Mete Tours Japan: Planes, Trains, Automobiles, Ferries, Suspension Bridges, Taxis, Bikes… Love Hotels?

Back when we parted ways over the summer, my best friend and brother from another mother, Mete, promised that he would make his way across the Pacific to visit me in Japan. Mete has a real big boy job, one that dispenses a limited amount of paid leave. To maximize his vacation time, he planned a two-week sojourn, with the first week in Portugal and the second week in Japan. Just like the Jesuits centuries before him, Mete would come to Japan from Lisbon.

When it was confirmed that he was indeed pulling up, we sketched out a week of adventure that would start in Tokyo, stop over in Osaka, and conclude with a day of cycling in my own prefecture of Ehime. I arrived in Tokyo on March 21, and Mete would arrive the following day.

Saturday

Based on my calculations of what train I would need to catch out to Western Tokyo (where I would be staying with our lovely family friend Yoshie), I decided to head for Shinjuku Station from the airport and leave my luggage in a coin locker there. While this was a good strategy on paper, I failed to properly account for how unpleasantly crowded it would be. I somehow managed to find a locker after trundling around for several minutes.

I snuck down an alley to find a tiny upstairs ramen shop that featured niboshi, or dried sardines, in their broth. As you can imagine, it was rather salty and I would be lying if I said I truly enjoyed it.

As I walked down the street in search of a reprieve from the hustle and bustle, my eyes found a sign for a cinema. “I wonder what’s showing,” I thought to myself as I went to check it out. It seemed like kismet that a Marty Supreme showing was starting in fifteen minutes. I snagged the last ticket available, and, armed with a ginger ale, plopped myself down in the smallest movie theater I’ve ever been to (which is saying something, having seen movies in Tigard’s Joy Cinema as well as the Movies at Midway in Lewes, Delaware – both places where you’re just as likely to see commercials for local businesses like “Bill’s Car Wash” alongside trailers). There was some shithead kid sitting next to me who was on his phone during the movie, but I didn’t let that ruin it for me.

You have to be a certain type of individual to go to a David Lynch triple feature from 10 PM to 5:30 AM

One detail I noticed on my second watch is that Marty uses “I love you” the way most people use “I’m sorry,” and it’s only at the end that he really means it. From there, I had a little more time to kill before it was time to meet Yoshie. I ended up at a store called BEAMS, which has a little of everything including… a stump?

I couldn’t quite figure out why a stump would cost like $80 – I even went in for a sniff to see if it was sandalwood or something of that nature. Nope. But I ended up with some cool postcards and a little piece of pottery.

I made my way back to the station, and headed west. Way out west, past Kichijoji, and all the way to Kunitachi, known for the prestigious Hitotsubashi University, that has produced scores of politicians and diplomats, as well as Masabumi Hosono, who was condemned and shamed in the media for surviving the sinking of the Titanic (kind of a raw deal in my opinion). His grandson? Haruomi Hosono, one of the most important figures in Japanese pop music, and a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra, along with Ryuichi Sakamoto. Random! Anyways, Yoshie treated me to a lovely Spanish dinner, which went unphotographed because my phone was dead. Thank you, Yoshie!

Sunday

While I was led to believe that Mete’s flight would be arriving around two in the afternoon, he informed me that it would be more like 8 PM. This was funny considering he had considered going directly from the airport to Shibuya to catch the tail end of a Masayoshi Takanaka concert in Shibuya that started at 4. That gave me another solo day. I decided to head to Kichijoji and see what they had going on. I ended up having a picnic in Inokashira Park with a bevy of spherical eats.

I saw a long line of people, so naturally I got in it. It moved fast, and when I got to the front I snagged a menchikatsu and a korokke (from the French croquette). As I was walking to the park, I walked by a pork bun shop located right next to a Beard Papa’s… and I couldn’t resist.

This was easily the best menchikatsu I’ve ever had. It’s basically a breaded and fried meatball, and this one was crisp on the outside and juicy on the inside, with onions and ground meat. The pork bun was top notch as well, and Beard Papa’s cream puffs always deliver. As I later observed to Mete, Japanese food is either something very light and delicate (like seaweed salad or miso soup) or hilariously fattening and decadent (deep fried meatball).

