We Have Only Japanese Menu

Jackie Endres
Oct 5, 2019
9 min read

Today is our 11th day here, and as I love (and will always love) palindromes, that calls for a celebratory blog post. So let's dig in.

Some time has passed since we last spoke, and we have been busy! Here are the highlights (and a little bit of a TOC) of what we've been up to:

Explored Fukagawa and Koto-kū
Got super kawaii in Harajuku
どもありがとう Mr. Roboto
Hit 15 miles of Tokyo DisneySea
Hiked Mount Mitake
Found a climbing gym to call home, and some running trails worth pounding
Survived (thrived through?) our first Japanese only menu, Japanese movie theatre experience, and Japanese Tiki Bar happy hour

Saturday, September 28th - Fukagawa

Over the course of the last week, Heather and I have become acquainted with a Japanese non-verbal cue that we have come to call The X.

Let me explain. One of the struggles we have encountered in the vast concrete jungle of Tokyo is finding a good place to exercise. Enter the Fukagawa Sports Center. It is cheap (about $7.50 for both of us), accessible via the train, and offers our two favorite exercises: running (via indoor track and treadmill) and bouldering. Last week, Heather and I donned our running sneaks, packed our chalk and climbing shoes, and set forth to Fukagawa to try this hopeful respite from our workout woes.

After paying for a morning ticket and checking in at the front counter, we were escorted to the main gym that holds the bouldering wall and treadmills (and a large open space where some version of a Japanese Zumba class was being held). We were then motioned to remove our running shoes. So, we entered the gym in socks with shoes in hand. The woman who walked us to the gym then transferred us to the gym receptionist. We pointed to the treadmills and asked if we could run, and that’s when we saw it—The X.

She crossed her arms in an X over her chest and bowed to us.

From context, Google Translate, and my minimal Japanese training, we realized that we could not wear our outdoor running shoes on the treadmill. Of course. The Japanese are very serious about the shoes-off mentality. In many places, there are signs reminding all to remove shoes before entering. In some restrooms, there are slippers that you put your shod feet into so your outdoor shoes won’t get the bathroom floors dirty. And this gym was no different. We needed indoor gym shoes. On a tightly-packed long-trip, neither of us had thought to bring another pair.

Ok, we came unprepared, and respect the culture, so we tried to make the best of the situation and moved on from the treadmills. "Can we run on the indoor track?"

X. Indoor shoes only.

Can we boulder with our climbing shoes? Yes, but also...

We were then informed of an elaborate climbing schedule on which each day is sectioned into three, and general climbing is set for one of those three periods, different on each day. This day, we arrived at 10 AM. We couldn’t climb until 6 PM and the pass we bought was good for the morning session, 9-noon. X.

Foiled. It, of course, was a valuable lesson, and the women were so contrite about the troubles caused by our confusion they returned our ¥800 while repeating, "Sumimasen," and bowing. Heather's (later) recreation of the X is below.

Despite the disappointment of the climbing/running, we recovered quickly, committed to the rest of the day we had planned. We started at the Fudo-dō Temple to view the 11 AM Goma (Buddhist fire ceremony). In this place and during the ceremony, no photos or videos are allowed, so Heather and I were granted an experience that felt uniquely our own and kept only by our memories together.

A bit peckish, we decided this day was the day for ramen. We found a well-reviewed place (reviews that mention a long line are a bit exciting because something worth waiting for here in efficiency central must really be worth waiting for).

We made a mistake.

Heather hasn’t eaten red meat for 20 years. I haven’t eaten meat for at least a couple, and before then I was an at-home vegetarian (I would only eat meat if I were eating out). So, not expecting pork cutlets in our respective orders of bamboo shoots and spicy egg ramen, the experience was a bit, well, unsavory. To no fault of the adorable and quaint counter service place we found—it was really the pork broth film that left a bad taste in our mouth. That said, Heather and I have both committed to expanding our pescatarian ways on this journey when the need arises, but we need to take that in small bites, not noisy slurps.

