Day 2 Part 1 Sunday 2025 05 18 Shibuya

 My son is really into parks, I can't guess as to why. Maybe he's inherited my wife's love of nature and, ew, hiking. In any case we wake up and get pulled back to Ueno park and find some lovely Torii gates to another Shinto shrine. Torii gates apparently represent the transition from the regular realm into the spirit realm, so Google tells me. 

Visiting any religious area is always fraught with anxiety. The very real desire to not offend, to not cross over some unknown line in etiquette. When we were in Rome, as a former/recovering/lapsed Catholic, and as one who had attended a fair amount of Latin masses (a Catholic mass, but moreso), I was perfectly at home in the ornate churches and cathedrals. Overly detailed depiction of the crucifixion? no problem, various shrines, altars, candles, don't even bat an eye. Walking in and around Shinto temples is a whole other ball of religious wax. 

I remember reading about people (read, Westerners) doing pull-ups on the Torii gates at one site. Ok, clearly, that's over all sorts of lines. So the best we can do is mince very lightly through the area, and try not to go inside anyplace. Shintoism was founded 1000 BCE, so everything has the potential to be so very, very old. Seeing adherents approach certain parts of the temple bowing and doing various religious rituals just increases my anxiety that we are doing something, anything, horribly wrong, so it's a bit of a relief when we, respectfully, high tail it out of there. 

Tourism by anxiety, I call it.

The best friend mom was not going to be outdone with the Paying for Meals thing. So she treated us to breakfast. It was a fun experience, with any small talk misses being solved, once again, by Google translate. 

All of us parents basked in the glow of the friendship of our children. The world being what it has always been, and continues to be; any source of comfort and connection with other people should be cherished, I think the thinking goes. There is always the forward considerations that spin through parents head. We are constantly worrying about future support for our kids. Traditionally it's through education, or through values we think will keep them in good stead. Or, in this case friendships that will support them when we are long dead and buried. It's a bit morbid but something that hovers on the outskirts of the day to day thoughts of parenthood, besides the usual thoughts of 'THIS is what they consider CLEANING UP', and "HOW have they not started their school projects YET".

And then, it was off to Shibuya. One of the few things I really wanted to see was the Shibuya Crossing, or the Shibuya Scramble, an impossibly busy intersection that is the the first image to cross MY mind when I think "Tokyo". It was about 40 minute train ride there, with our daughter leading the way. 

The train system in Japan was possibly the number one source of Dread and Worry for me. Lines overlapping lines connecting to other lines and absolutely most everything in Japanese*. But really, as soon as you have your platform locked in, you just follow the signs directly to that platform, and you are good to go. Forgetting the platform or just thinking any path will take you there would lead you to some Labyrinth situation, minus the minotaur or David Bowie, depending on your reference. 

It's a 40 minute train ride to Shibuya, with everyone on the train looking at their phones or effortlessly avoiding eye contact with anyone else, so transit just like everywhere else in the world I've been. It's pretty wild we are travelling for 40 minutes and still WELL inside Tokyo. Lives and bubbles of friends and families, countless, passed by, passed through. Meandering streets, buildings too close for comfort. And because this part of the world can be quite humid and quite warm, you often glimpse patches of green. Nature busting forth when it's not kept strictly in check. Oasis of green either planned or not. 

And then we are there.

Shibuya Crossing, the Shibuya Scramble, an intersection of six major roads with crosswalks that went all over. Dangerously long diagonal crosswalks, regular ol' crosswalks. And oceans of people going back and forth. Mainly, it seemed, tourists with their cameras out as they crossed, trying to take the everyday immensity of the thing in. 

I wonder if the cars that are stuck at that crossing actively try to avoid it and the odd time they kind of forget and the driver is just cursing themselves, yelling at whatever navigation software they are using, rolling their eyes at the tourists. 

My daughter and her friend are off again, to look for manga and shop for others things. It was just me, my son, and my wife, wandering about. 

