Fish out of Water and a Crappy Experience
- Jackie Endres
- Oct 9, 2019
- 9 min read
Finally, we are feeling better acquainted with Tokyo. We’ve been able to call audibles on train directions, navigate with ease the convenience store food offerings, and are even picking up more Japanese and piecing together bits of understandable two-way conversation with locals.
This comes with a commitment that we’ve had to the full exploration, the doing things the long and difficult way sometimes in order to do it the short and better way next time, and a willingness to take risks to engage locals, go the wrong way on the train, and enter into unknown (and yet to be determined whether we are welcome) haunts. This investment has started to produce great returns, as the last few days have unfolded with ease and incredible outcomes.
Sunday, October 7, 2019
After a casual start to the day, Heather and I took a leisurely stroll toward Shinjuku, our destination for a guided evening walking tour of the neon lights and itty bitty bars. En route, we made one good decision and one bad one.
The good decision:
Stopping at a joint along the way for fresh sushi. It was mid-afternoon, so the place was pretty empty and we got a healthy amount of fresh nigiri, miso soup, green tea, and local drafts for less than $30.
The bad decision:
Looking for a small sweet after our late lunch/early supper, we sauntered into a chocolatier to find columns along the wall that held fruits, nuts and other goodies encased in multi-colored spheres of chocolate. We walked along the wall carefully, choosing the ones we were most interested in, and turned the knob to drop two to four of our favorites into the small white bag. Proud of our carefully curated selection of what amounted to a glorified bridge mix, we checked out.
We accidentally spent $40 on a small bag of chocolate. Whoops.
Truth be told, we’ve made worse decisions with our money, so we laughed it off and now feel very posh with our teeny collection of high-end confection.
At around 5:30 PM, we arrived at the tour’s meeting point and connected with the rest of the group. Two Oregonians (just like us!) with their friend the Floridian (from Utah) and a lone ranger from New York. Yuko was the guide, and she led us to our first stop, the izakaya Chirin Bou where we enjoyed a drink along with small bites of nigiri, breaded tofu, and fried tako (octopus). In addition to the lovely food, the company was also refreshing. While we adore the companionship of each other, we do long for relaxed and friendly social engagements and sorely miss the easy and fulfilling interactions with our friends back home (that’s you!). So, we got to know our good-peeps crew and enjoyed the comfortable banter for the rest of the night.
After our first drink and vittles, we spent the next hour getting a tour of the Shinjuku night lights (including a special performance by Godzilla featuring Brad Pitt) and the Golden Gai.
The Golden Gai is a small area of Tokyo comprised of six alleys featuring 200 of the cutest, teeniest, most fire-hazardy, non-handicap-accessible bars in the world. We toured through here and got our next drink at Lonely, a 52-year-old bar still run by the same man who opened it when he was 20 (and who got generosity points for guessing my age at 24).
Our guided tour ended at Lonely, but we stuck with the Oregonians for the exploration of a couple more places including our 2nd Japanese tiki bar.
Monday, October 8, 2019
I’m terrible at secrets and suspense. So, without build-up, I will tell you that this day was our best day so far. It was full, incredible, surprising. We’ve been reliving it together for the last 48 hours, remembering each tiny gift of the day, incredulous that we did it all in “the same day!” Gleefully, I get to relive it once more here with you.
In order to manage the stress of planning an entire year-and-a-half, we’ve balanced our schedule with free days (no plans), joint days (shared plans), individual days (we spend the day apart doing our own thing), and individually planned days (we each plan one full day for the both of us). This day was a Jackie-planned day, so Heather got to sit back stress-free. But before you give me much credit for a Jackie day being the best day, some of our favorite parts were the unplanned discoveries we made along the way.
After we checked exercise and breakfast off the list, our day started with a walk across the Rainbow Bridge (not to be confused with the pet afterlife destination) where we chose the north route and got the best view of Tokyo we’ve seen to date.
On the other side of the Rainbow Bridge is the magical part of Tokyo called Odaiba. (It’s so wonderful, there’s another Jackie-day there next week.). This man-made island is surrounded by both water and fairy dust, so you know it’s good.
On the way to our first stop (a snack), we walked by the beach (which I had not planned and was surprised to find).
And that is where we encountered the first part of this blog’s title: leaping fish!
Not only were we surprised by the beach, but we were also stunned to find energetic fish leaping from the water. It felt therapeutic to just stand and watch it, so we did just that.
And then, the snack. Yes, we love snacks. Almost as much as we love cheese. But not as much as we love cheese snacks.
After inhaling the cheese tart, we sauntered through the mall where the dairy-laden treat was sold. It was approaching early afternoon and--though tasty--the cheese tart wasn’t quite holding us over, so we sought to rectify our hunger pains. Another good choice/bad choice.
The good decision:
Spending $8 on wasabi KitKat.
The bad decision:
Getting a vegetable ramen dish, where you dip your noodles in the separately provided broth, only to discover that this broth had pork cutlets in it. Fool me twice…
The good news was that at least it was separate, so we could simply eat plain (not even butter, oil, or salt to flavor) noodles and vegetables (really, the most tasteless thing we’ve eaten here as all of the flavor was in the broth we avoided). But, we capped it with another bite of wasabi KitKat.
AND…
Then we made a great decision.
Remember how I told you not to give me too much credit for the day? This one is ALL HEATHER. Besides being a Tiki-phile, Heather loves scatological humor. Enter, the Unko Museum.
This wonderful mall that houses cheese tarts and wasabi KitKats and tasteless noodles is also home to a museum dedicated entirely to Unko. Translation: Poop! (The second part of our blog title.)