From there I got sucked into Disk Union, a chain of record stores. Tower Records still exists here as well, although the last physical location in the States closed in 2006. They had an excellent collection of used jazz records, and I spent more than an hour browsing, collecting, and returning albums before finally leaving with three. One of the albums I put back was Delphi I by Chick Corea, a collection of solo piano compositions that he recorded at the Delphian Foundation, a Scientology outfit in Sheridan, Oregon. Shoutout to Sheridan – known for Scientology and housing Suge Knight in their Federal Correctional Institute in 2001 (I tried to mail him a letter when I was in 10th grade – shows you what kind of kid I was). Anyways, I went home with Live in Japan by The Crusaders, The Swing of Delight by Santana, and a compilation of songs sampled by Kanye West for records he produced in the early 2000s for the likes of Jay-Z, Cam’Ron, and Common. Like denim and knives, Japanese vinyl is sought for its sound quality in addition to the aesthetic value.

Now it was time to check into our hotel. I had decided that Mete and I should stay in Yanaka, a chill pre-war neighborhood removed from the overcrowded, overstimulating hecticness of Shibuya/Shinjuku/Harajuku. Our hostel was sparse, but sufficient. After chilling and studying for a little bit, I moseyed to a brewery, then a Chinese-ish restaurant for some tantanmen (a derivative of dandanmian, or dan dan noodles).

Finally, Mete arrived. I presented him with a Japanese DVD of Magnolia, acquired from Book Off just minutes prior. After he freshened up from his flight (Lisbon –> Warsaw –> Tokyo), we hit a local izakaya for some wings, and then an all-night soba joint.

Monday

The next morning we rose early and headed out for coffee, only to discover that there had been a fire just a couple of blocks away from our hotel. Thankfully no one was hurt, but it did add some excitement to our sleepy neighborhood.

We wandered around while waiting for an Australian cafe to open. What makes a cafe Australian? What is Australian cuisine? What do they got going on down under? It seems like most of Australia is California-esque coastal cities with a vast swath of hostile desert in the middle.

After a flat white, we wandered down to Ueno Park, where the cherry blossoms were in full effect, with food stalls to boot. We perused some junk tents in the drizzling rain, and Mete picked up some CDs while I browsed vintage lighters. Hit the kebab vendor with a quick “selam” to make sure he’s Turkish.

I taught Mete how to burn his mouth on takoyaki

We kept stepping through Ueno and eventually hopped the subway to Ginza. The fact that the first kanji in Ginza「銀座」is the character for gold should be enough to tell you that’s the fancy shopping district. Pop into a department store to show him the depachika – the basement with all the food – and spray on some cologne before eating a small snack before lunch. I booked an omakase spot that had a lunch deal. Mete leads us to a fancy hat store.

It is striking that in depictions of an older time in America, everyone is always wearing hats, men and women alike. And nowadays, save for beanies or baseball caps, pretty much no one wears hats. Though I suffer from debilitating hat head, a cool hat can be a statement piece.

We find the omakase spot – it’s on the fifth floor in a bit of a dodgy neighborhood. While dodgy by Japanese standards is quite a departure from American ones, it seems to be a semi-red light district. When we arrive, we’re shunted into a side room that’s more like a closet and our sushi starts arriving. I insist quite strongly that we’d like to sit at the counter, and when our waiter disappears for nearly twenty minutes, I worry that I’ve offended him.

I don’t quite remember what all the nigiri were but I think we had tuna, flounder, and shima-aji (or striped jack), which Mete promptly fell in love with. A little bite of ikura and crab on rice soon followed. While we were eating I was attempting to peek through the wooden door that separated us from the rest of the restaurant. After much of the counter had cleared out, our waiter reappeared and moved us to the counter. I swear the fish tasted so much better when the chef placed it right in front of us.

Next was a different cut of tuna – just look at how deep the red hue is. The shrimp was the perfect texture (reminding me of some of the har gow I ate in Hong Kong). And this was the first time I really “got” uni – sea urchin, a favorite of my mom’s that I had never quite fully enjoyed. Leave it to omakase to deliver in that respect.

After a dessert of warabi mochi (another first for Mete, who, like most Americans, had only encountered the type of mochi with ice cream inside) and a cup of tea, we were done. In hindsight, I should have ponied up for more courses, because we ended up heading directly down to Tsukiji Market for some more sushi. While the market itself was relocated in 2018 (I was lucky enough to visit the original one as a kid back in 2014, I was under the impression that the new one was far away, but according to the map, it’s only three and a half kilometers from the original one), the Outer Market with a smattering of shops and restaurants remains.

We wandered all over the Outer Market, as I inquired with various vendors if they had Mete’s newfound love, shima-aji. By now it was around 3 PM, most vendors were closing up, and no one seemed to have that specific fish. A random passerby, a sharply dressed man in a pinstripe suit, heard my pleas and steered us directly to a restaurant that had it. After a few more pieces each, we had finally scratched our sushi itch.