Needing to literally get the bad tastes out of our mouth, we entered a convenience store and grabbed a pack that looked like dried mango (which ended up being dried sweet potato) and a mint KitKat (devine).

Feeling fresh after the mint KitKat, we sauntered to the Kayosumi Teien (garden). Turtles, koi, and small Japanese children abound! A peaceful oasis in downtown Japan, we recovered from lunch, strolling through the perimeter of the grounds and sitting on rocks watching turtles interact.

After this, we visited our first Japanese museum, The Edo-Tokyo Museum, where we finally got the exercise we had been looking for.

The museum was full of Japanese history, especially of the Edo period where Japan was under the rule of the shogun. We also encountered a special exhibit about Samurai, where we learned they suffered a tragic demise after the feudal concept was demolished and the Samurai were forced to find work either outside of the skills to which they had committed their life, or to teach others the lost art of the Samurai (often through tourism).

One of the more interesting exhibits was in the modern section of the museum which showed the progression of technology like pagers and Nintendo, and also displayed school lunches over time. Perhaps needless to say, the Japanese lunches were and still are much more healthy and full of whole and nutritious food than the pizza boats, stromboli, French toast sticks, and nachos that frequented my childhood hot lunch plate. (Our bad, we took no pics of the lunches.)

Sunday, September 29th - Harajuku

Rainbows and costumes, open containers, pushing and shoving parades, doorless restrooms, people sitting in alleyways to take a break from the throngs... No, this isn’t NYC Pride, this is Harajuku. Our favorite splurge? A rainbow grilled cheese for ¥1000. #meltypride

Now, the day wasn't all party, party, party down there. Before we got to Harajuku, we started nearby in quite a contrasting way by exploring the Meiji shrine and some of Yoyogi park. A spiritual and calm location, even the Shinto wedding we witnessed felt more like a polite and reserved funeral march.

After the muted Meiji experience and the excitement of Harajuku, we walked around Shinjuku picking up whatever experiences were offered, including our first onigiri (seaweed-wrapped snack with rice and often some form of protein) and playing audience to a live radio show.

Monday, September 30th - The Humans are Dead

We were chatting with a friend Monday morning about having a free and unplanned day, and had packed our laptops for the coffee shop when Heather suddenly exclaimed, “We have the Robot Show today!”

In booking the excursions we have planned, sometimes it can be hard to keep things straight (we are continuing to evolve our methods and basically Google is in every space of our life, from Maps to Mail to Translate to Sheets to Fi). So, we scrapped all of our non-plans and watched the Robot Show. It may not be what you think (at least, it wasn't what I thought it was going to be). It wasn’t a bunch of humanistic servant machines, but a human-led entertainment show supported by robots of the IoT variety (which is probably much more representative of current form robotics than a Terminator demonstration). Here are some snapshots of the exceedingly colorful and entertaining show featuring both humans and robot-driven machinery.

Wednesday, October 2 - DisneySea

This full-day was too incredible and too well planned to bury it in another post. Look out for another post fully dedicated to the real magic that is the superlative Disney Park. What I will say, spoiler alert, is that The X was a part of our disappointed laughter that day.

Saturday, October 5 - Mt. Mitake

And, we finally hiked! Downtown Tokyo does have plenty of green space devoted to parks, temples, and palaces. But not enough to really feel in nature. Yesterday, Heather and I took a train 2 hours outside of Tokyo to embark on the Mt. Mitake hike. It surprised us: when hiking in Portland, the end of the hike is usually a sprawling vista, but this vista was a bit more bashful. We could only really see out beyond the tall forests of pine and some bamboo in select spots. The peak of the hike was not, in fact, a mountain peak but a Buddhist temple. And we had some trouble with poor signage that kept luring us to an evasive rock garden that was advertised as 1K away, but then had signposts along the way that told us 0.8K twice with a half-mile between.

We finished our steep climb with some plum wine at a restaurant with a view and then took the cable car down to begin our 2.5-hour public transit journey home.

