Vietnam 16: Tokyo

A year ago, in the planning stages, this absolutely sounded like a good idea. Staring down the barrel of another exhausted day, I regret my decision. But as we've established, I'm going to make the more interesting choice, so we're sending it. Besides, we're immune to abuse by now: take one of every pill and hold on for dear life.

When you fill out the immigration form they ask you where you're staying. I've never written a flight number on that line before, but the border agents didn't care, so neither did I. Finally through customs we met up with one of Lou's friends and made our way out to a car waiting in the frigid parking garage. And with that, I moved Japan from my "airports only" list to "actual countries visited."

Mt Fuji looked majestic in the distance, I constantly thought we were pulling into oncoming traffic, and the girls were ecstatic in the back seat. (Are we still doing phrasing?). Traffic here is very unlike Vietnam - almost no scooters, and everyone follows the rules of the road like a polite version of the states.  We cut across the city to Yokohama - the district, not the tire company (which would have been way cooler). We parked outside some historic warehouses (brick, 200years old, waterfront), to visit the captured North Korean spy ship!  Just kidding, we totally ignored the spy ship docked outside and spent an hour doing instagram photoshoots.  The driver and I chatted in basic English, equally inoculated to this sort of thing.

Our next stop was a train station, where suddenly another Vietnamese expat jumped in the car! Apparently another member of the friend-group, and the fiancé of the driver. Now complete in our quartet, we headed over to Chinatown for.... more instagram! You'd think it'd only be slightly worse (N+1), but I learned you need to cover every combination (2^N-1).  Luckily, I've accepted my role as luggage, and spent my time trying to distil my thoughts on the issue, finally arriving on:  "Instagram has done more damage to the Asian race than Hiroshima" 

Bold take, but I stand by it. We hit up a Chinatown and a temple, where we set some prayers on fire in a ceremonial brazier, and did instagram until we got yelled at. Then we left for more instagram dumplings (Quite good. They always were the best part of dim sum).

As is traditional, we followed foot with more food, and headed to a famous Japanese noodle chain, which provided  the starkest contrast to Vietnam. In Vietnam you eat in a garage or on the sidewalk, yelling your order to the cook, watching the streetlife, and occasionally waving off homeless people trying to sell you lottery tickets. In Japan, you pay for a ticket from a vending machine, head to the chair indicated by a light-up board, and then circle your options (spice level, onions, beef, firm or tender noodles) on a slip of paper.  The bar has dividers between the seats, sealing you into a cubby. There's a button to page your server, and he? she? will pull up a little curtain at the back, letting them read  your slip and deliver food, without you ever having to see their face.  In fact, if you have a normal request (have to step out to the restroom, need more noodles, want a quieter seat) there are a handful of tokens you can pass over so you never have to talk to him. It's either an autists dream or the reason Japan's birth rate is rock bottom. Maybe both. Regardless, it's fascinating - and that alone was worth another day of sleep deprived full send.

After lunch (we folded the cubby walls back so we could at least talk among our section of the bar), we took a cute 1/2km cable-car to an island on the park, where we obviously took more instagram photos. And just like that, it was time to depart to the airport. We laughed, we cried, we said our goodbyes, and our Japanese adventure was over. Another hour back through security, some final blogging at the gate, and they're starting to call boarding groups.

This is traditionally the time where I reflect on the trip as a whole. In a word: Exhausting. Physically, mentally, emotionally.... in both positive and negative ways.  Vietnam is beautiful and fascinating, and I wrote in China I wished I could see actual life in the countries I visited, and in that aspect was this was a perfect success. We visited actual homes, lived in actual apartments, ate and drank with the locals, because we were the locals.

Additionally, every so often I need to push boundaries and color outside the lines to stay sane. Sometimes it's climbing high-tension lines, sometimes it's giving a narcissistic insomniac total control of your life. Another perfect success on that front.

And the final question: Are Lou and I still friends? Not sure yet. I'm putting off those arguments until we catch up on sleep.*

*Update: Definitely not friends anymore.  We finally spoke a week later to figure out the finances -  which immediately devolved into a proxy war. I tried to find a compromise between "Brice pays for himself" and "Brice pays for himself and grandpa", while Lou delayed until 3am before going with "you're an unmarriageable miser stop hitting on my friends."  And then forwarded said opinion to mutual groupchats until I woke up.   The only clear fact is neither of us want to let this happen again.