The Japanese spring felt similar to the German one we’d just left, so I kept forgetting that Tokyo has a humid-subtropical climate like Florida and parts of Italy. Still, early March was warm enough that the plum trees had already exploded with pink blossoms, and although the famous sakura (cherry blossoms) were still a few weeks away from peak bloom, Japan was already gripped by sakura fever. Merchandise, desserts, and goshuin designs were absolutely covered in bright pink flowers. The subtropical climate also means many other kinds of nifty things can grow there too, including citrus fruit, and since arrival my travel companion Yasin had been talking about the city’s orange trees and how much he wanted to eat one of the ripe fruits. Most were too far away to be plundered, but on our second day I finally spotted some literal low-hanging fruit in the garden of Tokyo’s Ueno Toshogu Shrine. A stone pathway even led directly to one of the fruit-laden boughs. There is ongoing debate about whose fault the next part was, but by my recollection, I’m the one who finally convinced him to grab the fruit. Now, I’m not directly comparing us to certain other humans who ate fruit from a god’s garden without asking, I’m just saying that from that point on, a few things did go suspiciously awry. Enough things, in fact, that we started calling it Buddha’s Curse. Whether the consequences were really due to a supernatural curse or whether they were the natural outcomes of traveling through a foreign culture and environment…well. I’ll let you decide. 

Since we had just arrived in Japan two days prior, we were definitely still learning the cultural ropes. I for one had arrived with only a smokescreen idea of the country, meaning I was pretty well-prepared for what I would see – shrines, pagodas, maybe a geisha or two – but there was very little of substance behind that ephemeral visual screen. Nearly everything about Japanese culture and customs and language and history (aka everything that gives Japan its life and depth) were a big unknown in my brain. It was a risky tactic, or maybe rude one, yet it meant I could plunge into modern Japan without being blinded by any preconceived notions besides what the place might look like. Meanwhile Yasin was marginally better off thanks to a few decades of being an anime-and-manga nerd, although that’s somewhat like trying to understand the U.S. by watching Hollywood movies alone. Fortunately we are both addicted to learning, and experience is a wonderful, if sometimes brutal, teacher.

Left: Streets near Sensō-ji Temple before the shops opened / Middle: A chicken shop (maybe?) decorated with sakura / Right: Street scene near Ueno Park

If I had to summarize my impression of Japan after my ten-day visit using only one sentence, it might be this: “I imagine Japan emerged from ancient East Asian culture in a similar way to how shibas somehow evolved from wolves.” To be clear, Japan is still quite fierce and, if you squint, its culture has a similar shape to its East Asian neighbors. I’m just saying it’s also an incredibly distinct place and that it comes in a pretty cute package. It’s a country where the penthouse suite of a sleek skyscraper in the heart of financial Tokyo can be occupied by an official Pokemon store. Exotic-animal cafes, where you can cuddle with “pet” capybaras or owls or otters, are wedged in between ancient vermillion shrines and four-story anime stores. It’s a land where the desserts are obscenely jiggly, where wild deer have been collectively trained by tourists to bow in exchange for biscuits, where young locals rent traditional kimono outfits and walk around taking pictures of each other. Japan is an island, in more ways than one.

Of course, this is my party, and I get to use more than one ridiculous sentence to describe my time in Japan. So here, have some more.

Tokyo

Upon landing in Japan in early March of 2024, I wasn’t immediately convinced that I was on a new-to-me continent. My journey through the hermetic environments of Beijing and Tokyo-Narita airports felt so similar to every other international mega-airport in the world that they failed to make any impression, and getting on the train was too similar to everyday German life, punctuality differences notwithstanding. The first thing that really convinced me I was Elsewhere was the Japanese forest flickering past the train window. Slightly-weird shades of green and textures that were too spiky jarred my sleep-deprived brain. Finally I understood I was looking at riotous patches of bamboo that were scattered willy-nilly throughout forests of unfamiliar conifer and broadleaf species. A switch flipped, and just like that I finally arrived in Japan.

However, Yasin hadn’t even physically arrived yet because we’d taken separate flights, so I wandered around Tokyo’s Akihabara district alone for a few hours in a jetlagged fugue state. Jet lag is hard enough after 30 long hours of travel, let alone when the finish line is a neighborhood nicknamed Electric Town, which is essentially Times Square on crack, with multi-story walls of retina-searing LED displays that blare advertisements for everything under the sun. I briefly wondered whether I had accidentally landed on a foreign planet rather than foreign continent. Like a well-trained American I eventually sat down to wait in Akihabara’s Starbucks. The sky fell dark but the city’s glow intensified around me, the crisp March air pulsating with electricity as I nursed my matcha latte. Finally a familiar silhouette emerged from the crowd. After flying to the opposite end of Earth and landing in this very shiny and very baffling country with very weird trees, I was deeply comforted to see a familiar friendly face. Of course there wasn’t really any guarantee that his face would remain friendly throughout the week-long trip, since we had never traveled together and had only known each other for about a year, yet I took it on faith that we’d get along since we’re both easy-going and mostly-quiet nerds. Anyways I really hoped it went well, since we work in the same university office and I’d have to see him again regardless of whether it all ended in an inferno. (Spoiler alert: it didn’t). Equally destroyed from the journey, we scavenged the local 7-11 for dinner like feral animals, accidentally chose the worst possible flavors of hot bottled drinks and onigiri, and collapsed into dreamless sleep.

