Japan, Trip One, A Dream Realized, From Tokyo to the Old Capitals

For years I’d been pointing at this. There’s a photo of me on a beach in Washington a year earlier, finger aimed west across the Pacific, telling the universe I’m going there next. And then I went. This is the trip where the dream stopped being a someday and became a Tuesday.

Getting there: the longest, most wonderful day

We left St. Louis on a small plane to Chicago O’Hare, exit row, more legroom than I’d ever had, a good omen, and then boarded the giant that would carry us across the world. I sat there before takeoff in genuine disbelief that something so huge could lift into the air, watching the last American sunset out the window as we rolled toward the runway. We took off in the dark. A dream is starting and being realized. I actually wrote that down mid-flight.

Then Japan started early, at 38,000 feet. Pepsi and a snack; a little halting Japanese traded with the sweet flight attendants; and a chicken teriyaki dinner that arrived as this absurd, generous spread, edamame, a crab cake, cold noodles in dashi, a little Italian salad, rice with shredded egg, vanilla ice cream to close. We watched Harry Potter until we both fell asleep. More meals, more naps, a “sugarless honey bun” I slept through, and finally the big plane dropped fast and clean onto Haneda. People said good evening to us in Japanese as we got off. Immigration and customs were effortless. We took the monorail to Hamamatsuchō, a train to Shimbashi, and found our lovely little hotel room.

We were too excited to stop. We rode out to Tokyo Station, got happily lost inside it, walked to the Imperial Palace and back just to be out there, got offered massages by approximately eight different people, and ate McDonald’s teriyaki chicken sandwiches in the room, ordered in Japanese, a tiny victory. Showered, brushed teeth, met the Japanese toilet (a Toto, and a revelation; America is doing it wrong), and crawled into bed at 2:30 a.m.

Tokyo, the first days: shrines, Harajuku, and the choco monaka saga begins

We woke to the hotel breakfast buffet, salmon (our favorite), curry rice, mushroom rice, pork buns, and went out into the city. We saw the red torii gates of Hie Shrine (and walked straight into a wedding), the calm of Meiji Jingu, and the sensory overload of Harajuku, a cat café, a Shiba Inu café too busy to get into. We had our first Kura Sushi, working through as many of the top-ten plates as we could find, both falling for the salmon-cheese, and it was so good and so affordable.

This is also where a small, ridiculous quest began: I went looking for a chocolate monaka (the wafer ice-cream treat) and could only find vanilla. Reader, I would keep looking. The “choco monaka every night” running gag of this trip starts here.

I’ll be honest about one thread, because it’s true: there were moments I felt fraudulent about my Japanese, like I’d studied so much and still wasn’t good enough. But reading back through everything we did, I was ordering meals, trading jokes with shopkeepers, navigating trains in Japanese the entire time. I was harder on myself than the evidence deserved.

The big day out: Kamakura, the Great Buddha, and a Mt. Fuji sunset

One of the best days pointed south to Kamakura, the old seaside temple town about forty minutes out. We started up in Kita-Kamakura at Engaku-ji, a big, beautiful Zen complex where we made friends with some older ladies and helped take their photo (and quietly cheered “uh oh” when they got gently scolded for sitting in the wrong spot). Across the tracks, Tokei-ji was smaller and set deep in the woods, which is where we started noticing the spiders, fat ones strung between the trees. (We also saw, on the train in, a genuine Yakuza-looking character, suit, neck tattoo, spit on the floor. Tokyo contains multitudes.)

Down in Kamakura proper we walked the main shopping street, waited out a long line for Miyoshi Udon (worth it, udon, dashi, chicken and green-bean tempura, the whole order done in Japanese), and got a strawberry sweet frozen in sugar, gorgeous and almost too sweet. Then the payoff: Kotoku-in, and the Great Buddha, the giant bronze Daibutsu, which we saw from outside and climbed up inside. Our legs were dying by then. We kept going anyway, out to Enoshima, where we rode the escalators to the top of the island, ate chocolate ice cream, and caught an incredible sunset with Mount Fuji silhouetted behind it. Forty-nine minutes of trains home, a FamilyMart run for onigiri, and bed.

A night I’ll never forget: Yuriko’s table

On a recommendation passed through my friend Masako, we went to a tiny restaurant, Kappo Makino, run by a woman named Yuriko. I walked in shy and a little overwhelmed, and the warmth of the place dissolved it. We couldn’t read every dish, but we let her guide us: a fresh, bright potato salad; a kuresson (watercress) salad with bonito; and then the sashimi, yellowtail, bonito, tuna, flounder, so fresh it almost didn’t seem real. The showstopper was a grilled conger eel so fresh it was still moving on the plate. We had pufferfish too, served with green onion and special sauces; she mentioned, casually, that it’s the kind of fish her husband catches. We took a photo with Yuri-chan before we left, running on fumes after a huge day. It’s one of the most genuinely Japanese meals of my life, and it happened because a friend sent us there.

