A Quick Stop in Japan

To kick off my 6 months of travel, I spent 5 days in Tokyo with my family. To kick off the travel portion of this blog, I’m writing about it. I’m not entirely sure how to go about this travel blogging stuff, so I’m just gonna wing it and see how it evolves over the next 6 months. 

Japan is a weird place

It’s hard to articulate exactly what I mean by this but I will try. By weird, I don’t merely mean different than what I’m used to as a Californian. I’ve been quite a few places that are different than California, but none of them has given me a sense of weirdness approaching that of Japan. Every other difference I’ve observed during my travels feels simply like a varied expression of human nature. It’s different, but it makes sense; Japan does not. 

Take J-walking for example. If you’re standing on one side of a road and want to get to the other, usually you would use a crosswalk and/or wait for a light if it’s convenient. But if it’s not convenient, and there’s a reasonable gap in traffic, there’s no issue in just walking across the street. The definition of “a reasonable gap in traffic” varies quite a bit. In most of the U.S., if you can calmly walk across the street without any cars crossing your path, you’re probably fine. Maybe a reasonable gap means you have to run across the street to not get hit. In India, it might mean you have to play real-life crossy-road. All different, but all make sense. But in Japan, it can be 11pm with no cars within sight and a clear view of the road in both directions for 100ft, and people will wait for the light for over a minute to cross 10ft to the other side of the road. I saw this exact scenario my first day in Japan. It makes zero sense. If there is no danger of being hit, it makes no sense to not just cross the road. You can’t hide from logic behind poorly thought-out arguments involving “culture” or laws.” Not J-walking in those scenarios is just flat out stupid. There were tons of other things that contributed to my perception of Tokyo being incredibly weird, but J-walking is the easiest one to put into words. I think the easiest way to summarize why I feel this way is that I found the extreme social restrictiveness (i.e. illogical yet strong norms and taboos) of the society as something that felt unnatural.

I won’t get into detail about everything else I found weird about Tokyo for three reasons: I was only there for 5 days, it’s something that is impossible to truly express through words (you frankly have to experience it yourself), and I want to get to talking about the magical time that my gastrointestinal system had. Suffice it to say, Japan (specifically Tokyo) well and truly holds the top spot for the weirdest place I’ve ever been. 

Gastrointestinal system

The best part of Japan was easily the food, both going in and coming out. I’ll start with the end: bidets. Everywhere had bidets; specifically Toto bidets, which is the brand of bidet that I have at home and is, by most accounts, the best. If you’re unconvinced by bidets, that’s ok. I’m sure there were people who were uncomfortable with the idea of refrigerating their meat when refrigerators first became a thing, but eventually everyone was forced to bow down to the inevitability of basic logic. Bidets will be the same, Japan has just figured it out faster than most other places and it was great. I didn’t have to wipe once. 

Now, the food. I’m going to talk about every notable food I had, so buckle in or skip to the end depending on what kind of person you are. 

Our first breakfast was a salmon hand roll from 7/11. It was basically a triangle of rice containing a salmon center that was wrapped with plastic, then seaweed, then plastic again. This way, the seaweed didn’t touch the rice until the last minute and get soggy. There’s a clever way to slip the plastic off and enjoy. It was one of the best quick, cheap, low-effort snacks that I’ve ever had. And as a recent college grad I’m something of a quick, cheap, low-effort snack connoisseur. In fact, there were many of these said snacks at the 7/11s and that actually might be the thing I end up missing most about Japan. Being able to walk into a 7/11 and have satiating and satisfying food (that wasn’t a protein bar) in my mouth within a minute for less than two USD is something I would have killed for in between classes.

We had sushi, naturally, and it was, naturally, great. However, finding a sushi restaurant was actually quite a bit harder than I expected. For one, there weren’t very many of them. They also weren’t open all day and when they were, they had immensely long waits or were reservation only. The difficulties of finding sushi didn’t end there, at least if you were brown and/or American. This hypothesis is evidenced by the following experience I had. 

After looking up sushi restaurants to go to for lunch, we take the metro to one that both Google and Apple maps said was open. I walk into the restaurant, followed by my two siblings. A waitress comes up to me. 

“Table for three,” I say. 

“Three? Ok one minute,” she says as she turns to one of the sushi chefs. 

I watch the two of them have a short interaction in Japanese as I observe many locals enjoying some delicious afternoon sushi. After they finish their interaction, the waitress turns back to me.

“Sorry, we are closed,” she says, gesturing for us to leave.

We step outside the restaurant, somewhat confused, suspecting that we might have just gotten racismed. As we regroup and I pull out Google Maps to find another sushi place, a couple Japanese people walk by us and into the restaurant. They do not reemerge. 

So, was it the fact that we were brown? American? Brown American? Who knows. But there was certainly something going on. However, we were then able to walk a little ways and find another place that did take us, and they seemed quite excited to have us. Their sushi was amazing. 

The highlight of all the food was a standing room only, cook-it-yourself Wagyu place (this one). We were given a selection of five different cuts of A5 Wagyu to cook ourselves and holy shit, it was the best beef I have ever had. There’s not much more to say about that. It was just really really good meat. And we got out for about $15/person. 

We also had ramen and tempura, both of which were very good, but not really worth elaborating on too much more than that. And finally, we also had Christmas KFC, which is apparently a big thing in Japan. It was quite bad and put me on the toilet for over half an hour—the time I was most grateful that bidets were the norm even in public mall bathrooms. 

Overall, I thought the food was quite good in Japan. However, the classic Japanese dishes (sushi, ramen, tempura) were not done that much better than a good Japanese restaurant in the US. They were extremely good, but not mind-blowing. When I visit certain countries like India or Mexico, I feel like I need a month or so to reset my taste buds before having that cuisine again in the US. After India, Indian restaurants in the US don’t taste good again until the salience of Indian Indian food fades from my gastronomic memory. I cannot say the same about Japan. That’s not to say Japanese food is bad, I do still think it’s one of the best cuisines in the world; it’s just that if you’re eating at Japanese restaurants in the US and not in Japan, you’re not missing out on that much. You are missing out, don’t get me wrong, just not as much as some of the other gastronomic juggernauts of the world. 

Final Thoughts

The food, toilets, vending machines, and metro system were all great. Everything else was extremely strange. I was also able to catch a professional ice hockey game while I was there between the Yukoshima Grits and the Nikko Ice Bucks, which was comparable to a very good mens league in the U.S. Japan in general was a lot cheaper than I expected (although I did not look up its Big Mac Index until after I noticed said cheapness, so my expectations could have been better informed) and also a lot more sterotypical than I expected. Usually when I go somewhere, I assume the stereotypes of that place I have in my mind are somewhat overblown, but not here. I won’t get into details about exactly what stereotypes I had, but I’ll put it like this: Tokyo was more like what I expected than I ever could have expected. I wouldn’t be against going to Japan again, but I’m not in the biggest hurry to do so, and if I did, I think I would spend my time outside of Tokyo, as it seems to me like I would have a vastly different experience.