Vibrant tranquility
As I finally emerged from the shadow and stepped into the light, it was time to move forward in all ways. I boarded my flight with excitement and anticipation.
It’s been quite some time since I’ve been this excited to visit a place. I’ve long wanted to visit Japan. I’ve had more than a couple of near misses in the past, including a flight to Tokyo canceled the day before lockdown started in the US in March 2020.
As the wheels touched down at Narita International, the waves of excitement washed over me. It was finally happening. I was in Japan!
Japan seems ready-made for me. The country is time-prompt obsessed. There is great coffee around every corner. Solo dining is not weird; in fact, it’s the norm. Big, big cities. Forests, mountains, beaches. The food is incredible. The people, while a bit shy at first, are super friendly, helpful and kind.
After the train ride in from the airport, I emerged in the heart of Tokyo. This might have been overwhelming in other places, but Japan is so well structured and orderly that it felt relaxed. The bright lights and big city were easily navigated.
What to say about Tokyo …
What a place! It’s insanely clean. It’s insanely quiet. You can walk around and drink beer anywhere. Everyone obeys the laws. No one jaywalks. They wait for the signal to turn green. Even if no cars and it’s a small side street.
The metro is peak efficiency. There are approximately 1000 separate lines. You can get anywhere via the train. You are never more than a couple of blocks from a station. It runs on time … always. And, and! And it’s crazy cheap, about a dollar per ride.
Oh, by the way, in case you weren’t aware, it’s also the largest city on the planet. I cannot begin to explain just how massive it is. The best way I can think of is that on multiple occasions, I took the metro for an hour, emerged on the other side, and was still in the city!
There’s no real “downtown” like in American cities. There are multiple centers. Ginza, Shibuya and Shinjuku are each the size of downtowns in Minneapolis or Portland, and have massive commercial and office towers,. Tokyo has some of the coolest neighborhoods anywhere in the world. It’s almost impossible to calculate how many neighborhoods there are, too. There are 23 special wards, which count as major city centers. Within that, there are more than 50 major districts, and inside those, there are innumerable neighborhoods.
Shinjuku itself has the world’s largest and busiest transportation hub, Shinjuku Station. It contains more than 200 entrances and exits. You read that right, over TWO HUNDRED. The station’s total surface area is more than 15 acres and contains over 50 platforms. It services 11 different train and metro lines, from five different companies. The equivalent population of Chicago passes through the station. Every. Single. Day.
The diversity in the neighborhoods is also staggering. You’ve got the hip shopping of Harajuku, the electric anime capital of Akihabara, and the “little Paris” of Kagurazaka. There’s the tranquil arts area of Shimo-kitazawa, Yoyogi Park and surroundings, and the history-filled Asakusa. I could fill paragraphs trying to name and describe all the wonderful areas of the city I wandered through.
My days in Tokyo were easily filled. In preparation for my arrival, I had created an extensive list of coffee shops I wanted to visit. After arriving and getting to grips with the size of the city, I realized I needed to reorganize that list by neighborhood. If I could group a couple of cafes together, I could check out a few of them and the area they were in.
I fell into a nice routine of taking the metro to my given neighborhood, sometimes more than an hour’s ride away. I would then enjoy coffee and a book at one or two (sometimes three) cafes. After I was fueled, I would attempt to walk back to my accommodation. I say attempt, for I didn’t always succeed. Both the temperature and the distance were my adversaries.
I knew Japan was famous for its heat in the summer, but after having just spent the last four months in Vietnam and Thailand, how back could the heat really be? Well, let me tell you, it was … brutal. The sun is intense, and the humidity is oppressive. To the point that even my two-minute walk to the metro in the morning would leave me drenched in sweat.
Through my meanderings, one thing that I came to truly appreciate about Japan was how intertwined with life religion is. To me, it seems less like dogma and more like respectfulness for life. The thousands of temples and shrines, both Shinto and Buddhist, mix with skyscrapers and homes seamlessly. Around every corner, you’ll find one of them, almost hiding in plain sight.
Shintoism, especially, piqued my interest. The belief that everything has a spirit, or Kami. From the trees and rocks, to man-made buildings, to concepts like growth and fertility. It’s a practice of cultivating harmonious relationships with these spirits and our surroundings.