Akihabara, Asakusa, Odaiba: the Tokyo grab-bag

The city days blurred wonderfully together. Akihabara for game stores and gachapon and crane machines, hunting (unsuccessfully) for retro Macintosh stuff; Sushiro for lunch, which is so good; the Yamaha store, where Nicholas got to trial three flutes and I crushed the whole interaction in Japanese. Asakusa for the great temples and a beef-and-rice lunch, then a Tokyo Cruise boat to Odaiba, past the replica Statue of Liberty, for an afternoon of stores and okonomiyaki for dinner, riding the driverless Yurikamome home. Somewhere in here I finally started reliably finding my chocolate monaka, and got one nearly every night thereafter. Small joys, faithfully logged.

West on the Shinkansen: Nara’s deer and Kyoto’s temple on the hill

Then we packed up and rode the Shinkansen to Kyoto, only a handful of stops at the start and end, that astonishing smooth speed, with a wandering plan. We went south first to Nara Park, where you feed the famous free-roaming deer little biscuits and they bow to you for them (we bowed back, it was the best), then walked up the mountain to the enormous temple, Todai-ji, and its great hall. We got hopelessly lost finding the hotel, took the wrong bus, walked forever, but the ryokan-style hotel at the end was a dream, with a bath right in our room. Everything but the main street was closed, so dinner was MOS Burger, and then we soaked, put on yukata, took several baths, drank sweet drinks, and just relaxed completely.

The next morning, after an incredible traditional Japanese breakfast and another hot bath, we climbed to Kiyomizu-dera, the famous temple whose great wooden stage juts out over the Kyoto hillside, much higher up than I expected. We caught it relatively empty going up; by the time we came down it was packed. Then back to the Shinkansen, snacks in hand, home to Tokyo, and sushi for dinner. A busy morning, a chill day.

Back in Tokyo: Godzilla, a teacher, a concert, and Halloween

The home stretch in Tokyo was pure city joy. Ochanomizu’s music shops (Nick found two more flutes he loved). Shinjuku for the giant Godzilla head, Don Quijote, Tokyu Hands, and the Kabukicho Tower, where we won a giant Godzilla plush, soft and ridiculous and now ours. A near-empty Mexican restaurant for quesadillas and burritos, then Tokyo Tower at night, lit up and pretty. Tokyo Skytree another day for the high views. A concert over in Kawasaki where the sound was so rich I closed my eyes and just let it carry me. And I got to meet my Japanese teacher in person in Shinjuku over a tonkatsu set, one of the warmest meetings of the trip, plus a pilgrimage to the Pokémon Center (I got a Pikachu) and Itoya, the great Ginza stationery store. (I kept hunting for Malice Mizer CDs and never found any. Sad days.) Sushiro again, because obviously.

This stretch covered Halloween, with Tokyo doing its enormous, costumed thing around us.

The last day, and the gentlest goodbye

For the finale we rushed out the door on two showers and a protein bar and rode a string of trains out to Naritasan, a wonderful little temple town with a big temple, to meet my friend Masako and her friend Mami-chan. We exchanged gifts, walked down to the temple, collected two stamps in our new temple-stamp book, and ate unagi (eel) with rice and pickles and soup. Gifts, photos, real talk, real friends, it was the perfect note to end on. Back to the hotel for steak, one last choco monaka, and packing while we told stories until Nick fell asleep.

A note on the contrast home

The flight back was its own marathon, two more elaborate Japanese plane meals, a missing favorite vegetable soup I genuinely mourned, and then Chicago customs, which, after two weeks of Japanese kindness, was a shock. America treats arriving people like a nuisance; the yelling and the indifference landed hard right after where I’d been. We got our footing with O’Hare McDonald’s bagel sandwiches, endured a five-hour layover, and finally got home to St. Louis on Saturday afternoon, having woken up, by my count, on Thursday night Japan time. I barely slept. The cat wanted attention every hour. I didn’t mind.

The takeaway

My first Japan was everything I’d pointed at on that beach and more, temples and bullet trains, a Great Buddha and a thousand bowing deer, a conger eel still moving on the plate, friends who fed us and taught us and sent us to the right restaurant. I spent a chunk of it convinced my Japanese wasn’t good enough, and spent the whole of it using it anyway, succeeding anyway, belonging there more than I let myself believe. I came home knowing two things for certain: that the dream was real, and that I’d be back. (Reader: I was. Twice over. See Trip Two.)