Earlier this month, my wife Sarah and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary, and since we never had a proper honeymoon (aside from a thrilling post-nuptials weekend at Universal Studios before going right back to my new job on Monday), we thought that 25 was a solid enough number to do something special.

Oh, and before I continue, may I suggest that you first fire up Johnny’s Playlist (he’ll come back up a little later) to enjoy some sweet vintage Japanese jams while you read.

All set? Cool, let’s proceed…

Sarah’s cousin had been teaching for a bit in Jakarta, so we started this process out by making plans with her to do an Indonesian adventure. Soon after, however, her situation changed, so we started exploring some other potential options.

Maybe we do Indonesia on our own? Or Thailand since we still had White Lotus fever? Vietnam?

A week or so later we decided on Japan. Sarah had never been, and I’d only been to Tokyo super briefly as a teenager (a stopover for a few days as part of an epic family trip adventure to Hong Kong before it reverted back to Chinese control).

We researched a bit, rolled the dice on a tour package, and hopped on a plane.

Since we were still working with modified versions of our original Indonesian plane tickets, the airline had to connect us through Taiwan first before landing in Tokyo. This was largely uneventful, aside from a 17-year-old sitting next to us sharing that through we hadn’t even hit Japan yet, he’d already dropped $1,000 at the Taipei duty-free airport shops. Real legend behavior in action, so vibes were good.

Day 1 (July 8th)

First (and most important) things first, our Japanese eSIMs connected flawlessly as soon as we landed. Connectivity crisis averted, we quickly found out that the 5G coverage is unsurprisingly pretty amazing across the whole country.

I also quickly found out that while I’m moderately tall here at home (6 feet), I started to get a small taste of how Shaq must feel going about his day-to-day activities. “Big in Japan” indeed.

We had our first Tokyo train experience soon after getting off the plane, when we got on the Skyliner from Narita Airport to…somewhere in Tokyo. Our instructions from the tour company were generally great throughout the trip, but the first set of details on how to navigate the different train types/stations was a bit lacking, so we bumbled around like idiots, got off at the wrong place, but eventually got pointed in the right direction.

I should note here that this semi-stressful initial train experience was also happening in parallel to us realizing JUST HOW HOT Tokyo is in July. The insane heat and Washington, D.C.-style soul-obliterating humidity meant that by the time we found our way to the hotel near Kinshicho Station, I was dripping sweat to the point where the desk clerk couldn’t contain her laughter, even looking at me and saying “Tokyo is hot!” to Sarah’s endless delight.

The hotel room was not big, but it did give us our first taste of the completely game-changing bidet situation across almost every toilet we encountered in the country.

Mercifully for all of you, no pics were taken on this first travel day.

Day 2 (July 9th)

Since our original trip was a little longer than the guided tour package we got, we added a few extra days on the front and back, so we got to start in Tokyo with some time on our own.

As most good journeys do, the day started at Denny’s, at which I found out that if you want a Grand Slam-style breakfast, you’re gonna get it with salad and miso soup. Also? The restaurant (as with many restaurants) remained as quiet as a crypt, so we felt a bit like two Rodney Dangerfields entering a country club.

We then got back on the horse and started actually learning the subway system. Sarah quickly discovered that adding a Suica card to your Apple Wallet is the way to go, and over the next week we slowly became more and expert at navigating stations and quickly refilling credits. Related, I’ll now accept any Suica LinkedIn endorsements.

The subway system in Tokyo is astounding, miraculously clean, and while it can get insanely packed, almost no words are spoken, and people tend to be extremely aware of those around them. As an L.A. subway veteran, this truly broke my brain.

If you know me, I love a good tower (The king of course being the Sears Tower, which I will always deadname), so we first made our way to an area around the classic Tokyo Tower, where we immediately met a dude that had lived in Orange Country for years, and who was aghast at the current Trump situation. There’s no escape, people.

We then ventured to the first of a few trips to the Akihabara (“Otaku“) District, which was an overwhelming mini-city of nerdery, porn, and problematic “women dress up as maids and serve you” cafes.

We closed things out with a second tower, this time the newer Tokyo Skytree, which offered some great views, as well as a nice sushi place.

