It is Tuesday, 16.05.2023
In contrast to the day before, I woke up after 4 hours of sleep, yet equally energetic. Breakfast, writing, then off to a tour organised by Donny from couchsurfing. Today we will be in Ginza luxury shopping district but visiting other kinds of stores. We were a small group including Donny, a Canadian gentleman who used to develop websites and invested a lot of his income in stocks 15 years ago. Then he discovered that the income from the dividends was enough for him to live comfortably. So he retired at the end of his thirties. Now he spends the year divided between Tokyo, Mexico City, Poland, Hungary and finally Montreal. He speaks 7 languages comfortably and reads around 10 books a month. Accompanying us on the tour were a young German lady, a French lad, and a Thai guy. On the top of Ginza Six building they made a nice garden overlooking the poch shopping district and embraced by Tokyo skyscrapers.
Traveling truly sets the stage for everyone to share their life stories. Throughout my own travels, I’ve heard countless fascinating tales that have inspired me to shape my own path thus far. Today was certainly no exception!
We wandered around town, visited Sony-store where they exhibited latest technologies that sometimes never made it to the market.
We also explored an 8-story stationary shop filled with all sorts of paper, writing materials, and office supplies, as well as a 4-story toy store. Tokyo is like a vertical wonderland! Many businesses and shops are located on the 2nd, 3rd, or even higher floors, without any presence on the ground floor. I guess it’s easier since most people discover these establishments through Google anyway. As the tour came to an end, I bid the group a “hasta luego” and headed off to meet Tomogo, a local couchsurfer who had promised to show me more of Tokyo.
Tomogo works in the marketing of a healthcare app. Initially, she planned to take me to visit some temples, but we arrived after closing time. So instead, we ventured into the vibrant Harajuku area and ended up in Shibuye, home to the world’s busiest crossing, complete with its iconic diagonal zebras.
We went on top of a tower for a nice Sushi dinner and a view of Tokyo from above. I am in general not a Sushi person but this one was good. Well, not good enough to convince me to take you out for Sushi, but yalla, no problem.
Tomogo is wise. We discussed a lot about life, relationships and modern society. I learned a lot about Japanese relationships between men and women. After dinner we went to the game arcade, which is a usual activity here. We played old style video games by inserting coins and for example racing in Super Mario, racing in motor bikes and playing shooting games. I lost in almost all the games against Tomogo which is strange hehe. After the video games we went karaoke where Tomogo sang Japanese love songs and I tried my luck with Frank Sinatra and 50 Cent :D. Karaoke, for me like bowling, is an activity designed to fill you with shame and disappointment. I wonder what is the percentage of people that feel great after terribly singing in front of others. I added karaoke to my “Sushi-List”, of things I would need to be convinced to do.
Wednesday 14.05.2023
I had to change hotels today since my first booking comes to an end. I moved to another Hotel in the buzzing area of Roppongi. The new hotel has a swemming pool and its own “Onsen”, which is a traditional public hot bath. After leaving my luggage, I wanted to go see the sumo competition sinece luckily there is a grand sumo championship going on. But unluckily all the tickets are sold out. My plan was to go in front of the arena and hold a sign ”I need tickets” and hope that someone might have an extra one to spare. As fate would have it, while riding the tram towards the arena, I managed to secure a ticket from a black market website and decided to disembark at the next station. I found myself in a street that has many shops for music instruments and suddenly I found a university hospital in front of me. Sine I had no other plans, I went in and asked if I can have a tour in the hospital as a doctor. The answer was ”not without an appointment”. So I asked if I could make an appointment and the answer was ”no”. I took that as a clear rejection with ”get out of here” as a virtual subtitle.
I wandered more the streets of that neighbourhood and ended up having a massage and a hair cut :D, which is one of the experience I collect from different countries. For dinner, I went to a restaurant that didn’t look very remarkable but the food there was delicious. The minimum of the quality here is high. It seemed to me that there is no wrong choice, except of my incapability to use chopsticks. Donny said that around 1/3 of the world uses chopsticks and I wonder why. For me it is a terrible tool that can easily be replaced with better inventions.
In the evening, I decided to visit the “English Only Cafe,” a café where locals primarily gather to practice their English skills. I believed it would be an excellent opportunity to meet and engage with the local community. To my pleasant surprise, both Donny and Miriam, the German lady I met earlier, were also present. I moved from table to table, striking up conversations and sharing jokes about life with the predominantly young Japanese crowd. It was yet another enriching experience of cultural exchange. After the event, Donny, Miriam, and I headed to an Izakaya, a traditional Japanese pub known for its drinks and finger-food snacks. Our conversations continued late into the night. Donny amazed us by reading Patrick Süskind’s “Perfume” in just one day, inspired by Miriam’s mention of the book the previous day. Truly impressive, don’t you think?
One of the most interesting conversations was about the ”blue zones”, where are regions in the world with the highest number of people aged more than 100! There has been a research and a book about them trying to understand what these regions have in common and what makes humans live that long and, above all, they lived with few diseases and not just survived that long.
The evening was not over, one more meeting with Najat, a tunisian model living in Tokyo. We have a mutual connection and we were in touch before my trip. We met in Roppongi and went for drinks in a not-so-busy club. More conversations and more about living in Japan, this time rather from a slightly middle eastern perspective. These two days were very rich with encounters with locals and travellers. I thought tomorrow I should spend more time alone, in nature or with art.