Big Hero 6” kids ride, oftentimes they don’t even ride the ride, they’re just there to dance).
Maybe because it’s Japan, but I don’t mind the Disney Adults nearly as much here as I do in California. Here, it seems that the majority of Japanese/Korean/Filipino people I see are genuinely having a good time6, not trying to fill some empty void inside them through mindless corporate consumerism. Then again, a huge part of Japanese culture is mindless corporate consumerism, so maybe it just feels more on-brand here than in my home country.
After a better than expected Christmas hotel buffet, replete with Turkey and udon, we are back in the fray first thing the next morning for Disney Sea, the other park by the ocean here in Tokyo. And if I had to choose between the two, this is the one I would go to again. So much of the park is steampunk Jules Verne (replete with a “Journey to the Center of the Earth” ride that was the highlight of the day) as well as a fairly good approximation of the seaside town from The Little Mermaid. The park is interesting to look at, boasts quite a few good food options, with fewer rides but more nooks and crannies to explore.
After a day at the park, we loaded our things onto the magnificent subway line again (conveniently located next to the parks and hotels). We headed to our last Airbnb of our trip -this one owned by a Studio Ghibli fanatic, where all the decorations were Totoro and Castle in the Sky-themed. Craving some katsudon, the hearty comfort-food meal of fried pork cutlet, onion, soft egg, and cheese over rice, I found a place in our charming neighborhood of Sendagi called Katsudon Tenkaboshi, a small mom-and-pop shop of filling, homey and oh-so-oishi katsudon.
The next day, after being fueled by the mercifully open7 closet-sized Yanaka Coffee-ten coffee shop, we decided to try our hands at the Ueno Zoo. Upon some research, at the time we went to the zoo, there were currently no pandas anywhere in the United States. This zoo boasted three, with lines under half an hour to catch the monochrome idiots in their only real surviving habitat. And what a waste of time it was! In groups of <10 minutes, you got exactly 90 seconds to look at an immobile ball of dirty fluff before a whistle blew, and you moved to the next vantage point- to see exactly the same thing. I think one raised its paw once. Thrilling. The red pandas, while not true pandas at all, are infinitely more fun (and cuter, to boot).
After a quick bite to eat, batting the crows away to eat some zoo corn dogs (presumably still made from beef, hopefully), we headed to the focal point of Tokyo chaos, the lively Shibuya. The last time we did the crossing, our youngest was in a stroller, so visiting the Hachi monument and crossing the not-so-simple street are must-dos for the fellas.
For dinner, a trip over to Rappongi for another “Shaffer greatest hits” destination - the one-time Times “top ten burger in the world” Blacows. It may have fallen off the list- Spain has come up in the burger scene a big way in the decade since we’ve last been here- but the black wagyu beef is as juicy and unbelievably flavorful as I remembered, if you’re looking for a great, albeit insanely messy, Scooby-doo-sized burger, this is the place for you. I was able to recreate a photo of my older son and I each taking a bite of a too-massive burger, but this time he’s a giant teenager and not a little dude. Tempus fugit.
Stuffed, as we had been since arriving in Japan, we headed back to our Ghibli homestay. Only two more full days of Japan remained to us, I considered while sleeping on a creaky futon bed underneath the watchful eyes of Totoro.
The next day we headed to Akihibara Electric Town- the mecca for Anime nerds, video game nerds, and anyone who struggles with eye contact for any extended period of time. This place came up as a black market electronics neighborhood in the post-WWII scarcity, and has kept a sort of charming disorderliness ever since, replete with crane claw games and busty anime girl figurines. We stopped into an arcade to play some next-gen Tekken and Street Fighter arcades- all hooked up online to play (and get destroyed by) people worldwide. And I used to have to wait by the Street Fighter II coin-op at 7-11 for someone to come and play me.
Getting beaten in video games eats up calories, so we replenished by hitting our favorite recently-nationwide soup curry chain: Samurai. In case you forgot what it looked like from, like, every other post:
Later, walking amidst 300-year-old ginkgo trees and even older tombstones sits the Koukokuji Buddhist Temple, where 2,046 small multicolored altars of Buddha sit above the ashes, performing a rainbow-fueled dance of the dead. Long fascinated by the intersection of technology and religion, this place really scratches that itch. You need to be swiped or scanned in to enter and for the lights to turn on- but visitors are more than welcome and this was one of my favorite stops of our entire Japanese trip.
