Part 1: Intro to Japan

Recap of the first few days in Tokyo

I’m sorry guys. I’ve already failed you. The idea behind this blog is that I’d write to you guys about the place that I am and what I’m doing to 1). give everyone a hint as to what the world is like over here and 2). convince my mother that I am still alive. Unfortunately, I think I’ve already failed in objective #1. A week has passed since I landed in Tokyo and I’ve been trying to think of how to describe Tokyo and I have no idea. I’m unsure I can put into words the scale and craziness of what I’m seeing.

I know this may seem a bit hyperbolic. Oooo lookie here - Jack goes out of the country one time and it BLOWS his mind. I won’t lie, my mind is kind of blown and part of me was thinking that maybe this was just my freshness to travel. I talked about this with one of my friends from the hostel (yes Mom, I’m making friends!). His name is Zach and he’s been doing travel like this on and off for around the last 10 years (including a stint living in Europe for a few years). Zach has traveled to over 50 countries so hopefully you guys will weigh his views with a bit more authority than my rose-tinted ones, but he feels the same way: Tokyo feels different.

Tuesday - January 7th, 2025

Tom and Sus dropped me off at the airport for my direct flight to Haneda (1 of 2 Tokyo airports). The flight was 12.5 hours. I did a crossword, listened to Smartness, and watched Goodfellas + Casablanca. The food was pretty meh (I flew United). First regret of the trip: Japan Air gives super tasty Japanese food on their flights so I’m bookmarking that for next time.

I snagged a window seat and elbow to elbow with this nice, but stocky Austrian man with white hair and a mustache. He told me about how the steak in Argentina is better because of the moisture in the grass. Also, I kid you not the guy in the aisle seat was like a carbon copy of the Austrian Oregonian, I almost asked if we could take a picture.

Wednesday - January 8th, 2025

Tuesday quickly became Wednesday with the +1 day time shift. Time flies (get it) when you’re having fun! After touchdown in Tokyo and customs, I did what any Gen Z kid would do. I set up my phone so I could connect to cellular internationally. I’m sure a lot of you know about these, but eSim cards are awesome. I don’t think they had this when I abroad traveled last on my phone, but I literally just hit a few buttons, pay, and then I have normal cellular like I would have in the States.

With the power of the internet on my side I was feeling bold so I decided to attempt taking the train. As some of you know, I’m a bit of a transit-head and I was very excited about the Japan metro system. Google Maps gave me like 5 different options, none of which seemed super intuitive so I picked the one on top and went down an escalator to a train that looked right. Long story short: looks can be deceiving. The train did not take me where I wanted to go but it did take me North which was good enough. I may have added a solid 30 minutes to my journey there, but hey, I got nothing but time on my hands.

This week I’ve been staying in Shinjuku, which is a little inland from Tokyo Bay and is the city’s main red-light district. My train dropped me off at Shinjuku station, which is the busiest train station in the world (it’s like Tokyo’s Grand Central, but not as pretty). The short walk to my hostel gave me my first taste of Tokyo’s scale. Everything around me was 8 stories, the buildings covered in fluorescent lights and ads, and there were more restaurants than I could try in a month here. The region reminded me of Times Square and you may not believe me when I say this but…. It may have been even nicer.

Please be nice to my iPhone 11 camera.

Closing in on my hostel I noticed another guy in his 20s with the same backpack going in the same direction as me. We chatted, his name was Blaze. We were going. to the same hostel and it was also the first day of his first solo travel trip. He was from Colorado and just graduated Cal Poly.

Blaze and I ended up being in the same bunk room at our hostel. It was around 6 pm and exhaustion/hysteria were starting to kick in from being up for around 24 hours, but we were both starving. We got a rec from the receptionist for a conveyor belt sushi place nearby. Got this bluefin tuna platter and some shrimp tempura (~$13). Welcome to Japan 😎.

Is this what the doctor ordered?

