Hi, and thanks for clicking / tapping. Sanaë and I are having a lot of fun on our Japanese honeymoon, and I’ve really been looking forward to sharing it with you. More to come soon... assuming you make it through this first batch.
Ohayo gozaimasu!
We had a lot of trouble keeping our eyes shut past 5am during the first couple of mornings in Tokyo. That made for sleepy afternoons, but also beautiful sunrises, lots of time for journaling and editing photos, and a great grumpy looking family portrait. We played the honeymoon card for all it’s worth and got upgraded to suites in both hotels we stayed at in Tokyo.
Skyline at night time
Fast forward a little: On our first night, we went to the New York bar at the Park Hyatt, of Lost in Translation fame. It’s a beautiful bar, and I hear the live music is great but the 8pm kickoff was too aggressive for our circadian cycles, and we were well on our way to bed by then. Looking out from the 52nd floor of the Park Hyatt, it becomes clear that this is a big town. Massive in fact: at 38M residents, the Tokyo metro area is home to nearly 1/3rd of Japan’s 125M citizens. For comparison, less than 20% of the French population lives in the Paris metro area. Fun fact: Japan is still the most populous city in the world, but Shanghai is catching up at 35M, and Jakarta isn’t that far behind at 30M. Fun fact #2: 9 of the 10 most populated metropolitan areas are in Asia, with the exception of NYC!
Sumimasen!
On our first day in Tokyo, we walked around the commercial district of Omotesando. I walked up to this man and asked him, with my most charming mix of ‘sumimasen’ (excuse me) and gestures, whether he’d mind if I took his picture. His immediate reaction was to apologize and step out of the frame! We’ve experienced so many little episodes of unexpected thoughtfulness: Today at the train station, the ticketing agent printed out a receipt showing us the next departure time for the train we sought to take. She then helped us book several other tickets for the days ahead. When we were done, she was concerned we might have missed the train indicated on our receipt and had the foresight to print another receipt for us with an updated time, unprompted.
Portholes
We saw a lot of striking architecture in Tokyo. In particular, the designer stores in Omotesando all look to one-up each other with their architecture. This apartment building on a quieter street of Omotesando felt like a beached ship, with its small portholes. I love that throughout the city, and especially in Omotesando, the chaotic eight-lane thoroughfares give way onto a maze of back streets and alleys, where everything goes quiet and we find little gardens, shrines, coffee shops and lots of bicycles.
Ink forests
There are very few things Sanaë likes more than stationary stores, and Tokyo does not disappoint. This tiny corner store in Omotesando had more brands of pens than my childhood favorite: Office Depot. But our favorite stationary superstore was Itoya, sprawled out over 12 floors in Ginza. One whole floor is dedicated to pens; another to calendars; a third to fine papers; and a fourth to hydroponic salads! I have never seen anything even remotely like it.
Ohitsuzen Tanbo
On our first day in Tokyo, we had lunch at Ohitsuzen Tanbo in Omotesando. The place was hard to find and required a wait outside on a little staircase. Fortunately, we had all the time in the world. It seems to be the kind of place people go on a more leisurely Friday lunch break from work. We were served rice and tea, and were instructed by our two neighbors to drown the rice in the tea. That paired deliciously with black cod, little seasonings and a jelly dessert. Our neighbors and us were mutually curious: Sanaë had overheard furansugo (French) several times before we started chatting. They were both around our age, freelancers working on a fashion magazine. They’d been to NYC once and loved Paris-one of them had been there five times. She recalls meeting Karl Lagerfeld at the Café de Flore, bien sûr!
Street portraits
Speaking of fashion—everywhere we went, I just wanted to lean against a wall and take portraits as people made their way down the streets. Tokyoites don’t joke with dress! A lot of men wear boring suits-but beyond that, anything goes. And yes, face masks, lots of face masks.
Kazuko
On Wednesday, Sanaë and I met Sanaë’s aunt Kazuko. We had lunch together at the restaurant at Happo-en. We sat at the counter facing the chef, with the steady beat of rain pouring on the beautiful garden beyond (and beyond that, drab skyscrapers!). Lunch consisted of delicious sashimi and the most tender pork with autumn vegetables. Kazuko is fascinating. She grew up all over the world and attended boarding school, like Akiko, in Switzerland. She then moved to NYC for university in the early 1960s. She lived in the Village and tells us of nights out dancing in Harlem. She moved back to Tokyo and started a PR agency that exists to this day. She lit up telling us about her work for the government of Monaco. She had a policy of only employing women, because she found them to be faster learners, more spontaneously service oriented, and more likely to speak foreign languages.
