Tokyo:
Entire shops devoted to selling plastic food. Vending machines that sell beer. Cafes where girls dress like maids and refer to you as master.
A fish market hawking everything from thousand pound frozen tuna, to squirming eels. Around the corner, eight pieces of sushi sell for $60 at 9:00 AM.
Shopping. Shopping. In every neighborhood, high-end boutiques or logos you’ve only seen in Vogue.
Sweets stores loaded with vittles that could be amazing, or that could taste like crap. Street vendors roasting skewers of miniature octopus over charcoal.
A subway system that puts New York to shame.
Purify your left hand, and then purify your right, and then put some water in your mouth, swish it around, but don’t spit it out in the basin – that’s bad form. Use a 5 Yen coin rather than a 10 Yen coin when you make an offering because the word “10” translates to “far” and you don’t want your wishes to come true in the distant future.
Playing “what’s it gonna taste like” with the samples we are handed at an outdoor market. Usually we are wrong. Often we are surprised. Sometimes things taste like seaweed.
Sweeping gilded rooftops in the shadow of a glass and steel monoliths.
In an ex-pat store, boxes of Stove Top Stuffing sold alongside fine cheese, chocolate and wine from Europe.
The precise ritualistic movements of a tea ceremony and the pins and needles in your feet as you squat on your haunches. The man at the 7-11 bows when you buy your packaged nuts. Stare at a map long enough and someone is bound to help you.
Use the electronic vending machine to pay for your miso soup before you order, not after your meal. Heated toilet seats. Buttons that spray water jets on your bum and play music to disguise your bathroom sounds.
Grown men reading comic books. Public transportation where everyone falls asleep in seconds but miraculously wakes up right before their stops.
Robots that roam the streets picking up trash and speaking English with tourists. OK, that last one wasn’t true, but it feels like it could be -– Tokyo is one funky town, and such things are not beyond the realm of imagination.
While we clearly enjoyed our brief time in Japan, our honeymoon has now sadly come to an end. The bizarre, scratch-your-head-in-wonder streets of Tokyo seem far away when we’re sitting in a cozy cabin with our families over the Christmas holidays.
The good news for those of you who have followed us, is that we will continue to update MarriedToAdventure.com with travel news, articles and photos. We will be telling about past and future trips, and trying out new experiences around the Pacific Northwest.
We also offer travel consulting for those who need help planning a trip, have special needs, or are just looking for inspiration. We also do speaking engagements for various clubs and organizations, so please contact us if you are interested.
Thanks for reading!
Jeff & Amanda
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