As we walked in, the lobby of the hotel was dimly lit and filled with wood-grained shiny furniture that looked like something you’d pick up at IKEA. There was a coffee machine straight ahead and small lounge area to the left, where you could sit and have a cup. I started to greet the desk clerk with my best Japanese, but I wasn’t fooling her. She knew a little bit of English and the little she knew, she was going to use check us in. “Your English is very good,” I told her. She asked me, “Do you want to practice your Japanese?” I said, “Yeah, sure.” Then she said proceeded to say a few sentences in Japanese, while showing me the Q-tips and washcloths that were complimentary to guests, but weren’t located in the rooms. I just shrugged my shoulders and said, “Okay.”
She handed me the keycard, directed me to the elevator, then showed me how to use the key to open the elevator door. We took the elevator up to the 11th floor. On the way up, I noticed that there was a closed circuit television in front of me and a camera behind me. I had never seen an elevator so secure, but I was glad that if anyone got into the elevator with a hacked key, that they would be identified by the camera as they went up. I sighed and the elevator door opened. We went two doors to the right and used the keycard to unlock the door. In front of us, was the smallest hotel room that I had ever been in. It might have been the smallest room with a bed that I had been in.
Shortly after I graduated from college, I had a friend that was rooming with a group of people in a townhouse. He was out of town, every weekend, so he agreed to sleep in a walk-in closet on the loft. In that walk in closet, my friend had squeezed in a twin sized bed. This hotel room was barely bigger than that. Aside from it’s small size, there was a private bathroom, with a bathtub/shower and one of the fancy toilets with a heated toilet seat. Three feet ahead from the doorway was the bed and in front of it was a small desk with a television mounted above it. In between, the furniture in the room, was about 2 feet or less space for walking and maneuvering, so our luggage barely fit. There were a few outlets for standard plugs and USB cables around the room, so it would be convenient for us to charge all of our devices. The decor in the room was super modern with the same dark wood grain that was found at the front desk. There was a headboard with light switches and outlets embedded, as well as a little shelf on top where you could put your phone or alarm clock, if you wanted.
Elizabeth was exhausted and really felt the jet lag from the plane ride. Even though, it was about 5:30 pm in Tokyo, she wanted to take a nap, then go out to get some dinner layer. I knew that this wasn’t going to be a short nap, but I set an alarm for an hour anyway. I hoped that we would wake up, then be able get some dinner before things closed for the night. The alarm went off and we hit the snooze and since the baby was asleep, we just continued to sleep until I couldn’t sleep any longer.
Chapter 6: A Late Night Stroll
When I woke up, I looked at the clock and it was close to 2 AM. No matter how long I closed my eyes or stared at the ceiling, I wasn’t going to fall back to sleep. I thought about just laying there, but then I remembered something that I read about curing jet lag and decided to just go out to take some photos and find something to eat. Elizabeth woke up and wanted me to buy her some kettle chips and a Tiger granola bar while I was out. I thought that these might be the two things that probably can’t be found anywhere in Japan, but I was going to hunt for them anyway. It was still raining out, so I put on my hood and hunched my shoulders, then walked to the 7-Eleven on the corner across the street.
When I walked in, there wasn’t anyone around, was this one of those stores where you pick out your items, check yourself out and walk out the door? As I began exploring through the aisles, a clerk had come out of the back room. I heard a familiar tune playing in the store and I stopped to listen. It was a symphonic version of the Welcome Back, Kotter Theme. Outside of the opening and closing of the show on TV Land, I don’t think that I had ever heard the song on the radio, let alone in a symphonic muzak version. The rest of the shopping experience was beyond surreal. I started looking at the labels of things, and I couldn’t find anyway to decipher what exactly I would be purchasing. There were lots of foil bags of food and different boxes that looked like an explosion of kanji. I went to the refrigerated section and decided to go with something familiar, Orangina. I also picked up a bag of potato chips and an apple pastry.
I figured that I would continue to explore, to see if there was anything else that I could find that would fit Elizabeth’s request, but I decided to check out, then keep walking the streets. The clerk got behind the counter and without a word pointed out the total on the cash register display. I handed him my travel credit card, then continued on my way. When I walked outside, the rain had subsided into a drizzle and while I was still getting a little wet, I didn’t feel as bad about having my hood down. Down the quiet street ahead, I saw what looked like some restaurants and one was still lit up, even at 3am. I stood outside a place called Nakau (なか卯 茅場町店) located at Japan, 〒103-0025 東京都中央区Nihonbashikayabachō, 3 Chome−1, 日本橋茅場町3-1-11 旧大槻機材本社ビル１Ｆ, for a moment and looked at the large photos. I tried to decipher what exactly each of these dishes were, but it was going to come down to just picking one and hoping that I liked it.
As I was browsing, a young Japanese man casually walked in, as if this was part of his nightly routine. Perhaps his lunch break from a 3rd shift security job or his late night dinner after closing down a bar. Either way, it was enough for me to decide that this all night diner would be suitable to fill my hungry belly. The restaurant was light with bright fluorescent lights, which illuminated the bright orange and white walls. I walked in and sat down at the hairpin shaped counter and the person cooking the food came out of the back and pointed to what looked like an ATM, to imply that was where I was to order. I got up and went over to the screen, found the English version of the menu. While I still couldn’t really tell what I was ordering, I picked something that said chicken. I brought the receipt over to the cook and he went to the back to start cooking.