We also did one special thing towards the end of our ascent. In 2015, I lost a good friend unexpectedly. His fiancé gave me some of his ashes, and I’ve been carrying them around for a few years (they even survived a car theft in 2016) waiting for the right time to spread some. Yesterday, Heather and I had the opportunity to boulder over vast tree roots snaked around a large rock formation, which had a statue at the top. We climbed and I sprinkled some of Brad’s ashes over the side and watched them float away into the wilderness below.

Other Random Experiences

If you're keeping track, you'll note that not all days are accounted for. So what else have we seen and done?

We went to our first Japanese movie theatre to watch アド・アストラ (Ad Astra). Tickets weren’t cheap (close to $20 each) but concessions were reasonable and unique. We ordered a rice burger, whose “meat” and buns were both forged from rice as well as a side of fries. But not just French Fries, no. There were also green beans, daikon, onions, and zucchini. The soft drinks are also a normal size, not a Costco vessel.
We found Trader Vic’s Tokyo. Heather is a tiki-phile, and this is the only Trader Vic’s in the world that has the original recipes.
We refused to accept a soft X. Walking into a restaurant located near our apartment, we were immediately greeted with a sullen-looking man who, in forced English said, “We have only Japanese menu.” We looked at each other and shrugged. We used Google Translate to scan the page, and ordered a plate of fresh sashimi and two beers. We had a lovely and heartwarming exchange with the diminutive and elderly female restaurant purveyor who was donned in a smartly pressed kimono (who, we could only posit, was the crotchety man’s mother). She explained in Japanese and motioned how to take the sushi (don’t dare mix the wasabi into soy sauce), and took great care to make sure we were welcomed and accommodated. Her son seemed to brood towards us, which, we, of course, empathize with if he was, in fact, protecting his mother from the discomfort of rude and non-Japanese speaking tourists. We hope, however, that she enjoyed our company as much as we did hers.
After a comedy of errors in trying to find a good place to run and climb, I had my first 5K on uninterrupted paved (non-concrete, weeeeee) trail, and we found a rad climbing gym that has two nearby locations and ladies day twice a week for a discounted rate.
We found a "park" near us that we went to eat our convenience-store lunch one day. It was completely empty of people and we thought it a nice quiet place to eat. Turns out, it's actually a defunct water feature, and sitting on the edge brings loads of begging ants. So we had to stand in the now dry fountain and fork (whoops, chopstick) our food into our mouths. Still, it was just ours.

Stray Observations

Japan is a cat person. There are some dogs (lots of French Bulldogs) but many fewer than we’ve seen in the state. But cats? Beloved.

You have to go out of your way to eat crappy in Tokyo. You don’t need to go to a “healthy restaurant” or health food store to find nutrient-rich consumables. Convenience stores, grocery stores, restaurants, bars, theme parks, theatres. Fresh fish, vegetables, limited processed foods. Neither of us has weighed ourselves for about 18 months since the great throw a weigh of 2018 (Heather accidentally tossed both our scales when we shacked up together). But these hiking pants I packed on a wish that now hang loosely tell the whole story.
So far, the patience of the Japanese with our lack of fluency has been astounding. One waitress even engaged us in some Pictionary.
It appears autumn falls late here. While relishing the warmth (temperatures ranging between 70-85˚ F), we do long for some indication of season change before we leave. It’s as green as Midori right now. (Fun fact, midori, or みどり, means green in Japanese.)
It is exceptionally safe here which is liberating. We have never lived with such a sense of security. It impacts the culture in wonderful and unique ways. As an example, the Japanese have perfected the art of sleeping in public. On the subway, on the street, they are catching some major zzz’s with nary a concern for their unsecured belongings.
Tokyo is uber clean, but surprisingly, there are very few trashcans. Why? The Japanese take their trash home with them. What?! Personal responsibility on fleek.
The laundry situation needs some Japanese toilet love. What does that mean? It needs upgrading. Many washer-dryer combos (ours included) take more than 6 hours to do a small load of laundry. But wait, there’s more. After 6 hours, the clothes are still damp and must be hung, because the dry cycle does not actively dry anything -- it's just an exceptionally long spin cycle. It’s all very confusing.