The Tokyo Chronicles: Shibuya

After my big teaser at the end of my Akihabara entry, let's see if I can put my Shibuya experience into words without getting too sentimental.

My familiarity with this Tokyo district was born through the pixelated lens of a small screen, courtesy of The World Ends With You. A masterpiece from Square Enix that etched Shibuya into my young consciousness.  

This DS game, released in North America in 2008, was the brainchild of Square Enix, directed by Tetsuya Nomura. Nomura was the maestro behind the Kingdom Hearts series and several of my favorite Final Fantasy games. I might as well have loved this game before I ever bought it, it felt tailor-made for me.

I was only a mere 11 years old when this game came out, and I followed games a lot less closely than I do now, so I don't remember exactly when I played this game.

Definitely before I started high school at 13. This game was set in modern day Shibuya, one of the first games I really remember featuring real life Japan as a setting. 

It really gave me a sense of Shibuya as a place. The Scramble Crossing teeming with background NPCs, the 109 building (104 in game) flaunting trendy clothes, and every turning point in the story starts with an encounter by the goodest boy, Hachikō. All these elements painted a vibrant picture of Shibuya in my young mind.

This game spoke to me in a lot of ways, it sparked a fascination with Japan as more than somewhere cool games and anime come from.

To make a long story short, the message of the game is that your view of the world is defined by you. You can make your world as small as you want, blocking out others and forgoing new connections and points of view, or you can choose to broaden your horizons. 

Through this game, I realized I wanted my world to be bigger, and that meant not bringing my DS with me everywhere. This game really affected me, so it was safe to say that I was worried if real life Shibuya could measure up to this important experience I had as a kid. 

My journey began with a hiccup: the loss of my minuscule train ticket. Train tickets here are too damn small. I went back and forth on how I could get out, should I jump the gate? Stand off to the side and look lost until someone comes to help? Curl up into a ball and cry? 

After almost making an attempt at sneaking out close behind someone, I finally went to customer service. Google translate at the ready, I told her I lost my ticket.

In flawless English she asked which station I came from, and helped me buy a new ticket. Well, that was actually pretty easy. It was annoying to buy the same train ticket twice, but the ticket was only $2, a small price to pay for the journey that awaited.

Emerging into an urban symphony, Shibuya greeted me with bustling crowds and unexpected construction, a tangible clash of old and new. There was a tall building to my right, and I saw Starbucks on the sign, a brilliant compliment to any adventure.

What I didn't expect was that I would have to go up 10 sets of escalators to get to said Starbucks. I suppose that's one way of making my designer coffee taste even better. 

With coffee in hand, I was ready to explore. I ventured towards the Shibuya Scramble Crossing. It was everything I dreamed. Maybe I'm being a romantic, or it's because this shares a setting with a very formative game, but there was something in the air around Shibuya.

The Scramble Crossing was practically buzzing with energy. The hum of hundreds of conversations filled the air. Large crowds waited at each corner as cars passed through the intersection. You could feel the anticipation grow as the lights began to turn red. Before the walk sign was even lit, people started to move. 

I found a spot off to the side and watched in awe as the intersection became a flood of people. You could hardly make out the street lines between the hordes of people briskly walking in every direction.

It became a blur of people, each going about their day. It's said as many as 3,000 people cross at once, and I'm not sure if that was true that day, but it certainly felt like it.

I wanted to linger for a while longer, so I headed over to Hachikō. I fully expected to tear up when I saw Hachikō. I might have, if it hadn't been for the long line of people waiting to take a photo with the statue. It made sense, this statue is a popular tourist attraction, and I also wanted to get a photo with the very good boy. 

Yet for some reason, this really rubbed me the wrong way. It was like I'd wanted a private moment with the statue, to really take in that I was here, standing in front of the same statue I remember so clearly from playing a game on a tiny screen 14 (ish) years ago.

Standing in Shibuya, looking at Hachikō, it really hit me. I was here in Japan, and not just visiting, I was living only an hour and a half from this very spot. I was living in that far away place I always dreamed of as a kid. 

Then someone bumps into me. The feeling is lost. I'm back surrounded by tourists, and I once again feel like an outsider. 

Shaking off those feelings, it was time to brave the Scramble Crossing. The 109 building towered in the distance, calling my name. I wish crossing with a swarm of people felt as magical as watching it in action, but it really just felt like crossing the world's busiest street. 

