I managed not to get lost in Tokyo’s subway

Last week, my wife Mikaela and I made our first international trip, traveling across the Pacific to Japan. Her brother and sister-in-law, Koen and Sam, are currently living in South Korea and with their language learning classes coming to an end, we planned to meet them while they were still over there. However, to make it more of a vacation for both us and them, we decided that spending a week in Japan before Mikaela went to visit them in Seoul would be more fun for everyone involved.

We flew out of Minneapolis on a straight flight to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, a trip that took over 12 hours and saw us leaving on Saturday morning and arriving at our destination at one in the afternoon on Sunday. The shift in time was a bit disorienting at first, but luckily we both got a decent bit of sleep on the trip, so we weren’t overly jet lagged.

Unluckily, our knowledge of international travel was lacking. While I had thought we had packed relatively lightly, bringing a single suitcase and a duffel bag carry-on each, it became clear relatively early on that this was going to be relatively problematic. With plans to visit both Kyoto and Osaka before coming back to Tokyo, we were going to be staying at four different hotels, which meant dragging all of our stuff through the labyrinthian tunnels of the cities’ subway and rail systems. Our big, clunky bags did not do us any favors in this department. Whoops.

My lack of experience with the subway also made the first time through the system from the airport to our hotel a bit of an adventure. After getting some paper currency from anATM and loading up our ICOCA cards that allow for contactless passage through the various gates in Japan’s extensive passenger rail system, we charged forward into the vast crowds milling through the airport. While getting to the monorail leading from the airport was not too difficult, the first transfer point was a different story entirely.

First, I didn’t realize that I would need my card to exit the station we were in, so I had to fumble into my wallet to retrieve it, leaving the others to wait on the other side of the gate wondering what had happened to me. Then, because of our rather large and somewhat inconvenient luggage, we basically needed to walk single file, leading to the one in the back, myself in this case, getting separated more easily.

By the time we reached the next gate, I spent so much energy trying not to get left behind that I had forgotten that we would need the card to get through, prompting me to once again have to stop to search through my wallet for the thing. Let’s just say that I quickly learned that having the card more readily available was going to be key for this trip.

The biggest surprise for our first day there was just how quiet everything seemed to be. On the subway, no one really talked much at all. If any words were uttered, they were usually in hushed whispers, and this held true throughout our trip. Then, when we finally got to the neighborhood our hotel was in, the streets were exceedingly silent as well. Few cars traversed the roads, and those that did usually just emitted the low hum of a small electric vehicle. We did not come across too many pedestrians either and those that we did once again spoke quietly to each other, if at all. After checking in at our hotel and dropping off our now dreaded bags, we made our way to Meiji Jingu, a Shinto shrine just north of Shibuya. Once again, there was a reverent quiet over the space, which, while more expected, only solidified my initial impressions of Tokyo as a city much quieter than I had anticipated.

It wasn’t until later that I learned that our hotel was located in a financial district, and with it being a late Sunday afternoon, the traffic through the area was probably at its lowest. For the first afternoon we were there, it felt like we were in an empty city, which was an odd feeling.

When we visited Shibuya and Shinjuku the next day, that false illusion would be broken, as the crowds and skyscrapers of the downtown districts were more in line with what I thought we would be seeing, which somewhat speaks to the sheer size of Tokyo. We probably could have spent our entire week in the city and only really seen a fraction it.

Just as this was really only a fraction of our entire trip, and not really the interesting bits either. Time and space are at a premium here, so hopefully next week’s column will get more into the interesting historical locations, delicious food, and fun adventures we had.

A C ERTAIN POINT OF V IEW

BY

NATHANIEL U NDERWOOD REPORTER