Tokyo in Sakura Season in 2018

Eight years ago, Lily and I found a killer deal on flights from Toron­to to Tokyo on YYZDeals.com. We booked in haste and left the logis­tics for lat­er. Very lit­tle research went into the trip beyond a few points of inter­est and the loca­tion of our stay, a room-sized apart­ment booked through Airbnb. To our sur­prise, we arrived dur­ing saku­ra sea­son, with the cher­ry blos­soms in peak bloom between late March and ear­ly April. That only dawned on me while rid­ing the train from Nari­ta Air­port to Shibuya Sta­tion. I remem­ber look­ing out the win­dow at the scenery lit gold by the set­ting sun and see­ing a bloom­ing cher­ry blos­som emerge from behind a low-rise build­ing as the train passed through one of the first urban neigh­bour­hoods beyond the air­port.

Tokyo left us with very dif­fer­ent impres­sions. Lily found it too for­mal, bound by unspo­ken rules, and over­ly con­formist for relaxed trav­el. I found myself admir­ing much of that same order. The clean­li­ness, the qui­et com­pli­ance, the sense that peo­ple under­stand the social con­tract with­out need­ing to be policed. It’s hard not to com­pare that to home, where Cana­di­ans talk about civic respon­si­bil­i­ty but are too timid to enforce social con­se­quences for break­ing basic norms such as lit­ter­ing or using tran­sit seats as foot rests.

Food became a qui­et point of ten­sion. I’ve been a veg­e­tar­i­an most of my adult life. Lily hasn’t and isn’t. Although she had many options, she felt bur­dened research­ing restau­rants that would also accom­mo­date me. I nev­er asked her to do this, but at the time I was exper­i­ment­ing with one meal a day and occa­sion­al mul­ti-day fasts, so I was com­fort­able going long stretch­es with­out eat­ing. I failed to account for the stress she felt try­ing to ensure I had a decent time.

To her cred­it, she found excel­lent spots: a pricey veg­an restau­rant spe­cial­iz­ing in clean ver­sions of west­ern fast food; T’s Tan­Tan Ecute Ueno, a ful­ly veg­an ramen and sushi restau­rant inside the fare zone at Ueno Sta­tion; and Coco Cur­ry. Our gen­er­al impres­sion was that every­day Tokyo cui­sine was sig­nif­i­cant­ly short on fibre. We quick­ly devel­oped crav­ings for fruit, veg­eta­bles, and whole grains. The hearty stuff was either scarce or expen­sive. I remem­ber pay­ing the equiv­a­lent of ten Cana­di­an dol­lars for four Fuji apples long past their prime, eight dol­lars for a small jar of peanut but­ter, and about the same for a loaf of whole wheat bread. Japan isn’t a bread cul­ture, fine. But the shelves were not lack­ing in ultra-processed white bread, pre­sent­ed in the crunchi­est cel­lo­phane bags. (Aside: did you know cel­lo­phane is derived from cel­lu­lose and is com­postable and biodegrad­able?) Since that trip, Lily has advised any­one head­ing to Japan to pack fibre pills if they’d like to remain reg­u­lar.

Ear­ly on, we dis­cov­ered that con­ve­nience stores like Law­son sold roast­ed sweet pota­toes. That became break­fast on sev­er­al morn­ings.

I was also excit­ed by the vend­ing machines (and posed with them in a pho­to below)! I knew Japan had an exten­sive net­work, but I wasn’t pre­pared for the sheer quan­ti­ty or vari­ety of items on offer. Uniron­i­cal­ly, hot cans of cof­fee from a machine on a ran­dom street cor­ner felt like a mir­a­cle. And as it does, all that cof­fee led to fre­quent vis­its to Tokyo’s many pub­lic wash­rooms, which were con­sis­tent­ly clean and tidy. Toron­to should take note because the stan­dard of clean­li­ness in our munic­i­pal pub­lic wash­rooms is appalling. I was remind­ed of this while watch­ing Wim Wen­ders’ Per­fect Days, a sur­pris­ing­ly beau­ti­ful film giv­en that it’s about a Tokyo pub­lic toi­let clean­er.

We walked a lot. Often 20 to 25 kilo­me­tres in a day. Oth­er times we took the rail net­work to places like Yoko­hama and Kawa­g­oe. In Yoko­hama, we wan­dered Chi­na­town, vis­it­ed Kuan Ti Miao Tem­ple, cir­cled the water­front through Yamashita Park and Osan­bashi Pier, passed through Cos­mo World, and watched the Cos­mo Clock 21 at blue hour before head­ing back to Shibuya. That night, we ate at a West African iza­kaya-style restau­rant called Los Bar­ba­dos, where the Japan­ese pro­pri­etor, who had lived exten­sive­ly in West Africa, pound­ed cas­sa­va like it owed him mon­ey to make fufu behind the bar. (I lat­er tried to repli­cate this at home with a food processor—do not attempt this!) In Kawa­g­oe, we explored sev­er­al tem­ples and the tight streets lined by clay-walled ware­hous­es; and lat­er, met a young Jamaican expat who had moved to Tokyo with his busi­ness exec­u­tive moth­er, only to feel strand­ed in an eth­ni­cal­ly homo­ge­neous coun­try where he strug­gled social­ly and roman­ti­cal­ly.

In Tokyo prop­er, we vis­it­ed a shrine in Yoyo­gi Park, walked past rows of sake bar­rels paint­ed with bold char­ac­ters, and stood before wood­en prayer walls dense with hand­writ­ten wish­es. We wan­dered through Shin­juku Gyoen Nation­al Gar­den, see­ing its takes on tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese, British, and French land­scap­ing con­ven­tions, before end­ing up at a packed Shake Shack. At some point, we walked to the State Guest House, Akasa­ka Palace, and lat­er made our way to the Impe­r­i­al Palace area, where peo­ple pad­dled rent­ed boats around the out­er moat beneath the cher­ry blos­soms. We also explored the Impe­r­i­al Palace East Nation­al Gar­dens.

Day 1: Yoyogi Park to the Imperial Palace

Day 2: Harajuku to Taito City

Day 3: Imperial Palace and East Gardens and Marunouchi

Day 4: Yokohama

Day 5: Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden to Tokyo SkyTree

Day 6: Kawagoe

Day 7: Taito City and Tokyo National Museum

Day 8: A Short Stroll through Ginza

This was our depar­ture day. We took the train to Tokyo Sta­tion, left our lug­gage with the bus that would dri­ve us to Nari­ta Air­port, and strolled through Gin­za and Hibiya for about one and one-half hours. The rush meant less time for leisure­ly pho­tos and exten­sive walk­ing.