On Taking Detours in Tokyo
I may be an educator, but I’m also a traveler, so even though I may live in the same city for a while, I also know when it’s time to move on from one town to the next.
Here’s how my cycle goes:
- Phase 1: Move to a new place. Explore immediate surrounding area.
- Phase 2: Get bored of immediate surrounding area. Start taking detours.
- Phase 3: Establish favorite places.
- Phase 4: Get bored of everything.
- Phase 5: Stay a while longer because it’s comfortable.
- Phase 6: Choose a new town to live in even though it’s scary to move.
I’m in phase 2. Phase 2 is so exciting that it actually might be my favorite. Actually, when I hit phase 4, I’ve been known to circle back to phase 2 again.
Being in phase 2, I was riding my bike home from work today when I decided to take a detour. Normally, I take a road called route 306 all the way from Asakusa to Tabata in Northern Tokyo.
I thrive on forced exercise.
Also, while passing through Asakusa this evening, I took a picture of this spooky bridge beam that looks like a scary face.
It’s autumn, not yet Halloween, and the evenings are still mild.
It’s not quite cold enough to need a jacket…
…but just cold enough for bridge beams to make strange faces at you…
Boo!
Anyway, I have been detouring my bicycle route for the last week. There’s a gridded area where you can zig-zag through quiet streets and not get lost if you just keep going in the same general turn right / turn left / turn right pattern.
I wound up on this weird road and there, seemingly out of nowhere, was this Mongolian restaurant!
As a New Yorker,
I’ve had “Mongolian Beef” in Chinese restaurants. But I’m sure I’ve never had actual Mongolian food.
Anyway, I went inside and asked for a menu to take home with me. She only had a menu for me to look at. But after I walked inside, I could hardly focus on communicating in my broken Japanese: there, sitting at a table across from each other, were literally the two biggest men I have ever seen in my life.
Their black hair was slick and pinned up against their heads. They wore large, colorful robes. They were professional sumo wrestlers, and I have no idea how they sat on the restaurant chairs without breaking them like toothpicks.
I wish I had
taken a picture of them. But I didn’t want to be rude. It looked like they were enjoying their time off, and the restaurant had this atmosphere like the waiters and everyone just wanted to close up and go home.
It was an unexpected experience, but more than that, it felt like a cliffhanger. I want more. I can’t wait for the next chapter in this book my life is writing. I need to go back and see.
Mongolian culture and history fascinates me. I have no idea what they eat, though, and have no intention of Googling it, either. Next time, I’ll be going in blind. And next time has got to be soon. Maybe even this weekend. And when I do return, I’ll see if there are any off-duty sumo wrestlers who want to take a selfie with me.
New Origami Decorations in Lobby!
One more thing: the decorations in the hallway changed! Last time, they were tomatoes. Guess October is late for tomatoes.
Okay, these witch hat wearing pumpkin origami characters are just too cute. I guess the building owners keep up with the changing seasons! So, the tomatoes are gone, and now we have pumpkins. I wonder what’s next?
I also wonder who is making these decorations. It could be the landlord’s 8-year-old nephew. Or maybe there’s this old おばちゃん lady who make origamis as thank you cards for wonderful service from the dentist office on the second floor.
Who the hell knows.
