It's Frikin' Tokyo

The Shinkansen "Bullet Train" took us 700 kilometers from Hachinohe to Tokyo in under four hours. By car, it would have taken about thirteen hours. A transfer to the local rail system had us at the Asakusa train station a few minutes later. The third-floor apartment we would stay at was a nine-minute walk away.

Lyn had found this spot through Air BnB right in the heart of many of our planned activities. A kitchen and multiple beds gave us plenty of options. Shoes off at the entrance. Slippers on. Toilet rooms separate from shower rooms. Pay attention to the buttons on the toilet to know the difference between the bidet and the backside wash.

We got in late, but agreed we would have me cook dinner the next day and went the twenty-minute walk past our local Family Mart convenience store to the full Supermarket. Chicken breast, zucchini, and fresh corn would be the fare for tomorrow. Tonight would be local cuisine at a tiny place two blocks away.

We went to the place that we found online and paused in front to take a quick picture. A woman approached and indicated she would like to enter, and we let her pass. We took our photo and went to follow inside, only to find there were only three seats left of the ten total available in the tiny restaurant. Sometimes polite means patience.

We took a walk in the direction of a larger restaurant not too far away. We passed a ramen shop with a large window in the front showcasing a large man with a stern face stretching and slinging a long piece of dough that was destined to become ramen. We opted to continue our way to the restaurant of choice, thinking we may Return before leaving Tokyo for this very authentic ramen.

Dinner was good and satisfying with beer and multiple plates, but the journey was as important as the destination. The meal that was to follow the next day was a highlight that we had looked forward to since Lyn had told us about it.

Pancakes.

Lynn had found out about the pancakes, the big, fluffy, beautiful pancakes that you had to stand in line to make a reservation for the day that you wanted to have them. She got up early, went to wait in line at 7:00, and the earliest time that she could get was 12:20 in the afternoon.

With our reservation in place, we spent the next 3 hours checking out the surrounding areas in search of a place for a manicure and pedicure. After visiting four or five places and finding none of them available, To treat ourselves, we ended up finally going for our breakfast lunch adventure.

When we arrived, we could see that there was basically a lunch counter of about 15 or 20 seats, the kitchen in action just on the other side cranking out pancakes as quickly as they could make them. Calling them pancakes is an understatement, as each one was covered with a copper lid as they puffed up to a thickness of about an inch and a half to 2 inches high. We sat outside looking in through the huge windows in front, watching the orchestration of the presentation of the meal that we were about to receive. The options were phenomenal, and while some of us leaned towards the savory side of bacon and eggs with our pancakes, I chose the sweet route of their standard butter pancakes with a rum raisin sauce poured over it. By the way, there was a chunk of butter bigger than my thumb lay leaning up against it, which I took in small slices with each bite of pancake.

The show was worth the price of admission as the four of us lined up at the counter and watched our individual orders being turned out with military precision and the touch of art that the Japanese are known for.

A young man with a British accent sat next to us and asked if we had gotten more than one order after looking at the size of the servings that were set in front of us. His jaw dropped a little bit when he realized that his double order would be enough to feed himself a couple times over. Since the order was already in, he was not able to cancel it, so we offered to share his second order in a peach-topped presentation that we all shared amongst us.

Turns out that he came by his British accent honestly, as he was from England and was here for the opening of the Harry Potter experience in Tokyo. It's amazing the kinds of people that you'll meet and the fun conversations you'll have if you just open yourself up to them.

Take a look at the pictures of the pancakes, and they will speak for themselves better than I could ever find words to say how amazing they were. We spent a good long time savoring every bite, with me doing the cleanup on the extras from what my partners could not consume.

We waddled out into the drizzly day, working our way back towards our apartment, realizing that we had enough time to stop into the samurai museum that was just a few doors down from where we had had our breakfast. The display was impressive, interactive, and even allowed us to dress up as samurai before going through the displays. The ancient armor was near priceless, and they even included a tribute to the ninjas of the time period that they covered.

As we went out the back stairway to depart the museum, I looked down on what looked like hundreds of small air conditioning units, only to realize that this was an ancient cemetery in the middle of town. I took a moment to take a long look, spend some time in contemplation, and express respect for those who came before.

Later in the afternoon, we took a cab across town for the crazy go-kart ride through Tokyo's waterfront at sunset. We arrived there in time, got everything taken care of, and put on our costumes that we would wear while driving the go-karts.

Unfortunately, the weather forecast predicted much more rain, and we had to cancel that evening. The next day wouldn't work out as we had activities scheduled; however, the following day, we would be able to come early in the morning and race around Tokyo dressed in funny costumes and experience one of the largest metropolitan areas on the planet in a silly and exciting way.

We took the local trains back to the apartment, and I put together a lovely dinner of breaded chicken and lemon sauce with corn on the cob cooked in the microwave and zucchini that I steamed and finished off in the drippings from the chicken. We all agreed that it was one of the better meals that we had, and it didn't hurt that it cost a lot less than most things that you would pay for in Japan.

The next day had two scheduled events, Team Labs, and samurai dinner. We contacted our friends Shirene and Laura on the ship which had just docked. We asked them to meet us at the team labs planets experience and we made our way there hoping to be able to start at 11:00 in the morning. Unfortunately, making their way to our destination took an hour and a half longer than expected and we finally met them closer to 1:00.

