Tokyo – Day 1

I woke up in my Tokyo hotel this morning around 11:00 and had a lunch of shrimp curry in the restaurant before deciding to head to Akihabara, the otaku paradise.

Remember how earlier I said that Japan isn’t weird? Well, I stand by that statement. Japan is not a weird country. But weird places definitely exist in Japan, and Akihabara is one of them. Every image of Japan that Americans have in their heads when they say that Japan is weird can be seen in Akihabara, which is the area of Tokyo where nerds go to spend all their money. In Akihabara, money can be spent on games, electronics, or talking to women dressed in maid outfits.

Yes, you read that last part right.

Akihabara is the only area in Tokyo I’ve seen where there are no clothing stores, and that’s because no one here cares about their fashion except for the women who are paid to wear weird costumes. Today I saw women dressed in maid outfits, schoolgirl outfits (both real and fake), Loli fashions, and even bunny ears. All of them were there to advertise something, and most of them were speaking in the most sickeningly sweet voices possible. I tried to take pictures of some, but they all hid from my camera, and I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t want a picture of me in an embarrassing costume taken by some random foreigner either. It must have been especially uncomfortable for them, since a lot of the guys who come here are really into these girls in kind of a creepy way. Many otaku who come to Akihabara do so to go to the maid cafes, places where men can pay to talk to women dressed in maid costumes. The whole thing just gives me an uneasy feeling. It’s a really weird subculture that I don’t want any part of. I dunno, maybe I just don’t understand it.

Anyway, after being sufficiently weirded out in Akihabara, I headed back to Ginza to walk around for a little bit before going back to the hotel. First I went to the Sony showroom, where I got to try on a pair of the most incredible noise-canceling headphones and see a dancing robot that rolled around on the floor. I decided to talk to one of the people who worked there in the strongest Nagoya accent possible to see how she would react. She looked surprised to see a 19-year-old white guy talking like an old man from Nagoya. Then I headed out into Ginza, which was filled with fancy department stores, a huge contrast from the crammed-together electronics stores of Akihabara. It reminded me a lot of Beverly Hills, although it was much more intense. I actually got to see it again tonight on my way back to the hotel to go to sleep as well. Seeing Ginza in the daytime and the nighttime showed me that Tokyo is a city which literally shines at night. Ginza was impressive during the day, but at nighttime it was a sea of color. Nighttime Tokyo is spectacularly beautiful, in kind of a Blade Runner-ish way.

After heading back to the hotel for a little bit, I went to Roppongi for one of the best meals of my life. I was with my parents, who have been visiting, and they decided to do an all-out Kobe beef meal. There must have been 10 courses in the meal we had, all of which were incredible. First a cucumber salad with scallops, salmon, and a chili sauce; then fresh tuna and shrimp sashimi; then a giant plate of swordfish, eel, eggplant, crabcakes, and fresh crab legs that could have been a meal in itself, and we hadn’t even gotten to the beef yet. When it came, we had it shabu-shabu style; a boiling pot of water was put on our table, along with three plates of raw beef and three different sauces: a sesame garlic sauce, a citrus soy sauce, and a chili sauce. The beef was like bacon; it was full of fat, but sliced so thinly that it wasn’t overwhelming, just incredibly delicious. Then we had three courses of different vegetables, followed by tofu, rice cakes, and glass noodles, all cooked in the same pot of water. Our second to last course consisted of udon noodles served in the broth that had been created from our meal. The water we had cooked everything in had absorbed all the flavors of the meat and vegetables, and tasted simply incredible. The last course was a custard served in a refreshing sugar syrup, along with a cup of green tea. By that time, I was so full I could barely move.

But I managed to get up and explore Roppongi a little bit. Roppongi is even more international than Shibuya; every restaurant I saw featured the cuisine of a different country, and I saw more diverse people than anywhere else in Japan and heard languages spoken that I didn’t even recognize. We ended our night by going to the Tokyo TV tower and seeing the view of Tokyo from up high. If I were to go to the highest point in Nagoya, I’d be able to see mountains and countryside in the distance. Even if I did that in New York I would be able to see the water where the city ended. Not the case in Tokyo. Tokyo is simply a never ending city. No matter which direction I looked, it was city as far as I could see. It makes Nagoya look like a small town.

That’s why I’m not quite ready to head back to Nagoya tomorrow. I feel like I just got a taste of Tokyo, like I just barely scratched the surface. But I do feel better knowing that no matter how long I spend in Tokyo, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully understand it. It’s just too big and too complex. I feel like no matter how much I do in Tokyo, there will always be more that I’ve missed.