Tokyo is Blowing Our Minds

Good morning (Ohaiyou Gozaimas!)

It is Sunday evening for us and Saturday morning for you. We just arrived in the quieter town city of Kyoto after 2 and a half hours on the bullet train going 200 mph ^^.

We just concluded the first city of our tour: Tokyo. And we could not be happier, nor more exhausted.  Our feet are sore, but our bellies, eyes, and hearts are happy. We saw, ate, walked, and experienced so much, but easily could have spent an additional 2 weeks there. 

The largest city in the world is beyond incredible. Before I dive into our adventures so far, let me give some perspective on this city's enormous size.

According to Worldpopulationreview.com:

Tokyo: 37 million people

California: 38 million people

Canada: 39 million people

There are only 42 countries out of 234 on Earth that are larger than the city of Tokyo by population. It is larger than Sweden, Greece, and Hungary combined. 

I am tall among the skyscrapers here.

Day 1: We arrived on Wednesday midday; ate some delicious creamy tonkatsu ramen; checked into our cute/semi-traditional hotel and slept for 10 hours. Couldn’t stay up longer if we tried. After an 11 hour flight, long customs lines, and getting lost on the trains, we were ready for sleep.

On Day 2 at 5:30am, I walked to Hatsudai Catholic Church (St. Alphonsus) with a small Lourdes Grotto replica, and attended 6:30am daily mass. It was all in Japanese, but the liturgy (flow/order of the mass) is the same in every Catholic Church around the world so it was easy to follow along with my phone in English. There were 3 priests in and 4 other people in the tiny chapel. It was beautiful. 

On the way out I learned about a saint that is new to me: St. Gerard Majella. He lived only to 29 years old, but he is known for having received extraordinary graces and gifts from God like bilocation, visions, and miracles. He is the patron saint of children, unborn children, women in childbirth, mothers, expectant mothers, motherhood, falsely accused people, good confessions, lay brothers and Muro Lucano, Italy. 

You might be wondering about grace. What is it?

According to the Catholic Church, we profess that grace is essentially, favor: the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons and daughters, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.

It is also described in the Catechism as “the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it.”

Take heart and don’t be discouraged if you are tempted and are always giving into sin, but also wanting to be better.  Romans 5:20 tells us, “...where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more..”

The Hatsudai Catholic Church is in the Shibuya side of town in case you’re ever in the area.

Abby and I’s first stop together was the Senso-ji temples: Buddhist Temples. Originally erected in the early 600s, they had been burned down during the 1923 earthquakes, and destroyed in the 1945 great tokyo air raids that wiped out 90% of structures.  There are many monuments attributed to it to remind the current generations of what happened then. The sign says, “There were mothers screaming for children and children screaming for mothers. They had nowhere to go. That's all anyone could do.”

The modern day temples are meant to be exact replicas of the temples from the 600s and thousands of people visit each day to make wishes, receive fortunes, honor their gods, and ask for success in various areas of life.

The Cherry Blossoms are everywhere in Tokyo, but throughout day 2 and 3, we found larger parks and more mature trees. The Cherry Blossoms (also known as Sakura) is a special time of year for the Japanese people. It is a festival where families and friends will gather in parks en masse to lay down tarps, get lots of food and drinks, alcoholic and non-alcoholic, and enjoy time together under the trees. They may spend the whole day or several hours together there. When we say en masse, we mean en masse. We’ve never seen so many people, let alone family and friends together in one park at one time. 

The Cherry Blossoms have many meanings including communion, peace and beauty, but also the fleeting nature of life. Two weeks from now the Cherry Blossom flowers will fall from the trees. There is beauty in the life and the death. I am grateful to be here for this with my best friend.

Day 3

Thanks to a free walking tour through the Electric Town, Akhiabara, we learned so much about Japanese culture and history. Electric Town is one of those quintessential towns in Tokyo with arcades and electronics stores on every block with big screens on every building and lights everywhere. They have a word for the culture of Akhiabara based on those who frequent it, known as “Otaku” or “Geeks”. Those who are into manga, anime, video games, electronics, and computer-related goods. I was at home there. I was an Otaku among the Otaku lol.

On our walking tour, we visited 2 Buddhist Temples, a former Samurai University, Ueno Park where we were stunned by the beauty of the Cherry Blossom Trees, and saw a statue of Saigō Takamori, the last Samurai. The Samurai under the Shogunate ruled Japan from 1192 to 1867 with the last Samurai Saigo dying in a rebellion in 1877.

The Japanese have a long history which they recognize and honor that which is worthy of honor. There are many monuments erected for the sake of the new generations who may otherwise forget the history. During our tour we met a couple from London, Laura and Sebastian, and an IronMan from Germany, Maten. 

After some much needed rest, we went out to Roppongi, the art district, for a pub crawl with probably 50 people. A mix of locals and visitors. It was a good time. We met people from South Korea, Peru, India, Singapore, New York City, and Tokyo. The pub crawl hit 3 bars and a club. Bar locations 2 and 3 were on the 4th and 5th floor of a large building. Tokyo is like that- stores, bars, arcades, shops- all in 5-10 story buildings with nothing but those things in them. It was my first club experience in probably 8 years (since Cancun). It was a unique experience. We took the train back in the early morning stopping only for some Turkish street food. Another 20,000 step day in the books. 

Thanks for your patience. Tokyo really took us by storm with little time to sit down and share what we’ve been up to. We miss all our family and friends, and are praying for you. Time for bed. Talk to you all in a couple days.

Final day in Tokyo in pics:

More on this later