A strong jet stream got me to Tokyo’s Narita airport over an hour early from Singapore. Wishing I’d had the extra hour for sleep on the overnight flight I found my way through customs and to one of the handy shower areas to get cleaned up. Feeling a bit fresher after a shower I stored my carry on bag and bought my train ticket on the Narita Express to Tokyo station in central Tokyo.
Brad and his wife Tanya had taken the train in from the town the live in on the outskirts of Tokyo. They met me in the train station and we hopped on the subway to get lunch and see a few sites. It was great to see Brad who I’d not seen in over five years. Last I saw him he wasn’t married and wasn’t in the Navy so a lot had gone on. Brad was a volunteer that I supervised in my second year with Amigos de las Americas. We’d kept in touch over the years and seen each other a few times since the summer of 1994 that we spent in the Dominican Republic.
Brad is a Navy Pilot flying fighter pilots off of aircraft carriers and I was interested to hear that he’d been flying off of the Kitty Hawk. The Kitty Hawk has particular interest to me as John Abbott, from my mom’s side of the family had died during Vietnam flying off of the Kitty Hawk. The boat is being decommissioned soon and it was a strange connection to make between these two Navy pilots. On my first trip to Washington, DC in 8th grade I remember the impact of seeing John Abbott’s name on the Vietnam Memorial Wall.
We got off of the subway at Harajuku station walking through the area famous for the Tokyo girls dressed up in their baby doll and French maid outfits. I’d seen this last time I was in Tokyo but it still amazes me that this practice lives on with girls spending hours getting themselves ready to basically walk down the street and hang out with their friends.
We had lunch at a sushi restaurant…when in Tokyo…enjoying the fresh tuna and gawking at the items that went by that were unidentifiable. It was one of those classic Tokyo sushi places with a conveyor belt type of system that has plates going by and you simply pick up the plates that you want to eat and pay by the piece. Delicious!
After lunch we took the train to Shibuya station and walked through the famous intersection, Shibuya Crossing, which apparently on a weekday has over a million people walking through it. The cars go through as normal and then they stop all car traffic and the people rush in all directions across the intersection. It is hard to do justice to describing what it really looks like. People line up in droves and then the light changes and a thousand people scatter trying to get across. After some coffee we wandered into Shibuya 109, a famous department store and watched in awe as the stylish Japanese shop for the latest styles in a bit of a frenzy, as if it will disappear before they can get their hands on it. Brad and Tanya had been talking about how much fruit costs in Japan so they made sure to take me into a store to prove their point. A cantaloupe was nearly $75! It came in a very nice wood box but I laughed at how in the US cantaloupe is the fruit they use to fill up the fruit salad so as not to have to put in other more expensive fruits! I was shocked at the prices of all of the produce that they had in the store.
After wandering around Shibuya for a while and spending time learning about Tanya and Brad’s life in Asia it was time for me to head back to the airport. It’d been a brief visit but fun to rekindle an old friendship. Now back in the airport I’m waiting, with my head bobbing because of a lack of sleep, to board my flight to Cairns.
