Electric Town

I will likely have less to write today, as we spent a good deal of time on the train to Tokyo and doing hotel check-in logistics, etc. But I wanted to still get some highlights down.

We traded the slow hum of Kanazawa for a return to the crowded buzz of Tokyo this afternoon. After being away for over a week, I had underestimated how stark the difference would be. Wandering the streets of Kanazawa, even in the daylight, we were often the only ones in the immediate vicinity, and it was easy to fall into mindless autopilot, dedicating little to no brain power to an awareness of our physical space. Not so in the largest city in the world. Tokyo demands constant vigilance and attention, where bustle is just a part of everyday life. I would find it difficult, I think, to live with such constant crowding and density, but as a novelty, it’s really something to behold, and we’ve enjoyed participating in it (in moderation).

While we waited for our check-in time to arrive, we settled in for some sushi at nearby Sushi Mon, another spot in a list of restaurants we’ve visited where guests order from a website and are encouraged to do so in short, swift bursts in order to self-pace the meal. An introvert’s dream! And, frankly, probably an easier way to run a restaurant. The pace of service in Japan is lightyears beyond what we encounter in the U.S., and it is difficult to imagine that improved administrative efficiencies aren’t at least partially responsible. Of course, the type of food and the nature of sushi service are also factors, but this difference we’ve observed spans cuisines and has not been limited to sushi, either.

One of Tokyo’s hotbed neighborhoods we didn’t get to see the first time around is Akihabara, known for being a high-energy zone filled with shops dedicated to video games, anime, manga, and other digital media. The best way I can describe the vibe is to imagine a nerdy Las Vegas on a slightly smaller scale. Cosplayers are lined up along the sidewalks handing out flyers and advertisements (for what, I couldn’t tell you; we weren’t in a collecting mood) and businesses use every tool at their disposal—audio, visual, and olfactory—to lure guests to their various modes of fun and excitement. We watched one participant (victim?) at a claw machine arcade sink try after try into his quest for a giant Yoshi plushie. He was eventually successful, but at what cost?

We started on the hunt for a storefront called Super Potato, where the fare on offer was retro video games and consoles, as well as various related merchandise. I scored a copy of my all-time favorite video game (Legend of Dragoon) in Japanese—not a practical purchase, but a very cool memento—and Paresh added a Final Fantasy figurine to his considerably smaller stack of souvenirs. The top floor of the multi-level store features a retro arcade with classic joystick gameplay. Our brief run on one of the machines served primarily as a harsh reminder that we don’t have the same acumen for video games that we may have once possessed.

We stuck around long enough to witness the day-to-night transformation of Akihabara, when the light show truly begins, by locating a hidden staircase to another retro game shop called Beep, where a new-with-box copy of a Super Nintendo console will run you a cool 550,000¥ ($3,742), likely on account of the relative rareness of the item (in Japan, the SNES released as Super Famicom, not Super Nintendo).

Paresh had worked up an appetite after I handed him a deflating loss in arcade-style Pong, so we tracked down Tempura Hisago at the nearby Akiba Ichi complex. And complex is a great word in this case, because locating the restaurant was anything but easy. With no fewer than 2 smartphones and 3 physical map boards consulted, we finally pointed ourselves to the proper entrance and got seated for dinner. We were treated to another demonstration of the aforementioned lightning-like pace of food delivery as we dug our way through courses of soups, vegetable starters, various crispy tempuras, and dessert. This was maybe one of the more forgettable meals we’ve had in Japan, but not because there was anything particularly wrong with it. I think our heart and soul just wasn’t in the selection of the spot from the beginning and we were, for probably the first time, looking for speed and proximity to us rather than settling on a choice that excited us. If anything, that a perfectly good meal like this one sits so far down on my personal running list is an indicator of how good we’ve had it, and it’s hard to be upset about that.

We’ll be back to the Tokyo grind tomorrow, although we are flying without a map for much of the remainder of the trip. We have canceled our remaining activity reservations in favor of a more spontaneous and freeform approach, since we both agreed that felt like what we wanted to do. So we’ll have to see what shenanigans we get up to. I’m looking forward to the surprise.