Part 2: A Shinjuku Weekend
Are we hitting our stride?
Coming up:
Cold Open: Broad Strokes on Japan, Folks
Grocery Store Admiration + Mishaps
Meat on a Stick, Sake in a Bowl
The Living Dead: Inside a Pachinko and a New Gambling Addiction
The Japanese Microcosm: Don Quijote
Cold Open
I said this in my last blog, but there is too much to cover in Tokyo - it’s just not possible. I could spend a year here, and I’m sure it would only feel like I’m scratching the surface. Japan is a place where upon the day you get there, you feel like you already need to come back. One time is not enough. There’s so much here that no matter how long you’re in town, it’ll feel like it’s not enough.
While I could go on and postulate about what truly ‘tis the essence of Japan and thereto and henceforth, etcetera, etcetera, and the sorts… I figured it would probably just be easier if I could list a few quick hitters of things I’ve noticed (some of which you’ve probably already heard before):
Left Side of the Road: This took me admittedly a little long to pick up on. On my first day, I kept feeling like I was getting in people’s ways. Turns out it’s part of my tourism right of passage to look stupid somewhat often.
Trash Cans: Absent from the streets. Makes it even more surprising that the streets are so clean. Most places you’d buy something (convenience stores, coffee shops) have trash bins, but I guess once you get out of the store you’re expected to throw your own stuff away.
Clean: The streets here are pretty spick and span clean here. I think this comes from the culture of trash ownership from the previous bullet point, so ironically fewer trash cans creates less litter.
The sound of silence: The streets are fairly quiet by city standards. There aren’t a ton of cars out and about and most of the ones that are here are hybrids, which don’t make as much noise. And drivers rarely honk here (how do they express their commute rage??).
No jaywalking: Zero jaywalking would be an exaggeration, I’ve seen people do it, but the culture very much is not to do it.
Safety: It’s super safe here, yet surprisingly I almost never see cops. A high-trust society?? *GASP!*
The Birds: I’m convinced the crows here have accents. Their squawks sound shockingly human and tortured.
Anyways, back to our regular schedule programmed:
Saturday - January 11th, 2025
Goodbyes are never easy. I woke up today to the sobering realization that I had to say goodbye to
Ooof. Who stays up until 3 am these days? I woke up at 10 am feeling somewhat human. Slight headache, but WOW my legs were gassed. I’ve been walking so much. I’m going to need to start pacing myself. After sufficient phone time in bed breathed life back into my soul I was able to rise out of bed. I bid farewell to my first hostel friends, Blaze and Ben, who were off to the next adventure. The hostel life is an interesting cycle of having people constantly come and go that I’m sure I’ll be getting accustomed to.
Today I had the Shinjuku Gyoen (Gyoen means garden I think) on my agenda. I figured a little picnic action would be fun. There was this grocery store nearby to my hostel that I checked out earlier and boy was it awesome. Sushi fish, wagyu steaks, cool Japanese snacks. I think the added intrigue of every label being in a language I can’t read may have added to the allure, but lunch target had been acquired. On the way to the park, I stopped and got some sushi, yakitori (chicken on a stick), fried chicken bites, and sweet rice balls. All in was like $7 - this grocery store is gold.
Shinjuku Gyoen is a huge fenced-in park area with ponds, tea houses, well-kept grass fields, and manicured trees. Conveniently only a 10-minute walk from my hostel. Unfortunately, it being January most of the greenery was currently brown-ery. I paid the $3 entry fee found a fresh spot of yellow grass and sat down for my feast.
Boy, do I need to start using my Google Translate app more. The food I got was good, but almost none of it was what I thought I ordered. The fried chicken? Yeah, those were oysters. Talk about a surprising texture (not bad though). The chicken on a stick? Turns out it was chicken skins on a stick, not chicken meat (little chewy, but also not bad). The sushi was in fact sushi, so that was a relief.
Walked around the park and found a bench in the sun to read my book. While I was reading a Japanese guy, a little younger than me came up to me and asked if he could practice his English with me. His name was Colin and while he spoke at a slow pace, he had like an almost perfect. He said he learned by watching YouTube cartography videos (he likes maps). Turns out, Colin’s moving to the US. He’s going to Stanford for grad school (in hindsight this made a lot of sense). We compared Japanese and US culture for a bit and I tried to prepare him for the reality of living in Palo Alto without a train system. I tried explaining to him the culture of tipping at restaurants in the US and he did not understand. After trying to explain it to him, I’m not sure I really understood either (in Japan items cost exactly how much they are listed for w/ tax included).