The team Labs planets experience is an immersive tactile, visual, auditory, olfactory experience in water, textures, moving images, and plants that we dove into with childlike glee. We started by taking off our shoes and walking up a pathway that soon found us surrounded by water, standing in front of a waterfall, and then walking into a wonderland made of mirrors and colored strings of lighted crystals that were constantly changing. Color pulsing and cascading as we looked in every direction in what seemed to be an infinity of glass and reflections.

From there we went into a room that had us knee deep in lukewarm water that was covered by a cloud of dry ice, a cloud of carbon dioxide with images being cast on it of changing colors and images of color-changing koi fish swimming around us, illuminated from above onto the clouds that surrounded our legs. We couldn't stop smiling. Neither could all of the men, women, and children that were strolling around us in awe.

Then the room of giant balls, this as tall as me, that we pushed and bumped into, changed color and reacted to our movements, followed by a room with a planetarium-like dome over you where we were asked to lay on our backs and watch the flowers cascade around us as we relaxed and meditated to the scent of flowers.

We moved rather quickly through the rooms that had interactive displays of shapes and colors that popped up little rain clouds or flowers or houses or ladders with a touch of the wall or the table display with little blocks where hours could be spent if you were to turn back into the child that you once were.

Finally putting our shoes back on, we saw that our time was short, but we could go through the forest to the garden. That is where orchids danced up and down on invisible lines from the ceiling that would lift themselves as you approached. We ended up taking pictures of other couples and other couples taking pictures of us.

We were surrounded by the wonders that I've always found so magical and that was the last we got experience of the Lab. I hoped that someday we would return and spend more time, touch more, see more, feel more, hear more, smell more, when we had a little bit more time. At least we had the opportunity today to immerse ourselves in one of the most extraordinary interactive experiences I've ever seen.

Through the rain to the train to the other side of Tokyo to arrive at the Samurai Restaurant three minutes before the show was to begin. Having paid for seven of us in advance, I was really glad we made it. So was our friend, Clarkie, who was waiting for us when we arrived.

Inside was a comic book anime technicolor explosion of images everywhere you looked. By the time we sat at the two booths ten feet away from the stage, our pre-ordered meals of sushi, Ramen, and assorted appetizers were landing in front of us. Sparkling sake was poured for us and the lights went down.

The master of ceremonies greeted us, and the Las Vegas-style entertainment with live music and giant mechanical carts rolled out onto the stage, and the choreographed stories began to play out in front of us.

With a few intermissions, we took time to order more of the sake they had provided on our arrival, as well as being the random winners of a giant tub of popcorn.

It was wild, intense, and the craziest thing we had experienced until the next morning. The next day started with Kartzilla. That was the name of the urban tour via go-carts through the streets of Tokyo. We got there early in the morning and dressed up, with me as Tigger, Lyn as Stitch, Ellie as a Trained Dragon, and Sue opted for a lighter-weight Japanese wrap as it was warming up that morning.

After signing away our legal rights and a quick briefing about the hundred ways to die if we didn't follow our guide's instructions, we were fitted with headsets and deposited in slick little yellow carts.

Sue would follow the leader, and we would follow her. We started our engines, and our guide pulled onto the street. Sue's cart stalled three times. A quick adjustment to the idle speed, and we were off.

On the main streets of Tokyo, surrounded by morning traffic, it was surprising how few looks we got. Must be normal around here.

Only once did I get separated from our group by a couple of cars, but I quickly caught up at the next light. We had a blast and saw a bunch of the city. I reminded our guide that we had a tour starting in about an hour and we would still need to get there. He said he could skip a small part of our tour to be back in time. We still had a longer go-cart experience than had been promised.

To save time, I ordered an Uber, and he arrived with fifteen minutes to get us to our tour of Asakusa Temple with making matcha and monjayaki. Great. I showed the driver the police stand next to the temple gate we were going to, and he got weird. He said we needed to cancel and rebook the ride. I said to just take us to the place we had scheduled. The next thing I knew, we were getting out, and we were almost late already.

With a little drama and a few app activities, we finally got our ride to the start of our tour, and our guide was patiently waiting, as we had called to advise him of our delay.

He was from Nepal and had been in Japan for twenty years. The walk through the gate into the avenue of merchant stalls was a dramatic portal I had experienced a year earlier with my niece, Caroline. There were a bunch of people from the ship there, as this was a highlight of many trips to Tokyo.

Our guide explained the history of the Shinto temple and adjacent Buddhist shrine. He picked up a few fresh red bean paste cookie treats to sample while calling about the matcha experience to update our arrival time.

As crowded as the temple and shrine were, the tea presentation was harmoniously absent of other people. We learned about the incredible details involved in making a perfect cup of this rare and premium green tea. Then we made our own and enjoyed it with a little mochi sweet treat.

We all walked on to an upstairs restaurant where we sat around a large table where the center third was a flattop griddle. Here we made our own mojayaki pancakes for lunch. It was hot up there, but it was fun and good. We had about six hours to get our hunger back after that meal.

The most significant beef meal of my life was that last night in Tokyo. But that's another story.