From there we hopped on the subway and headed for Meiji Jingu, a vast swath of forest and gardens, with a massive Shinto shrine to boot. Amidst the sensory assault of Harajuku, it’s an island of tranquility.

We tried to do a spot of thrifting, but Harajuku was such a zoo, it was rather overwhelming and unpleasant. We did poke our heads in a few cool shops, but much of Harajuku today is luxury designer outlets (which I’m convinced are money laundering fronts).

Back when we were planning this trip, Mete had booked a score of concerts for us to attend. I had no objections, as I love live music, but I was a little mystified why he was so hell-bent on seeing Lisa Loeb. I knew very little about her, let along any of her songs. According to her Wikipedia, she appeared in Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (2015) as herself. She was born in Bethesda, Maryland, to Jewish parents – that sounds familiar. She also dated Dweezil Zappa (who got his own taste of Hollywood with a minor role in The Running Man (1987) with Ah-nahld, along with NFL Hall-of-Famer Jim Brown, former Family Feud host Richard Dawson, and Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac – what the hell was this movie), son of Frank, for a hot minute and together they starred in Dweezil & Lisa, “a weekly culinary adventure for the Food Network.” That sounds like something out of The Onion, and I’m not sure I would want to eat anything cooked by someone named Dweezil.

In Hot Tub Time Machine 2, Craig Robinson performs a cover/parody/homage of Lisa’s hit “Stay (I Missed You).” Anyway, for whatever reason, we had tickets to see Lisa that night at the Blue Note. We ended up in the bougie neighborhood where the venue is, and after struggling to locate something to eat, coincidentally ended up at Afuri.

For those not in the know, Afuri is a ramen restaurant that takes its name from the mountain from which it sources water for its broth. Though this memory has since taken on a Bigfoot-like exaggerated quality for me, I ate at the original Afuri location with my family when I was a kid. I remember a dirty restaurant, where we ordered from a vending machine and sat on milk crates to scarf down delicious ramen while rats ran around our feet. When Afuri was looking to expand to the United States, they chose my beloved Portland over larger cities like New York or Los Angeles because the soft water from our Bull Run Reservoir better matched the water from Mt. Afuri. However, the Portland location (which has since expanded to additional locations in Portland, in addition to California, Canada, Portugal, Singapore, and Hong Kong) is as bougie as the (memory, at least) original Tokyo spot was dank (I unearthed a blog post from 2013 that has a few grainy photos of the Ebisu location that we must have eaten at – I guess it was more of a hip, industrial vibe, with no rats and normal stools).

At any rate, Afuri’s thing is yuzu. Yuzu has been played out, as this article from last year details, but you can’t argue with the results. It adds a citrusy element of tartness to everything from ramen to beer. I forgot if we got the shio (salt) or shoyu (soy) ramen, but either way it’s light enough to taste that hint of yuzu. By Japan standards it’s on the bougie side (in my experience, the best ramen usually comes from the least assuming establishments), but still cheaper than the Portland location.

After a quick walk-and-chug, we arrive at the Blue Note Tokyo and are shown to our seats. We sip espresso martinis as Lisa sings. I don’t know a single song, but it’s a nice vibe.

At the conclusion of the show, we still have an appetite for music, so we walk 15 minutes to a bar. But first, with Mete’s phone dead and mine on low battery, I borrow a pencil from some salarymen and write down instructions for how to get back to Yanaka, should we need them.

Red Bar (I wonder why they call it that) is unassuming from the outside, but inside has cool eclectic decor, and two levels with two different DJs establish two different moods. These tracks are too obscure for Shazam to pin down, and when we leave, helpful directions from a passing stranger help us find the train station we need. It was a long day, and we got an early start as well, and we guess how many steps we did. Somewhere in the realm of 20-25,000, we reckon. We should have guessed higher, because we did 33,000 steps – nearly 15 miles.

Tuesday

The next morning we find ourselves at the Sugamo Flea Market on the bustling Jizo-Dori shopping street.

Start with some spirituality to offset the consumption

Salespeople ply us with samples at the garlic shop and at the honey spot – we actually have to tap out and say no mas at the honey store after something like a dozen samples. Honeycomb gets stubbornly stuck in my teeth.

Garlic spread

Cool watches from the 60s that don’t actually work. Keychains to help us navigate using the alignment of the stars. Takeout iced coffee from an old-school cig hotbox kissaten. We march to the kebab shop.

Time to enjoy my first street meat in what must be nearly a year. That’s far too long to go without thinly shaved meat drowned in mysterious pink and white sauces. My tortilla is lowkey untoasted, but it’s okay because I got it loaded with feta and hot peppers and all that good stuff.

