Only Schmucks Visit the Eiffel Tower

Saturday, February 15 (22,000 steps)

No plans, no reservations, no clue—the best way to get to know a city. Our neighborhood, Shimbashi, is sandwiched between more popular areas and is known for the various establishments that allow salarymen to blow off steam after work: izakaya (Japanese pubs), karaoke clubs, and pachinko parlors. Sleepy during the day before coming alive at night.

We started our morning with a walk to Hamarikyu Garden, the site of imperial retreats during the Edo Period (1603–1867). We wandered through the historic grounds of the shogun's duck hunting and falconry areas, admiring their juxtaposition with the skyrise buildings towering above. A field of blooming canola flowers swallowed us up to our waists. Winding paths twisted their way between trimmed shrubs, babbling creeks, and rows of cherry trees, still too early to bloom. Nakajima Teahouse sat suspended in an expansive pond, accessible via picturesque bridges made of hinoki (Japanese cypress). We hesitantly entered, stumbling over ourselves to remove our shoes at the door and nearly knocking our heads on the low beams of the entryway, feeling acutely aware of our status as bumbling Americans. We ordered matcha and admired the panoramic views of the garden, Tokyo Bay, and the city extending beyond.

We made our way out of the garden and through the cobweb of streets to a depachika, food markets occupying entire floors of department stores, lined with a variety food stalls. We ordered marinated tuna rice bowls, complete with pearly rice, thick slabs of tuna in soy sauce, and freshly grated wasabi (pleasantly unrecognizable from the squeeze tube version available in the U.S.). The tuna was some of the highest quality I have ever tasted, buttery yet toothsome, but where this meal really stood out was in cost performance: the two meals came out to less than 20 dollars.

From the windows of our depachika, we could see the iconic Tokyo Tower soaring into the skyline. This seemed like an obvious northern star to which we could set our compasses, so we began trekking through city block after city block to get to the base. On our way, we passed through Zojo-ji Temple, a sprawling Buddhist temple founded in 1393. We tossed a couple of spare coins into the offering box, telepathized a message to the Buddha, and purchased an ivory silken talisman granting us a blessed relationship. An auspicious start to our vacation.

Tokyo Tower stands less than a block away, casting its latticed shadow over the Zojo-ji Temple and the rest of the neighborhood. Modeled after the Eiffel Tower, this newer and improved version stands a whole 3 meters taller than its European counterpart. We rode the elevator up to the main observatory floor, watching Tokyo open up around us. Besides a few glimpses of Tokyo Bay, the city stretched below us in every direction, endlessly. The sheer size and density was at once daunting and, strangely, comforting: a reminder of the number of people living lives as rich as our own.

From our perch, we could spy an area with intriguing architecture—rooftops surging with ripples, plants filling spaces between external support beams. We plotted this as our next destination and charted our heading. This area is known as Azabudai Hills, an upscale shopping district filled with stores like Hermes and BVLGARI. This is the kind of mall where shop attendants give you the once-over, assessing if you are the kind of person who can afford their wares, and begrudgingly watch you window shop, the same way that a restaurant owner might watch a stray, mangy dog get a little too interested in the scents wafting from the front door. We waved off the hordes of shopkeepers begging us to become the newest ambassadors for their luxury brands and continued onwards.

We stopped for some local coffee (I think the name of the place was something like Starbucks?) before going to TeamLabs Borderless, an exhibition hall that is either a groundbreaking digital art installation or a glorified backdrop for tourists' Instagram pages, depending on how charitable your interpretation of the space is. It's probably a little of both. We passed a shocking number of people with noses buried in their phones, experiencing each room through only the filter of the camera lens, but we have little room to judge based on the number of photos we left with.

The visuals were otherworldly. We entered a room to find ourselves amidst a field of clover stems towering over our heads, a path winding us through the digital plants as they shrunk to shoulder height, then waist, then knee, as raindrop projections transformed the room into a rushing river. One room was filled with thousands of illuminated orbs, walled with mirrors as to make it seem endless. Another room dripped with sheets of mist, patterns projected onto the cascading surface. The largest room shone with floor to ceiling animations of trickling water, which followed our movements as we walked across the room, bending around us and creating eddies wherever we paused.

As it approached 9pm and jet lag started to take hold, we elected to head back to our neighborhood for a bite to eat. A small restaurant with dim lights and a crowd of people caught our attention, offering up Tokyo-style Neapolitan pizza. Though pizza was, admittedly, not what we had in mind for our first evening in Tokyo, our meal was excellent and still completely unexpected. The crust, more tender and chewy than a traditional 'za, bent under the weight of of the generous toppings: a delicate smear of marinara, globs of buffalo mozzarella, egg yolks rich and as deeply orange as the Hermes bags we had passed earlier.

Our dinner came with an unexpected show. Sat next to us was a solo French diner who drew the ire of the wait staff by emphatically refusing to order a drink. In many restaurants in Tokyo, the number of seats is so limited that patrons are required to order at least one drink, alcoholic or otherwise, in lieu of a table charge. An additional number of restaurants will refuse to serve solo diners unless there is a seat at the bar available, in hopes of conserving the previous space for larger parties who are more likely to order rounds of food and drink. Despite an explanation of the above from the (very kind) waitress, he continued to refuse and indignantly threatened to walk out without paying for the pizza that had already been made and delivered to his table. After a few repeated requests, he ended up winning the battle. I hope his ego and the 300 yen he saved was worth making such a scene. And I bet he doesn't even know how pathetically short his beloved Eiffel Tower is.

We ended our day with sore feet and heavy eyelids, camera memory cards nearly full, coin purses a little lighter: all of the hallmarks of a successful day of travel.