Later that night, Zach (Seattle hostel friend) and I went to Omoide Yokocho (also called Piss Alley) for dinner. Piss Alley is a narrow street similar to Golden Gai, except its dozens of small Yakitori spots rather than bars. We found two seats at a spot and split some sake, a kimchi cucumber salad app, and each got the combo skewers. Woah, these things were gooooood. Apparently, the Japanese coal they cook over gives it its edge. I wish I could say what exactly I was eating - I think one was chicken, one was beef, and the other two were pork. (no idea about the meatballs).
To put into context how good these were, Zach and I finished our meal and then immediately decided we should go to another spot and get more. We went to another stall on the same street and got almost the exact same thing. Equally delicious.
After dinner, we migrated to Shinjuku’s red-light district, Kabukicho, which is where the night light is. Neither of us had the juice to go out fully, but the area was alive and ripe for exploration. Tons of people buzzing around, lights/noises everywhere, Jamaican men repeatedly trying to get into their strip clubs (lo siento, no hablo ingles).
We went into a Pachinko, which are these casino-like buildings filled with Pachinko machines (essentially slot machines). They’re all over Tokyo and they're stuffed with people. To me, slot machines always have felt pretty dystopian (look at me adding links) and Pachinko is no exception. Rows and rows of people zoned out - begging for serotonin hit - putting money down and robotically hitting buttons on a machine that is flashing and beeping right into their unflinching staring faces.
Naturally, we had to try it. Don’t knock it until you try it as they say so we put 1000 yen down. Money down the slot. Lights blinking. Button clicked. Lever flicked. The wheels start spinning. We lost almost immediately. Perhaps it’s a skill issue? Maybe if I just keep trying I’ll win this time. It’s gotta happen eventually right? C’mon Mom! 5 more minutes, please!
Back outside in the Shinjuku area. More lights, more noise, more Jamaicans (sorry, we uh got that thing we have to go to). We follow a crowd up an escalator into a tower and end up in an arcade. We played some K-pop drum game. Lowkey… I dominated. We hit a mochi place on the way home and were back at the hostel around 11 pm.
Sunday - January 12th, 2025
Today’s idea was to be a rest day. My legs were pretty sore and I’d been running around a lot, so I didn’t put too much on the agenda. Zach and I booked an Omakase lunch in the Shinjuku Station Mall which was the day’s headline activity. Omakases are similar to tasting menus where they prepare and slowly bring out small plates throughout the meal.
I’ll try not to gush too much about the meal because I know reading words about food isn’t the same as tasting it. I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking for me, but the highlights were the mackerel, the salmon roe with rice, a hand-roll full of uni (whoa), and the baby tuna nigiri. They also had this homemade ginger ale that was so good. I’ve been trying to hunt similar caliber ginger ale since then, but nothing has matched it. All in it was 18 courses and a little under $70. The most expensive thing I’ve done here, but well worth.
The afternoon was dedicated to R&R. I’m going to be traveling for a while. Slowing down the pace occasionally I think will help my stamina. For dinner, Zach, Kim, and I had plans to try a pork cutlet joint where you cook the sliced meat on a hot stone. We were a bit late leaving the hostel and were greeted by a hefty line. Turned out, that Monday was a holiday, so there were a ton of people out again. After moving sluggishly up in line and freezing out in the cold the server came out with ran out of meat (RIP), so we pivoted and went to a place that sold Korean fried chicken. Kim said his parents would be so disappointed in him - he came here to practice his Japanese and here he is eating Korean food with Americans.
After dinner, we went to a store called Don Quijote to buy a screwdriver. Kim’s laptop screen had stopped working and he decided he was going to take it apart to fix it (this sounded like a very bad idea to me). I don’t know if anyone has been to or heard of the store Don Quijote before, but it’s actually wild. It’s kind of the perfect microcosm of what I mean I’m describing when I refer to Japan’s “craziness”.
The contents of Don Quijote are somewhat of a combination of Target and Party City - they have everything. The layout is like an Ikea with arrows guiding you around a maze. Then it also has the density of a convenience store where you barely have an elbow room. It’s chock-full of everything you could imagine. It is brightly lit. There are colors and widgets and gizmos all over the place. They even have an EDM theme song featuring Bruno Mars that unfortunately is extremely catchy (proof below). It’s like if all the craziness of the Shibuya and Shinjuku areas were condensed into a store.
Back at the hostel, Zach, Kim and I kept chatting about life and comparing cultures. Kim talked about South Korea’s doctor strike, Korean movies, K-pop. Kim also asked us questions about why Americans were shoes inside their houses and why we pronounce “hello” like we do. Kim normally says it with an emphatic “HERRO” (I have a feeling that he’s playing into this extra as a joke). Kim started bagging on Zach for being old because he watched Dragon Ball Z (this is an anime show, Mom). Friendship! Woohoo!
More to come,
JT
"Their squawks sound shockingly human and tortured" LAUGHED
I would love to see JT’s k-pop era