We eat beneath the cherry blossoms before embarking for Shimokitazawa, aka the Mecca for foreign tourists who come to Japan in search of thrifting (read: other 22 year-old white boys). I bought a marble apple – exactly what it sounds like, an apple-shaped marble paperweight of sorts – before spending way too much money on a fancy coffee that I ordered from a menu that resembled a statistical presentation, with pie charts and everything. When it comes to coffee or wine, I’m not knowledgeable and my palate is not refined enough to really tell much of a difference between cheap swill and the good stuff.

We inspected pens and stationary, smelled scents, and tried on sunglasses. I got a vintage Italian tank top. From there, Mete directed us to another store. If I thought I couldn’t afford anything at any of the previous stores, my eyes bugged out of my skull when I surreptitiously peaked at some of the price tags in this joint.

Mete tried on some poultry-themed slippers that cost about as much as the contents of my entire Japanese bank account. Shortly after this, his jet lag caught up with him and he crashed. Hard. We had another night of live music on the books, and I didn’t think he was gonna make it. A bus brought us into Shibuya, and after a katsu dinner, we retreated to a quiet music bar where Mete caught a quick power nap.

The bar was spinning some absolute classics like Donny Hathaway’s Live album and the John Legend collaboration with The Roots, in addition to some songs I hadn’t heard before from familiar voices – like Mos Def singing with the Isley Brothers. In fact, we heard so much good music this day – from what the shops in Shimokitazawa were playing to our concert – that I made a playlist.

Mete had found a show called SPIN.DISCOVERY, a reoccurring line-up of three bands in a basement venue called WWW. We missed the first act, and arrived midway through the final song of the second set after Mete miraculously rallied. But we were right up front when the third band, a group from Okinawa called HOME, took the stage.

HOME absolutely killed it. The singer was the kind of nonbinary-ish diva that you want fronting your rock band. He moved around the stage, spinning and doing a graceful, deliberate stumble. The guitar player had a different grunge kind of style, draped in flannel and hiding behind his bangs. The third member was a DJ of sorts, laying down a backing beat via a drum machine and providing support on the keys as well. The sound was indie, shoegaze-y, with a dash of new wave-ness. In an interview, the guitarist, who goes by Shun, recounted how when he was in junior high school, he had acute allergies and was heavily medicated. He would lay down and inadvertently robo-trip to bands like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, and Ride (maybe if someone had put him onto DJ Screw instead, he would have gone in a different musical direction). At any rate, you should check HOME out.

Wednesday

On Wednesday we woke up, checked out, hustled to Tokyo Station, and managed to grab 駅弁 (train station bento) just in time for our Shinkansen to Osaka.

Bullet train boys and their bento

As soon as we arrived in our tempura-themed Airbnb, Mete declared that he was in need of a nap. It was drizzling as I set off for a thrift store recommended by my Matsuyama thrift shop curator/DJ friend Hodoka.

A sign advertising “Italian vintage” caught my eye and I took a detour to a fourth floor shop. It was tastefully curated, minimally stocked, and priced closer to a consignment store than your local Value Village.

Shabbat Shalom, Osaka

But I struck up a conversation with the shopkeeper, who turned out to be a very interesting guy named Jo (short for Jotaro, per his Instagram). He happened to be from the Matsuyama area, and knew Hodoka, Tacos Locos, and some other local figures on the cool/alternative scene. We talked for nearly an hour – he’s been all over the world in search of vintage clothing, including to Italy.

He professed a deep appreciation for Portland (as Hodoka and many other cool Japanese people do), and recounted to me how he had driven across Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas – places I have yet to venture. His favorite things about America include Panda Express and Mountain Dew. When I asked him how he had communicated with people in America (his English seemed to be mostly confined to profanity), he responded「気持ちで」which more or less translates to “with feeling.” He knocked 800 yen off my Boris Becker Lotto Fleece, and threw in a Barcelona ’92 pin before cracking open a beer that he pulled from behind a counter. I guess his boss is chill like that.

I found Mete back at the mall that we had visited earlier that day, where he picked up a pair of sneakers. Every white boy who comes back from Japan does so wearing a pair of Onitsuka Tigers, he said, but who else is rocking the Patricks? Personally, I prefer the look of the Tigers, but I deeply identify with the need to not follow trends.

For dinner we ended up at Hanamaruken Ramen down on Dotonbori. Though it seemed to be all tourists and no locals (always a red flag), this ramen had made my Japan Top 10 nearly a decade ago, and the nostalgia was a powerful factor. However, either my tastes have changed since then (very possible, as knowing about Tucker Carlson has ruined bow ties for me), or the ramen has declined in quality. It was good, but the meat was way more fat that anything else.

