Tokyo was crazy. It is HUGE. Looking over the city atop the Tokyo Skytree, it's sorta like the view from the Empire State Building, except Tokyo looks like multiple Manhattans crammed next to each other, 360 degrees. It's so dense, and there are so many layers to it physically, culturally, perhaps in every possible way.
Amidst all the chaos, there's so much beauty and artistry. Even for the smallest or seemingly most trivial tasks, the utmost attention is paid to every detail, and everything is executed with incredible precision. There's a visceral, shared pursuit for perfection and doing things right that's hard not to notice and appreciate. It's all quite breathtaking and overwhelming at the same time.
Over the final week of our hsiaoswithoutborders time abroad, we explored as much as we could of Tokyo with Alexandra's parents, who had visited once in the early '80s. One of their favorite memories was eating yakitori under railroad tracks and feeling the rumbling of the trains as they went by, but they had forgotten the location. Fortunately, one of the stops on our food tour was that precise location, where about a dozen open-air yakitori stalls line a narrow alley right under the railroad tracks. We went back on one of our last nights for a fun, memorable dinner, where Alexandra's inner-Japanese-businessman-who-just-left-work-after-a-long-day came out to shine, and we enjoyed a few 'Kanpai'-s with actual Japanese businessmen who just left work after a long day. Man, they know how to party!
Other highlights included day trips to Kamakura and Nikko Parks, seeing Tsukiji fish market, exploring the cool tiny bars of Golden Gai, and taking Alexandra's parents to the sensory-overload Robot Show.
We went out with a bang!
