No Regrets!

I woke up this morning feeling amazing. Rested, recharged, and adjusted to Japan time. Dave, on the other hand, was a mess. He barely slept last night, victim of the jet lag and wracked with the crippling anxiety of tonight’s dinner at Sky Restaurant 634. The restaurant is on the 345th floor of Tokyo Skytree, the highest tower in Japan. Dave has known this and been nervous about it for months. Today is the day, and Dave is so crushed by his debilitating fear of heights that he couldn’t sleep. Blackout curtains, melatonin, noise-canceling earbuds, and binaural meditation music did not help.

I did my best to reassure Dave that we’d get through this together. We headed downstairs, where the hotel staff cheerfully greeted us with “Ohayo gozaimasu!” (“Good morning!”). We hopped into a taxi, which gives Dave a fun opportunity to practice his Japanese. Everyone is very patient and accommodating with our broken Japanese and English.

As we sat in the back of the taxi, anxious Dave took deep breaths and tried to collect himself. I stared out the window, taking in the city. Tokyo is truly enormous, with a downtown sprawl that extends miles in every direction. Much of the architecture feels very 70’s and 80’s, not unlike Montreal, which I guess reflects the timing of Japan’s last major construction boom. Today is gray and misty, with a fog blanketing the city in monochrome.

We headed over to teamLab Planets, a popular playground-like museum and immersive sensory experience. Despite timed tickets, the line out front was long, but it moved quickly. The experience consists of four loosely themed exhibits: Forest, Garden, Water, and Open-Air. Each exhibit is a playful sensory overload, blending light, reflection, and ambient sound into something both ASMR and magical. The Water exhibit was especially memorable, as it requires guests to walk barefoot with their pants rolled up through some rooms with ankle-deep water and others full of cushions and mirrors. It’s Instagram heaven and unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The experience also helped to calm Dave’s nerves a bit.

Afterward, we walked around a bit. The smells here, sweet, savory, floral, and incense, are everywhere and always delicious. I rewarded myself with a hermetically sealed matcha donut and some banana Kit Kats from a nearby shop.

We visited the nearby Toyosu Market, which was less of the outdoor “stinky fish carcasses everywhere” experience I expected and more of a quiet, orderly indoor stroll with stern-looking, uniformed security officers at every turn. I asked Dave to pick one of the hole-in-the-wall sushi restaurants for lunch, and he picked well. Lunch was absolutely fantastic, with melt-in-your-mouth fatty tuna that we’re still talking about.

The taxi ride home was slow, weaving through Tokyo’s tight grid of alleys and side streets. It’s interesting that there aren’t really main thoroughfares for cars that cut through Tokyo. If you want to get anywhere across town, expect to take an indirect route through small city streets and alleys and expect it to take a while.

Once back, Dave, wrecked by anxiety and exhaustion, collapsed into bed for a quick nap, while I caught up on blogging in my favorite window chair. Dave woke up feeling a little less anxious, only to see it spike up again when he misplaced his cash, misplaced his hotel key, and misplaced his passport. It took some calming Jeff energy, a new hotel key from the front desk, and a stroke of luck finding his things just in time to save Dave.

I got spiffied up in my fanciest travel threads, and we headed downstairs to catch a taxi to Tokyo Skytree. Dave’s breathing exercises and iPhone wrestling game served to keep Dave’s anxiety in check as we approached the tower. We hopped out, got our tickets for dinner and the observation deck, and took an amazingly fast and smooth elevator to the 350th floor. The elevator doors parted, and there it was. Tokyo stretching out in every direction from.

Dave was… just fine. I don’t know if it was the six months of psyching himself up or the meditation music or the iPhone wrestling game, but he confidently walked right up to the windows to admire the view. Really proud of the guy.

We headed to the restaurant and got seated at our private omakase (fixed menu) teppanyaki table, far away from the window as Dave he requested, though I’m not sure that was even an issue anymore.

First course was fresh abalone. I’m not an abalone fan to begin with, and the fact that it looked like a female body part close-up did not help. It was fresh, so fresh that it was in fact alive and writhing in its shell. At that point, I nearly lost my appetite entirely, but I felt like I owed it to Dave to at least try it since he had just done so well facing his fear of heights. The abalone was doused in so much wonderful French garlic butter sauce that I ended up having not one, not two, but three delicious bites. The texture was a bit of a challenge, but the taste was there. I even had a nibble of the abalone liver, which had been removed with surgical precision and sauteed on the side. Subsequent courses included sea bream that was out-of-this-world good and the wagyu beef was melt-in-your-mouth incredible.

Each course was meticulously prepared by our young but very competent chef named Akita, who also made a noble effort throughout the meal to communicate with us in his limited English. Truly an exquisite meal and experience.

After circling the observation deck and snapping a few photos of the Tokyo cityscape in breaks through the clouds, we headed off to Roppongi for a pub crawl I had booked for us. That ended up being a total bust, so we dipped out early and found a local bar called Hub, which had a TV showing the end of the first game of the Japan Series. Hanshin Tigers won.

Back at the hotel, Dave packed it in to catch up on some much needed sleep. I went out for a little solo wander around Kabukichō in the rain to get a more thorough feel for the area. Streets were wet and packed with locals and tourists alike. Most people carry clear umbrellas, practical and perfect for navigating crowded sidewalks and pedestrian crossings.

I found Omoide Yokocho, a tiny alley with rustic, Blade Runner-style sushi bars squeezed closely together. Then a stroll through Golden Gai, a neighborhood of alleys with hundreds of impossibly small bars crammed next to and on top of each other. It’s incredible how tiny these bars are, some the size of a closet with only 4 or 5 stools and no space to walk around them. It was in some of these Golden Gai alleys that the African touters were out in full force, aggressively trying to hustle me into their titty bars and clubs. I didn’t bite.

I’m now back in the hotel room, sitting in my favorite chair, with the city below completely obscured by low-hanging clouds. Instead, I am enjoying the quiet hum of street noise and Kabukichō revelers down below. Dave has been asleep for hours. Poor guy needs it.

Tomorrow brings shrines, sushi, owls, and an old friend. Can’t wait!