After a brief pit stop back at the crib (little did I know that was the last time I would be there), we were off for some funky jazzy DJing. Mete’s incessant use of Chat-GPT was a source of much argument and debate during our trip, but I would be lying if I said that we didn’t have two awesome nights of music on Tuesday and Wednesday that I might not have found on my own.

SOCORE FACTORY is a small club in an unassuming neighborhood. If you didn’t know it was there, you would walk right past the heavyset metal door.

It’s long and skinny, with a DJ setup on one end (no bandstand, even) and a bar on the other end opposite the maybe-temporary okonomiyaki setup.

There was an Australian/Kiwi dude DJing when we arrived shortly after midnight, and he was relieved by a Japanese guy around 1.

On our walk to the club from the subway, we had walked past this unmanned thrift shop and obviously we had to return on our way back (although by then the subway had stopped running).

A quick Fami Chiki + egg sando, and I was ready for bed as we walked up to our Airbnb. It was past three in the morning. We stood outside of the door for a beat. “I don’t have the key,” Mete said. “That’s funny. That’s a good bit.” “No, I’m serious.”

I wasn’t even mad. The emotion I was feeling was something like disbelief, mixed with exasperation, residual drunkenness, and a heavy pinch of disassociation. I sank to the fetal position on the soggy carpet of the lobby. Mete called Airbnb customer service. About as useful as buckling your seatbelt as your plane hurtles towards the earth, nose down from 35,000 feet. After about fifteen minutes of trying to fall asleep, as if this were a bad dream I could miraculously wake up from, I had an idea. While I had never been put in this position, my more seasoned friends here in Japan had told me that I could always hunker down at a 24-hour manga cafe if I missed the last train or something. So we stumbled like zombies down the darkened streets of Osaka’s dotonbori, the tourist trap stalls hawking Wagyu skewers long since shuttered.

As we walked in dead silence, I noticed a love hotel out of the corner of my eye. For those who don’t know, love hotels are more or less what they sound like. Hotels for sex, often rented by the hour or for similarly short periods of time. Designed to be discreet, contact with staff is limited. You pay for your room via a machine, where you can also rent lingerie or anything else you might need for your night of promiscuity. Interior design is often themed. But hey, it would be more comfortable than a cafe. After Mete successfully negotiated with the staff via Google Translate (I was leaning against the wall with my head in my hands), we opened the door to a mostly normal room. Yes, the bathroom took up about half the entire room, and there was a mirror on the ceiling. You can guess what was on the TV (although they had karaoke too), as well as what might be in the toiletries kit. The bed was comfortable, and although it was past 4 AM and Mete fell asleep immediately, I could not. Maybe it was the Strong Zero, maybe it was the immensely-fatty ramen, or maybe it was the emotional rollercoaster of the past hour. Either way, it resulted in me vomiting into the toilet in a spectacularly accurate fashion. After re-brushing my teeth so aggressively that my gums bled, I eventually succumbed to sleep.

Thursday

I woke up to the sound of the doorbell chiming. I was so confused. Where was I? What time is it? Where’s Mete? I staggered to the door, and opened it to find the same old woman who had checked us in last night. She informed me that checkout was at 2 PM – in an hour. I checked my phone to find three missed calls from Mete. After hazily climbing back into my dirty clothes from the prior night (there’s nothing I abhor more than putting on the same pair of socks after shedding them), I slinked out of the hotel and immediately found a Family Mart for a Pocari Sweat. While I’ve nursed some hangovers while trying to recall the exact sequence of events of a wild night, this was an unprecedented level of “what the hell happened last night.” Back in the hotel I had even checked my wallet to make sure I still had my bank card and residence card.

I found somewhere to sit in the sun and called my parents. I had to tell someone about what happened, more to convince myself than anything else. I eventually found Mete in a camera store looking at lenses that cost more than a month’s paycheck. He had left the hotel in the morning, and after gaining access to the Airbnb via a code and packing our suitcases, spent a few hours exploring on his own. Props to him for handling the situation. We spent the rest of the day farting around looking for jeans. Have you ever waited in line to buy jeans? Well we did, at Momotaro (named after the Japanese legend of a boy born from a peach who became a great warrior). Mete was on a denim quest, but ultimately walked away empty-handed after trying many pairs at several different stores.

This cool music store above a different jeans store had curated music sampler platter. If I ran a music store, a la High Fidelity (I would die for Blewish excellence Lisa Bonet), I would definitely have something like this.

