Day 3 Part 2 Monday 2025 05 19 Sensoji & Sushiro

The second half of Monday we went to Sensoji, the home of one of the oldest and famous temples in Japan. As is the case with rampant tourism, there grew around it a veritable city of shops and stalls, hawking all sorts of wares. Our reasonable expectation was, go during sundown, it'd be far less busy, then we'd just buy random food from stalls for our dinner. This was all good in theory.

However.

Sundown meant all the stalls were closing, or at least, it seemed, all the food stalls. We wandering up and down and down and up with no food in sight. 

We did manage to get some matcha ice cream, my family is apparently all into matcha now even though I've been drinking matcha as my Stimulant of Choice for like 2 years. You're nerdy dad using a can of matcha from Costco? Ew, matcha.

See matcha ice cream and pancakes and candybars in Japan and now it's cool. It's like middle aged nerd dads aren't cool anymore or something.

But still we searched for actual food. Up and down and down and up to the point that my partner was on the verge of giving up, all she wanted was some sort of meat on a stick. 

You have to admire that sort of culinary focus. So I took the lead, instructing Google Maps to find us the closest meat on a stick. 15m walk away, apparently.

Along the way we bought all sorts of fried foods, never knowing when our next meal would be. In Tokyo, where the most I've ever walked is half a block before seeing another food option. I think the Temple area closing for the day left us scarred and a little bit jumpy in the food department.

We got croquettes, various types of meats in panko breading and fried, we got some sort of sweet glutinous ball (dongo) thing in fermented soy sauce. I know what you are thinking but yes, soy sauce, fermented in and of itself, has an alternative, also, maybe, MORE fermented, and sweetened. And then used to sweeten these glutinous balls. Again, my daughter's idea. The family tried and then filed that away for "Have tried this, for the last time". Maybe I'm used to Asian desserts, or in general, glutinous balls covered in some sort of unidentifiable sauce and sold as dessert. Used to it, maybe even welcome it?

Dongo

This is not the place, it just
looked cool

So, we finally arrive at this meat on a stick place. And it looks local enough to be too daunting for us to try and order there. The absolute lack of any English in any signs is enough to get us a bit squirrelly about the whole proposition. That and Google maps is deciding to be vague about things and we are trying to match the photos in Google maps with what we are seeing ("wait, is the door over here, but the bar is on this side with a sliding door behind it"). I have a worry that we are going to walk into a place that serves exclusively Wagyu steak and Wagyu steak accessories and now we are too embarrassed to leave and have just blown out entire food budget for the week.

But what with the constant snacking on the way there, we weren't starving. And we turned around, to return to the temple we just checked out.

Not Sushiro, just another place
that looked entirely too cool
for us

Somehow on the way back we decide that, actually, we do want to eat. One of my buddies who had taught English here (what North American/European doesn't have a friend who has taught English in Japan, though), recommended that I don't need to go to some Michelin star restaurant to have some good food, Sushiro is a chain that serves perfectly acceptable sushi. Two things of note: I've never had Michelin tires let alone been to a Michelin star restaurant; and when he says 'chain', I assume a smooth and easy transition for us tourists. A bubbly yet inscrutable mascot, combos with numbers you can just point at; small children throwing food, world weary employees with a dead stare but company approved cheerful demeanor taking orders.
 

The first warning sign: the restaurants sign was completely in Japanese. No small print translation in English, no ceding to the tourist horde that descend upon Japan every day. This was a chain, but it was a chain for locals, clearly. And then there was the thing with locations that continues to trip us up, the restaurant was not on the ground floor but a few floors up. Above a Uniqlo. Which I imagine describes the location of at least 30% of all restaurants in Japan, now that I think about it.

Not a single mascot in sight

We get there, and shuffle in with only mild trepidation into the waiting room. As is the general theme in the restaurants we've been to, there have been efforts to automate out any human interaction. The part of me that knows maybe 15 words in Japanese and those, not really well, this makes me happy. As someone who thinks he would like a more authentic Japanese experience, well, I guess I am, actually.

We have to navigate a menu screen to acknowledge our arrival. From a hurried glance of watching someone else interact with it, there is not a single word of English in sight. My partner had wandered off to check out the temple some more, so it's just me and the kids.

Me and the kids retreat further into the waiting room to contemplate our next action. Somehow thinking a bit of strategizing about the screen and the series of unknowns in front of us will make it easier. There is safety in indecision, we think. Also hunger.

My kids, not starving.

