Me at the vermillion gates of Hie Shrine

My husband Jon and I arrived at ELSI at the beginning of May for a month-long stay at the Ookayama campus. During our time there, we made a point of exploring not just the things on everyone's to-see list in Tokyo, but trying to get to know the local neighborhoods, shops, and culture in the suburb as well. As a graduate student myself in the social sciences, I had plenty of dissertation-related responsibilities to complete during my time, and so tried to make the most out of the days when Jon was working to explore various coffee shops, restaurants, and parks that were conducive to thinking, reading, and writing. Among the better places I found were a beautiful lake and park with swan boats, a Moroccan restaurant in the Shinagawa train station that served liberal helpings of white wine, and a Starbucks near Harajuku with a view of Mt Fuji!

Visiting a foreign country is always an adventure, but when you don't know (and cannot even read) the language, it presents a special kind of challenge, but also some amazing opportunities to learn about a culture and place from the ground up. Restaurants ended up being the best place for me to learn and reinforce my (nascent) language skills, though we also got very good at the old "point and smile," since most places have displays of the kind of dishes that they make, even if English translations of the menus aren't always available. We found some great little places this way, including an award-wining Udon noodle shop in Ishikawa-dai where a group of locals took us under their wing and introduced us to almost every dish on the menu!

Spending time in Japan definitely involved some culture shock, but I would say that my shock was mostly at how amazing the society is. After about a week of exploring Tokyo, Jon and I came up with the expression, "Japan: Taking your things and making them better," which pretty much defined what we saw while we were there. From kegs on the backs of women selling concessions in the stands at the Tokyo Dome to hot hand towels before every meal, it seemed as though everywhere we turned there were western influences with "Japanese characteristics," which had the effect of making everything seem very familiar but very foreign at the same time.

Despite its size, Tokyo was one of the easiest cities to explore that I've encountered. We purchased a Lonely Planet guide to the city, which ended up being very useful in some circumstances and a waste of paper in others. As with any city, you can't possibly write down all of the exciting things to see and do, and some of the things that get listed as "must-do" items are really not that great. That being said, I tend to enjoy wandering around a city without a real sense of direction or purpose, and Tokyo most certainly affords that luxury, while maintaining a very efficient train station to get one home after the day is done.

My husband Jon taking a break from his research at ELSI

On this note, one of my favorite stories from the trip comes over the course of two days when we were trying to get Jon a visa for his upcoming trip to China. This was a temporary detour in our stay in Japan, and he would only be gone for a couple of days, but his current visa was set to expire on the day he flew into Beijing so just to be safe we set about the process of getting an updated entry visa from the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo. The trip had been changed around several times, so by the time we realized the need to renew, it was already Wednesday night and the plane was set to leave Saturday morning. So, about midday on Thursday we took the train up to Roppongi and walked a little less than a mile to the Embassy, only to find that it was closed. Crap. Well, even though visa attempt number one had failed, we had an afternoon in the city, and so decided not to waste it. We wandered toward the Mori Tower, where we had seen their top floor art exhibit 10 days before, and without any particular restaurant in mind, took a set of back stairs that should have led to the ground floor, but instead popped us out in front of a Thai restaurant with al fresco dining (a very hard thing to find in Tokyo, it turned out!) and a beautiful view of Tokyo Tower. After a delicious meal and even better wine, we decided to visit some of Tokyo's most famous art museums around the Roppongi area, and discovered a very moving exhibit at the Suntory Museum of Art of mono no aware artwork throughout the Japanese Edo period. Not ones to waste an opportunity, we then took advantage of its location in Tokyo Midtown to find a mozzarella bar with the best mozzarella di buffalo Jon had eaten since his time in Italy, and followed it up with some happy hour drinks at an upstairs bar with a view of the sunset.

Visa attempt number two proved to be just as frustrating, though the woman at the Embassy assured us that he would be able to enter China as long as the visa expired the day he arrived, and not before. With some hesitation, we decided to trust her, and that afternoon was again spent exploring the city, but this time after getting some work done in a coffee shop by Mori Tower we went west toward Tokyo Tower. By the end of the day, we had climbed the tower, seen two different shrines, relaxed in a beautiful park that wasn't on any guide list I had seen, and ended up three or four miles from where we had started. We hopped on the train for home and made it back in time to finish up some work that evening.

Jon's experience in Japan was different from mine, as he was occupied most days with work and research for ELSI, but I had an amazing opportunity to do my own work while still exploring and getting to know a truly unique city. Rather than just hitting the ten or twelve top sights in Tokyo (though we certainly did that), I was able to truly explore and get to know the character and feel of the city. I am looking forward to many more trips to this amazing country, and am truly grateful for the time we got to spend there this spring!