We retrieved our luggage and stored it in a train station locker before transitioning towards our second Baller Meal. While I was hoping to be better dressed for this (or at least recently-showered), I quickly forgot about my mustiness when the plates at Ushigoro started hitting the table.

First off was this light smattering of veggies.

Avocado kimchi, eggplant kimchi, and asparagus. Having something soft, smooth, and creamy kimchi-ified instead of the usual crisp/crunchy texture was interesting, and could be a new horizon in K-Mex.

After some consomme, I had to laugh out loud at the sheer absurd luxury of the first dish.

Yeah, that’s beef sushi topped with snow crab, uni, and caviar. This is just stupid. All of these ingredients would probably be better enjoyed separately. I actually felt guilty eating this, like I was betraying my social, moral, and political values. But of course it was amazing.

We got even more stupid with the next one.

Smoked beef tartare with caviar and cream cheese inside. This one reminded me of how my most recent trip to the legendary Russ and Daughters yielded a bagel with smoked trout and wasabi-infused tobiko. Cream cheese and fish eggs = a natural pairing. This also brought me back to the first few weeks of high school when a friend (who will go unnamed), uninvited, reached across the lunch table and stuck his fingers into my negitoro gunkan and proclaimed it to be “like beef tartare.” Mete knows who I’m talking about here.

Why are the truffles in rice? Probably to keep them dry. Mete and I stuck our strong Mediterranean noses into the truffle bowl to give them a good sniff, and were amazed by their deep, earthy, umami-laden aroma. They do smell like mushrooms, even though they look like a fossilized dog turd. Who remembers the movie Pig (2021), where Nick Cage plays a truffle hunter living in the secluded forests of Oregon who has to go on a John Wick-style mission to retrieve his prized truffle-sniffing pig? Mete and I do. I think Covid unfortunately resulted in it being lost in the shuffle, although it was a small indie production (modest $3 million budget) and may not have gotten much of a release anyways.

The meat in question was chuck flap (I’ll leave the sophomoric jokes to Dennis Lee, one of my favorite food bloggers), and we swirled it around in the raw egg before cleaning up the egg with some rice.

Next was tongue. Mete is a big tongue fan – in the Turkish, cold cut style. My mom has told me about how she hated eating tongue growing up. The waiter explained that this was the root of the tongue, which is naturally oily. Mete didn’t actually like this one, and gave it to me to finish. I liked it, with a squeeze of lemon on top, though it was a bit chewy.

Around this point Mete was cursing me for letting him have Mos Burger around four hours earlier. I’m not your mom, I retorted, you’re a grown man, I’m not gonna step in and chastise you for potentially spoiling your appetite (although I did that very thing on numerous other occasions throughout the trip).

What the hell is this absurdity? It’s a beef katsu sando topped with scrambled eggs and more truffle. “More truffle?” I moaned in exasperation. I need to be sent to a Communist reeducation camp after this meal. Of course this was delicious – not quite your typical Tokyo Sando (my favorite Portland food cart), but if I saw someone eating this within the context of online short-form video content, I would make fun of them. I guess in some ways, we all become exactly what we despise.

More meat. Who even knows at this point. I can’t even properly appreciate that amazing marbling. I think the one on the left is rib eye and the one on the right is shabu shabu (hot pot) style. By the way, at this place, your waiter will cook your meat for you, usually for less than thirty seconds because it’s sliced so thin (and because you would definitely mess it up if you tried yourself).

After a bibimbap-esque hot stone rice bowl (resplendent with more truffles), it was time for dessert.

We enjoyed our little strawberry cream pudding thing with some hojicha before waddling out of the restaurant. All in all, this meal amounted to $100 a person, not including beers. In today’s American economy, you might drop that on an ordinary restaurant experience. And this was a once-in-a-decade type decadent meal that Mete had wished for, along with the omakase. While it was delicious, I didn’t feel like it was especially creative. No Noma action here. But I guess when you have such high quality ingredients, it’s best to keep it simple, stupid.

From there we made our way down to the port and successfully boarded the ferry. Here’s the route, in case you’re curious.

Mete went to great lengths to capture the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge, which connects Kobe to Awaji Island (formerly the longest suspension bridge in the world)

We made great use of the facilities on board, including the massage chairs, vending machines, and game room. To Mete’s delight, one of the vending machines dispensed towels (for the onboard onsen), upon which he promptly spent our remaining cash. We also chatted it up with a group of recent high school grads. Mete asked them if they had seen Marty Supreme – they had not, but one of them said that he enjoyed Se7en (1995). Their English was very limited (a striking indictment of the English language instruction in Japan), but “what’s in the box?!” transcends all linguistic boundaries.

