After catching up on sleep for almost the entire flight, Lucas and I touched down at Haneda Airport slightly after when we left Brooklyn, which was a little after lunchtime the previous day. Things were different since this was Lucas’s second time in Japan. He was way more confident navigating and had a blast using his Suica card to get around on public transportation as well as at convenience stores and vending machines. He unknowingly practiced math over spring break by keeping track of how much his snacks and gachapon cost. And also became very quick at converting yen into dollars, which he did every time he tried to convince me to buy something because it was such a great deal. He wasn’t wrong. The Japanese yen is currently at a 30-year low.
After putting money onto our Suica cards, we took the monorail to Shinjuku and to catch another train to our apartment in Nakano. I fell in love with Nakano during my first visit to Japan over fifteen years ago. Lucas fell in love with it last year, which is how we ended up staying in the same place.
My long-time NYC friend Emi lives nearby, which is another reason I like that area. Lucas loves it mainly because of Nakano Broadway, a mall filled with over twenty-five different Mandrake stores, each with its own vibe. My favorites are Henya and Special 1, which both sell vintage Japanese toys. Takashi Murakami also has a retro-looking cafe in the mall, and in the past few years, a ton of high-end watch dealers have also opened up shops.
As soon as we got off the train, we grabbed a chocolate-filled taiyaki for the walk. Lucas navigated the restaurant-lined alleys and streets, trying to remember how to get to our place. He found it.
The first night in Japan is always a weird night sleep-wise. Pulling an all-nighter is almost possible, but obviously, not a good idea. So we went out to meet Emi for a late dinner, acclimated a little, then went back to our place and passed out watching Murder Drones. It’s like Stranger Things with an Evangelion ending.
The next morning, we grabbed one of the bear pastries I mentioned previously and took the train one stop to Shinjuku to check out a Don Quixote, a giant Godzilla head, a little Godzilla store, the Hanazono Shrine, the Taisō-ji Buddhist temple, and the Tokyo Toy Museum, which was more fun, than I expected. The repurposed classrooms are filled with tons of old wooden toys you can use, and there’s a wood forest with a “hot tub” filled with 20,000 wooden balls you can lay in. Several sweet grandmas roam the rooms and very enthusiastically show you how to play with everything.
While in Shinjuku, we casually strolled through Golden Gai, which is a small area of two-story buildings that house many mega-tiny bars with very specific themes. Someone once told me there were two hundred bars, but I don’t know. You’re meant to go alone since most places only have a few seats and cannot handle more than six people. Many are for local regulars only. After passing by, we picked up a coffee and pastries from Eight Coffee and then saw some photos by John Sypal at Totem Pole Gallery.
We planned to eat lunch in Omoide Yokocho, but along the walk, Lucas smelled curry and instantly suggested we eat that instead. We were welcomed by a very stylish gentleman who looked over seventy. I was caught off guard when he turned from his dish and said, “Hello, how are you?” before realizing that’s all he knew how to say in English. I told him I liked his style in Japanese, and he returned the surprised look. The curry was good, but the hole-in-the-wall in Kyoto we ate at last year still holds Lucas’s “best curry I’ve ever had” award.
After our yummy curry lunch, we took a short subway ride to Asasuka to see some temples and visit Yu and Mie at Snow Plant. Yu’s embroidery skills are top-notch, and his private upstairs studio is filled with the best collection of patches and embroidered jackets I’ve ever seen.
Oh, and Lucas got to throw some ninja stars inside a random little house tucked between all the shops and restaurants near the temples. Afterward, we grabbed a small dinner near our place and passed out pretty early. He stayed up later than me…again.
The next day, we went to Kichijoji to visit the Ghibli Museum. Not the Ghibli Park as originally planned, because that was sold out months ago. And apparently, it's the same for the little Ghibli Museum in Inokashira Park, that’s been around forever. My friend who lived there for years never even tried to go because he said it was too much of a pain. Timed visits are booked out months in advance, so if you’re a planner, then you’ll love this. But if you cannot pinpoint the precise hour you will do anything that far in advance, then you’re like me. I’ve been told that only a few people are let into the museum at a time so it’s more enjoyable and that it is an amazing experience. We’ll probably never know.