Travel for most folks is about seeing new things, new experiences, for me it's for me to exercise just the most middle class milquetoast form of bravery so my kids don't go hungry. This is one of those times. We march up to the screen and oh lucky for us there is a 'English' button hidden amongst the scattering of buttons and options and options for options. It's simple, you just select few options, get a ticket, and wait for the ticket to show up and get your seat. This is the sort of system that's going to replace the Blinking Not Blinking Sometimes Blinking light system from that ramen place, I'm sure.

The ketchup is a dead give away

We get to our seat and the ordering system is via tablet. Which is all well and good, but they underestimate my ability to get confused, I get the kids some food and promptly get a kids combo for myself because interfaces are tricky; for me, anyways.

My partner joins us because of some sneakily obtained candids I took of the kids laughing and having a good time. FOMO for parents is missing out on their kids having a good time.

The way back

All done commercing for the day

We finish our meal and go check out the temple now that's it's dark. In writing these blog posts and editing them, I realize this is a common theme. See the thing. Then see the thing at night. In our defense, it's always been a good call.

It's really quite stunning. This is a Buddhist temple honoring a deity that a fisherman found a statue of? It was in the sea, he pulled it out, but it's never been displayed (or seen?) and is housed, unseen, in that temple. 

Ok, Google Translate really helps to put things in perspective. Seeing all those Japanese characters, the mind wonders. What are those? Special blessings, some mysterious sign? Why? What? How?! But invariably, it's mundane and grounding and a reminder we're all pretty dang similar. One of those larger signs that looked like an announcement of the Apocalypse was something to the effect of "If you would like your prayers added to next Tuesday's ceremonies, please see the front desk". 

I'm sure one of those signs said "if you are visiting near dusk, your meal options will be limited".

Day 3 Part 1 Monday 2025 05 19 Akihabra

Today is the day we hoof it out to Akihabra, a nerd's dream we are told. Geeks flock from the world over to get to Akihabra! I'm mildly excited, I'm a nerd, I say to myself. And yes, yes I am. This is self evident.

We hoof it on over there, walking along the path of the rail, which has shops embeddded in the base of it, retail square footage being the rarity that it is, I suppose. Nothing quite catches my eye again and again as much the small cute, cars, more so when they are small, cute vans carrying things all over the city, supposedly to the small cute business, etc etc you get the idea. 

What is coolest about these little vehicles is that it's exactly how much you need for the job, no more, no less. You are travelling less than 50km in the city over flat ground, a bunch of packages. You don't need four wheel drive and massive  clearance and fog lights and whatever else gets puts into some SUV monstrosities. You need an engine, hopefully as small as possible, and enough space to carry your packages. It all appeals to the sensible part of me. They also look like they could be driven by a Disney character and nobody would bat an eye. 

We get there and the kids scamper off together to get whatever it is that kids get at Akhihabra. Hopefully nothing that would embarrass both us and them should we find it. But they are to stick together and it's only with the mildest of trepidation that we let them go.

My wife isn't particularly excited about anything nerdy or geeky except maybe me but that is certainly an aspect of my personality she'd rather pretend is not there. Like my love of graphical tees featuring science fiction icons or my ridiculously over engineered split key ergonomic keyboard, or, well the list goes on. 

So our first stop is the venerable Yodobashi Akiba. A monolith. A towering edifice to electronics. 8 floors of wires and transistors and all sorts of goodies for people who care about prime lenses, or 'true 8k definition', or 'cherry MX switches'. You get the idea. 

I wander in and, yeah. It's as billed. It has everything. Or nearly anything that could run on electricity. Just this section alone, that featured shredders, paper shredders, seemed aggressively thorough. You could cover up decades worth of malfeasance just on the clearance shredders alone. 

So my thinking is, sure, I got a nerdy keyboard (weirdly, all my personal blogging is inevitably on my chrome book, which features the sort of chiclet tinny laptop keyboards that I would never deign to think about considering to write on) for my work, but what if there was an even NERDIER one? Could my ergonomics be even more ergonomicy? I could stave off my inevitable arthritis and carpal tunnel syndrome by, 3, 5 months over my lifetime if I could just get the riiiight setup.

So I trudge up to the third floor, where PC peripherals are. And there they are, a phalanx of keyboards. Mechanical, naturally. Different switch types, just solid keyboards. They even have a separate section for GAMING keyboards, which, I assume set themselves apart from the work keyboards by having too many RGB lights, and cool sounding names that seem to be the rejected names for the sort of short lived special forces squad where their next of kin never qualify for military benefits, because they were never in the military, and were never in Argentina during that particular questionable coup, either.