Back at the hostel later we met some other guys who had just gotten in that were also all on their first day of the trip (it appears that starting in Japan on a trip is a trend). Ben was around my age and was from Colorado, Zach (aforementioned) just hit 30 and was from the Seattle area, and Leo was an Aussie who was on the last day of his trip and trying to figure out how to pack 5 boxes of shoes he bought back to Australia.

Thursday - January 9th, 2025

I woke up excited and ready to hit the day. Only roadblock was it was 3 am and the jet lag had entered the chat. After trying to force myself to sleep with a mixed degree of success I ended up throwing in the towel and getting up at 7 am.

First thing on my day’s agenda - French Toast (a rec from brother Will). The place was next to my hostel and opened at 9 am. One quick thing I learned is that Japan gets up late. Walking over, you could see very few people were up and almost everything was closed. The french toast was fluffy and insanely good. It came with three different types (caramel, cinnamon apple, and berry), all three of which helped me hit my morning sugar intake quota. Needing to walk off the meal, I took to the streets.

I really didn’t have any other goal today other than orienting myself. I going to be in Tokyo for 1.5-2 weeks to start this trip off, so I figured I may as well learn my neighborhood a bit. My hostel was on the east side of Shinjuku, so I figured I’d walk west. Walking west, I was able to see the transformation of Shinjuku from the red district’s colorful lights to a more traditional business side. I walked until I reached Shinjuku’s Central Park, which ironically is on the west side of Shinjuku. From there I saw on maps that it was right next to the Government Building, which had an observatory, so I thought why not and took it up.

Tokyo is huge. I didn’t have a view of the city flying into the airport and had only been on ground level so far, so this was the first moment that I could see its magnitude. Tokyo is the biggest metro area in the world from an elevated view that was 100% understandable. You can tell from the picture. It goes forever. In terms of comparisons, obviously my simple American brain immediately jumps to Manhattan as it’s the only other place that has any comparable density in the States, but I think the comp is still off in a lot of ways. I actually think that Downtown Manhattan is way more vertical - there’s a lot of taller buildings in an even smaller area. Tokyo doesn’t have as many behemoths. Tokyo is in some ways like Los Angeles because it’s a metropolitan area and just goes on forever.

I got lunch at a gyoza place where the servers did not speak a lick of English and were drilling me with questions. Utilized my dynamic skill combination of menu pointing and giving thumbs-ups to effectively secure the goods in a timely and efficient manner (sorry for this sentence, I’m working on my resume). I got 5 gyoza, miso soup, and fried rice for ~$9.

Back at the hostel, I hung with the guys I’d met the previous day and chatted in our floor’s common area doing the predictable convos of life stories, day recaps, trip itineraries, etc. We discovered that we could buy beers at the 7/11 next door for like $2, so we did some Japanese beverage samplings. We formed a plan to get dinner and go out to nearby Golden Gai with two girls from our hostel that Ben had met. One of the girls, Dina was Norwegian and a medical student. The other, Trinity just graduated South Carolina and was doing the trip before her job started. On our way out the door, someone called out to us and asked if he could join, so we welcomed Kim to our ranks. Kim is another medical student from South Korea, who has pretty good English skills but has very good comedic delivery.

We got sushi for dinner and after a few drinks, Kim confessed to us that the martial law declaration in South Korea was his fault and that he’s on the run. We pressed him about this and figured out he was joking, but that medical worker strikes did potentially have a role in the president’s decision and that he was on forced vacation since he didn’t have school during the strike. Classic Kim!

I convinced Zach and Kim to “lady and the tramp” the last hand roll

Golden Gai was awesome. It’s this area in Shinjuku right by our hostel with a few small narrow streets lined with 2 story buildings each holding a tiny bar that seats 4-10 people. Our group of 7 crammed into the only one that was big enough for all of us and had drinks and chatted about our lives/trips. We met an Australian and an American at the bar and chatted about football. The bartender played Daft Punk. On the way back we got onigiri from 7/11 for $2. I love Japan.

