My trip to Japan will start like so many of life’s adventures: with a victorious game of Scrabble. This time, however, I best not housemate Zac, but an Art Librarian who works at MIT named Jennifer. Naturally, this was a good way to start any vacation, but I did not board that plane to demonstrate my verbal acuity to strangers. No, I boarded that plane to take me halfway around the world to a land where “Octopus Balls” is an everyday food.</p>
<p>And so I arrived in Narita, where I finally made a hotel reservation for that night, rented a cell phone (happy, mom?), and hopped a train bound for Tokyo. The train ride was about an hour, which at first gave me many views of mostly rice paddies, which slowly gave way to houses, which gave way to apartments, which gave way to nonstop neon. Tokyo is HUGE, as demonstrated by the 30 minutes of straight city that I passed to get to the center of the city. </p>
<p>Once in Tokyo Center, I made my way out to Ueno, where I spent my first night. Being brand new to Japan, I stopped at several points to ask for directions, and every single person I talked to had exactly the same advice: they handed me a map and pointed. If I had to pick one word to describe the people I met that evening, it would be ‘earnest.’ And as a result of that earnosity, I ended my evening with a dozen or so distinct maps of various areas of Tokyo. </p>
<p>It was dark when I arrived at my hotel north of the Ueno Park, which I walked through to reach my destination. Sleepy from the day’s travel, situated snugly in my snug room where I had to duck to keep my head safe from the door frame, and comfortable believing I had enough maps to begin the day tomorrow, I went to bed.</p>
<p>On the morning of the 4th (today), after watching an episode of the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers in the method God intended (in Japanese), I marched bacck through the park to the Yamanote Line to grab a train to Harajuku. The train ride brought several observations. First, I am not a good judge of Japanese age. Everyone looks like one of these ages to me: 12, 20, or 50. Second, although I am not surprised to see balding Japanese businessmen, nor am I surprised to see those businessmen playing portable video game devices in large numbers, I am surprised at how many of those balding Japanese businessmen are playing pink portable video game devices. Third, it is impossible for Japanese teenagers (adults? I have no idea how old anyone is) to look ridiculous. It does not matter what they wear, it is normal to look like that in Japan. Of course, some of that may be the particular quirks of Harajuku, but more on that later. </p>
<p>The train took me to a reasonable sized park which houses the Meiji-Jingu, a massive Shinto shrine build by the emperor, and rebuilt after WWII using materials native to Japan. After ritually cleansing myself in front of the shrine (wash both hands and your mouth), I entered the complex where a wedding procession was taking place. The shrine held areas for prayer votives, offering boxes, flower arrangements, huge drums, food offerings, and many beautiful and large buildings. My personal favorite is a area where visitors can ink their prayers on wooden tablets (called ema) and place them around a large sacred tree to be conveyed to the deities enshrined during morning ceremonies. Before leaving the area, I took a walk through the adjacent gardens and saw the iris cultivation (shame they weren’t in bloom yet), then made my way out of the park to stroll about the neighborhood.</p>
<p>First was a walk through Take*<strong><em>a-dori, a shopping street for pedestrians only where an almost endless sea of teenage girls sport bleached blond hair and shirts with English writing that can only be described as illiterate. Although not everyone has style, they each have their own style - having no style of my own, I’m a little jealous of it. That brought me to Omotesando, a street reminiscent of Fifth Avenue in NYC, where Dolce and Gabana competes with similar brands for the attention of slightly older clientele than Take</em></strong>*a-dori. From there I made my way into Shibuya, where I crossed that famous intersection (which is much more impressive in the evening than it is at 1030am), checked out a Sega arcade that had WAY too many electronic Mah-Jonng machines, and got lunch on the 8th floor of 109, a rather prominent department store. I completed the circuit by hiking back to Harajuku’s train stop, where I found several Japanese girls (who could have been anything from 13 to 25 years old) dressed in costumes and taking pictures with middle aged white guys - apparently this is normal on a Sunday afternoon in Harajuku. Anywhere else and this would have seemed untoward. </p>
<p>And with that, after only 24 hours, I returned to the Tokyo train station to say goodbye to Japan’s most famous city in favor of a city much lesser known - Toyama. But Toyama has something Tokyo doesn’t: Stephanie Simpson-White. Steph, a friend and fellow Tufts alum, met me at the Toyama train station and directed me to her apartment, which will be my home base for the next couple of days. Although my sole activity so far has been to bike with Steph into the center of town for a meal of food on sticks, I’m liking Toyama. </p>
<p>Also, I’ve learned to say ‘excuse me’ in Japanese. Perhaps the most important phrase ever.
hope you’re having fun!</p>