We started by creating Unko on a toilet, which they then put on a stick for us to carry around the museum. We entered each vibrantly colored corridor, which included exhibitions and activities such as:
A poopy tea-party
Video game rooms where you rack up points by stepping on poop or screaming into a microphone to create a virtual poop that matches the power of your scream
A creativity room where you can draw your own poop and enjoy others’ poopwork as well as various global products and games devoted to the wonder of scat
Instagram worthy installments of floating unko, motivational mirrors, and more
A nice touch: the Halloween theme that gratifyingly features ghost poop.
I don’t have any more words that could describe this interactive museum better than the images and videos of our crappy experience. Enjoy.
I have never had more poop-related fun.
On the way out of the mall, we walked through a promenade that housed the Giant Gundam Robot as well as the Freedom Flame, a gift from the French to the Japanese. I know that the French get a bad rap, but they sure do know how to give other nations gifts relating to liberty. Oh, we also tried some matcha ice cream that, instead of hot fudge and whipped cream, it has red beans (kind of like kidney beans) and gooey rice balls as the fixins.
Departing the Diver City mall, we were back on track for our next stop, MegaWeb. This (poorly-named) Toyota-driven (harhar) experience is a free, interactive, multi-level museum. Our first stop was the History center, which made us nostalgic for our own Subaru (renamed SCUBAru post our first dive trip together).
Between the history and the technology parts of the museum, we connected via Venus Fort, a mall reminiscent of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. After a requisite stop to play pop-a-shot in Namco, and flitting through a couple of stores, we departed Venus Fort through the exit that doubles as an entrance for the next part of MegaWeb.
There, we visited the more modern part of the museum, the Toyota City Showcase where we tried our hand at wheelchair basketball (a bucket-list item for me since my hometown has a team that consistently wins national titles) and Heather’s first VR experience (which was disappointingly just about safety features--many of which we already experienced in our aforementioned SCUBAru--and sitting in traffic, much to Heather's dismay).
Overall, I’d grade MegaWeb an A. There is a volume of activities and attractions it offers for free that aren’t just a pitch for Toyota, which was refreshing.
By the time we got through MegaWeb, we had traversed a long bridge, visited two malls and two interactive museums, eaten snacks upon snacks (you may have heard) and plain noodles, and we were beat. It was time to relax.
We ended the day at the Odaiba Oēdo Onsen, the place to unwind. Though the central attraction is the hot spring baths, this location has so much more. We began our visit by exchanging our street clothes and shoes for bare feet and a yukata. The entrance fee was a mere $15, and we were given a wristband for any other purchase we would make within (food, drink, relaxation services).
We immediately put those bracelets to use with 50-minute massages which successfully shook the tightness out of our bodies that had already walked 10 miles.
Loose and relaxed, yet hungry again, we strolled through the indoor village of restaurants and shops, ordered a seafood and rice dinner, and drank green tea from the tea and water stations dispersed throughout the onsen.
We were then ready to finally enjoy the hot baths. No pictures here, as it is all done nude at this point. Some notes:
No tattoos allowed (Portland, how did we escape thee unscathed?) as tattoos in Japan are related to the Yakuza (Japanese gang culture).
Hair and the washcloth must not enter the baths, so many women placed the washcloth on top of their head or tied it on their heads, recreating a nude Rosie the Riveter
There were numerous types of baths: small wooden tubs, large sprawling stone baths, cold water baths at 19 degrees C, hot water baths at 60 degrees C, microbubble baths, large jet baths, sodium chloride baths, indoor and outdoor baths. And, as an adjacent option, a dry sauna and a steam sauna.
Being naked for that long with so many other naked women made nudity feel like a non-event and body image issues like a cruel and irrational disease. We thought about how odd it would be for an alien race to visit our planet and discover that many of us grip tightly to shame over our own lifeform’s form.
We spent hours relaxing, trying each type of bath and changing location whenever we got too hot, too cold or just ready for the change of scene. At around 9 PM, we left the baths area feeling more relaxed and revived than either of us could recall being in recent memory. It was a natural Zen-like high.
Before departing this oasis and leaving our yukatas behind, we walked through the village once more, enjoyed an animated projection show, and devoured our last snack of the day, a decadent crepe. You know what’s better than dessert? A dessert which is actually multiple desserts in one: fruit, ice cream, cheesecake, crepe. One portable package of four desserts.
There were other areas that we didn’t even have time to try that day, including a pond where tiny fish suck at your feet, sofa rooms, and hot stone areas. We have another Odaiba day planned on the 14th, so the tentative hope is to finish our next busy day with another onsen visit.
And that was the most perfect day.
Followed by…
Tuesday, October 8th, 2019
(AKA, That day we decided to stay up all night to watch the sunrise over Tokyo which was a bad idea because trains stop running at 1 AM and a taxi to a place beyond buildings that was mediocre at best to see the sunrise cost more than two tickets to Kabuki and also it was chilly and windy but we did it and still had (sometimes tired and loopy) fun extending our evening into the morning by glow bowling, going to a jazz club, exploring the 24-hour Don Quixote we-sell-everything store, and walking the streets with no objective.)
The evening started with my friend Yoshi, who treated us to an amazing family-style Japanese dinner. It's been six years since we finished business school (and worked on a terrible "corporate intrepreneurship" project) together, and we had much to catch up on. Yoshi also generously gave us a wealth of tips for our remaining six weeks in his country.
The rest of the night, I feel like you already got the gist...
Stray Observations
Sparkling water is cheap and gum is expensive
We were told you could buy anything out of a vending machine in Japan. We have not found that to be entirely true, but we have bought underwear and socks
You may (will) get more food options if you use a Japanese menu instead of an English one
Trains are packed at 12:15 AM and empty at 6:00 AM
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