Japan Journals 2: A Night in Asakusa
This is the second in a series of pieces about my trip to Japan this past summer with my wasband,* D, and my two sons, C (age 20) and E (age 15).
If you missed Japan Journals 1: Tokyo, you can find it here.
*a husband from whom one is amicably separated
Tokyo’s Asakusa neighborhood is hopping, and unlike Takeshita Street (which I wrote about in Japan Journals 1), the crowd of humans enjoying its alleys, restaurants, and covered outdoor market appears to contain more locals than tourists.
Here I encounter dogs for the first time in Japan. Small dogs, well-groomed, on-leash, many wearing glowing neon collars, trot obediently alongside their owners. They pass each other with nary a bark or a yank. My incorrigibly exuberant pups would probably get me arrested here.
D is meeting with colleagues tonight, and E has gone off in search of more clothes. Within the first 48 hours in Tokyo, fifteen-year-old E has absorbed the Metro system, and with the help of Google Maps and Google Translate he’s off to peruse a giant mall. Though well-versed in the city buses of Ann Arbor, Michigan, this is his first time traversing a foreign metropolis on his own. Fortun,ately Tokyo is not only the most populous city in the world, but also the safest. Although E maintains a perfect deadpan at all times, I sense his elation. Or perhaps I’m just projecting onto him the sense of wild liberation that comes to me, even now, when I find myself alone in the great wide world, ditching the expectations of ordinary life and following my senses the way a gull or a squirrel or an off-leash dog might, answerable to no one, if only for a week, or a day, or even an hour.
Now it’s just C and me and the Tokyo afternoon, and this too feels like liberation from my perpetual efforts to please two very different young men. Twenty-year-old C is always game for an adventure, and unlike E, he has no aversion to hanging out with his mom. Perhaps it’s because C is on the autism spectrum and therefore atypical in his development, but he has never exhibited that peculiar adolescent scorn for all things parental that’s been E’s default for the past year.
First we hit the famous Sensoji temple, where the ratio of tourists to locals increases dramatically. I tilt my camera upwards in an attempt to crop the ravening hordes out of my shot, but I can’t make it work. So annoying to have all these tourists intruding on my tourism.
We circle the striking crimson temple and the five-story pagoda with appropriate reverence, then gape at the fourteen-and-a-half-foot, 1100-pound owaraji affixed to the sides of the Hozomon Gate. These traditional straw sandals, reputed to ward off evil, were a gift to the temple from the city of Murayama. It took 800 citizens a year and a half to make them, and they replace them every ten years.
When C and I are templed out, we go in search of food.
I’ve noticed that Japanese people tend to keep quiet in public settings. Consideration for the experience of others is paramount. On the subway, people look at their phones, listen to music through earbuds, or converse in hushed tones. But on this Friday in Asakusa, as day fades into dusk and dusk into night, the volume rises, and groups of people—older men in particular—cluster at outdoor café tables, talking, drinking, and laughing. It’s as though the week has shed its suit and tie, opened a few buttons, loosened its belt, and let its belly relax.
C and I wander aimlessly, clutching each other’s hand, reveling in the unfamiliar sounds and smells. We pass through smokey clouds of grilled meat scent, steam redolent boiled rice, and the occasional whiff of dashi—the mushroom and fish base of most Japanese soups—that carries us, for a moment, to the sea.
We want to eat someplace popular with locals. We settle on a crowded spot where every table has a flat metal griddle at its center, and the waitstaff and customers are pushing the food around on the griddles with what look like small metal squeegees.
The host who seats us speaks no English, and I can’t read the menu. I open Google translate and point my phone at it, but it’s not much help.
A young woman who speaks a bit of English arrives to take our order. I ask her if they have anything vegetarian.
She says yes, but only cabbage.
I tell her fish is also okay.
“Fish,” she says. “Seafood?”
I nod.
C and I pick two dishes to share from the seafood portion of the menu, with no real concept of what we’re ordering. We place ourselves in the hands of the universe.
The young woman returns, coats the griddle with garlicky butter, then places what appear to be octopus tentacles on the buttery metal. She sets a bowl laden with seafood and cabbage on the edge of the table. She adjusts the heat and sets a timer. She points at the timer, then at the octopus, and gestures not to eat it yet.
If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy Tell Me A Story, about my experiences at the Yunlin Storyhouse in Taiwan, and From Nudism to Buddhism, about my journey from the naturist resort Cap d’Agde in Southern France to Plum Village, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s community near Bordeaux.
Are you longing to explore your life in words? Join me for Off-Leash Writing Workshops and the Memoir/Fiction/Personal Essay Workshop and write your way home.