As I sat down adjacent to the young man, who had already received his food. He was looking down at his phone, eating his food out of the bowl, with one of the large plastic spoons that you see in Pho restaurants in the states. Shortly after my food came out. I asked for some chopsticks and the cook pointed at a box in front of me. Looking at it, it was shaped sort of like a straw dispenser in the states and I thought that there was probably a button, that would release the chopstick from the bottom. I looked up at the man sitting across from me, seeing that I was looking for assistance, he lifted the lid on the box in front of him. Then I knew.
The dish that I ordered tasted like a type of curry, but with slightly different spices than I am used to, and maybe some egg or cheese mixed in. The was only chicken with sauce on top of white rice. After trying to eat it with the chopsticks for a minute or two, I just opted to eat it with the large spoon, like the gentleman across from me. I was trying to be authentic and eat like the Japanese eat, but if this guy wasn’t going to be eating with chopsticks, I don’t see why I had to.
The food was pretty good for the time and place that I was eating it. It wasn’t delicious, but it was the type of food that you probably eat after a long night of drinking or if you are really hungry and jetlagged at 3 o’clock in the morning. If you are drunk, the bar is closed, and you don’t really want to go straight home, you can stop at this little place to get some food on your stomach, so that you don’t feel as bad in the morning.
Before I left, I had to use the restroom. I tried to use the Japanese phase that I had memorized to ask the cook, but he had no idea what I was saying. He pulled out his phone and wanted me to speak into the google translate. It turned out that he wasn’t Japanese after all. He was Vietnamese. Somehow I was able to get the google app on his phone to translate toilet and he pointed to a curtain in the corner.
After I was done using the restroom, I tried to ask the cook, if he had any vegetarian food on the menu, that I could take out for Elizabeth, but unfortunately he declined. I walked out the door, and remembered that Elizabeth wanted me to try to bring her a banana and a granola bar. I google mapped a grocery store and when it looked like there wasn’t one around, I decided to just take a walk and see where it would take me. The rain had pretty much stopped, so things were a bit more comfortable, than before. It allowed me to enjoy the peacefulness of the city, which had been loud and bustling when we arrived, and in a few hours it would retain its energy. I walked down the dark street, to the pedestrian walkway, in which we had detoured from before. The stairs were a little steep, so it probably wouldn’t have been the easiest task to climb them with the stroller, but while walking alone, there wasn’t any issue.
I walked a block down the road and as I turned right at the corner, I saw a Lawson. This might not seem strange in Japan, but to me it was rather odd. Growing up in Ohio, Lawson was everywhere. Midway through my youth, all of the Lawson stores were replaced by Dairy Marts, which were then replaced by Circle K’s. In some of the local Ohio stores, they still carried Lawson chip dip, which was a staple at my grandma’s house, whom still called the store on the corner Lawson’s, even 25 years after it closed. The name Lawson held a certain nostalgia for me, so I was excited to go inside, if only to see if they had their famous chip dip in the refrigerated cooler.
The Lawson was about the same as the 7-Eleven when it came to food selection, but much to my dismay, they didn’t carry the chip dip that I longed to see. Directly, across the street was a Natural Lawson, which was dressed up to look like a Trader Joe’s or a Whole Foods, but after walking in, there didn’t seem to be anything too much different from what I can tell. Maybe some of the packaging of the foods said that something was organic or low in preservatives, but from my view, I didn’t see these items as any more healthy than across the street, but I’m sure that the Japanese can tell the difference.
Down on the corner was a grocery store called Hanamasa. It wasn’t as big as American grocery stores and was comprised of mostly a produce section and a meat department. They had a few other things like chips and sodas, but it was more or less only meat, vegetables, and fruit. I was able to find a bag of flavored chips for Elizabeth, along with a banana, and another pastry. The aisles of the store seemed really narrow and the way that the shelves were stacked, I felt almost claustrophobic the way that items were towering around me. Over the sound system, I wasn’t soothed by the soft symphonic muzak that was being played at the 7-Eleven, but I was once again caught off guard when I heard the Boney M. hit Ra Ra Rasputin (he’s the greatest love machine). While strange to me, this was probably in heavy rotation on the Hanamasa grocery store ambient radio. After I finished checking out, I went back out onto the streets.
A work crew dressed like the Beastie Boys in the Intergalactic music video filled the crosswalk in front of me and I waited for them to cross, before heading back to the hotel. I had been out for a little more than an hour or so, and I felt like I might actually be able to drift back to sleep, now that my stomach was no longer craving food. I went back around to the pedestrian walkway and walked back down the dark street, which was now lined with taxi drivers, whom I assumed were waiting to be dispatched. I walked over the highway underpass which was starting to once again show signs of life, then around the corner to the hotel. It looked like there was a different crew behind the desk from when I left and they greet me in a friendly manner as I passed them and headed to the elevator.
I took the elevator back up the the eleventh floor, presented Elizabeth with her snacks, then crashed out for a little while. I had my alarm set on my phone to wake us up at 7:30am, so that we could get a little breakfast before we met with our tour guide at 9am. I was still feeling a little out of sorts, but eventually I was able to sleep deeply, even when Escher was waking up.