Tokyo

Greetings, travelers! I come bearing tidings of a trip I took (consults watch) eighty seven years ago! That's right, we're back on travelogue catchup times, and we are finally to the last stop of the trip: Tokyo! After the jump: impressions, recommendations, confusions, delights!

TOKYO: THE PARIS OF JAPAN! JAPAN, THE FRANCE OF ASIA! ASIA, THE EUROPE OF AMERICA! I HAVE SUFFERED BRAIN DAMAGE THANKS TO A SUSTAINED LACK OF SLEEP!!!

I finished this trip with Tokyo, having been told that (a) the city was overwhelming, and (b) sort of its own culture relative to Japan as a whole. Both things are true! And I'm mostly glad to have come to it last - I'd had a few weeks to get my language skills in a better gear, and to deal with jetlag (though I don't think I ever entirely settled into a sane schedule).

But the flip side was, especially after my wild side tripping from Osaka and my swing through Kanazawa, I arrived in Tokyo exhausted. This was up there with how I felt after my three-countries-in-three-days tear through Romania/Serbia/Montenegro on my way to meet my friend Kate in Croatia, and was a great reminder to slow down, you idiot. Ultimately, Tokyo was gonna kick me in ten different directions just by dint of being (scientifically speaking) eighteen New York Cities all on top of each other, but I definitely rested more than most humans visiting this city tend to.

I also took FULL ADVANTAGE of Tokyo's wonderful coffee scene. Most places not open til 10 (weirdness) but lots of lovely refuges. Third-wave coffee shops like this were bang-on, but even the vintage "kitasen" shops were lovely and warm and had great coffee.

So. What was this visit to Tokyo built around? I'll tell you! Basically, each day I picked a neighborhood (most of which were the size of a small American city, say Boston proper) and explored a blend of places I'd earmarked. Coffee shops, bars, restaurants, thrift shops, arcades, the odd museum, etc. And here's the thing: Tokyo resisted my usual mode of city exploration like nowhere I've ever been.

SUCH TREASURES ARE HIDDEN HERE

Thing is, this place is vertical. That's sort of dumb to say, because duh: it's chockablock with skyscrapers, big deal. The different thing to me, relative to the major world cities I'd visited previously, was how much life was lived up on the 18th floor or in the 3rd basement of these buildings. If you look at most photos of Tokyo, you'll see signs up the side of a building; those kanji characters are telling you that the eighth floor is such-and-such tea shop, or the third floor is a mattress retailer. Unlike most western cities I've visited, it's not a "shops at the street, offices above" city. As a result, with hardly any kanji (the one of three Japanese alphabets I barely studied at all) I couldn't do my usual thing of "wander a neighborhood and find the magical stumble-upons." This was frustrating! And makes me think I'd have a better experience with a guide, after significant kanji study, or with a totally unlike-me approach of literally going point-to-point on a pre-researched plan of attack. Which, who knows! Maybe! Or maybe I'll keep exploring to find cities with great hidden corners at street level. We will not know for SOME TIME.

A TERRIFYING VERTICALITY

The exception, I should note, was the old Tsukiji Market area. The market itself had relocated about a month before my trip to an antiseptic and depressing-looking drab structure further out of the city; but any concern that the "outer market," the shops and stalls that surrounded the fish market proper, would suffer from the departure faded immediately. This area was hopping with local shoppers and tourists, and holy moly it's the best area (that I experienced) to do some morning street food hopping. Offal stews and morning pastries and all manner of great ingredients and kitchen supplies... this neighborhood felt human-scale to a degree that most of Tokyo did not.

Not Tsukiji.

OK, that's a lot of general blather. What was good in Tokyo? Here's a few specifics.

The Mori Museum
Tokyo's contemporary art museum, with rotating exhibits and a gallery from which you can see the city sprawled in all directions, each quadrant of the viewing level opening out on the biggest city you've ever seen. Once you realize there are four of the biggest cities you've ever seen in Tokyo, you start to realize how big it is.

From the exhibit; photography subjects were asked to write down what they were thinking. Boy do I love this piece.

But the draw, of course, is the art; in this case, art responding to catastrophe. Inspired by the Fukushima meltdown, but not limited to that case, there were some stunning works here, including a great (and predictably interactive) piece from Yoko Ono on the refugee crisis.

The week after I left, this was to turn over into a series of works inspired by Hokusai's Great Wave; boy would I be back if I were in-country!

Ghibli Museum
Yep: this place is great! The studio behind Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbor Totoro, Porco Rosso, and a good pile of other classics opened a museum to their animation and it is just dang lovely and nice. The whole thing is designed with kids in mind, without condescension: there are dozens of windows at kid height, and any displays or windows at adult height stand behind stairs or ladders that make them accessible to kids. On the flipside, a room that recreates Miyazaki's office comes complete with an ashtray jam-packed with cigarette butts. Verisimilitude and a national culture of smoking FTW!

No photos inside, but hmmm this museum does look nice from the OUTSIDE, eh?

It's a bit tricky to get tickets here from the US, which is a shame; at the in-country price of about $10 this would be a no-brainer. For the ~$30 it takes from the US, I'm still very glad I went, but can't say it's a must-do for everybody. One compensating factor: getting to see one of the dozen or two short films that have been, and will be, only ever screened in the museum. A charmer from top to bottom.

These li'l fellas were under the fake ticket booth staffed by a Totoro. Me heart!

Kabukiza
Ahhh, finally the exact performance tradition for me on this trip! As I mentioned, I'd seen a Bunraku performance in Osaka, which was impressive and dazzling in individual moments but a bit grueling over the full performance. (Or, er, the first two hours of the performance at least.) Later in the trip, I'd see Noh theatre, which similarly had impressive technique but altogether just couldn't do it for me. But ahhhh kabuki, this was magic.

Kabukiza is a gorgeous theater, and they rent super-useful subtitling boxes for dumdums who don't speak Japanese so good. But this, of all the theatrical traditions, was one where (while I recommend getting one anyway) you might understand everything without it. Dynamic, energetic, funny, wild, and acrobatic. The theater typically puts on a sort of highlights-reel of an evening, and while I enjoyed the whole thing (the first play featured extended improvisation on the reputations of the actors in the show, which uhhh I did not realize was part of the form) the final act, a wild balletic sequence in which one of the young stars was treated as though a bunraku doll, unravelling his costume and flying through the air through the manipulation of stagehands, was transcendent, about fifteen minutes of pure theatre in the best ways. Golly I'm glad I pounced on these tickets.

Yoyogi Park
OK, the park is pleasant (there are three or four massive Central Park-ish parks around Tokyo, and they're all nice, though maybe I liked Shinjuku park the best?) but the south end of the park hosts an antique/flea market at least once a month, and virtually every weekend day (apparently) it hosts events: food festivals, regional festivals, anything. (When I was there, it was having a Chibu Prefecture festival, complete with those wonderful prefectural mascots we've all grown to love.)

Bars
I am not discussing bars here. That is for the next post. That's right: this whole post was a teaser for a post you haven't even read yet!! WE WILL NEVER LEAVE JAPAN. MEXICO CITY WILL HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL 2020. THE END.

The Kusama museum was nice too! Lots of things in Tokyo were nice! I guess it's a nice place!!!

(Oh, and in life news: my show has opened! Awaiting reviews, and very curious to see how it looks from the outside. But it's been great getting those muscles back in gear and playing again. If you're reading from Chicago, hit me up for discounts and/or comps. More on that process... probably after Japan, maybe before Mexico City? Guess what! It's slightly chilly out, I'm going to go put on a sweater!) [logs off, immediately falls asleep]