SSS Method

I lived in Japan from 2005-2008, teaching English. Haven’t really spent a lot of time there since. Had a good opportunity this last weekend (2023) to pop up from the Philippines to see an old colleague of mine perform in his Irish rock band, Angry McFinn and the Old Yank (check them out on Spotify/Apple Music). Found a nice flight online, went up to Tokyo Saturday morning, and came back home Monday afternoon.

The show was in a super small bar in Ueno (one of the regions of Tokyo). It was packed and there was lots of energy. Great time had by all!

The bathroom in the bar had an open hole in the wall (I didn’t see any kind of window or shutter haha), and I felt a bit..exposed. I also walked a little bit around the Ueno neighborhood, which has a whole lot of little shops and restaurants/street food. I hadn’t spent much time in Ueno when I lived in Tokyo; and I wanted to check out my old haunts on my next day in Tokyo, so that’s what I did!

This was my old neighborhood of Magome (馬込), in south Tokyo, where I lived in my last year there. I lived primarily off of bentos (pre-prepared meals) at the Family Mart convenience store, and the Coco’s family restaurant (I had lunch there for memories). Of course, now they’ve opened a grocery store right next to the Family Mart – that would have been convenient! And.. I found my old apartment building! I thought they might have knocked it down, it being fairly old for a Japanese apartment building, but it’s still there, hiding (my door was the left one).

Then I traveled up to Tamachi (田町) and Hamamatsucho (浜松町), where two of my English school locations were. Neither of them are there anymore. The one in Tamachi is now part of a gas company, and the one in Hamamatsucho is… a hot yoga studio. Probably smells a little better now. The public library in Tamachi behind the school was closed on Sunday, but I hope they still have the fantastic little cafe in the basement where you ordered some home-style Japanese dishes from a ticket machine, gave them the ticket, and then some nice old ladies would bring you your meal. Good times.

After going back to the hotel for a quick work call, I went up to Akihabara (秋葉原), the “anime/manga/video game” capital of the world! Back when I lived in Japan, the Nintendo DS was huge, and I could come here and find the weirdest games, some of which even had English options (for example, the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney). They closed the main street to car traffic, which was pretty cool, but a lot of the stores seemed a bit slower (I heard a lot of the stores didn’t reopen after the pandemic). But I found some good electronic buys (the yen is very cheap right now and as a tourist I got a 10% tax-free discount) and found a “retro” arcade with some awesome platforms (I played an original Galaga machine but didn’t get a picture..oops).

Kabukichō (歌舞伎町), in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo. The setting for the Yakuza video games, and where I spent many a night in my early 20s partying. Everything from arcades, movie theaters, bars, batting cages, restaurants, and more (note for those not too familiar with Tokyo: if you’ve seen the movie Lost in Translation, the hotel Bill Murray and ScarJo were in is right across the tracks from Kabukichō). It looked pretty much the same (if a few new towers/buildings), and all the same crazy set of people. I’m definitely getting a bit old for the experience, though!

A place near Kabukichō that I never went to when I was younger, but had always heard about, was Golden Gai (ゴールデン街) – a 3 block or so area of small alleys with extremely small bars, with like 4-5 seats crushed up against a bar with 1 bartender. I imagine it’s a lot more crowded on Friday/Saturday, but on a Sunday night, it was actually pretty chill. I had a nice whiskey in one bar and overheard a lot of tourists talking about their “first time in Japan” – pretty interesting. There are a LOT more tourists/foreigners in general in Tokyo these days compared to when I lived there – great for the economy, but it did feel different when we were much more “rare” – I guess I’ll have to get out of Tokyo more to get that feeling again!

The last place I checked out was Roppongi (六本木), which was the “foreigner” party district back in the day. Maybe it’s because of the pandemic, or maybe because it was Sunday, but it was dead when I visited; nothing like it used to be. All of the bars/clubs I used to frequent are long gone. The horrible dance bar that I worked at for one night as a bar server, Gaspanic, is gone (thankfully) and is now a “Taproom.” My favorite club, an 80s music-themed club called Castillos, is now what appears to be a liquor distributor. But there was almost noone on the street, and it just felt sad. I hope it was just because of Sunday.

And that was it for my whirlwind weekend in Tokyo. On the train back home, I got to thinking – I’ve loved Japan ever since I lived there. I always had the thought in the back of my mind that I would always love to move back to Japan, and I only left because I wasn’t making enough money as an English teacher. And while I still absolutely love Japan, and Tokyo is still my favorite city in the world, I recognize now that it’s not my “home.” It’s a great place to visit (and I recommend anyone to visit Japan – it’s absolutely worth it). For the past 13 years, I’ve lived mostly in the Philippines, and I have to say, I feel much more “at home” here, and this trip just helped me feel that even more.

Next time I’ll go back for a little longer and try to visit some more places outside of Tokyo. I’ve always wanted to visit Tohoku (the region north of Tokyo on the same island) and shamefully, while I visited Nagoya a couple of times, I never actually went to Kyoto or Osaka when I lived in Japan (working too hard and no money)! Plans for the future 🙂