Happo-en
Happo-en was Akiko and Kazuko’s grandmother’s home. Over lunch, Kazuko recalled spending time there as a child, in the house that gave directly onto this gorgeous garden. She’s grateful the area’s found a new life as a wedding venue, instead of being torn out to make room for more apartment buildings.
Kuma bears
After lunch, Kazuko drove us to Waseda University in the north of Tokyo. Waseda was founded by Okuma Shigenobu, Sanaë’s great-great-grandfather, in the 1880s and is now the largest private university in Tokyo! The university mascot is a grumpy looking bear, aka. a ‘kuma’ in Japanese. Why grumpy? We were given a regal tour of the campus by Kei, a first-year student who commutes 90m twice daily from his parents’ home in Yokohama. He has his sights set on a study abroad at Columbia next year. We then had a chance to meet with Prof Nakagaki and some of his students and learn about their cutting edge research on scaling up carbon capture, a necessary component of our portfolio of solutions to deal with climate change. As post doctorate Corey puts it, adaptation is just a fancy word for suffering.
Tonkatsu
On Wednesday, we had lunch at Butagumi. I had never been a fan of tonkatsu before, and I’ve converted. This restaurant is on a quiet street a short walk from Omotesando. Diners are spread out into several small rooms. Private rooms for business meals require shoes off, other rooms don’t. The pork is tender and the panko shell is thin and crispy and not at all greasy. The dish is served with a bowl of shredded cabbage, to aid your digestion!
Design v1
I had long understood Japan to be somewhat of a design mecca. There’s obviously the very rich artisanal culture, centuries old and continuously developed still today. There’s also an immediately recognizable visual language that we see in furniture, ceramics, everyday objects… But what I did not expect was the incredible level of functional design all around me here. The toilets of course: Toto washlets; non-touch flush for hygiene; privacy music on demand; a sink on top of the bowl, giving a dual purpose to the flush water. But also the foam wrapped on a bag handle so it won’t dig into your hand, umbrella locks at Waseda, or wavy railings in the subway so nobody thinks to slide down.
Design v2
The subway is the epitome of functional design: the numerous & low-hanging handles; numbered car & exits for faster transfers; ground markers for people with visual impairments; stops numbers so gaijin foreigners like me don’t have to memorize difficult names. I think this incredible design thinking shares its roots with the spontaneous consideration for others I mentioned earlier.
Meanwhile, I’m glad to report Uber hasn’t yet entirely decimated the local taxi industry.
Muji
Sanaë and I love Muji. I love their pens, their writing pads, and their desk organization accessories. Not surprisingly, Muji in Tokyo is on another level. We enjoyed mackerel and tofu breakfast platters in the basement diner, before making our way up past the groceries, clothing, kitchen and bedroom items, all the way up to the Muji Hotel!
Kimono
On Thursday morning, Sanaë and I walked around Kagurazaka. We stopped at the Akagi shrine, where this girl was posing for a photographer (not me, another one!). I wonder what the occasion was. While we hung out, people came and went into this open shrine, clapping twice, bowing, and making their way again. It’s a five minute spiritual refresher on the morning commute!
Food composition
A little later, we had lunch at Akomeya, a food court inside a beautiful grocery store. Sanaë and I were surprised to get ringed up by a Frenchman speaking fluent Japanese... and then promptly amused to think how normal that would be in many other capitals, just not here. Just outside the store, a handful of people were huddled with a professional light reflector around a few porcelains and a donabe (rice bowl). They explained they were working on a product composition!
Uniform
When we made our way to the Nezu Museum after lunch, we shared a subway with lots of kids just out of school. We had been amazed earlier in the week to see a boy no older than seven walking home alone. This black and gold school uniform with military origins, while striking, is apparently still relatively common in Tokyo though military style uniforms are gradually being replaced by more civil garb.
Shishi odoshi
On the topic of the Nezu Museum: of my favorite spots so far is its garden. I quickly made my way through the special exhibit on flowers and birds in Japanese art before heading out to walk through the garden in the waning daylight. I wasn’t the only one walking around, but all was silent except the rhythmic tap-tap of a shishi odoshi, a bamboo see-saw that gradually fills with water & then dumps it with a loud thunk.
And a few other shots I liked, for good measure...