Our eyes were opened to a lot of important lessons on this first full day:

• Drink vending machines (which you can pay for with your Suica card) are cheap and EVERYWHERE
  
  
• Same with bathrooms, they’re plentiful, shockingly clean and (as noted above) almost always have bidets
  
  
• People generally pass you on the left, except in Osaka, where it’s a bit of the wild west (more on that later)
  
  
• Tipping is generally not a thing, which was glorious
  
  
• It’s an incredibly safe country, and in Tokyo I’m not sure that we saw a single bike locked up (again, things were a little different in Osaka)
  
  
• 7-11s aren’t just convenience stores in Japan, they’re a way of life
  
  
• Public trash cans are kinda not a thing, and while I understand that this makes you more aware of the litter you’re generating, as an American, I was pretty close to raising a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag after carrying endless water bottles for hours on end
  
  
• Sun umbrellas are essential with the heat, and while men historically didn’t carry them as much, apparently things are changing (and I was obviously an influencer on this front)

Day 3 (July 10th)

Our next free day continued with a visit to a Japanese Garden park, then a visit to teamLab Borderless, an interactive art exhibit that made creative use of objects, video effects and more to envelop you in surreal worlds. It even ended with a trippy tea ceremony involving video projection.

We ended the day by visiting Shibuya Crossing, the Times Square-style district of Tokyo that you’ve almost certainly seen in countless movies and shows. It’s…a LOT, but was cool to see, and it included a mandatory visit to the official Nintendo store.

This may also have been the night I forced Sarah to watch Tokyo Drift IN Tokyo, a real bucket list item for me.

Day 4 (July 11th)

Our first day of the guided tours! This one started at Tsukiji Fish Market, with a nice older gentleman showing us a LOT of fish, then taking us on a private sushi lunch, where he explained the proper way to hold things, which order to eat certain the items in, etc. I promptly forgot most of it, but for a brief shining moment, I was classy.

From there we got a peek at a Kabuki theatre and a brief tour of the high-end Ginza district.

We ended the day by watching Superman (English with Japanese subtitles). The whole experience was surreal, as everyone was issued a nice combination drink/popcorn holder, people were SILENT the whole time, and at the end everyone lined up to properly separate popcorn bucket, drinks and combo holders into different bins. In America they’d be lucky if multiple people hadn’t crapped into their popcorn buckets by the third act, and the megaplex hadn’t been burned to the ground while the credits rolled.

Day 5 (July 12th)

Our next tour took us from Tokyo Station to the Imperial Palace (sweet), then to the Asakusa District and the connected Senso-ji Temple.

It was here that we got our first taste of temple etiquette (purifying your mouth and hands with water, a specific numbers of bows and claps, etc.), and learned the differences between the many temples (Buddhism) and shrines (Shintoism) across Japan.

For lunch we wandered like pigs to the slaughter to a fantastic Kobe beef place, which ended up costing way more than we expected, but yolo.

We then walked through the giant Meiji Jingu Shrine before venturing to the Gwen Stefani-famous Harajuku District, which like Shibuya before it, was intense. It did, however, feature tons of experiences where you sit and play with all types of animals. We just watched through the windows, but I’ve shared a couple pig and dog cafe videos below.

Day 6 (July 13th)

Day 6 brought us to our first “get in a van and drive for a while” experience, in which we traveled to the Mt. Fuji area. Ol’ Fuj is notorious for getting hidden behind clouds, and while we thought we might get screwed, it finally peeked through a bit. Moving between destinations, Sarah left her phone in one of the bathrooms, and the tour guide was nice enough to take us all back to pinpoint (and find it!) through the “Find My” app. Thanks, Tim Cook!

We then went to what I can only describe as the Japanese equivalent of Denny’s (not to be composed with the American Denny’s in Japan we’d already visited), at which a robot waiter delivered our orders. Again, video below.

This trip offered lots of beautiful scenery, but as someone with a very bad back, being jammed in a van for a long time tore me up. Thankfully at the end of the day, I saw an older gentleman with a Bart Simpson phone case on the subway, so all was soon right again with the world.

If memory serves, this may also have been the day that we first visited the flagship multiple-story Kura Sushi restaurant, at which we were assigned a table via a screen, fed sushi via conveyor belt and robot, then paid via a screen, NEVER encountering a human. Goals, my friends. Those bastards have really cracked the code.

Day 7 (July 14th)

We were now done with our guided tours for Tokyo, so in our last few free days before traveling on, we met up with an old friend both of us had known during our freshman year of college. He was/is doing great, and gave us a little walking tour of his neighborhood.

Capsule machines (that dispense little toys) are HUGE in Japan, with products inside that I’d conservatively say are 10x cooler than what you’ll find in the United States, and on the way back from our meetup, we discovered a capsule machine inception situation, in which there was a capsule machine that dispensed…capsule machine knob toys. Hashtag disruption. Hashtag thought leadership.

Day 8 (July 15th)

For our final day in Tokyo, Sarah (a train fan, and someone that grew up in the Hub City) wanted to visit the Tokyo Metro Museum, which was suprisingly cool, and we went to town in the photo booth (with full results below).

We then took a walk through Ueno Park and walked through the Tokyo National Museum.

That was a wrap for Tokyo, but we were just warming up.

Check out Part Two, in which we voyaged to Kyoto, Osaka and Hiroshima before finally heading back home.