Saitama/Tokyo Part I

I have never really been all that interested in Tokyo. To be honest, Tokyo always scared me. I know I would never be able to live in a city of such enormity, and just thinking about visiting made me nervous: not that I would get killed or mugged, but that I would get lost, make a fool of myself, or not be cool enough to fit in. Because of this I-don’t-want-much-to-do-with-any-city-over-a-million attitude, I haven’t been in a terrible rush to visit Japan’s capital, even though I only live about an hour-and-a-half or two-hour train ride away.

I felt the same way about New York, too, until I visited for the first time in April of this year. With the help of my three friends who live there, I was able to have a fantastic New York experience without looking (too) foolish, getting mugged, or dying. Even though New York worked out, I’d imagined Tokyo a bigger, faster, scarier city, in Japanese. As it turns out, though, Tokyo, once you get past the mad rush of people, is quite doable, as long as you have good company and a good map, with emphasis on the good map. Even though I would never live there, I had a fantastic time visiting there this weekend.

One of my friends from UNCG who is in JET as well is stationed in Omiya (Oomiya, draw out those o’s!), Saitama, one prefecture over and an hour’s train ride from Takasaki. On Friday night, I walked from my house to Aeon Mall (5 minutes), took the bus from Aeon to Takasaki Station (30 minutes), the train from Takasaki to Omiya (90 minutes), a bus from Omiya Station to Stephen’s stop (15 minutes) and then walked from the bus stop to his apartment (15 minutes). Oh, travel! We had a very chill night eating home-cooked hamburgers and watching Zoolander, planning the weekend’s adventures.

Omiya is maybe two or three times bigger than Takasaki (or four, maybe). After a breakfast of PB&Js and bananas, Stephen and I set about exploring the city. We took a bus back to the station and started wandering around. I found a gigantic used bookstore with a relatively big English section just a few blocks from the station. There were even books in Spanish: outdated copies of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series printed in Spain that had somehow ended up on the shelf at Book-Off. I didn’t want to carry them around all day, though, so I gave them up for another day.

After the bookstore, we took a side street down a narrow alleyway with shops on either side that reminded me of the mercado in Oaxaca. We ducked into a used clothing shop on another street, but ducked out after we realized that “used” and “vintage” meant “over-priced” at that store: a 1980s t-shirt was 4,000 yen, a 60s-style skirt was 7,000.

It was a beautiful day, not nearly as hot as the summer was, with a brilliantly blue sky and a cool breeze. We made our way down the street and into another part of town near Omiya Park, which stretches for miles between two major roads. At one end of the Park is Omiya Shrine, which may or may not have a better name. It was my first time visiting a real Buddhist shrine, and it was an interesting experience. I kept thinking about how the kanji for “gate” is supposed to mimic gates to shrines, and it’s so true. If you cut off the tails on the actual gate, the perfect kanji appears. Characters from pictures, it’s true.

We walked under the enormous gate (100 meters high?) and down a gravel path under a canopy of green trees. There were a lot of other people around as well, mostly Japanese, but a few Westerners as well. After about ten minutes of walking, we crossed a red wooden bridge that arched over a small river. There were trees on each side of the bridge leaning into the water. I peered down into the river and saw swarms of gigantic catfish at the top of the water with their mouths open, begging for food. It was a sight.

The shrine itself was beautiful, made in a Japanese style and painted a bright red. There was another building that we didn’t enter, but through the open door we saw a Buddhist priest with his long blue and white robe and black wooden shoes waving a stick of incense near a well-dressed mother and her baby. After that ceremony, the participants walked out of the building and posed for pictures in front of the shrine. I later saw the priest blessing one participant’s car with incense. Nearby was a wall of white paper notes tied to strings that I hear are wishes, or perhaps prayers. After looking around for a bit, Stephan and I left through the same gate we had entered.

By then it was a little after 1:00 p.m. We were supposed to meet my Canadian friend L (who does not want to be mentioned by name on the internet) and his girlfriend for lunch, but, as usual, they were running late. We finally got up with them at the station and after too much discussion and several closed restaurants, found a nice Italian place to eat at. (Katakana comes in so handy at Italian restaurants. I understand su-pa-ge-ti and chi-ke-n.)

After lunch, Stephen, L, M, and I went back once more to Omiya Station, this time bound for Tokyo! It was a fairly quick ride, and easy since Stephen had his JET Diary with its list of train stations and since M speaks fluent Japanese. We got off at the Roppongi shop, famous for its ubiquitous gaijin (and oh yes, every other person was not Japanese) and shops. We wanted to go to Roppongi Hills, what Wikipedia describes as a “mega-complex [that] incorporates office space, apartments, shops, restaurants, cafes, movie theatres, a museum, a hotel, a major TV studio, an outdoor amphitheatre, and a few parks” if that helps you visualize it.

Our first stop, after taking a picture of the gigantic spider statue, was to enter the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower up to the 52^nd floor to Tokyo City View, where we spent a good hour snapping photographs of the skyline in the setting sun. Promising to return after it was dark, we went down a floor to the art museum and saw a fantastic exhibit of “Sensing Nature” by three Japanese artists: Yoshioka Tokujin, Shinoda Taro, and Kuribayashi Takashi (listed first name last). After being bowled over by exhibits of feathers, glass “water,” papier-mâché forests, videos, and woodcuts, we returned to the tower to see Tokyo at night. The city sparkled under us, not like fireflies like before, but like steadily burning. . . lightbulbs.

We descended the tower, maneuvered our way through the gift shop—every exit always makes you go through the gift shop—and went out onto the street. The original plan was to meet one of Stephen’s friends at Roppongi Hills, but once we got there, he never answered either phone calls or texts, so we went in by ourselves. The place was massive, just like Wikipedia had told us. Inside gardens, posh restaurants, a gigantic grocery store on the bottom floor, it looked like a gigantic mall but with more things to do. After wandering around for the better part of an hour, we realized that we couldn’t afford anything there and that we were looking for a different experience. So M took us to a creepy Creepshow-themed izikaya restaurant in another part of town.

Part II Coming Soon….