Friday - January 10th, 2025

I woke up in the morning free of the effects of jet lag, but not entirely free of a hangover inflicted by the Strong Zeroes (lemonade Shochu drink) we had the previous night. I put down a coffee/panini combo that the hostel offered for breakfast for 700 yen (~$5), did some computer work then left for Shibuya.

Other than being incredibly catchy to say out loud, Shibuya is the region directly south of Shinjuku. You’ve probably seen it before, it’s the place with the super crowded intersection. Naturally, nothing is more exhilarating in life than going to a place that you’ve seen on Instagram, so I decided that’s what I’d be doing. Also looking at maps, I was able to deduce that there are two pretty large parks in between, so I figured I could add that to my day’s agenda. Look at me! Doing things!

I was walking towards the train station to get to Shibuya (sha-booooya) with the headphones in listening to music, feeling good. The walk was nice so I aborted the train plan and decided to walk there. One of the parks also was on the way, so I figured I could knock out two in one with this new plan. Re-arranging on the fly? Look at me go!

The first park area I walked through was called Yoyogikamizonocho. I haven’t once called it that (or even tried to say it out loud), it’s more identifiable by its Meiji Jingu Shrine which is in the park’s center. You history buffs may remember the Meiji Restoration from your history classes - this is the guy! The Emperor Meiji had a forest planted around the shrine so entering the park area takes you out of the craziness of Tokyo city and puts you in some nature surrounded by the trees and full of shockingly loud birds. I walked by the shrine. Beautiful structure. Didn’t have a spiritual experience this time.

On the other side of the forest, I emerged to Shibuya. Shibuya is nice. Shinjuku I would say has a similar scale and style as its southern neighbor, but Shibuya feels higher end. There streets are narrower, there’s nicer shopping, it’s much less red-light district-y. I did the thing where I walked across the Shibuya crossing (woohoo! Life-changing!), then realized it’d be a couple of hours since I had eaten something delicious. Ramen was calling.

Navigating to a side street with dreams of noodles on my mind, a short line at a vending machine ramen spot caught my eye, so I did get in line. (An aside: The ramen doesn’t come out of the vending machine ramen, you just order/pay on it then it prints your ticket and you sit at a counter. A human cook makes the ramen.)

I decided to walk back since it was nice, so I walked through Yoyogi Park, which was just south of the Meiji Shrine forest area. Very pleasant, but one thing to note is that almost everything is brown right now. I don’t know if they just don’t like watering stuff in the winter, but all the trees are bare and the grass is yellow. It would be awesome to be here in the spring sometime when the grass is green and the cherry blossoms are doing the said blossoming.

I walked back to Shinjuku and did a walking tour with this guy Terry. Nice guy. Solid English. He took me to the Godzilla building and a nearby temple where he showed me how to do the traditional praying style at Japanese shrines with two bows and two claps.

He’s so misunderstood.

I met up with the guys back at the hostel and we got conveyor belt sushi again. We welcomed a new guy Jacob into the fray, who was from Las Vegas. We deleted an impressive amount of sushi. I thought it was all pretty good, but some people described it as life-changing (their words not mine).

Jacob had been to Tokyo before and wanted to take us to a nightclub he liked. Dina and Trinity joined us drinking 7/11 beers at the hostel. AND Kim finally showed up! We had been looking for him. Man of mystery that Kim. The club we went to was kind of crazy. Smoke machines, crazy LED screens, confetti, dancing shows of people wearing monkey masks. Very Las Vegas vibe, I get why Jacob liked it. Alas, those of you who know me well likely know that I am not a club guy. I definitely had a fun time, but let’s just say when Kim and I split from the group at the ripe hour of 3 am, I was not upset about leaving.

Outro

If you’ve made it this far congrats! I’ve decided to take mercy on you guys and cut this one off at last Friday. I think I’ll try to split it up to maybe two updates a week. This way you don’t have to read as long of an essay each time. I’ll try to hone in on the content, but let me know what you guys like hearing about and I can make sure to keep it in there.

Adios internet friends!

-JT