The voyage was going smoothly, between the alcohol and the desserts, we started to lose track of time. We were arriving in Tokyo at the Shinagawa Station. First hearing the name of the stop and then seeing it on the display, we found out that we had all of our devices and loose items out and about. We quickly gathered our items and put them in the bags that we had been carrying. We retrieved our baggage from the luggage rack, then headed into the aisle and toward the door as soon as the train stopped.
Coming down from the platform and out of the station, we were once again, back in the hustle and bustle of the city. It was right around 9pm and the city was still as vibrant as ever throughout the station. We exited the shinkansen gate and continued with the crowd to the local Yakamoto line platform. The platforms were as busy as ever. Trains were arriving every 5 minutes or so, and hundreds of people would exit the train and then hundreds more would enter the train within less than a minute. With all of our baggage in hand, getting on the train and settling in would be a challenge, but we were handling it with grace. When we arrived at the Shibuya Station, we became one with the crowd, but somehow everything fell from my hands and I collapsed to the ground. Contents of the open shopping bags scattered across the platform as hundred of people headed towards the stairways.
I managed to gather all that I could find and placed it back into the bags. Luckily, I was able get out without any trouble, then we headed toward the elevator that would take us out of the station. It was unclear whether there was construction taking place or whether the station was built like a maze of temporary looking walls, but we were having a hard time finding our way out. Once we made it outside, we stopped for a minute to re-group away from the crowd. Elizabeth looked through the shopping bags, but she couldn’t find the pocket wi-fi or her phone. The pocket wifi, which was rented, carried an absolute value that I would have to pay, if it wasn’t returned. This was on top of the value that it possessed as a result of being the only way that we would be able to map ourselves around the city. Elizabeth’s phone on the other hand, once again contained hundreds of photos from our trip, and any personal data that hadn’t already been compromised in the initial identity theft.
Used to the potential for such ridiculousness to occur, having lost two phones in Germany on our previous oversea trip, I was hardly phased by the event. I shook my head in acknowledgement of the loss and managed to compose myself. I asked Elizabeth to double check her pockets and bags to make sure that these items were really gone, before I went up to the platform to check for the missing items, where I had carelessly dropped the bags previously.
After she was sure that she checked everywhere, I used my rail pass to get back into subway station and back to the platform, where we had just came from. I looked up and down the platform and saw nothing. Second guessing myself, I went to the subway track going the opposite way, just to see if I had been wrong in remembering what direction we came from when we arrived. Again, there was nothing on the platform. Like most places in Japan, there wasn’t even trash or dirt in the corners of the stairwells, let alone a phone and pocket wifi. I guess that it was possible that someone had found these items and took them with them, but I didn’t think that was very likely given what we had experienced of the culture.
I walked back over to the other track and in between departing trains, I went up to one of the conductors on the the platform and used my best Japanese to ask him for help. He got on his walkie talkie and got in contact with the station manager. The station manager came down the stairway with a large tablet, then went to the conductor on the platform to point me out. The manager was tall and in his mid-late 20’s. He wore thick rimmed glasses and his spiked hair poked out from underneath his peaked hat. He spoke into the tablet in Japanese and the Google Translate app asked me what I needed help with. We took turns talking into the tablet, then the app allowed us to communicate with each other across our language barrier.
The station manager asked me a number of questions. What time I arrived? What platform? And where exactly I thought that I had dropped the phone and pocket wi-fi? He then took me me upstairs to fill out some paperwork, then gave me a card. He then dialed the number for Japan Rail lost and found on a payphone next to the ticket booth. He handed me the phone. I used the handful of Japanese phrases that I knew, despite the fact that I had no idea what was being said on the other end. I handed the phone over to the conductor who was still standing by. He told me that it took 2-3 days to process lost items, so I would have to call back then. With a heavy sigh, I tried to communicate that I was leaving for California in two days.
He could see that I was pretty desperate to find these items that I dropped, so he brought me back down to the platform. He instructed me to wait by one of the i-beams, then he walked back up the stairs. A few minutes later, he came back down the stairs with a flashlight. He told me to stay to the side, then started at one end of the platform and began looking onto the tracks, where we thought that the items could’ve fallen. It seemed like the trains were arriving and departing in a quicker frequency, than I had really noticed before. He would shine the flashlight and look into the tracks, then music would play to indicate that a train was arriving and he would stand behind the yellow line. A crowd of people would depart train, a few passengers would get on just before the train left the station, then the station manager would continue looking. He would shine the flashlight on the tracks walk a few feet, then look into the tracks for the lost items. The platform was easily 200 feet long, and the station manager inspected almost the whole way, before coming back feeling defeated.
He shook his head, then spoke into the tablet that he was sorry that he couldn’t help me find the phone and pocket wi-fi. I tried to communicate that he was probably one of the most helpful people that I’ve ever encountered in my life. I was wholly grateful, but there was no way that he could known how incredibly unique he was, in level of care and compassion he had for my situation. Having gone through situations similar to this in the past, from law enforcement to low level employees, no one had ever shown so much pride in making sure that a task was completed properly. He spent close to an hour helping me find something that may never be found, while most Americans, who wouldn’t even tell you when the next train arrives, would just shrug their shoulders and emote something to the effect of “It sucks to be you.”
Even though, the station manager wasn’t able to save the day completely, he was a hero and I will always see him as an ambassador to the world of how incredibly helpful someone can be without any regard for how he would be duly compensated. Feeling completely defeated, I walked down the steps and I found Elizabeth right where I had left her, with her phone in hand. She said that she had been trying to message me, but because I wasn’t in range of the pocket wi-fi, there’s no way that I would’ve known. She told me that the phone and pocket wi-fi had been in the bottom of the black bag that she was carrying all along. I was a little frustrated, but at the same time, I was relieved.