But right there, in the center of the crossing, one of the iconic areas of modern Japan was a Star Wars exhibition of some sort. Big screens looping the same trailer for the entire Star wars universe. Some props and costumes and then the in
evitable merch. I'm not sure if it was quintessentially Japanese, but it was certainly the sort of thing you'd expect in a world city. A multi billion dollar empire stamping it's signature somewhere in the cross hairs of some very high foot traffic (which probably has some  technical term for whoever counts these sorts of things, like Mean Cognizant Impressions per Retail Hour or something). 

Not Kanen

Needless to say, the boy and I were pulled inside, going slightly manic anytime Andor or Rogue One related was shown. AND I found I think was the only reference to Rebels, the short run animated series covering a time between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. It's nerdy for Star wards nerds, so don't worry if you have no idea what I'm going on about. 

Anyways, yeah, someone went to the bother of drawing Kanen on the wall (fun fact, voice by Freddie Prinze Jr.) of a massive overly signed and fan graffitied wall. 

Kanen

The merch had an unhealthy amount of gambling/gacha like merchandise. So not the toy itself, but a sealed bag that might have the toy you want from among a set of toys. The random reward drip that feeds right into the lizard brain, that powers all of Las Vegas, and the stock market, probably, is alive and well in Star Wars merchandizing.

We had our fill of that but we still had time to kill so we went and found another park : Miyakashi Park. It was situated on top of a bunch of buildings, oddly enough. It had a farmers market, some sort of frozen fruit... tasting/festival? A currently unused small kids soccer field, a bouldering wall, a skate park, and a Starbucks. All perched on top of an office building. As I said, space is at a premium, and well, we just needed seat.

It was warm, say, 24C with a humidity in the 80's. I don't do well when it's too hot, or too cold, or too humid. Basically, as I'm sure I've said before, I do really well with indoor conditions. Everything else and I'm in survival mode. 

I mentioned that Tokyo is a source of inspiration for Blade Runner/cyberpunk aesthetic, so I'm always on the lookout for buildings that really represent that taste. Of course, my son finds the perfect example. So cyberpunk. And really.. I'm not sure there is a good reason other than it's cool. The building is for records. Music records. Who even buys those anymore outside the people who yearn for punk to come back or Jack White.

We luck out to be at Shibuya when a festival was happening, the Shibuya Kagoshima Ohara festival. Lots of synchronized dancing of some sort, and Taiko drumming. Another one on my list that I honestly never thought I'd get to cross off. I'm not sure if this is the usual atmosphere, but the Taiko drummers where smiling and laughing and having a great time. The sound and the beat of the drums makes one think they are for war or something naturally aggressive in which general merriment has NO place. But again, first time seeing Taiko drummers. 

We are in a dizzy trying to figure out where to have lunch, so I find one the oldest running fast food places in Japan, specializing in beef on rice bowls, Yoshinoya. It's manned, as these chain restaurants often are, by folks from outside of Japan, as far as I can tell. They speak Japanese but something tells me that most could easily switch to Hindi or Tagalog or English without breaking a sweat. 

I get the beef bowl, since this restaurant has been around since about 1899, and must be doing something right. My family gets other things. It's, as we 've been told, quite affordable. But one realizes why it's affordable and why this restaurant has been around for so long. The beef is cut thin enough to almost see through, and has the battle hardened toughness that tastes like, well, profit margins, if I'm being honest. It wasn't horrible, but it was certainly fast, affordable food. You get what you pay for is a cliche for a reason.

But we had a lovely view of parade and it was great watching all the gentle synchronization of folks in all sorts of, I think they were school colours? There were young and old folks, in various states of traditional garb, yeah, I'm as horribly informed as you'd expect for a tourist who stumbles upon a decades old tradition in the middle of one of the highest Mean Cognizant Impressions per Retail Hour sections of Central Tokyo.

Then we did the usual, visit the shrine to that embodiment of loyalty, Hachi. Go ahead and look him, up, try not to tear up. If you don't, well, don't bother coming back to this blog, you monster.

Then some more sadness, final goodbyes between my daughter and her best friend. It's bitter sweet but we are all so glad they got to have some quality time.

Part 2 to follow, more parks, but thankfully no hiking.