Four Blissful Days in Tokyo
15 September 2009
As I write this I am sitting at Narita Airport, awaiting my flight back to Munich. This was my first trip to Tokyo since we moved away at the end of May. The possibility to come back here arose indeed sooner than expected – Simon was scheduled for a business trip and I just grasped the opportunity and joined him for, let’s say, a very extended weekend. It was indeed a rather short stay (so short in fact that I didn’t even try to get over the jetlag, so I’ll have little trouble getting back into rhythm as I come home); but I fully and thoroughly enjoyed the 4 days, it was absolutely worth the hassle, and no doubt I will do it again whenever I have the opportunity!
I was really wondering what it would feel like to come back to this city we had lived in for a year and three months. The first few hours after my arrival I spent like floating in a dream, probably partly due to the long flight. I was enchanted by the unspoiled view on Tokyo Tower from the hotel room (we had seen just the top of the tower from the apartment we used to live in, and I always loved this view, especially in the evening when it is lit up). As my first action I went to a nearby specialty shop to buy myself some "dango" (delicious little rice dough balls dipped into sweet red bean paste), and to Starbucks to get a "maccha frappuchino" (the green tea blend I mentioned last week – god, have I missed it!! I’ll really have to try reproducing it at home…), and enjoyed both sitting down underneath the spider at Roppongi Hills (no worries, that’s just a big sculpture).
As soon as I met my friends for dinner that evening the weird dream phase was over and everything seemed just back to normal. We went to a place we had been to on several occasions, eating "monja" and "okonomiyaki", both egg-based mixtures, containing different kinds of vegetables and seafood, which you basically prepare yourself on a big, hot plate covering the entire table. My worries that I might have forgotten all my practical Japanese turned out to be unfounded, and I was more into the conversation than ever.
Lazy, Lazy Weekend...
The following days Simon and I spent meeting lots of friends, strolling about our "regular places" and enjoying some fantastic Japanese food (apart from amazingly good sushi (just impossible to get THIS quality anywhere in Germany…), for me one of the culinary highlights was a piece of fish, filled with a mixture of miso paste and pine seeds, steamed in a bamboo leave. Definitely something I’ll have to remember…). Due to the jetlag (paired with our excitement) we went out late at night and slept in on the weekend. In fact we accidentally slept until 2 pm on Saturday – I can’t even remember the last time this ever happened…
These four days could really not have been more blissful! While living in Tokyo there were of course a bunch of things that used to annoy us, but in hindsight you always tend to think less about these occasional negative points, and if you’re there for just a few days of leisure you often find them rather cute and amusing than painful... Everything seemed so comfortingly familiar to me that I did not at all get the feeling of being a 12-hour-flight away from home, nor on a different continent. Strangely enough, it felt totally normal to be here, as if it were a weekend trip to London or so. A very nice sensation, indeed, as even after returning home Tokyo won't seem out of the world...
Maybe my sense of geographic distance will come back once I am in the air and impatiently trying to kill the 12 (usually sleepless) hours. Anyways, I have to board soon - I shall post this as soon as I get back home.