But no split keyboards? No isolinear cap placement? Some niche s of nerdery, it seems, is too niche for this shop. 

Slightly worried about my unhealthy interest in keyboards, I wander some more. And realize, for all the selection of, well, everything, I don't really want anything, to be honest. And buying something 'just because I'm there' feels deeply icky. So I find another place to wander in.

Super potato. A shop that's, quite self explanatory, really, a retro gaming mecca. Old Super Nintendos, Segas, cartridges for them, Dreamcast, everything an old school gamer could want.  It's accesible through a side street through a narrow hallway up a dodgy elevator.  Everything is packed right in and features rare finds that I'm sure the right collector would absolutely lose their cool over. What, collecting vintage GameBoy Color! cartridges is a super cool hobby, I'm told. 

I wander through, rather quickly. Because then I realize, oh yeah, I never grew up with a console, all my gaming was on a PC. Usually well worn shareware demos. It's an easy sell to parents that we should get a PC for 'schoolwork' and the like, much harder to justify why Yoshi is going to help me get through algebra. So no actual memories or attachment to the litany of games that make up Japanese console gaming

My partner is off fighting through the chaos that is Don Quijote, voluntarily. I guess that's preferable to wading through the morass of nerd. The kids are off, doing whatever teens do. So I decide to find someplace that I would actually want to go to. Yes. A keyboard shop. 

It's only a 15m walk so I make my way through. It's off the beaten track's beaten track. In what looks to be a mixed residential/office supply/generic building .. area. I was never, apparently, cut out to be a city planner, or architect. It was not the usual techy consumery area, in any case. 

But find it I did. Split keyboards. Ergonomic mechanicals, custom printed jobs. It was preeetty rad, let me tell you. But rad enough to shell out the money only to realize I can't rebind the keys, or the firmware installation manual is all in Japanese? All which would require me to chat with the clerks? The math wasn't mathing for me. 

I'm in need of a washroom, and sure, I could dip into the nearest McDonalds, but a viewing of the super excellent film 'Perfect Day', about a washroom cleaning attendant in Japan, made me look for a public washroom. And yes, this was the sort of movie you'd call a 'film'. Super chill with many backstories and histories alluded to, started, and never finished. But the guy just seemed super happy, doing his job, taking the small pleasures in life.

I find the washroom is surrounded by a small park, right in the hustle and bustle of Akihabra. The contrast of sensory overload and consumerism with the sudden quiet, the waving trees, the what looks to be an abandoned (but probably just sleepy and underutilized) volunteer fire department, was wonderful.

The family finally all gets back together and I get them all Taiyaki, a filled fish shaped pastry, a lot like a waffle in it's consistency. I was told that Tokyo does custard very well, so I got four filed with custard. We all went back to that park and chilled, looking over their loot and finds. 

Except me, I never got around to buying any keyboards. Yet.

Day 2 Part 2 Sunday 2025 05 18 Shinjuku

I have no place to put it, other than it's pretty humorous. At least for me, coming from the Pacific Northwest where admitting you smoke (plain ol' tobacco) is the equivalent of confessing to minor war crime. In some circles, not so minor either. But here is a smoking area.

First off, it's funny that they just corral all these people outdoors, and miraculously the walls somehow contain the smoke. Or contain it enough to not bother too many non-smokers. But secondly it's kind of amazing that there are enough smokers to make use of it. Then I'm reminded that Tokyo has the population of about all of Canada, so, I suppose there's bound to be SOME smokers.

Then, well, we always do this. We assume we have far more stamina and energy than anyone could possibly have for a family that doesn't do, say, casual triathlons. But yes, we think after all this excitement and walking and standing and more walking we can make another trip, to Shinjuku.

First we take a small walk to a park, to rest. Little do we know that it takes an additional 10 minutes of walking since there is only one entrance, the rest of the park surrounded by  a sort of iron gate that seems designed to stop a reasonable expeditionary force. It vaguely reminds me of Sauron's helmet, if that gives you any clue. Well, it at least gives you a clue to how nerdy I am.

Halfway there, sensing the lagging energy of the family, we decide to get some of the famous vending machine drinks. There are vending machines everywhere. Something that I, who would rather interface with a machine than a cashier, given the choice, can really appreciate. 

These drinks all seem quite reasonable, a $1.20, a $1.75, so it's easy to spend the money. I also think just having to do the currency translation short circuits any sort of budgeting instinct I have. The numbers make no sense to my initial instincts, "120 YEN FOR DRI-- oh that's $1.20". There is also the reasoning "There CAN'T be this many vending machines without it making sense!". 

