Day 1: Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, The Railroad Station, Department Stores and Ramen!

We had a packed couple of days. After touching down in Tokyo yesterday, we got a couple railroad passes and took the train to our hotel, stopping to buy a few Japanese snacks along the way. My mom got an icecream from the famous Japanese icecream vending machines. Why the US doesn't have these, I will never understand....

The next morning, we both woke up early after crashing before 9pm the night before. We were planning on grabbing breakfast and visiting Shinjuku Gyoen Garden, but since we were out the door at around 7AM, we had some difficulty finding somewhere that was open. We opted for a casual throw-together meal from one of the corner stores, "Family Mart", the Japanese equivalent of 711, but to no surprise, they do it better. There were a lot of locals grabbing breakfast before work, too. In addition to cute stationary, medicine, icecream and cold drinks, they had a section of really fresh looking sushi and hot food. We got some triangle shaped rice wraps with salmon on the inside, bamboo drinks, meat buns, and a couple other little snacks, and enjoyed our little meal outside the gates of the garden, which didn't open until 9AM.

When the gates opened, we were one of the few people to enter. The garden was huge, and we only saw about 5 other people the entire time we were in there. We assumed it was because the weather wasn't quite optimal and people smarter than us had checked this beforehand. About 20 minutes after we had been walking around in the garden, the brewing clouds finally gave in and rain came pouring down. I enjoyed the rain. My mom and I sat for a while under a canopy of leaves, hearing the tranquil pitter-patter of raindrops kissing pond water and inhaling the earthy scent of wet leaves and mud.

Visiting the garden was a surreal experience. Tokyo is one of the most compact, loud, human-dense, bustling place I've ever been, rivaling Times Square. I say this in the best way possible--it's fascinating to see a wave of hundreds of people walking towards you at a cross walk during rush hour, a whole city moving to get to work. Flashing signs with intricate Japanese characters, so many of them that they're stacked on top of each other. Crosswalks with six or seven paths to accommodate the constant flush of people. You get it. But five minutes after walking through the center of crowded, bustling, bright Tokyo, I found myself not caring that my brand new Stan Smiths were soaked in mud because I was staring across a pond full of swimming turtles at an ancient Chinese structure thats original architecture had been preserved, surrounded by more shades of green than I'd ever seen in one day. The city traffic was nothing more than a muted din. The garden reminded me a little of Central Park; a serene oasis swallowed by a vibrant city. 

We spent the rest of the day walking around the Shinjuku district, getting lost, and exploring the famous Japanese department stores. These department stores were no Bed Bath and Beyond; twelve stories high, they carried not only what you need and what you didn't know you needed, but what you would have never in your life thought you needed because the Japanese think of everything. Like these silicon figurines that hold your instant ramen lids down, or this apparatus that apparently turns lemons into lemon juice spray bottles. We didn't have the space to actually buy all of these gadgets, but it was really cool to see the amazing ingenuity and detailed minds of the Japanese. 

To end our adventure packed day, we stopped by a local Ramen shop for dinner. This was a really authentic experience. I found the place on the Japanese Yelp equivalent, tablelog. Tablelog is infamous for being incredibly harsh-- they have yet to list a 5 star restaurant. This one scored a 3.6, which, apparently by tablelog standards, is incredible. The shop was on a kind of run down side street, and it was so narrow that you could barely squeeze by other diners at the bar table. But that was part of the magic. I'm pretty proud to say we were the only tourists in the whole 8-seat shop, the rest being locals who had just gotten off of work. We first payed for and chose our ramen from what can be best described as a vending machine. It swallowed our money, we pressed glowing buttons, and, voila, it spit out an order ticket that we presented to the Ramen chef. I could write a whole blog post about the brilliant ways the Japanese use machines from the vending machines on every street corner that serve drinks, food, icecream, etc. to these efficient little ticket robots that a lot of food venders seemed to employ. Anyways, we watched the man make the Ramen a foot in front of us. Though I'm no ramen connoisseur, I can confidently say it's the best I've had to date. I'll let the photos say the rest. 

Well, that's all for tonight. I have to say, I'm thoroughly in love with Japan and I'm incredibly excited for the rest of the trip. I can't believe this was only day one. A graphic design post will be up tomorrow for sure. I'm thinking I'll separate my graphic design posts and my daily blogs in order to keep everything organized.