On my way to the 109 building I passed a cluster of people squeezed into a pen that looked similar to a bus stop. After a few weeks in Japan I had a good idea what it was, a smoking area.

Up until now, most smoking areas only had 2 or 3 people corralled inside. This one probably held 40 people at any given time, with many people smoking just outside.

I know I need to quit smoking, and so far I've been smoking less in Japan than back home, but it's also led to pretty unique experiences. 

I got a little lost on my way to the 109 building, which is actually kind of impressive since all I needed to do was look up for the giant sign. Once I finally found it I went up the escalator and started scoping things out.

I've been pretty impressed with the fashion in Japan as a whole. As a baseline it's lots of well put together, but slightly plain outfits. Imagine any Uniqlo ad you've ever seen and you'd be pretty close. 

The other end of the fashion spectrum was trendy outfits using textures and colors you'd hardly ever seen in the west, especially not during the day. I found the most stylish outfits to be pretty loud, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'd really been appreciating how out there the street wear in Tokyo could be, and Shibuya was a shining example of this. It made sense to me why Shibuya was considered the youth capital of Tokyo. 

The shopping at the 109 building was cool, but really wasn't for me. It was mostly clothes aimed at women, but was often accompanied by a hefty price tag.

The clothes were certainly cool, plenty of lace, disjointed sleeves, and lots of bows. But with none of the clothes seeming like anything I could wear, I didn't give many stores more than a passing glance. 

The gender norms in Japan seemed to be rather enforced, if not explicitly than certainly implicitly. At work I have to make sure my hair is pulled back into at least a low ponytail, and I've yet to see a single male student or teacher with hair much longer than chin length.

I've dipped my toes into wearing more feminine clothes back home, but that would certainly seem to be on hold while here in Japan. 

After scouting out all of the 109 building, I was off to Udagawa to search for the CAT mural. I stumbled across this mural online, and instantly recognized it from The World Ends With You, so naturally it was on my list of things to see.

I trotted off to where google maps said it should be, excited to see a real life nod to a game so near and dear. 

After searching for around 10 minutes, I pulled out my phone to double check if I was in the right area. Only now did I see the brackets around the location on google maps (erased).

It felt like the wind got knocked out of me. According to reddit this beautiful graffiti mural had been painted over 2 years prior. This would mark the beginning of a frustrating chapter in my Shibuya adventure. 

Collecting myself, I turned to the next thing on my list, Yoyogi park. This park was supposed to be quite beautiful, and has a shrine that many people like to visit.

After another 15 ish minutes of walking, I found myself at the edge of the park. Checking to see where the shrine was, I saw it would be another 30 minutes of walking, something I've been doing a lot of on this Tokyo trip.

This nearly broke me. I plopped down on the edge of the cement wall, dropped my backpack, and sighed. I was hot, I was sweaty, and I was tired. My back hurt and I could feel blisters forming on my heels.

I rested here for a while, trying to think of how I could turn things around. I eventually gave up on going to the shrine, I would pass through what I could of the park on the way to my next destination. Even with this decided, my legs were heavy. I couldn't seem to get up. 

In the midst of fatigue and doubt, a realization struck, traveling alone is a lot more difficult. I had no one to bounce ideas off of, complain to, admire the sights with, or shoot the breeze with as we walked.

It was just me and my thoughts, which uninterrupted, either remain cheery, or quickly spiral into a negative cycle. 

I was certainly stuck in the latter. I didn't want this to define my trip, but as I was quickly learning, it's a lot more difficult to change your mindset when everything is so far removed from what you know.

You have no comfortable things to latch on to, no familiarity to help ease your mind. It's just you. Alone with your choice to come here, to leave behind everything you knew.  

And afterall, it was your choice. You had some sense of what you were getting yourself into. You knew it would be tough, that you would leave so much behind in pursuit of something new. But what if these new experiences I'd dreamed up were just a fantasy in my head. 

Perhaps those streets of Tokyo were at their best seen through a small screen, through the eyes of a young child. These thoughts creeped up through the corners of my mind, threatening to drag me down to the depths. 

At some point I simply got up, and kept walking. I couldn't solve these thoughts, or bat them away with logic. I had to choose to keep going, to push those thoughts back to the edges of my mind, and continue walking. And so I did.

With the vague destination of Cat street in mind, I rose to my feet, and pressed on. My journey will continue, in The Tokyo Chronicles: Shibuya, part 2.