Back in the 90’s I lived in Tokyo. I felt at home as soon as I set foot in Japan. Everything was so clean, harmonious, strange and familiar. In July, I went back to the country with my 13-year-old. What could go wrong? Teenagers are notoriously laid-back and easy to get along with.
In the airport, we were excited. My daughter was born in Abu Dhabi and has traveled a lot, but she really wanted to see the home of Hello Kitty and Junji Ito. I tried to remember Japanese, which I used to speak fairly well, but I was having trouble coming up with the word for hello. That’s when I realized the trip was going to be a challenge.
On the plane, the pilot announced that the flight-time was 14 hours. My daughter glared at me. Her good mood was starting to deflate, and so was mine. Oh well. I turned up the volume on the movie I was watching, the flight attendant poured me a coffee and the world was good. On top of that, I was wearing my lucky blazer and I looked pretty good. Just sayin’.
Halfway through the movie, I heard a sound. My daughter tapped me on the shoulder and threw up all over my blazer. It wasn’t so lucky anymore and, if I’m being honest, I wasn’t looking so good.
Traveling with a teen is not always easy. You may want to do different things, energy may run out sooner for one party than another or best laid plans may fall by the wayside.
Our experience had a little bit of all three—but by being open-minded and going with the flow, we also discovered a lot of cool things about Japan and each other.
‘You can make a plan, I learned, but in the end the plan will make you’
On that first day, after hotel check-in and a quick vending machine stop (They’re as common in Tokyo as pigeons in New York), we had a list of things I wanted to do. It was already 4 p.m., so we got started right away. Two blocks from the hotel was Shinjuku I-Land Tower, a 44-story building surrounded by public artwork, including the iconic Love sculpture by Robert Indiana. There was also a 7-Eleven in the building, which was even more appealing. We bought cold water and several bags of unidentifiable Japanese snacks made of mochi, green tea and maybe seaweed. Somehow, it tasted great.
Item One checked off. Next, I wanted to hit Tower Records, Kinokuniya Books and a Godzilla statue, but my daughter’s limp body and red eyes said otherwise. I threw my list in a trashcan, and we headed to a nearby restaurant for a large trough of sushi. You can make a plan, I learned, but in the end the plan will make you.
The next day, we made another to-do list. We found almost everything we were looking for, but it wasn’t easy. The street names weren’t always labeled, or labeled in English, and GPS wasn’t working too well, especially around Shinjuku train station, which has 3.6 million passengers a day. We walked for hours and my daughter was a good sport about it. According to the news, it was the hottest week in recorded history.
How did we escape from the heat? Gaming centers. I never thought I’d step inside a gaming center, but my daughter wanted to, and she’d bravely followed me on a sweaty odyssey to find obscure record stores and art galleries. Over the course of 10 days, we hit gaming centers three times. I hesitate to brag, but we got really good at claw machines and won eight prizes between us. And we only had to spend a few hundred dollars to do it.
Despite finding refuge in gaming centers, the heat was getting to us, especially my daughter. I’m not sure everyone knows this, but teens sometimes mope. A little-known fact. We decided to slow down and walk less. We took taxis everywhere and stopped for water and iced coffee more often. I also looked for indoor activities and found the perfect thing: a shopping mall in Roppongi. This was the last thing I expected to do, but in Japan malls are often cultural centers, not just places to buy cargo shorts. The first thing we did was take the elevator to the 54th-floor observatory and look out over the city. The view was amazing. After this, we explored the rest of the tower: waterfall, art gallery, 7-Eleven (for cultural reasons), book shop and a great Korean restaurant for lunch.
One day, I let my daughter plan everything: where to go, what to do, what to eat. She was even in charge of steering us to our destinations. We got a little lost, but in the end, we managed to find our way. Like parenting, Tokyo can be hard to navigate, even for the most experienced traveler. It was a fun day, though I probably wouldn’t have chosen the Alice in Wonderland -themed restaurant for dinner. I felt slightly foolish, to say the least, but since it made her happy, I didn’t mind. And it’s not like I was forced to wear a March Hare outfit and speak in a 19th-century English accent. I mean, I did anyway, but that was a personal choice.
The remainder of our trip included a mom’n’pop gallery, a hedgehog café, more sushi (and a six-stool ramen counter) and Harajuku, the avant-garde fashion center of Tokyo.
We had a great trip. It was hot, we walked too many miles and we got lost a few times, but we both went along with what the other person wanted to do. For once, I relaxed about her screen time. If she wanted to use her phone a little longer, that was OK. It probably made her feel comfortable which is important when you’re far away from home. And she didn’t mind when I snuck down to the hotel bar for a quick drink one night. We both needed a few hours apart.
My daughter is a tough girl, and I think traveling through Japan made her tougher, more resilient and more self-confident. I’m proud of her. She survived the long flights, late nights, early mornings and strange foods. She even survived listening to me talk about how much I like vending machine coffee. There were a few tense moments, but in the end our travels brought us closer together.
Travelogue
Here’s some of our favorite—or most memorable moments—in Tokyo.
Gaming Centers
We didn’t play video games, pachinko, slot machines or even the ubiquitous dancing games. I prefer to embarrass myself in my own country. Instead, we opted for claw machines, where you put in 100 yen and try to grab a prize with a joystick-operated metal claw. They’re designed to make you fail, but that doesn’t mean they’re not fun, and the prizes were cute and judiciously curated. We also “played,” if that’s the right verb, gashapon. These are toy vending machines, where you feed change into a slot and prizes slide out encased in plastic globes. When I was a kid, they’d be in grocery stores and you could win superballs, mini football helmets or spider rings. In Japan, you can buy anything from them, but they specialize in figurines from manga, anime and, for some reason, Harry Potter.
Kyoto
Kyoto was the highlight of our trip. We took the bullet train, which got us there at 200 mph with twice the legroom of Amtrak. We visited a manga museum, walked through the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove and visited a few shrines The best part was a tea ceremony at a geisha house. A young maiko, apprentice geisha, showed us the proper method of preparing matcha tea. She also danced and played the shamisen, a traditional stringed instrument. We were taught how to make our own matcha and drink it like a local. Slurping was encouraged. My daughter did a great job and was congratulated on her tea. I was told that my slurping was fairly decent.
Harajuku
On our last day, we tramped around Harajuku, the avant-garde fashion center of Tokyo. We spent a lot of time rummaging through clothes at vintage shops, which is something we both enjoy back home. Afterward, we ate crepes and watched the local kids walk around dressed as Little Bo Peep or Goth Lolita. We did some more thrifting in Shimo Kitazawa, a small neighborhood that even the taxi driver had trouble finding. On a side street, I saw a sign pointing to the third floor for a record store/bar. We climbed a rickety staircase to the place, but it didn’t open until 9 p.m. I was disappointed, but it looked disconcertingly like some random guy’s apartment. All for the best.
Andrew Madigan is a freelance writer/editor from Springfield, Virginia. He has lived and worked in the UK, Tokyo, Dubai, Okinawa, South Korea and Abu Dhabi. His second novel, Dark End of the Street, is available from Gumshoe Books (Helsinki, London, Tokyo).
