Tokyo Flyby

Not, sadly, the name of a hot new J-pop boyband. Although maybe it is time for me to try a career change...

Tokyo calls. Last time I was there it was December, and even though the weather was pretty mild the streets were quiet enough that I genuinely thought that even Japan's capital city was pretty much untouched by foreigners. Silly me. This time it's the high season and it turns out Tokyo's actually pretty popular, so I'm surrounded by more white-faces than I can count. I also landed in the middle of a sudden early-Spring heat wave so the city is sweaty, my God it's sweaty,

I tried to resist having classic 'traveler possessiveness'. That thing when westerners lay emotional claim to a foreign country, as if being an repeat or long-term visitor from outside makes you some sort of protector of the local culture (see: hippies in Goa and most of Thailand). I mean, I am a traveler so I'm part of the problem but... it's hard. There's a visible gap between the people who enjoy slotting into the respectful calm of Japanese life, which somehow survives even in a busy city atmosphere, and the ones who want to hang off every kawaii sign yelling 'Britneee get me a selfieeeeeee!'. Sigh. Can't you all just fucking BEHAVE?!

Anyway... my actual reason for being in Tokyo was to catch a gig. In 2017 I saw a New Japan Wrestling show, and some live music was next on the list of things to try. At the wrestling show the crowd were ridiculously quiet in relation to the football-chant vibes of a London wrestling crew. A spinning backflip over the ropes might, might, get a polite ripple of applause, and I wanted to see if the same rapt silence applied to the live music scene. The lineup was Enter Shikari supporting Crossfaith at Shin-Kiba Studio Coast. So that's a rave/metal crossover band from the UK supporting a drum and bass/metal group from Osaka, and thankfully it seems that Japanese gig fans go just as mental as they do out west. Beer was drunk, sweat was made, heads were bobbed. That was just me, but everyone else went batshit crazy. There is a little bit more... group synchronicity to things. If one guy at the front of a Japanese gig starts clapping or pumping his fist everyone follows suit, as if it'd be rude not to join in. People do sit on the floor between bands which is a bit weird. If you sat down in most UK venues you'd never get unstuck again,

I had a few extra days to kill and my boss/friend from Hokkaido was in town playing tour guide for his visiting family. As comfortable as I now feel out here it's always handy to have thirty-something years of local knowledge to prey on for local knowledge and secret info, so I tagged along for the day. Some sights I'd seen before, like Tsukiji fish market. The fishmongers take no prisoners and WILL remind you that you're in the way, so it's always fun watching the battles between bewildered tourists wielding cameras and an over-worked market-hand hefting half a frozen tuna. One new experience was a 'yokocho', which is basically a smartened up aback alley with tiny little eateries overlapping each other and customers crammed into elbow-rubbing tables. You can just order from the place you're sat at, or grab a menu from another place fifty metres away, and yet somehow you order it all through the same waiter and they'll keep track of making sure all the money reaches the right pockets. It's crazy fun, especially on a buy weekend night where you can people watch the girls Out To Be Seen, the boys Out To Impress, the veteran gaijin showing off to their friends and the handful of novices just trying to survive.

I still find Tokyo quite a strange place to kill time. A lot of the key 'sights' are based around shopping or price-bumped experiences for day-trippers. Maybe that's just regular for a capital city, and for pure cultural sight-seeing I'd always side with Kyoto. But there's still some amazing stuff to see if you do a little digging, especially when it comes to food. If I had to choose one reason to travel it probably would be food tourism, finding local favourites off the beaten path. Investigating a random queue in Ginza led me to an absolutely amazing ramen joint (Ramen Takahashi), and one of the best meals I had was in a tiny little place in a dark alley behind a corporate skyscraper - a massive plate of fresh soba and tempura for less than 500 yen (about £3.50). There's still a couple of 'big' things I want to experience here. Sumo. A show at the Tokyo Dome. Disneyland, maybe?

I should mention capsule hotels, which have ended up being my budget accommodation of choice. Even in London there's a bit more space to spare, so the concept that hasn't really caught on in Europe, whereas Japanese cities have about ten times the population per square mile. I thought I'd be crammed into a tiny coffin space with zero privacy but they're... actually pretty good! The pods are big enough to easily sit up in, and you'd have to be the width of a fridge to touch the sides. You get free PJs so can save on clothes, check in and check out are super smooth, and it's Japan so everything's kept pretty spotless. The only downsides are having to be a bit OCD about your rucksack organisation, or spend half your life rummaging about on the floor of the locker room, and the odd occasion that you follow a real stinker into the shared toilets. I'm sold.

One little thing I do still get caught out by - Japan's 'Mystery Flavour Lottery of Doom'. One cereal bar I ate turned out to be savoury. It was like trying to eat the dried block from a Pot Noodle. And those crackers you thought were filled with a delicious cheese/sausage combo? No sir, that is the flavour of salmon roe. Check the little pictures on packets very, very carefully.

#travel #japan #Workaway #japanese