Following a foiled attempt to get into the museum through its exit, we walked over to the Parco to check out Village Vanguard (which I knew Lucas would be into), discovered a City Bakery (!!!), found some cheap Japanese Pokémon cards, fed kittens at a cat cafe, and fed ourselves soup dumplings at a random Chinese restaurant.
After a brief stop at our place to drop things off and freshen up, we took the train a few short stops to Shimokitazawa to have dinner with old NY friends Kaname and Ai and their two daughters, Ren and Mako. Emi also joined us. We sat on the floor in a private room, which was perfect after all the walking we did that day. The kids played Uno on one end while the grown-ups ate and caught up on the other. On the train ride home from dinner, Lucas fell asleep, so I ended up carrying him back to our place from the station. Of course, as soon as we got home, he was suddenly wide awake, and I was suddenly exhausted.
The next day, we decided to take the train to Hakone from Shinjuku for an overnight at a ryokan with private baths that I found the day before through Airbnb. An hour and a half later, we were in Hakone. I should mention that I left our larger roller suitcase in a locker at the Shinjuku station and took only this backpack. Those lockers are a great invention.
Once at Hakone, we took a local bus up to the area around Gora, which is the base of the cable car ride, which I’ll get to later. I did zero research on this part of the trip and was purely going on Emi’s suggestions. We arrived super early before our check-in time, so no one was even around until a sweet woman appeared out of nowhere and suggested we go to the Hakone Open-Air Museum. When I asked if it was boring, she responded with a look of shock and disgust and replied, “Oh no! You can spend many hours there.”
And she was right. It was very, not boring. And ten times cooler than Storm King, and I love Storm King. Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam’s net installation, in which only kids are allowed to go in, plays soothing music while kids climb through netted passageways. The sculpture park also has an outdoor maze, a giant spiral staircase tower, and a mix of sculptures by both Japanese and non-Japanese artists.
On our way back home, we ate little ninja-shaped pancakes at a ninja cafe. They throw a random chocolate-filled one in the bag, and whoever gets it is the recipient of good fortune. There are so many random games in Japan! We walked down the twisty roads along the forest back to our ryokan and got in around four. I reserved the private outdoor bath for an hour, another right before bed, and one first thing in the morning before we checked out.
After checking out in the morning fully rested, we walked back down to Gora, left the backpack in a locker and rode the cable car. I had no idea what to expect and only learned about it that morning. We were rewarded with a crystal-clear view of Mt. Fuji and a cable car ride over a smoking sulphuric volcano. If you take the second leg of the ride, it takes you down to the lake, which has a pirate boat tour to the other side of the lake.
We rode back down to Gora, picked up our bag, and took the little local train through windy mountains, tiny tunnels, and multiple switchbacks back to catch the romance car back to Shinjuku. I have no idea why it’s named that, but it was the cause of many laughs with Lucas. I didn’t feel like dealing with the luggage yet, so it stayed in the locker for an extra day. From Shinjuku, we hopped on a train to Shibuya, walked through the busiest intersection in the world, and took the tiny Hachiko bus to our second apt near Yoyogi Koen. We also stayed here last year.
Once we dropped our stuff off, we walked around the block to Bondi for coffee and food and picked up some more patches and stickers from Question Marks The Store. Next, we head out to meet Emi at Tokyo. The friendly shop manager told us about the Margaret Kilgallen show five minutes away at Scooters for Peace, so we walked over to check it out. The gallery owner told me everything belonged to Barry McGee, and nothing was for sale. Lucas found it cool to see their art in Tokyo and even found some twist tags in espo’s guest book. After a quick stop at floor three of Kiddy Land, we grabbed some convenience store food with Emi and went back to our place.