Top left and top right: Akihabara Electric Town / Middle left: Kanda Shrine / Bottom left: Terrible 7-11 choices, but the bottled drinks were hot! / Bottom right: A pocket shrine found near some Akihabara apartment blocks.

We initially stuck pretty close to our home base of Akihabara, where so much was going on that we didn’t feel the need to leave. Akihabara is nerd paradise for foreigners and locals alike. Its stubby skyscrapers are full of anime/manga paraphernalia, and sometimes whole floors are dedicated to “adult merchandise,” as we accidentally discovered once and then immediately ran away from. I gave Yasin free reign in the anime world for a few hours, watching his behavior with fascination, like David Attenborough beholding an especially quirky platypus. Once he had his fill, we went to hold a couple of “pet” owls in a cafe where you could choose from 40 different species. My first pick was a huge Barred Eagle Owl aptly named “Mr. President,” whose ginormous feather-eyebrows loomed over eyes that resembled bottomless black pits. I warily stared deep into his eyes for a long while and the abyss stared back. Eventually I decided I wanted to keep what remained of my soul, and also my hand was tired, so I switched to a golden-eyed juvenile owl the size of a bread loaf who looked at me with this exact expression: O v O.  We managed to find a late vegetarian lunch in a shop set beneath a few arches of the elevated Metro tracks, which rumbled our seats every few minutes. Arguably the weirdest time in Akihabara happened after sundown, as the city lights blazed. Karaoke clubs and anime-themed casinos spilled over with humans of all shapes and sizes. Gauntlets of young women dressed in skimpy maid costumes lined the sidewalks and handed out fliers for their respective maid cafes (non-stripping adult entertainment), which cater to lonely businessmen and foreign tourists alike. We couldn’t quite bring ourselves to set foot in one of these cafes so I can’t report back, but I can assure you that the sidewalk-gauntlet experience alone was pretty uncomfortable.

Mr. President (lol) / A barn owl on Yasin’s head / my baby owl / our giant owls and the cafe

We did briefly manage to escape the Akihabara bubble on the first day with a trip up to Sensō-ji Temple, where we scored our first goshuin stamps and learned the cleansing ritual to prepare ourselves for entering religious sites: using a bamboo ladle, you wash your left hand, then right hand, then your mouth, using your cleansed right hand. After the awesome temple visit, we were just walking around and minding our business when a woman appeared, carrying a cup that was topped with a jiggly animal made entirely from milk foam. I stopped dead in my tracks and audibly gasped at it. Yasin immediately grabbed my elbow and shook it, saying “Do you want one? Huh?” and oh man, did I. Cute jiggly desserts were half the reason I’d come to Japan. We entered the same doorway that she had exited and ran up the stairs, where we were delighted to learn you can pick basically any design you want. I panicked and chose Bulbasaur, a plant Pokemon, while Yasin went with his alter-ego, Squidward Tentacles. Before my eyes, it took the coffee wizard only 40 seconds and two spoons to sculpt a perfect Bulbasaur from a cup of oat milk foam. When he’d finished, he danced the cup towards me, jiggling Bulbasaur the whole way, and sang something in Japanese. My smile almost split my face and I couldn’t contain my laughter. I was so enamoured with it that it took a full ten minutes before I was emotionally ready to destroy my jiggly Bulbasaur enough to actually get at the coffee underneath. Luckily the sacrifice was worth it, because the coffee tasted incredible. I don’t know how this fact hasn’t made it outside Japan, but Japanese coffee is amazing.

Left top: Hōzōmon Gate at Sensō-ji Temple / Left bottom: Yasin at Sensō-ji Temple / Right: Bulbasaur and Squidward latte art (made just from foam!)

