Digitised desires in an analogue world
A Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka post-op, in several parts (pt. 1)
What can be said about Japan that hasn’t been said already? Can you expect to see something that you haven’t subliminally consumed through the Algorithm, Samurai Champloo, A Cook’s Tour/No Reservations,【4K HDR】Walk in Heavy Rain at Night, seemingly neverending blogs and stacks and books and podcasts and soundbites about Tsukiji closing and moving to Toyosu, somethings about geishas and ryokans and onsens and Nippon nomenclature that people are overly comfortable sprinkling into conversations - as signs of high-taste, cosmopolitanism and spending capacity. The cities are huge, and no matter how fast the trains are, there is too much to see - I cancelled a trip to Hakone, didn’t see Mount Fuji, or any hot springs, or towns recommended by New York Times writers, or Hokkaido, or any Art Islands.
I did a decent amount of research, I think, I skimmed a couple of books, made some restaurant reservations, and talked to people who had visited before - but made the glaring oversight of not actually speaking to anyone Japanese. I was planning to eat, purchase, and get lost - and I achieved those 3 goals.
I landed in Tokyo on a balmy Indian Summer day in early October and legged it to Shibuya before dropping the bags and taking one of the two dozen JR JA JY JS metro lines to Shinjuku’s Golden Gai - a footlong by foot-wide grid of alleys with those smokey vinyl Yamazaki bars that epitomise the Tokyo Aesthetic - that sui generis hazy grimy neon that we are all obsessed with. The clam ramen spot we queued for in tight backstreet announced that all the broth was pork and we walked out of the queue - brown gaijins looking for someone to beckon to us, and they did. FOREIGNERS WELCOME - NO COVER CHARGE - FIRST DRINK 500YEN, we soaked in the moody atmosphere - filled with loud Australians and NY/LA caps floating at 5’10’, and walked to a FamilyMart for the first meal of the trip - a soggy fishcake tempura, egg sando, and mentaiko onigiri. The rest of the trip would be mentaiko-accented.
A slow walk exiting Golden Gai and leading to the love hotels around Shinjuku took us to Sushizanmai - a 50-location sushi chain branded with the Japanese colonel sanders.
I woke up in Fuglen, the Bird, the 1963 Oslo mid-century modern coffee spot, that has two in Oslo, and five in Japan…. that Japanese notion of taking things they enjoy from overseas and recreating it, perfecting it, Otaku-ing it starts to set in. I had a funny-shaped croissant that was as wide at the edges as it was in the centre, and a ‘daily coffee’ in a diner mug.
Took a train to Tsukiji, and joined a walking tour of four Seattleites - shouting as quickly as was acceptable, that Teriyaki is from Seattle, and had Chutoro for breakfast, saw an ikura vending machine, had some insipid pickled cucumbers, 3 muscat grapes, and an espresso cup of dashi. It was buzzing with the smell of shaved tuna flakes, grilled surf-and-turf skewers of wagyu loaded with sea urchin roe, and something that looked like a sea-insect smashed with a hydraulic press - I’d learn its an prawn or octopus rice cracker.
The Blackbird Spy-friend recs and Emirati influencer feeds led us to Glitch Coffee, where a photojournalist asked us if he could take our photo, queueing for pourovers. I wondered what the story was about. The Yohji’d baristas explained in genuine detail where the beans were from, and I paid the most i’ve ever for a coffee that tasted like a watery tomato juice (not negatively).
At the Ogawa coffee laboratory a few times later on, the brutalist coffee atrium in Shimokitazawa, we’d have a similar experience - bolstered by maple butter scones.
The thrill of bouncing around on the trains, to neighbourhoods we had memorized from online and text snippets, while flicking through Popeye’s and Casa Brutuses on the commute, seeing the best-dressed people we’d ever come across, never faded even momentarily.