Back on the platform, it felt like less and less people were waiting for trains to depart the station. Meanwhile in the streets, there was considerably more people than I feel like we had seen in anywhere in all of Japan. We were a few feet away from the Shibuya Scramble, which if you’ve seen any movie that takes place in Tokyo. It is the crosswalk shaped like a pentagon and all 5 ways cross at the same time. Instead of one at a time with a single crosswalk going in a straight line, pedestrians seemed to go everywhere.
Nearby we saw the statue of the dog, Hachikō, which represented the dog that waited at the train station for its owner to return, but in reality the owner had died. Everyone was gathered around to take selfies in front of the statue, to make the moment extra special, someone had placed a kitten on the statue. While it seemed like everyone around us was Japanese, we were the only white Americans. Everyone loved this famous attraction.
After we made our way through the crowd a little and approached crossing, it was breathtaking the amount of lights and energy that was emitted around us. The area did have its fair share of businessmen, but it was clear that young people loved the area. Our Airbnb host really set the standard for making it really easy for people to find his place. According to his profile, he didn’t grow up in Tokyo, and I think might make a living renting out Airbnbs. Either way, he seemed to have a knack for making sure that people arrived with no problems. He provided a pdf that not only had the directions, but also photos of the landmarks that would make it simple to make it to the apartment.
We continued down the road passing the high end chain stores, the MEGA Don Quixote and took a left at the Lawson. We walked from the heart of the area to what started getting to be a more residential area. We walked passed a number of small houses, ramen shops, and wine bars. Between the lighting and the architectural style of the buildings and houses, the area had a sketchy martial arts movie feel to it. We walked down a dark street and up a hill, then after one more dark turn, we found the apartment building where we were going to be staying.
The building had a market next door, a wine bar across the street, and we were only about 100 feet away from a metro stop. The apartment was located on the second floor. So, we climbed a steep, narrow, rusty, outdoor, staircase, which was covered with a corrugated plastic roof. While it was difficult to climb the stairs on my own, it was even more difficult to climb with a baby, the roller bag, and the stroller. Everything seem more awkward and unwieldy than before. At the top of the staircase was a narrow wooden balcony which led to two apartment doors. The aged wooden railing was covered with severely chipping paint, and was lined with 4 or 5 umbrellas that were left hanging by past guests of the airbnb, who needed coverage from the rain, but didn’t want to take them back home. The wood creaked as we walked across balcony toward the door straight ahead. While some of the previous Airbnbs had the keys locked in the mailbox, the keys to this apartment were on a hook right outside the door. We keyed in and found a spacious efficiency apartment with a shower that had built into the kitchen, next to the sink. The bathroom was directly on the left, but as you walked closer to the shower in the kitchen, you could smell something resembling sewage. The apartment had been given the impression that there were three different rooms, each room having a wide doorway, with a frame that was just low enough that if I didn’t bend down a little, I would bump my head (which I did a few times when I wasn’t paying attention.) There was a “living room” area, where there was a small table against one wall and a television on the other. The third “room” contain two parallel twin beds with a table in between.
While the beds had sheets and blankets on them, when we sat on them, we discovered that they were only a box spring without a mattress on top. This was the third time that one of these apartment hosts thought that this was an adequate bed. When we stayed in Yudanaka and slept on a futon on the floor, it wasn’t as comfortable as our memory foam bed at home, but it wasn’t just wood and springs in a bed frame. Nevertheless, the apartment was a lot of space, in a great area of Tokyo, and there was a working heater there in case we got cold.
After we settled in and Escher was feed, we decided to go out and get some dinner, then check out the surrounding area. We walked back toward the train station and began seeing lots of shops that we would plan to check out over the next two days. We also happened upon a few small restaurants, that might suffice for dinner. We ended up walking into a place called Achikoko, which was Okinawa themed. After taking a look at the menu, we walked through the narrow restaurant passed a line of tables. We were brought to a back room, where we were able to find a place to park the stroller in between two tables. There was a younger group of people sitting to our right and a couple to our left. There was maybe only one other open table in the restaurant.
The menu looked pretty similar to those in other ramen shops that we visited. What really stood out about the place were the photos on the wall. The dimly lit space was filled with brightly color imagery of white sandy beaches, that Americans would say resemble those in Hawaii. In fact, not ever really knowing much about Okinawa, we assumed that this restaurant had placed photos of Hawaii on their walls, before doing a search to find out that it was in fact Okinawa. We ordered a bottle of sake and a bowl of ramen each, while Escher slept quietly in his stroller.
The young adults at the table next to us were switching between speaking Japanese and English. They seemed to be having a lot of fun and I began eavesdropping on their conversation. They noticed that I was listening in and asked us, if we could tell which one of them was the youngest. They all looked about the same age, which was about 21, so I made a guess, telling them that they all looked 21. I asked them how old they thought that I was and they over guessed, which really made me feel old. They all seemed to be from different places. One of them was from Taiwan, the other was American, but of Japanese origin, and the third was from Tokyo originally. They had all met in Los Angeles, while they went there to learn and perform as dancers. The young man had a bit of a sass to his mannerisms that made it seem fitting, as if I could see him as a dancer.
They asked us questions about whether we were married or had any kids. They were surprised when we showed them the baby carriage, that we had been hiding on the other side of the table. Our conversations eventually brought us back to our separate tables and we went on to finish our respective meals. It was getting late and we had been up most of the day traveling after wandering around Osaka, so we began heading back to the apartment. We ended up stopping at a wine shop on the way back to the apartment and finding a cheap bottle. When we got back to the apartment, which was just around the corner, I got out my tablet and we watched Netflix and drank wine until we eventually fell asleep.