Everyone goes with things that are pretty safe. Peach juice, coffee, etc. I gasp as I spot the most famous drink for them all Pocari Sweat! We all slam those back and we are nearly back from the dead. Pocari sweat is what old school, like, from the 80's, Gatorade used to taste like. Slightly sweet, somewhat salty, all sorts of electrolytes. 

This is really the original Gatorade flavour, I remember it making a splash (along with arcades and Iran-Contra Affair) because it didn't taste like something you should pay for? But then we heard it was athletes and I guess back then what with the short shorts and jogging and jazzercize everyone thought "huh, that makes sense", and it took off. Over time, of course, the Big Sugar has take over and now one infant sized Gatorade can induce adult-onset diabetes. One day you need electrolytes, another day your pancreas is a burnt to ash and your are obsessed with the what the glycemic index is of everything.

We finally make it to the Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden, and are chagrinned to find there was a entrance fee. We sit outside, just chilling, thinking we don't need to go in, by my son, oh, he is called to nature and lays out the justification for paying and just going in, so we do. It's eloquent, there are hand gestures and that reasonable wheedling that makes one think "This kid is gonna talk himself out of a parking ticket one day".

It has regions for different gardens and well, it does end up being a bit of hike, at least for me as I try to get to different parts of the park and take in all the greenery. The family eventually just collapses under a tree while I wander. It is refreshing and incredibly calming after the hustle of the city.

There's just acres and acres of this park, with different sections. One has a genuine Chinese structure donated to the park by the people of Taiwan. It's sprawling, and really quite busy.  I guess everyone needs some downtime from the hustle of the city.

We continue our journey to Shinjuku. I think there are kicky shops or cultural areas or... something of the sort. If this was one of those casual triathlons that I imagine really well adjusted families compete in, this would be the part when a veteran triathlete who's taking his very last race collapses from lack of electrolytes of heat exhaustion or something equally heroic.

On the way are pulled into a stationary store. Why are there stores for stationary, this large, this fancy? Why are there so many people in it? These are questions and mysteries I'll never solve. My daughter, being the artistic sort, seems to have lost all fatigue and pulls my wife through the store as my son and I stand against a wall, trying not to sweat too much. We succeed at standing near a wall, anyways.

I do not have a friend in my life worth the
cost of some of these artisanal sheafs of paper.

I can't remember the reasoning, but we decide we'll just make a quick stop at Don Quijote (yes, he of tilting at windmills fame) a super mega ultra everything store. Why Don Quijote? Why misspelled from Don Quixote? Why a penguin? The questions you have about the store's name and motivations mirror the experience going there. See also, stationary stores.

Imagine this, going on for
 eternity and 4 floors of it.

This was sensory overload. signs, products everywhere. Aisles that seemed engineered only for someone with spelunking experience. Floors upon floors with no discernible organization. Or no organization that made sense to me. My son and I trudging up floor after floor looking for flag pins? It was a dreamlike state of trying to keep the fatigue body awake while the mind was pummeled with inputs. I'm trying to remind myself we've paid for the privilege of putting ourselves through this. 

What greets you as you enter in via the 3rd floor. Yes
you have to walk up three flights to enter in the retail
equivalent of a mosh pit

We stumble out and all we have energy for is to get some dinner from a corner store. Now, in Japan corners stores have all sorts of food, reasonably priced, and pretty acceptable for the sorts of people who have been laid low enough to get their dinner from a corner store. But really, the selection is pretty massive.

And not just prepackaged and additive laden food that can stay shelf stable on unrefrigerated shelves, the sort of overprocessed foods that really stretched the technical innovation and drive of the civilized Food Industrial Complex. But actual food that was probably prepared sometimes that day. I suppose the sheer traffic and volume of people who buy this warrants this.

For some reason, and my photos do not lie, I guess we decided to go for another walk about in the city lights, because I guess we wanted to see that temple again, except at night time. And I guess I really wanted to see Tokyo when it was all lit up and dolled up for the night. All the media I consume  about Tokyo seems to be about 75% during the nighttime, when the sheer wattage of the night signs dazzles you into submission

LIGHTS!

Sorry, I cannot get tired of these smoking areas

Mmm, pretty temple

JUMPSCARE. The god of fertility and luck

We make it back to our hotel, and plan for the next day. Hopefully remembering that we do not, in fact, swim in the open ocean on a timed run for fun.