Yeah I’m wearing a velour Italian tracksuit, don’t worry about it

Friday

We got breakfast on the boat at approximately 5:45 AM. Between the Japanese and Western options, obviously we got the Japanese one.

We got a little salmon, some omelet, salad, an umeboshi, and a Dixie cup of natto. I chose to eat the natto in small doses, with rice rolled up with the seaweed. This was Mete’s first acquaintance with natto, and he dove right in and took a bite straight to the dome (after squeezing in the included soy and mustard packets and stirring vigorously until it’s foamy). Credit to him for that. The ferry docked shortly after, and we scrambled to pack our luggage and ran to the bus bound for Matsuyama.

We arrived at my apartment, and Mete grabbed another nap while I did his laundry and watched some March Madness. From there we headed into Matsuyama. I showed him around, we had a spot of curry for lunch, and he loaded up on CDs at Book Off.

I treated Mete to a castle sunset, and after getting slightly lost, we met up with my friend Will for an izakaya dinner. We dined on a smorgasbord of gyoza, oden, tofu, karaage, and much more. A quick drink at Cafe Bleu ended our night – we would need our beauty rest for tomorrow.

Saturday

The Shimanami Kaido is a cycling route that spans a network of islands between Ehime Prefecture and Hiroshima Prefecture.

I’ve heard about it since I arrived here in Ehime, but I had yet to attempt it. Mete is a cyclist at heart, as he’s spent most of the past five years pedaling around Chicago and Paris, so I figured he would be an ideal cycle partner. We rose early in the morning to catch the train to Imabari.

A quick selfie atop the Kurushima Kaikyo Bridge, which was the world’s longest suspension bridge when it was completed in 1999, but now ranks a measly 52nd.

We biked up to the Kirosan Observatory Park on Oshima (which literally translates to “big island”). Thankfully we had an electric boost on our rented bikes, because I would have not been able to drag myself up these mountains without it.

We sipped on fresh orange juice, the pride of Ehime, as we took in the view. After being off the bike for maybe 45 minutes, my butt cheeks protested to returning to the bike’s uncomfortable seat. We pedaled to a Rose Park, which I imagined to be like Portland’s Rose Garden, but instead was more of a kids on see-saws vibe, plus we were several months too early for the roses. But to save the detour, there was a quaint museum housing some of the works of local-born painter Hitone Noma. We snagged some postcards and headed to the next island, Hakata-jima (no relation to Hakata as in Fukuoka).

We had a surprisingly great lunch at a totally random roadside joint. I was concerned about timing, as there was a ferry back to Imabari that we could not afford to miss, but we enjoyed a Japanese-Western fusion meal with miso pork cutlets. I indulged in a sakura tiramisu for dessert.

After lunch we climbed up to Hirakiyama Park, where my friend Celine had assured us that the view of the sakura would be spectacular. But this has been a strange, uneven year for sakura, with no consistency in bloom time and volume even for trees right next to each other. Though the sakura were not in bloom, we enjoyed a great view of the Tatara Bridge, which we would not be making it to.

We stopped to check out the dolphin farm, which was cool but also sad to see the dolphins in such small enclosures.

The “Night of the Dolphin” segment of The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror XI has always stuck with me – the idea that hyperintelligent dolphins will one day rise up and have their revenge on humanity.

As we turned southwards to the ferry port, we went by the nicest looking outdoor basketball court I’ve seen in Japan. Why is it on this random island? How much use does it get? These are questions I don’t have answers to. We made it to the ferry just in the nick of time, and were treated to a lovely golden hour view of the islands as we retreated back to Imabari.

Mete of course picked up a set of the renowned Imabari towels as we returned the bikes. Back in Matsuyama, we met back up with Will, who showed us around his favorite onsen, Soratomori (translates to “the sky and forest”). Will is the onsen expert, and this place was unlike any onsen I had been to. Usually with an onsen, you bring your own towel, and you pay a few bucks for access to the facilities, which include a few different kinds of baths, a sauna, maybe a massage chair, and a lounge area. This was a different level, and upon walking in it seemed like a fancy hotel, and the smell of lemongrass hung in the air. The baths were top-notch, and relieved our aching bodies. After bathing we donned the provided pajamas – loose-fitting, monochrome, slightly cult-y. Will departed, but Mete and I headed to the restaurant, where we feasted on a massive spread of taimeshi (the Ehime speciality), tempura, sashimi, and other bits and bobs. I left my phone in the locker, so no picture was had, but the tray nearly took up the entire table. We tried to have a massage, but they were booked until after the last train back to Iyo. Instead Mete took advantage of the one working massage chair, while I retired to one of the lounge rooms, where I reclined in a hammock and flipped through a magazine.

