019. Tokyo Drift
What can I write about Summer Tokyo that hasn’t been said before? It’s huge, sprawling, vertical, hot, and full of people. You’ll find pockets of calm in Roppongi maybe, where we visited the most refined shopping mall to date, or surprise suburbs nestled behind Shinjuku, but mostly it is an affront to the senses.
We visited the big names - Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku, Ginza, Tokyo Tower, TeamLab Planets - avoided some even bigger names, but some smaller names too - 21_21 Design Museum particularly. Hardly a small name really - directors include Issey Miyake - but relatively small. Things become relative very quickly. 30 degrees and humid is relatively mild. 1am is a relatively early bedtime. Only going 2kg over a 23kg baggage allowance is relatively restrained.
We let our shopping freak flags fly in Tokyo - bags bursting at the end of every day; gifts mainly, actually, but also chopsticks for the house we don’t own yet, 8+ new pairs of socks apiece because they’re just so much better, 3 cream blushers to keep me going for a small lifetime.
We also experience our first real “big rain time” - rain, but in the torrential, horizontal, screaming sense. Ke found cover in a MUJI, I was in the back streets of Harajuku. People couldn’t believe just how soaked I was on the metro.
We ate - again - good food, great food, and awful food. I have eaten enough egg to rival Gaston. We have both eaten far too many sweeties.
Our sleeping patterns have gone completely out the window, and we found ourselves in Don Quixote at 1am. An intoxicating, dizzying end.
