Tokyo Story

Tokyo Story is perhaps the greatest movie ever made (it certainly has the backing of a spectrum of renowned directors). It's a deceptively simple, timeless story of an elderly couple who travels to Tokyo to visit their children in bustling post-war Japan, only to find their children occupied with the demands of their own jobs and families. But there is no bitterness or rancor, just acceptance and resignation, and the movie pulls off the difficult task of questioning the modern rat race while simultaneously suffusing the audience with warmth and grace. And it does this in a way that isn't boring or dull the way some art-house films are.

And unlike a number of other critically-acclaimed films, Tokyo Story's reputation isn't built on bare imagery or technical innovation (think 2001 or Citizen Kane) but on universally-identifiable emotions—so many films today make little emotional sense, even on the rare occasions when they actually attempt to.

Asakusa

Asakusa is a popular tourist and entertainment hub, with lots of cheap hostels and guesthouses in the area. It's centered around the Senso-in temple, which has a huge paper lantern under a gate, followed by an arcade of souvenir shops culminating in the temple proper. It's always busy and popular with kids on school trips—fun, in an amusement-park kind of way. 

Most of the hostels are across the river, in a quieter neighborhood.

The other main attraction is the nearby kitchen district centered on Kappabashi street. It's one of the best places to see and buy the ubiquitous plastic sample-food that you often see displayed at restaurants. It's a great place for window shopping, and you can also buy some small and inexpensive (but pretty low quality) souvenir sample-food keychains, fridge magnets, and the like.

Philippe Starck's Asahi Beer Hall on the right and the Skytree on the left, as seen from across the Sumida river.

Souvenir arcade leading to the temple.

Everyone likes having having their pictures taken next to the giant lanterns. These girls are doing it better than most, especially since the default Japanese pose is to simply flash the peace sign next to one's face.

Yay!

 Another gate and lantern at the end of the arcade.

Incense burns in front of the temple. This is why you don't stick chopsticks in rice: it looks like incense, such incense is used mainly at Buddhist temples (note the swastika, which is a Buddhist symbol), and in Japanese culture Buddhit temples and rites are strongly associated with death and funerals (while celebrations and marriages are more strongly associated with Shinto rites).

Pagoda.

Five-story pagoda (or gojunoto) next to Sensoji temple.

Plastic sample food in Kappabashi.

I walked to Ginza to visit the Sanrio store—a friend loves My Little Twin Stars and I wanted to see if they had anything she might like. Ginza is notoriously expensive, and one symptom of that might be this incredibly stylish older lady I saw crossing the street outside a department store.

A new (and welcome) twist on "blue-haired granny."

No translation necessary.

Tokyo Tower from a park.

Tokyo Tower, which remains the second-tallest structure in Japan after the Skytree.

Darth Vader meets Stasi: the incredibly oppressive NOA building not far from Tokyo Tower.

I headed back to Asakusa at night to take some twilight pictures of the Sky Tree set against a lantern-lit, restaurant-filled street. A lot of what I do when I travel is motivated by photography, which is both good and bad. I think that it makes me look at things more closely, but on the other hand I suspect it also means that I dismiss things too easily if they're not photogenic, and I definitely know that I will hang around some place for longer than necessary just to wait for a good moment.

Restaurant street in Asakusa.

Skytree as viewed down a lantern-lit street.

He knows the loneliness of the single diner.

Police and security are deployed in force to deal with the threat of a couple of homeless men camping in a shopping arcade. Homelessness has been a growing problem in Japan ever since the '90s downturn, but most homeless are largely invisible to society as they live in tidy, semi-permanent squatter camps in the less-trafficked areas of public parks.

Skytree and Asahi building by night.

The outer gate and lantern at Sensoji: view from the street.

These Boots are Made for Walking: day one in Tokyo

I taught English in Japan for a couple of years, so I felt a certain sense of nostalgia on arriving in Tokyo. The smell of food cooking and frying, the humidity and feeling of the air, the orderliness of everything, the sounds of announcements: all of these things are barely perceptible in everyday life, but they hit you like a wall of familiarity when you return.

One thing that wasn't familiar was the train employee stationed next to the ticket machine at Narita, who spoke English and was there to help people buy their tickets. In my time in Tokyo I would come to see that a lot more people seem to speak English than they do in more rural Japan or the Kansai region (Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto, and environs). I bought the cheapest ticket from Narita to Asakusa, where my hostel was. This involved changing trains and taking the regular commuter line, but only cost ¥1,200 as opposed to the ¥2,500 or so that it would have cost to take the express train.
 
I arrived in Asakusa at around 10:00 pm. I usually don't have much jet lag when I travel, in either direction, because I can sleep on planes and my sleep schedule is often unsettled. I ended up waking up at around 4:00 in the morning, however, and decided that this would provide a good opportunity to visit the renowned Tsukiji fish market.

Although I had lived in Japan before, I didn't actually see all that much of Japan when I lived there, as the cost of transportation is too high to travel very far during the weekends (a Shinkansen trip from Osaka to Tokyo is about $150 each way); most of my experience in Tokyo comes from when I visited the country in 1993 with my grandmother. And in 1993 I didn't visit Tsukiji—even though I had wanted to—because as a teenager I felt that I would be out of place and in the way during the commercial auctions that Tsukiji is famous for. Ugly Western tourists who really have interfered with both the auctions and the wholesale have resulted in the current situation: in order to see the Tuna auctions you have to queue up and get tickets for a tour, and you can't visit the wholesale market before 9:00, when most business has already been conducted.

Welcome to Japan: on the morning train to Tsukiji.

Tsukiji to Setagaya

I arrived at Tsukiji to find out that it was closed (I should have checked the schedule, I guess). I wouldn't have been there early enough to take the tour, anyway, but I couldn't even see the market.  Instead I wandered around the area for a little, stopped at a nearby 7-Eleven to get some of the snack foods I had missed (there are some great Pizza chips in Japan), then headed to a nearby Yoshinoya for a similarly missed beef bowl.

The market's riverside port.

Saying hello to old friends.

I then decided to head to the Imperial Palace. It was really surprising how well I remembered it, despite it being almost 20 years since I had been there. I often knew where things should be, and what I would see around the corner. It was kind of eerie at times.

 

Palace grounds.

This is Japan.