Snapshots of Life in Tokyo 🗼🍣🇯🇵🌸⛩

Exploring the busiest city in the world for 5 weeks

Apr 02, 2024

Macy Sees The World is an album of short fiction and essays inspired by my travels around the world. To join the adventure, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Click below to learn more about subscriber benefits.

Hiya friend!

How have you been?

I just arrived in Osaka after bouncing around the Izu Peninsula for the past two weeks during which I saw Mount Fuji way more times than I needed to, made friends with a backpacking French couple plus two siblings from Colorado, and ziplined for the first time.

I can’t wait to share more details from that brief yet unforgetable travel episode with you, but before I do, I want to invite you to my home for the past 5 weeks: Tokyo, aka the world’s busiest city.

Through the following photos, I hope to give you a visual tour of Tokyo that’ll simultaneously acquaint you with the city’s frenetic personality while highlighting its ultramodern yet traditional aesthetic.

In short, think of today’s post as a look into my traveler’s notebook. The photos are ordered chronologically, with each one followed by a few lines of context.

Since I’ll be sharing about my time volunteering at an international language cafe in a future newsletter, I decided to exclude photos from that experience from today’s article. If you’re curious about what that was like, subscribe for free to stay updated!

Lastly, because today’s newsletter contains A LOT of photos, it might get cut off before the end. To prevent that from happening, I recommend reading this in your browser.

Let’s begin!

P.S. This month, several authors are offering their books for FREE for a limited time. If you’re interested in expanding your spring reading list, check out the promo here: https://books.bookfunnel.com/pageturnerfreebies/xgjo2viaur

1. February 5th — Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

It snowed right as I landed in Tokyo! This was the second time I’ve ever experienced snowfall, so needless to say, I was quite thrilled. Not even trudging through slush with a suitcase and backpack for an hour could dampen my mood.

The next day, my one of my roommates and I stumbled upon these two snowmen in front of a neighbor’s house. The bottle cap eyes and chopstick arms are just too cute 🥺.

2. February 8th — Asakusa Kannon Temple and Tokyo Sky Tree

A few days after I arrived in Tokyo, I visited the Asakusa Kannon Temple with my other roommate and her friend. Having stood for 1,379 years, the temple is one of the oldest and most revered worship sites in Japan. It’s dedicated to Kannon, the Buddhist goddess of mercy and receives about 30 million visitors every year.

Later that night we visited the Tokyo Skytree, a broadcasting and observation tower. At 2,080 ft, it’s the tallest tower in the world and the third tallest structure in the world. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the observation deck, but we still saw some pretty stunning views on our walk there (bottom right picture).

3. February 11th — Hanging out with new friends in Ueno

A few days later, I visited the Shinobazunoike Benten-do (temple in the middle of a lotus pond) had dinner on Ameyoko Shopping Street with some new friends I met through the language cafe.

One of my favorite parts of traveling is meeting fascinating people and spontaneously deciding to hang out. Our group consisted of two Japanese office workers, a calligraphy professor, a French expat currently living in Tokyo , and my roommate who’s also from France.

4. February 12th — Exploring Meiji Shrine, Harajuku Fashion District, and Shibuya Crossing

To kickstart our second week in Tokyo, a friend and I visited the city’s largest shrine, Meiji Jingu. The giant torri gates marking the entrances kind of made me feel like I was in a fantasy story set in some forgotten epoch.

In the afternoon, we picked our way through Harajuku (bottom left photo) fashion district, which is renowned for its quirky vintage, clothing, and cosplay shops.

At night, we made a quick detour to Shibuya Crossing, allegedly the busiest intersection in the world with about 2 million pedestrians passing through every day. Tbh, I love the feeling of being swept away by a crowd. Your senses go haywire. You lose sight of yourself. Getting burried under the frenzy of human activity around you feels paradoxically peaceful.

Later that week, I went izakaya hopping near Nakano Broadway with my Italian roommate and a Japanese friend, where I tried warm soba and Takoyaki (a round, fried snack made of wheat batter and octopus) for the first time.

The cozy alleys, pervasive lanterns, and idiosyncratic storefronts enamored me. As we head back to the train station, I imagined a little boy sitting outside one of the izakayas, nimble fingers folding an origami dinosaur. That image stuck with me, eventually inspiring “The Cycle of Death”, our first short story set in Japan.

6. February 19th — Kamakura daytrip

During my third week, my roommates and I took a daytrip to the seaside town of Kamakura. After being engulfed in an incessant stream of overstimulation for several weeks, the quiet as we walked from the train station to the Great Buddha statue felt almost palpable.

The statue’s craftmanship belies its age. We were all pretty shocked to learn that it was constructed eight hundred years ago and has withstood multiple typhoons, tsumanis, and earthquakes throughout its lifetime.

