Spirit of adventure
Restless, fascinating Tokyo is unlike any other city, so step out of your comfort zone and embrace its wonderful weirdness, writes Kate Wickers
You must be joking. We’re not going in there.” We were standing outside a maid café in the Akihabara district of Tokyo and my two teenage sons, Josh and Ben, were not cooperating.
“But I want to write about it,” I said, playing the it’s-for-research card. “We’ll wait out here,” they said. The purpose of a maid cafe, where waitresses dress as French maids, are to make boys without girlfriends feel special. “Hello, darling. I’ve missed you” is the usual sort of greeting. It’s all very innocent but perhaps they had a point – it was a little weird.
Akihabara, known proudly as ‘geek city’, is popular with earnest-looking teenage boys searching for electrical components to make goodness knows what in their bedrooms. My 11-year-old son, Freddie, loved the area because it was also full of gachapon arcades (a simple pleasure of putting 100 yen/70p into a slot and seeing what pops out encased in a plastic capsule). This area also feeds the Japanese obsession with manga (comics) and anime (cartoons) with shops packed with collectibles for diehard fans.
If Akihabara is for geeky teenage boys then Takeshita Street (cue the schoolboy sniggers), in Harajuku, is a pilgrimage site for teenage girls, who come to worship the latest fashion fads. Here you’ll hear the cry of “Awww, kawaii” (Ah, cute) in the sweet shops, make-up stores and teen fashion emporiums, but with three sons in tow we hurried on to a cat café – the latest bizarre craze to hit Japan. Pets aren’t conducive to city living so the opportunity to stroke and play with a ‘kawaii’ cat while enjoying a drink has really caught on. Be warned: the challenge to lure a cat on to your knee is very competitive. Nearby, the Meji Shinto shrine, set in a wooded enclave of 120,000 native trees, provides a welcome breather from this riot of youth culture. Look for the beautifully painted old sake barrels at the entrance gate, gifts to the shrine from the breweries.
Tsukiji Fish Market is a highlight. You can queue for entry in to the tuna auction at 4am (perfect if you’re jetlagged) but visit any time before
We head to Dover Street Market to hunt for Japanese streetwear brand BAPE
midday and it’s still a spectacle. Strange sea creatures that we couldn’t identify were no doubt bound for posh sushi restaurants. There were scallops the size of side-plates; bright blue swimmer crabs; crimson octopus and shimmering swordfish, all laid out ready for buyers. This is a working market so we had to jump out of the way of the forklifts and dodge the fishmongers who hose the fish and your shoes if you’re not on the ball. We wandered the small streets opposite the market, rammed with food stalls, grazing on rice-crackers, dried seaweed and prawn dumplings.
We set aside a morning for shopping, using the metro to whizz around the city (a day pass costs around £8). First stop was for Pokémon toys, at a dedicated store underneath Tokyo Station, where Freddie stocked up on gaming cards and figures. For Josh and Ben we headed over to The Dover Street Market in swanky Ginza to hunt for BAPE (a much sought after Japanese streetwear brand not readily available in the UK). For me it was something iconic: a silk dressing gown, some pretty chopsticks and lacquered earthenware, which I found in Oriental Bazaar. The shop started as hole-in-the-wall antique shop in 1912 but now holds court in a huge three-storey department store on classy Omotesando. You’ll still find old collectibles and also high quality traditional products from silk screens to kimonos.
There were more fashionistas on parade (Little Bo Beep; Queen Victoria; Lady Gaga – we played “guess the look they’re going for”) in Shinjuku Gyoen Park. They were posing along with the tourists to take cherry blossom selfies, wandering the lakeside paths in search of the perfect bloom, enjoying the occasional gust of wind that filled the air with confetti. There are more than
1,000 cherry trees here so even in high season it retains a relatively tranquil atmosphere, due in part to a ban on alcohol consumption. Tokyoites like nothing better than a sakuru (cherry blossom knees up) so visit Ueno Park to witness cherry-blossom viewing at its most riotous.
Who knew that crossing the road would become one of Tokyo’s biggest tourist attractions? Shibuya Crossing is the world’s busiest and the best time to witness what is known as ‘the scramble’ is around 6pm, when office workers spill from their workplaces in the sky. We crossed the intersection three times and I kept a firm grip on Freddie’s hand, relishing the potential chaos and marvelling at the expert way the Tokyoites manage to dodge and weave. Starbucks on the first floor of the Tsutaya building has a bird’s eye view of the crossing but you’ll have to be prepared to wait for a window seat.
We ate nearby at Gonpachi, whose beautiful interior (modelled on the traditional wood-panelled Japanese style inn) inspired a set in the film
Kill Bill. Their Yakatori (charcoalgrilled meat skewers) are a Tokyo staple, which suited my sons, while we tucked in to tempura and sushi. There are fabulous views of the Tokyo skyline from its glass elevator.
Cutting edge architecture is everywhere but there are a few standouts such as the Asahi Beer Headquarters in Asakusa. One building looks like a glass of beer complete with froth, while next-door Philippe Stark’s curiously shaped 300-tonne Flamme d’or (golden flame) is fondly referred to as the ‘golden turd’.
Nearby is Tokyo’s oldest temple, Senso-ji, founded over 1,000 years ago by two fishermen brothers. In front of the main hall we watched worshippers rub the smoke from the immense incense burner on to their bodies, as it’s believed to restore health. We each parted with 100 yen to buy an omikuji (fortune scroll). Josh received a warning about not studying hard enough. No need to panic about his A-levels though – if you get a bad fortune you can simply tie it to a nearby rack and try again.
From here it’s a short walk to the fake food shops on Kappabashi Street. Our favourites were the sushi platters, pints of beer and plates of spaghetti with floating fork in mid twirl. We browsed until I found the perfect ruse – a tub of ice cream, so real looking that it would fool our friends at home. Don’t think for a minute that this is cheap plastic tat – much of what is produced is a work of art and used by restaurateurs to lure in customers.
The Meguro River isn’t particularly scenic most of the year but in April it is resplendent, when 800 cherry trees burst into bloom, carpeting the canals in pink. It’s a relaxed neighbourhood with independent fashion boutiques; specialist bookstores; quirky homeware shops; trendy cafes and street food stalls. The boys picnicked by the canal on chicken teriyaki and toffee bananas, while we lunched on grilled mackerel and pickled vegetables at Café Kamimeguro.
There are huge neon signs advertising the Robot Restaurant (bento box style dining with a robot show) all over the city. It is possibly the craziest show in the world; an unrelenting parade of dinosaurs, extravagant beasts, fish, birds and dragons, kept in control by bikiniclad dancers and drumming warriors, set to techno-music and flashing lights. My husband was heard to mutter, “Please make it stop!” but my sons declared it the highlight of our stay. They’d learned by then that to get the most out of Tokyo, ‘weird’ is something every tourist should embrace… apart from visiting a maid café with your mum.