We didn’t end up making the last train anyway, and Mete fell asleep in the cab ride back to my apartment – that post-onsen sleep is deep and powerful. The cab driver got lost, but we eventually found our way.

Sunday

The next morning Mete woke early to pack, and then we sipped coffee next to the ocean, just a few minutes on foot from my apartment.

I put the boy in a cab to the airport, and that was the last I saw of him. It was quite the week.

Pretty much right after Mete left I got sick – I thought I had pink eye, but it turned out to be adenovirus-induced conjunctivitis. There’s nothing quite as humbling as getting an illness as an adult that usually children get from putting blocks into their mouths. But I’m better now, and have been sitting on this for quite a bit while I waited for Mete to produce a contribution. After all, it’s time for my next adventure. So without further ado, Mete’s Japan musings:

Figured I’d chime in with an epilogue (after much procrastination, thanks for bearing with me Zev). After downing my airport OJ at MYJ and Suntory beer at HND, and as the horizon downed the sun, I settled into my trip home. I opened Zev’s parting gift, a copy of Norwegian Wood, which starts off the rip on a 747 reflecting about “what I had lost over the course of my life: … feelings I would never know again.” I figured an equally apt and tamer start to the flight would instead involve a rewatch of Marty Supreme.

I had the feeling the soundtrack, vaporwave and all, is placeless and timeless – in the sense that it’s liminal space-y. Director Josh Safdie has spoken about evoking “hauntology,” a Frankenterm about “lost futures” coined by Jaques Derrida in Spectres of Marx (1993) to build a vocabulary around communist utopias that never came to be (see the Marty blog). These chasmic bounces and gliding synths come in when Marty first sees the reigning table tennis champion from across the tournament venue. The track plays to a version of Marty in limbo, one where he has behind him “82 million souls hold[ing] hands in the rebirth of a nation” like Endo does in post-war Japan. I wouldn’t call it jealousy, but Marty wants the circumstances Endo has: the title, the clout. What I appreciate about Marty’s character though is he doesn’t need admiration, it’s just he’s frustrated he’s one in a billion and doesn’t get his flowers for it. Talk about a complex! I had one of the last onigiris I’ll have in quite some time, and rode those vaporwaves into a sleep that lasted till sunrise. 

Now it’s a matter of how I can get what I had in Japan in Chicago. For all our American ingenuity, there’s so much we get dead wrong: convenience stores, toilets, transit. There are these socks for god’s sake that feel like truffula gloves over my feet. My facebook reels feed, the only place I feel safe on the internet, is sakura-stained with stamp art at Japanese stationery festivals.

For all our differences, Japanese are also super consumerist I’ve realized. It’s really not that you won’t find similar things here; it’s that the median consumer’s disposition, preferences, taste is elevated such that sellers there sell better things. I was talking with a friend about this, who recalled something Dan Carlin said: “The Japanese are just like everyone else, only more so.”

I hope to be the versions of me that like everything I could reasonably like. There’s the Masayoshi Takanakafication of our preferences, where the Algo does its thing once a critical mass rallies around something. It’s not that what’s popular isn’t good, it’s that seeing virality grab something you like can be unsettling. And in Takanaka’s case, Zev tells me, he’s far bigger in the US than in Japan. It’s almost arbitrary what gets the hype and what doesn’t but could’ve. So I’ve been listening to Shibuya-kei, which is like Japanese pop meets French lounge music.

I haven’t appreciated until recently how some of my most formative franchises, Pokémon and Mario, come from Japan. And they couldn’t have been from anywhere but there. I love that Nintendo’s heroes greet you in the airport halls.

A few weeks after full bloom in Japan, the cherry blossoms in Jackson Park, Chicago bloomed. I realized that every time I’ve seen them outside Japan, they’ve been a spectacle. In Japan there was this group of kids on recess in the park where we were eating our wraps, just hanging out under the trees. Here it’s people in droves getting their portraits taken. There’s something beautiful about not making a spectacle of something most people do. And I guess there’s something beautiful about making a spectacle of something others don’t.

It wasn’t until last week that I broke my streak of no fish since Japan. A friend and I made Jonah Reider’s poached fish recipe, with a generous amount of garlic miso paste from Jizo-Dori mixed into the beurre monté sauce. It reminded me I don’t have long to get through the yogurt I picked up at the airport.

If you find yourself lucky enough to go on a trip with Zev, count your blessings until after it’s over. Thanks again for the hospitality, Dweez — until Chicago…