The next morning, Lucas and I had an early breakfast and coffee at Bondi, picked up our luggage from Shinjuku, and took the train a few stops to Sendenjaya to stay with our friends Kaname and Ai, and their two girls, Ren, who is five, and Mako, who is two.
The very first time I visited Japan in 2007, I stayed with Kaname and his mom in Kichijoji for three months. I met him in the mid-nineties, going to parties in NYC when he came to SVA. When Ai came to NY for school, they met, and he went back to Tokyo with her. I was pleased to see he was still riding the bike I left with him back in 2007.
They live in the same neighborhood as another friend, Ayumi. Last year, Lucas and I randomly walked by her on our way to the Gotokuji cat temple. She has two daughters, An, who is fourteen, and Kina, who is six. They’re all very sweet, and Lucas was super excited to hang out with them again, even with a language barrier.
Since everyone lives in the same neighborhood, Ayumi and her family came over to hang out for a bit before walking to a nearby park playground. Another Japanese friend I met in NYC about twenty years ago contacted me and told me she had just moved back to Tokyo from Argentina with her husband and two daughters twenty days ago. She also knows Kaname, Ai, and Ayumi, so they were very surprised when she showed up.
For dinner, we all went to a kushikatsu restaurant that Kaname kept comparing to Kenka on St Marks, complaining about how loud it was. But that was exactly the reason I liked it. Every time somebody ordered a drink our server would come over with a bowl and two dice that you could roll for a chance at a free drink. Kids did rock, paper, scissors instead. Ayumi gave me her first roll, and I got her a free drink, so she ordered a 32oz whisky highball. Several people ordered those, actually. We shared everything family style, which was good since there was no English menu, and everything looked the same since it was fried. After dinner, the kids got to go to the ice cream machine afterward for their free cone. This was after the fried Oreos, by the way.
The following day, we all decided to check out the flea market at Sedenjaya Park since it was so beautiful out. Lucas and I split up and scoured the market for Japanese action figures and monsters, buying every one we could find (about twenty), all for under twenty bucks. Most of the vendors were other kids selling their old stuff.
After a delicious curry lunch from a food truck and some shaved ice, Lucas and I broke away to head to Cafe Capyba on our own to hang with some capybaras. I still don’t know how I feel about all the animal cafes in Japan. The cat ones seem harmless, but the owl one we went to in Kyoto last year seemed wrong. I’m pretty sure those owls don’t like standing chained to a pedestal all day long. And for me to assume these capybaras enjoy being fed carrots by different people every day is probably a misconception. But we still went. And it was fun.
On the walk to the train, we found an old, weathered metal and concrete playground that we played in until the sun set. We ate at another Chinese place where I had to interact only in Japanese, and then rode the train about an hour back home to Ren, who was waiting up for Lucas so the two of them could watch her favorite cartoon, Oshiri Tantei, which means “Butt Detective.” And he is exactly what he sounds like…a butt-faced detective. Of course, Lucas thought it was the best show ever and had fun chanting “Oshiri! Oshiri! Oshiri!” with Ren whenever the little detective fought his foe.
The next morning, Lucas and I took my old bike out to get coffee, pastries, and plants for Ai, Ren, and Mako since it was our last day in Japan. Kaname had to finish up a project, so Ai suggested we take the kids to the Unko Museum in Odaiba. Unko means poop, so obviously, the museum was a hit.
When we all went back to Sendagaya to pack up and say our goodbyes, Mako cried and Lucas got teary-eyed as Kaname drove us to the airport, saying he missed everyone already. He asked if he could learn Japanese to talk to his friends, so we’re going to try Duolingo. Wish us luck. Kyoto guide coming next!
If you’re looking for non-kid-related recommendations in Japan, Delia Cai recently went and wrote a pretty detailed summary of what she ate, bought, and visited that’s worth a read, if not for her “master maneuvers” alone.
Thomas