Day 1 Saturday 2025 05 17 Tokyo

First trip to Asia with the family , and we decided on Tokyo. Land of the Rising Sun, Pokemon, anime, and all manner of nerdly pursuits. It's also, you know, clean, safe, and not super expensive, so that part of me that was always destined to pick the safe, sensible choice is satisfied. The same part of me that buys clothes at Costco and tries to avoid most manners of conspicuous consumption like sports cars or fine suits or whatever it is that get middle aged men buy to get in trouble with their spouses. 

I realize this is all part and parcel of being middle aged and middle aged crises but I've always suspected I was born middle aged. It's the Senior Life crisis that my spouse better watch out for. Unseemly gaudy walkers, diamond encrusted reading glasses and the like are sure to be in my future.

Anyways, Japan, Tokyo. 

It's a 10 hour flight from Vancouver and we take the newly (newish) launched budget airline, Zipair. Now, 10 hour flight and budget airline go together like Student Dentist and 4 root canals, but my wife assured me that almost no travel atrocities have been reported with this new airline. Nobody force to.. well, whatever that would entail. We're flying supersonic through the air in an aluminum tube to travel distances that most people in the course of History would never imagine would be traversable. Outside the really wild eyed and adventurous sorts, the adventurers, criminals, treasure seekers, and general ne'er do wells that make up the Age of Discovery. 

Anyways, Japan, Tokyo, or Tokyo, Japan. 

I have very vague notions about Japan, although I've consume plenty of media about and around it. One of the reasons it was picked was so that my daughter and her best friend, who now lives in Korea, could visit with her. For her friend it's like a 2 hour plane flight, but still, it was great that her and her mom made the trip out. These two will spend hours, and I'm talking like 4 plus hours, on their monthly calls. This is the sort of friend that I'm sure my daughter will have all sorts of adventures with, or maybe just oodles of long talks, probably more important option of the two to be honest. 

The first day, we land. I'm not sure if it's because the signs have absolutely no Latin based characters at all, but there seems to be a LOT of signage. And the English translations are not always available. Spotty at best. Begrudgingly  available, if you are lucky. So we make it through customs and immigration, which was very smooth. None of the vaguely posturing and slight jitters you get landing in some countries. 

We hurry through the airport, make our way to the train station, to pick up the passes we bought online. Ok, the passes my wife planned, shopped for, and bought online. I'm, for most intents and purposes, simply a self-ambulatory piece of luggage. So anyways, we get through the unending incomprehensible signage to the ticket booth, and are direct by a very nice Indian employee using perfect English, to use the machine. Unfortunately? Or fortunately for her employment, the machines do not support English, or support itin some mysterious unknown way that you'd have to know Japanese to enable properly. Aaaanyways, yeah, her job is basically to whiz us through the menus and get us the tickets. All good.

We get on the train, and are chatting away, and all I notice, visually only, is that the background behind my wife is zipping from right to left. Oh crap. We are moving? I didn't hear anything, or really feel anything. I then had to look up if this train was one of world famous bullet trains or some rail device previously used to show off at World Expositions or.. I dunno, UN sponsored transportation show downs that I assume countries have against each other from time to time? Is this like a maglev train?

Nope, it's just a regular boring train that happens to go 100 km/hr without breaking a sweat and without, apparently, indicating to the passengers that they are moving with something as rudimentary as, say, momemtum. We careen through the countryside, and Japan is really like all the Studio Ghibli movies that everyone assures everyone else they have absolutely seen. Bucolic. Verdant. Quaint as all get out.The only other detail I remember about that train was the same Japanese... I'm gonna say pop star because I think that's accurate, plastered all over that train. Advertising.. whatever it is you advertise with a young man with impossibly perfect skin running full out with a smart casual suit on.

We start rolling into Tokyo proper, the megacity, the city with the population of Canada, the ity that's spawned all sorts of genres and sub genres of science fiction. Dense, is the first impression. And, not laid out in any sensible manner, is the second bit. So buildings nearly touching, they are so close, and at odd angles to each another as streets just meander through the city following some pattern that I'm sure was logical when samurais carrying swords were a regular occurrence.

There is the unending sense of just waves of humanity. Millions and millions of people living and working and laughing and dying. 

So, Tokyo, first day. We make our way to our hotel. The extreme compactness of everything reminds one of a cruise ship, or Korben Dallas's living arrangements in the Fifth element. The hotel doesn't have the luxury of having reception on the ground floor, that's owned by a wagyu beef restaraunt of some sort. No, we have to go to the second floor to get to the reception of the hotel. And even before that, we cross two other hotels which are named almost exactly the same, with a small enough variation that we could have easily gotten into a heated argument with the wrong hotel about the room we never booked with them. 

The room is everything I imagined. A corridor, more like. With a bathroom that has exactly enough room for one person to do their business. Two if one is using the shower, the other has no hangups on modesty, and both have more than a passing interest in contortionism. 

There's a bunk bed, then right after, the larger bed for me and the missus. There is NO room around the bed because that sort of luxuriant square footage is for someone in a few tax brackets above us, obviously. We have to climb over each other to get into bed, but thankfully, it's a normal sized bed. I'm not sure what I was expecting, maybe a hyper efficient bed arrangement where you could move only if you coordinated your movements with your sleeping partner?

The bathroom has one of those world famous japanese toilets. There were enough buttons beside the toilet to maneuver a small aircraft carrier. It wasn't quite terrifying, but disconcerting would not be out of place. 

And, lemme reiterate how incredibly NECESSARY google's translate app is. In that you could point to a bunch of Japanese writing, and have it translate it on the fly. A little rocky, maybe, but with enough accuracy to avoid lasting harm. 

We had ramen at possibly the most expensive ramen house in walking distance. It had wagyu ramen on the menu, thankfully everyone avoided that, but it clocked in at an eye watering 50 dollars a bowl. It was good food though, and we ate with my daughter's friend and her mom. It occurred to me how far you can get along in a restaurant just by pointing and indicating the number with fingers. 

We had the traditional Asian 'fight' on who would pay for the meal, but you have to get up preeetty early to try and pay for my meal I 'll tell you what. This is a source of pride for some cultures, I can assure you.

After that, we let my daughter and her friend wander off and talk endlessly about whatever best friends talk about. 

The rest of the family wandered over the Ueno park and walked around an incredible Shinto shrine. Much to my chagrin all the plaques were in Japanese, but Google Translate to the rescue. It was made for a god of fertility, who had the most terrifying statue, a bearded man's head on top of a snake. But, you know, something was probably lost in the cultural translation.  

Besides the temple was a massive lake/pond.. Er, a massive pond or a mediumish lake. Across the body of water was a open theatre of some sort that seemed to have non stop open mic karaoke? Or maybe just rabidly enthusiastic amateurs. But it was constant, and their sometimes somewhat off key singing was sung with such gusto you had to admire it.

For all we know it could be some middle aged men singing about their love of sports cars and fine suits.