On the second morning when I opened the blinds overlooking our narrow suburban street, every suited businessman and uniformed schoolchild criss-crossing the intersection was carrying a folded umbrella, in a portent of what was to come. We were feeling bolder and mostly healed of jetlag, so we decided to go further afield. We first headed north to Ueno Park to visit some temples, and it was there that we had our fateful meeting with the citrus tree. After grabbing the fruit and exiting stage left, Yasin tore into it and gave me half. The first warning sign that something was amiss was that the “orange” he picked was bitter and tasted more like an unripe grapefruit than an orange. I struggled through a waxy quarter of the fruit before I chucked the rest into the bushes (an act of waste probably also not looked upon fondly by the Buddha). The felted clouds started spitting rain shortly thereafter, and the drizzle steadily increased over the next 8 hours, eventually soaking us to the bone while we wandered the most populous city on Earth. On our way towards Imado Shrine, which was entirely devoted to lucky-cat statues, we stumbled upon a parade of umbrella-carrying monks exiting Matsuchiyama Shoden Temple, where worshippers exclusively offered huge white Daikon radishes to Buddha (the themes at some of these religious sites were truly inspired). We cleansed ourselves as we had learned the day before, then entered the silent temple to kneel on the floor while a monk painted our goshuin. I’m functionally agnostic, so I decided to pay my respects to the temple in the currency of gratitude instead of prayer. Staring up at the intricately-painted ceiling, I cast that day’s gratitude into the silence of my own mind. I thanked the gods, just in case they were listening, and their local human believers, for being so overwhelmingly welcoming towards my clueless foreign self. I thanked the long-gone people who had built and decorated the incredible building with their bare hands. And I thanked myself, for finally coming all the way to Japan, and Yasin for faithfully following along. 

Top left: The evidence / Top right: A cutesy street sign directing people to the radish temple and the cat shrine /
Bottom left: Religious folk leaving the Matsuchiyama Shoden Temple / Daikon radishes for offerings / Imado Shrine and its largest cats

Back out on the street and back on track to Imado Shrine, with freshly-cleansed hands and souls, we came across some huge guardian statues with ugly faces. I’m never one to pass up the opportunity to pose with a statue and copy its dumb face, so I stood next to one and tried to contort my expression in the same way. The statue was holding a stick, though, and I had no suitable props. Yasin – and this time I will throw him under the bus, since it was absolutely his idea – spotted an umbrella that was propped against an adjacent residential door, and he decided to “borrow” it. Despite my protests, he stuffed the umbrella into my hands and I became an accomplice. Not ten seconds later, before we even managed to take the freakin’ photograph, two businessmen exited the same door and started frantically running around, clearly looking for their umbrella. I froze with the evidence clear as day in my hands. At first I tried to hide behind the statue while I figured out how to handle the situation. I looked to Yasin for help, but he did absolutely nothing besides continue to take pictures of me, possibly for police evidence. Finally I ran over and gave them back the umbrella, while bowing and pantomiming what I hoped looked like a groveling apology. As we hastily walked away, our Buddha’s Curse joke solidified. What horrific luck, to borrow a prop for a photo and come out of it looking like thieves who can’t even explain the situation. At least we were headed for another shrine, so I could cleanse my hands and soul again.

Left: Successful photo, but no prop / Middle: Right when the businessmen came outside / Right: WHAT DO?

Chuo City district is a forest of glittering skyscrapers that had a wholly different vibe from Akihabara, despite being directly adjacent. From the rainy sidewalks it seemed like a somewhat aloof financial district, but its life hummed once we ducked through any one of its doors. Once, to get a respite from the rain, we chose a cozy chocolate-colored cafe that was absolutely stuffed with single businessmen having lunch, and I ordered a coffee-flavored gelatin dessert (extra jiggly, of course). A few streets away we entered a shiny glass door and found an elevator vestibule that was covered in 15-foot-tall Pokemon murals: it was the launch pad for a free visit to Tokyo’s official Pokemon Center shop on the top floor, where it was Yasin’s turn to observe me like I was a strange platypus. And beneath Tokyo Main Station lies an underground city that has been colonized by stores featuring individual characters or IPs: Snoopy, Godzilla, and Ghibli all had their own capitalist homes. The main attraction of Chuo City for me was the nearby Imperial Palace, which is the main residence of the figurehead emperor’s family. Their traditionally-built Japanese castle complex sits on an oddly foreboding island, surrounded by a series of moats and gates and stunted conifer trees that look like the shrubby krummholz trees you might find at the top of a mountain (my science brain thought their shape was a phenotypic thing until we came across a team of tree pruners making bonsai-like cuts to the trees). Like the world’s most inept foreign invaders, we wandered around the impenetrable edge of the island until we finally found a door that was open and free to the public: an entrance to the delightful East Gardens, which was full of ancient guardhouses and former castle ruins and yet more weird Japanese trees.

The Imperial Palace East Garden wall and moat next to Chuo City district / Pikachu, Snorlax, and Mew in Tokyo’s Pokemon Center

Somehow, all of these things happened in the span of two days. I’ve actually barely even scratched the surface on explaining all the things we did, a list that also included a wild goose chase to collect free stamps and being fed strange raw sea creatures by two of Yasin’s Japanese friends, whom he met while studying abroad in Alabama seven years prior. To top it off, we probably only managed to experience 0.000001% of Earth’s most populated city. Yet we had places to do and things to see, so on our third day, we left Tokyo behind and headed for Mt. Fuji.

To Part II: Fuji to Kyoto