Back to Tokyo

The thing about Tokyo is that there's not just one thing about Tokyo.  If you Google 'best 10 things to do in Tokyo,' you'll find warring posts from influencers with too much time on their hands writing snide comments to each other.  Some of the lists are helpful.  Some of them are just trolls trolling trolls.  

By contrast, if my daughters wrote the best 10 things to do in Tokyo, their lists would be eerily similar.

1. Lay in bed and watch tv
2. Lay in bed and watch tv
3. Lay in bed and watch tv
4. Lay in bed and watch tv
5. Lay in bed and watch tv
6. Humor dad by going to a shrine and complain until he brings us back
7. Lay in bed and watch tv
8. Lay in bed and watch tv
9. Pretend to sleep and watch tv under the covers
10. Eat breakfast

The infamous Douglass luck manifested early in this trip.  In watching the local weather announcements, we saw with horror that Japan was about to be struck by a 'storm of the century' that would cripple the infrastucture.  Given that we are from the Northeast (we are basically Starks), we took this warning seriously.  We thought about cancelling the trip.  We googled prepper sites for 'how to survive for a week when you are trapped in a Tokyo subway.'  I wrote a few people heartfelt goodbye texts.

Here is a picture of the storm of the century that shut down Tokyo.

In the bottom right there's a snowflake that melted instantly upon hitting the pavement.  Still, you know it was serious because a) it was a Friday in Tokyo and b) there were no people, no cars, and no dogs in trousers (it's a thing - blog post pending).  It felt a lot like The Living Dead: Tokyo Time.  Luckily, I'd also Googled 'how to survive in a Tokyo subway during a Zombie apocalypse' (though there was nothing on there I didn't already know).

While in Tokyo, Amy had a meeting with a colleague who has clearly never seen pictures of the US northeast in the winter and regarded this storm as the worst thing to hit Tokyo since Pokemon.  This colleague appeared gravely concerned about how she was going to get home.  Amy saw a stockpile of gatorade and saltines in her office right beside what looked like a home made spear.  Looks like somebody else subscribes to the zombietokyo reddit.

Enjoying Tokyo?

We had a late lunch at a conveyer belt sushi restaurant.  

I had a lot of sushi, as my stack of plates will attest.  Lily looked nauseous and had an edamame.  

It was only later that I learned her nausea was at least partly related to a Tik Tok prank in which teenage anarchists take a plate from the conveyor belt, lick the item, and put it back.  

Yet another of social media's contribution to society. 

Here I'm caught mid dad joke.

Tessa caught thinking it was funny.

By that night, Tokyo looked a lot like Gotham.

My brother, who has been frustrated by the complete lack of Godzilla in my posts, provided this rendering.

If anyone would like him to Godzilla your wedding photographs, I'm sure he would oblige for a modest fee.  

That night, the girls watched television while Amy and I went down to the hotel bar and listened to some jazz.

I had The Vesper.  

Watashi wa Bond.  James Bond.

I'm pretty sure the bartender got the joke.  But maybe not the one I intended.

To our daughters' horror, the next day we mandated leaving the comfort of the hotel and television and ventured out into one of the shopping districts.  Both daughters viewed this as a profound betrayal that was sadly typical of our failed "carpe diem" parenting philosophy (which they have since rebranded as "carpe puppis").  

After brekkie, we took the subway to Nakamise Dori and wandered in and out of shops (though with Amy's sense of direction it's possible that we wandered in and out of the same shop a few times).  Lily discovered that she does, in fact, like shopping and proceeded to have a manic episode in a purse store.  She left with a lot of purses and no money.

I also forced the family to see the Senso-ji temple.

Quick traveling tip for families - if you take pictures facing the sun, the squinting will make it look like you are all smiling.

The one place I'm never going to ask for directions.

Given our complex culinary needs, an Italian restaurant represents the best possible outcome for an early lunch.

In our last hours, we really wanted to find Harmonica Alley, which was described online as a lively warren of restaurants and bars lit by traditional Japanese red lanterns.  Google helpfully directed us to a dark alley that smelled like a sewer and had no restaurants or bars.  At one point, Amy cleared her throat and suggested that I head down the alley and see if the shape on the ground was a person and, if so, if that person was alive.

We retraced our steps and walked down street after street of an open air mall looking for an alley with red lanterns or a vegetarian restaurant that Happy Cow (Sad Soybean) told us was nearby.  To make matters worse, the vegetarian restaurant was sketchy and closed, the few places that were open appeared to be shutting down, and our internet provider suddenly decided that we had all abused the Fair Use Policy and was throttling us.  So by this point, we were lost, starving, and angry at Google but taking it out on each other.  This is what family therapists refer to as The Low Point and is, coincidentally, the least amount of fun for the odd person out in the gender game.  For those of you keeping score at home, that's me.  This is particularly true if you are the one who suggested traveling to Harmonica Alley.  If you've ever traveled with Amy when she's hungry you know it's like sitting on a fire-ant hill after bathing in honey.  A matter of seconds and you wish for death.  So in an effort to save our sanity and family, we randomly walked into a basement Indian restaurant.

Best decision ever (except for Lily - as her facial expression suggests, no decisions that day could even be called marginal).

Smile for the blog!

Exhausted and sated, we walked back to the train station and stumbled into the damn alley.