On our way there, we encountered these little statues in red caps and bibs. Apparently, they honor the Jizo Bosatsu, the Buddhist deity of children and travelers, and are quite common in Japan. (I saw them a few times when traveling around Izu Peninsula last week).

As for the frogs on the train track, Idk what their story is, but they sure look adorable!

7. February 24th — Tokyo Tower

Over the weekend, I checked out Tokyo Tower with one of my roommates. The view from the observation deck was stunning, like gazing down at a sea of stars.

Later that night, I thought of this quote from The Little Prince: “All men have the stars but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For businessman they were wealth…”

Today, I am a traveler, and the stars are my guides; I wonder what they’ll mean to me 5 years from now. Guess I’ll find out when I get there. What do they mean to you in your current stage of life, dear reader? Feel free to let me know in the comments.

8. March 2nd — Live jazz club

One night after our shift, the other staff members and I decided to take a peek at this live jazz bar down the street from the cafe. I was pretty excited since I’ve been wanting to experience live jazz for several months now.

Watching the musicians leap into spontaneous rifts and construct new chords on the fly was incredibly energizing. The style of playing would shift depending on the lead player’s skill and artistic personality. One sax player would trill with reckless abandon while another drew his notes at a slower, meditative pace.

I ended up staying from 10 pm till 3 am with a handful of the other staff. Returning to the outside world is hard when you’re surrounded by such good company and good music.

In the second to last week of my stay, a friend I’d met at the jazz bar and I made a quick trip around downtown Shinjuku, one of the liveliest districts in Tokyo. According to Railway Technology, an average of 3.6 million people pass through Shinjuku Station every day.

Like Shibuya, Shinjuku is as sensually overwhelming as it is crowded. Every street is a whirlpool of glittering buildings, neon signs, photo snapping tourists, mouthwatering goodies, and flowing traffic.

When I try to recall that day, the scenery blurs together into a single streak of light. Focusing on the details feels impossible when there are a thousand stimuli demanding you attention every second. Yet, I love it. I love that everywhere you look, there is life—pouring in every which direction, indefatigable and hopeful, never the same from one moment to the next. I may be overwhelmed, but I’m also happy.

10. March 4th — Yokohama City Daytrip

The next day, one of my roommates and I made a daytrip to Yokohama, a city bordering Tokyo that is known among toursits for its Chinatown, scenic waterfront, and the Cup Noodle Museum.

We stopped by the museum first, where we got to design our own cup. Sitting at a low table and drawing with markers made me nostalgic for my elementary school days. After that we mixed and matched different flavors and toppings to create a personaized Cup Noodle.

That night, we explored Chinatown, where we tried snacks like xiao long bao and sweat bean buns, perused hand-embroidered Qi Pao dresses, and admired the Yokohama Kuan Ti Miao (Buddhist temple)—hands-down the most ornate temple I’ve seen in Japan so far.

11. March 7th — Teamlab Planets

Teamlab Planets was one of my favorite experiences in Tokyo. It’s an art exhibit that combines sensual stimulation and digital technology to create a full-body immersive experience that titillates your touch, sight, and auditory senses.

Wandering around a labyrinth of floor to ceiling curtains of light, wading through a pool reflecting dozens of multi-colored lights, and lying on your back in a mirrored chamber as thousands of flowers slowly descend and ascend over your head left me feeling partly awed, partly dazed, and partly like I’d slipped into a techno-fever dream.

Given how interactive the whole gallery was, you could argue that the visitors are as much part of the exhibit as the art itself. At least that’s how I felt watching people laughing as they crawl beneath a ceiling of flowers and bounce around a room made of cushions like they’re kids again.

12. March 11th — Goodbye Tokyo

I took a picture of this mural on my last day in Takadanobaba, the neighborhood that had been my home for the past month. I’d walk past it every time I crossed the underpass by Takadanobaba Station.

It’s hard to believe something that had been such an indelible part of my daily rhythm has now faded into a memory. I might never see the bright, beaming faces of these characters again just as I might never see many of the cafe guests I’ve come to respect or the other staff members that I am honored to call friends.

Over the past year and a half of traveling, I’ve learned that just because people ebb and flow out of your life does not make the time you spent cultivating those friendships any less real or worth cherishing. In fact, the limited time you had with them makes the memories you forged together even more precious.

Another truth I learned is that people don’t need to be in your life for long to make a lasting impact on who you are. A single conversation can change the way you think and see the world. Such occassions may be rare, but they can happen, especially when you’re least expecting it.

You also don’t need to fly thousands of miles across the Pacific to another country to engage in meaningful conversations with people. They can happen anywhere—on the metro with a stranger, at a cafe with a friend who’d recently moved back home, in the office with a colleague you’ve seen but never talked to before. You just need to see the inherent value in others and be open to making genuine connections.

I’ll expand on the topic of making connections when I describe my experience at the language cafe. For now, take care and feel free to share you thoughts in the comments.

I’ll talk to you next week. :)

Macy Sees The World