{"id":7530,"date":"2018-09-29T12:39:49","date_gmt":"2018-09-29T11:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bjornfree.com\/travel\/?p=7530"},"modified":"2025-04-14T22:35:34","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T21:35:34","slug":"tokyo-takeaways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bjornfree.com\/travel\/2018\/09\/tokyo-takeaways\/","title":{"rendered":"Tokyo Takeaways"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m not sure how it happened, but I managed to visit almost a hundred other countries before I decided to treat myself to Japan. Last May, I went for two weeks, traveling with my wife. My expectations were few, but people told me it would be weird and fascinating. They were spot on.<\/p>\n

This post will only be about Tokyo. We stayed in Tokyo for almost a week, split between a few days at the start and at the end of the visit to Japan. Getting to know this enormous city would require much more time, but as you will see, a week is enough to approach the city from a few different angles.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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The twelve hour flight from Norway, mainly above Siberian Russia, is a good transition. Looking down at the still wintery tundra, I throw away all my thoughts about work and life at home. As usual upon entering unfamiliar land, I read about country’s recent history, and I memorize how to count to a hundred. It’s a bare minimum of preparations, which still is vastly better than no preparations at all.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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Arriving in Tokyo on a Sunday during Golden Week, the city is surprisingly quiet. The Golden Week is a series of Japanese holidays that allows a majority of the Japanese to on vacation for a full week. Train and plane tickets may be hard to come by during this time, but walking around Tokyo can be less stressful than at other times. We stay in the Nihonbashi district, fairly close to the ultra-busy Tokyo Station, yet we barely see other people around.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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The silence stretches into the evening. Exploring the city, I’m pleasantly surprised by the many water canals and rivers that split Tokyo into many distinct neighbourhoods. The number of pipelines, highways and bridges built to conquer these water valleys is stunning.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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I see few other pedestrians, and there’s not much motorized traffic. I’m beginning to think that there’s a curfew in place or something. Is Godzilla on his way? Or maybe I have just chosen the “wrong” parts of Tokyo to explore. It doesn’t matter. I’m happy about the city staying so quiet for me. I had expected city noise and crowds of the kind that usually makes me want to go home.<\/p>\n

Instead of the well-groomed and futuristic city I imagined, I find many places where I feel as if I’m back in the 1980s. The front of this gaming centre is much less impressive than the decibels of noise coming out of it. Inside, people sit around, playing old games in what appears to be a weird mix of apathy and excitement. But everything is perfectly clean, so my expectations got that part right, at least.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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I head underground, to see if maybe that’s where everyone is hiding. They’re not. I’ve seen videos of people in Tokyo being stuffed into the subway trains by employees whose only job is to do just that. Fake news?<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>

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At last I find people. It’s cozy here, in a distinctly urban way. Karaoke places, bars and restaurants urge people to leave the street and come inside. I think I’m about to find the real Tokyo. Or one of the many real Tokyos, at least.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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As if a flood gate has opened, suddenly this street outside the Tokyo Dome fills up with happy people leaving some event that just finished there. Smiling people effortlessly stream across the road and quickly disappear down a subway entrance.<\/p>\n

I just do my best to stay out of their way.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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Walking almost straight east for half an hour, I arrive in Akihabara. It’s also quite busy, an hour before the shops close. This is nerd heaven, with all kinds of weird\/retro\/fun\/flashy things being sold.<\/p>\n

I’m not the only tourist walking around with open mouth and lifted camera. Because of Golden Week, most of the other tourists are Japanese. It seems that they are just as astounded by the wonders of Tokyo as I am. That’s good to know. It means that if I need a change of habitat, I probably won’t have to travel far.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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Shopping for strange items can continue even after the shops close. Akihabara is home to many vending machines with unusual offerings. Snails, party ballons, muffins and earthquake detectors are all available in this one machine alone. No one can say that Japan lacks diversity.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>

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I stick around while Akihabara closes for the night. It takes less than an hour for this place to change from busy anthill to post-apocalytic urbanity. Electricity usage is drastically reduced when the shops turn off their illuminations as soon as there’s nobody around to look at them.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>

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The next morning we go to Harajuku. It’s the epicentre of Japanese youth culture and fashion, as evidenced by the many storefronts that look much like giant toys. The English language used on signs and clothes is often less than innocent, though. I’m not sure if that’s intentional, or just Google Translate at work.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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Wherever we go in Harajuku, we see long, orderly queues full of young girls and, curiously, quite a few middle-aged men. They’re all victims of fashion, of course, but apart from that they look like they have little in common. And I have no idea what they’re lining up for. The line often starts on a seemingly random spot, and every now and then someone comes to get the next ten people in line, and off they go. To somewhere, for some reason.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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I follow one of the lines, and it leads to a place where you can buy ice-cream with cute ears. The girls squeal with joy and take a few photos of the ice-cream and themselves, rapidly flinging the resulting pixels towards social media. Then they eat their ice-cream and walk off to stand in some other long line. Japanese don’t seem to mind queues at all.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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As if there aren’t enough people around already, the architect at Tokyu Plaza in Harajuku decided to add mirrors to everything at the entrance to the shopping centre. It makes for a cool effect, but it doesn’t lower my stress level at all.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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To calm down a bit, we walk up from Harajuku and enter Yoyogi Park. You can go there (do it!) to look at Japanese Elvis copies, jugglers, cosplayers, martial art groups, and other show-offs, but we walk the other way in search of some peace, towards the Meiji shrine grounds. Giant toriis mark the entrance.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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It’s quite busy around the Meiji shrine as well, but it’s still pretty, so that’s okay. Religion and gardening are close companions in this country.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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Today is May 4, so I naturally walk over and congratulate this woman on her splendid Star Wars cosplay. I’m saddened to learn that it’s just a Shinto wedding dress. Stylish stuff either way.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>

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We want to see Tokyo from above, but we’re too cheap to pay for entrance to the Skytree or Tokyo Tower. Fortunately, there’s this option; Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. Floor 45 here is open to the public, free of charge. It does cost us 30 minutes of waiting time for the elevator, though.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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From the top of the skyscraper we see a landscape full of buildings stretching towards the horizon in every direction. Given the extremely high cost of land here, it would have made sense to build taller buildings instead of having the city spread out so much. But earthquakes and Godzilla says otherwise. So this is what we see.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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For a few minutes after the sunset, Tokyo turns a wonderful shade of blue. I’ve never seen anything like it in a city.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/section>

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And as the sky turns dark, Tokyo becomes an absolutely overwhelming ocean of light.<\/p>\n

From up here it’s all quiet, too, so I have no problem appreciating the beauty in front of me.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>

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A friend tells us about an extreme Japan-style pet shop in Ebisu. For some reason it’s called Ebisu Zoo, and not EbiZoo. It is a really, really strange place. Navigating the narrow aisles inside this store, you encounter a surprisingly high number of different species. Some have just been brought here to be groomed, while others are for sale. Get your owl, meerkat, desert fox, or whatever, here.<\/p>\n

I’m not that into samurai movies, but the one on that poster I’d love to see. I suspect that it’s nowhere near as good as the poster, though.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>