I found myself sitting in shrines throughout the city, pondering these ideas and seeing how my perspective aligns with these ideas. One thing became very clear. Japan communed directly with my soul. I found a contentment and inner calm I’ve not felt in some time, even amongst the never-ending drive of commerce in Tokyo.
The meandering wasn’t confined to daytime hours either. In fact, Tokyo truly shines at night, literally. I fell in love with nighttime wanderings. The lights are bright, plentiful and mesmerizing. I strolled streets, parks, alleyways and temples, constantly open-jawed at the beauty before me.
Another utterly fascinating aspect of Tokyo is how quiet it is. The silence is deafening. Hard to believe this is the biggest city in the world. No honking cars, no shouting people. Even the trains are quiet. Quite surreal to me.
Finding peace in this massive city was easy. Getting off the main streets puts you into the tranquility of the quiet neighborhoods.
Then, on August 4, 2025, one of my longest-held dreams finally came true. After nearly 30 years and an entire adult life, I got to hang out with one of my most kindred souls. Kaku and I met in 1995 at Pacific, and became fast friends almost immediately. I can point to him as an inflection point in my life. Someone who single-handedly changed my life forever.
And now, finally, I had the chance to tell him this.
In the fall of 1995, he took me to my first Phish show. I’d never even heard of the band at that point. One show was all it took … I was hooked. And well, most of you know what happened next. I started following the band around the US, met Ann, moved to Minnesota and had Eli. More clearly than anything else in my life, I can look back at that one night at Portland Memorial Coliseum and see a clear before and definitive after.
Time slowed, yet sped on at lightspeed, as we began the impossible job of catching each other up on three decades of life. The great thing with kindreds is that it’s easy. Everything flows as it’s supposed to; there’s no pretense. We saw each other and it felt right, immediately. The calendar may have said 30 years had passed, but our souls touched like we’d never missed a day.
Of course, one night wasn’t going to be nearly enough. A few nights later, we met up again, this time with a few of his colleagues. What transpired next, I’m told, is a very typical salaryman’s night out after work. One izakaya became two, then three, then bar became bars. Alcohols mixed just like the conversations did. Beer, shochu, whiskey highballs, tequila, sake and sours. This went on longer than I can comprehend, till well after the trains stopped running.
Yokohama
The following weekend, I agreed to meet Kaku and go camping with his family. They live in Hayama, which is approximately 1.5 hours away by train. To facilitate things better, I went to Yokohama a day early, which would put me much closer the next day.
Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans. Massive rains arrived, camping was canceled and Kaku went out of town a day earlier than planned. Bummed, but undeterred, I stayed an extra night in Yokohama and enjoyed its charm.
Only an hour’s train from Tokyo, Yokohama feels a world away. Quaint, charming and beautiful. A major metropolitan in its own right at over. It might surprise some to know it’s actually the second-largest city in Japan; I certainly was.
Yet it retains that small-town vibe. It has Japan’s largest Chinatown, is home to the Yokohama BayStars and has an amazing waterfront. It was a pleasant pause to my time in Tokyo.
On my last weekend in the Tokyo area, I went back down to visit Kaku in his hometown of Hayama. I also had the privilege of meeting his daughter and seeing his beautiful home. We hung out on his patio, enjoying a couple of cold beers before making our way down to the beach.
Still in the summer season, the beach houses were still open, and we made sure to try out a couple of them. Enjoying lunch and plenty of cold drinks while watching the waves and catching up.
It was the best possible way for me to wrap up my time in Tokyo. Sitting with my dear friend, recounting stories from our days at Pacific and philosophizing over the serendipitous ways our lives have gone. While not epic in a traditional sense, this afternoon will forever rank up the list of my favorite days of this crazy adventure.
Thinking about the number of near misses I’ve had with Japan, I arrived in Tokyo full of so much anticipation. Excited to explore, but most excited to reconnect with a long-lost, but never forgotten, friend.
Tokyo is the king of cities, has everything you could ever want or need, and then some. I devoured it with all the pent-up excitement from years spent thinking about what it would be like to visit. I walked nearly 400 km, or over 200 miles, in an effort to consume it all.
Now, after twenty days and more than 400 photos, I was ready to see what else Japan had in store for me.