Our evening was taken up by a stroll through the Tokyo dome area of Bunkyō, which is akin to a carnival, complete with a rollercoaster that travels above, around, and through the area’s mall. Obviously, we had to take a ride on Thunder Dolphin, 80mph of exhilarating fun. Mostly worth both the price of admission and the hour of standing in line. Another day down the hatch.
Our last full day in Tokyo had us meeting up again with one of our old dorm students. We were planning on visiting the Museum of Art, or Museum of Science- but warning, between Christmas and New Year’s, most public buildings are closed, and these were no exceptions. Instead, we took a lovely stroll through nearby Yoyogi Park, playing amongst the ginkgo trees there and people watching tai chi practitioners, musicians, and competitive trick-kendama players, taking the old children’s game to new extremes just like yoyo did a decade or more ago.
After our pleasant stroll, we went to Harajuku to have one more nostalgia trip: when we were last in Tokyo, we were getting our Visas for moving to Thailand. While waiting for them to be processed, we pushed our Ezra in his stroller down the streets of Harajuku, looking at the little Bo Peep-esque fashionistas and got Jude a bougie cotton-candy the size of his upper torso. We decided to try it again, but this time Harajuku was way more packed (maybe the most common refrain of the trip), which seemed to drive most of Tokyo’s most fashionable to other locales. No more “Hollaback girls” in sight, sadly. Gwen Stefani must be weeping somewhere. While there, we stopped in at a beautiful record shop called Manhattan Records, where the MF Doom mask on the wall told me all I needed to know about the bona fides of the place. I recently learned the Japanese-based company has a store in Seoul, so I think my time to improve my vinyl collection has come, at last.
I love my family- and I don’t just say that because I made them walk a mile to go to one of the key toilets in what is one of my favorite movies of the decade, “Perfect Days”- but I did make them walk a mile to see a toilet. A famous transparent toilet- which turn out only does the “transparent to opaque thing” in the warmer months of the year- so I took my family to a toilet from a movie that didn’t even do the thing from the movie. But they were lovely about it, so I am full of gratitude and bought everyone Mexican Hot Chocolates from nearby.
A last drink in at the local Mikkeler8 brewpub and we said our goodbye to our old friend, promised it would not be ten years in between visits next time, and headed back to Ghibli-land for a last sleep, a morning coffee, and a Shinkansen back to Osaka and home. Hearts (and bellies) incredibly full, and excited to not have to stand in any line for a good long while, our time in Japan ended9.
I hope you enjoyed these posts on Japan- my wish is that you didn’t get Japan fatigue reading them, even though I had some Japan fatigue writing them. The end of the year brings new travels, places, foods, and friends for the Shaffers- I’ll see you back here in the New Year, hopefully more tan, more refreshed, and ready to keep writing, taking pictures, and taking way too long to edit those pictures.
Until next time,
-JS
Going through Shinjuku station is a trip- over 3.5 million people a day commute through Shinjuku, known as the “busiest station in the world”.
Also home to the creators of the Final Fantasy video game series, Square Enix, fwiw.
Excepting one coffeeshop we went into, and were denied entry because we had children. This wasn’t a bar, mind you- no alcohol present. Just no kids, apparently. Bizarre. Like the “no foreigner” restaurants, sometimes Japan can be inexplicably hard to parse.
I have waxed previously and at length about my love of Don Quijote.
These bath bombs were ridiculous- first turned the bath blue, then in the middle let out a blood-red fizzy dye, and finally a toy shark popped out of the middle. Nobody does bath bombs like Nippon.
Seeing an extended family of 20+ Pinoys all wearing matching Nick Wild (the fox from Zootopia) hats and green ties was a trip.
Japanese coffee shops, like Korean coffee shops, have a habit of not really being open before 10am, 9 at the earliest. We are usually up and raring to go by 8, even on vacation, so finding coffee that’s both good and open early is akin to a miracle.
which has home to one of the single finest meals I’ve ever had in my life, in Bangkok at the sadly now-closed Michelin-starred Upstairs @Mikkeller
We went back this last October, but that’s a post for another day.