Vacation Part 1: Tokyo

First off, happy New Year! It's 2019, and a brand new year with brand new promises, or something like that. Really, to me, 2018 and 2019 blended together pretty seamlessly, but I hope everyone else had fun celebrating and has a lot to look forward to this new year!

I didn't really celebrate much, but that doesn't mean that I didn't have a spectacular end of 2018. My family came to visit me and we had a whirlwind 10-day trip around the country. Throughout the whole trip, I was wondering how to best remember all my experiences and immortalize all the sights I saw so I would never forget them. My dad and my sister were taking notes of our trip, which seemed to me the best way to remember--after all, that's how I study Japanese: write things over and over again until I remember them. Why couldn't I do the same for experiences? And since I made this blog, which I don't utilize nearly as often as I should, and have lots of free time till classes start up again, I thought I would do my writing here.

My family and I made five stops on our trip: Tokyo, Hakone, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and finally Akita. I figure I'll cover each place in an individual post because otherwise I would have a very long post on my hands that no one would read.

We started out in Tokyo, and went south through Honshu to get to Hakone, Kyoto, and Hiroshima. Finally, we retraced our steps back to Tokyo and from there ended at Akita. In this post I'll start where the excitement began: in Tokyo, one of the most exciting cities in the world.

Before meeting my family, I arrived in Tokyo with a friend, and we spent most of the day together. Our plan was to travel around and have fun, but that got derailed when I had an allergic reaction and had to go to a hospital. My friend ended up finding a hospital, getting me checked in, and even paying my hospital fee since I forgot my Japanese National Health Insurance card like a silly person and so I couldn't afford the whole fee. So that was not so much fun, and it was very embarrassing to be so dependent on someone else besides. But I did get to experience a Japanese hospital! It wasn't a sight I planned on seeing, but if you're in a foreign country you might as well get the whole experience.

Anyway, my adventures with my family didn't start till the next day. We went on a morning tour and saw Tokyo Tower, which was once the tallest structure in Japan till Tokyo Skytree was built in 2012. We also saw Senso-ji, a famous Buddhist temple, and the outside of the Imperial Palace. It was very cool to see these places, especially Senso-ji and Tokyo Tower, but the problem with tours is that they go so fast that you don't really have enough time to really explore a place. It's like watching the first hour of a really good movie and then losing power; it's fun, but definitely feels more than a little unfulfilling.

After that, we had leisure time to explore Tokyo on our own, so I decided to take my family to Shibuya to see the famous crosswalk. It was predictably crowded and crazy; even being in New York a couple of times, I don't think I experienced the sort of human congestion we found in Tokyo. It's a figurative sea of human bodies, all crammed together. It's not what I would call fun, but it is an experience in and of itself, and it was the bulk of my experience with Tokyo. But after wading through the treacherous Tokyo waters, we were able to find a nice spot to view the crosswalk and get some pictures, located in this shopping mall called Magnet. Here, I got some nice overhead shots of Shibuya.

It should also be pointed out that this was on Christmas, so that probably means it was more crowded than usual. Here are some more crowd shots from other places, too:

It looks even worse from ground level, and this is pretty much what we saw most of the day: the backs other people, spread as far as the eye could see, which really wasn't all that far cause of all the people. 

I wouldn't say that Tokyo was the highlight of my travels. I'm glad I saw it, but it's a very overwhelming place, and it didn't help that we weren't able to spend that much time here. I also noticed that in Tokyo, there was a very different atmosphere from the rest of Japan, and I can't quite decide whether that's good or bad. In the other places we went to, it felt that the traditional, unique aspects of Japan were very much alive, albeit with a tourist bent. I felt like I was in Japan in those places, experiencing the wonders of the country, which were being readily sold to me by employees and tour guides. I wouldn't say I experienced Japan at its absolutely most authentic, because I don't think a tourist can ever authentically experience another country. Rather than blending into it, tourists are very clearly outside of the country, and are allowing that country to be 'sold' to them by locals and attractions set up to draw them in. That's not to say I didn't absolutely love being a tourist and seeing some of the most popular and beautiful spectacles Japan has to offer, but it feels shallow to say I experienced 'authentic' Japan. Arguably, my life at AIU is more 'authentic' because I get to live in Japan without being catered to all of the time--just most of the time.

Anyway, back to my original point: while I got a sense of 'Japanese-ness' (whatever that is) from everywhere else I went, I didn't really get that from Tokyo, and especially not from Shibuya. Rather, Tokyo feels like a place that breaks from Japanese norms. It's a place where you have to be pushy, where rather than stumbling onto something spectacular, you are more likely to get lost in throngs of people if you don't know where you're going. It feels on one hand like any other massive city, but on the other hand doesn't really feel like anywhere at all. I imagined that I would view Tokyo similarly to New York, but it felt distinctly different to me. Perhaps it's because I just don't know Tokyo as well as New York, but I got the sense of being in some sort of limbo, some parallel realm between Japan and the rest of the world. Whatever the case, it's very easy to see the ethereal qualities of the city, and why it captures the interest and imagination of so many young Japanese, who have increasingly been migrating to Tokyo from other prefectures (not to mention the ever-growing number of foreign tourists). It feels like a place where everything resides and anything can happen because it lacks an identity of its own. The bizarre blend of Japan, and all its influences from the rest of the world, comes together in Tokyo to create something that feels so distinct as to lack any concrete sense of self. It's very unique and makes Tokyo feel like it offers a lot of freedom and promise, but it also feels so foreign and disconnected from everything else that it made me a little uncomfortable.

I think I'd like to go back to Tokyo at some point and experience it again. But when the time came to leave the city, I must confess that I was ready to go somewhere that felt more like being in Japan.