Selcouth Chronicles Week 1
Hello family and friends!
We’re so glad you’ve decided to follow along with our Selcouth Chronicles. We are just wrapping up our first week, so it’s a good time to give a quick orientation:
1. We will be on the go for the next seven months, until the end of July. We are hoping to get the newsletter out every week or two.
2. This email goes to a wide variety of friends and family, and with that in mind all four of us will be contributing to each newsletter.
3. What does “selcouth” mean? Selcouth is an old English word. The modern translation roughly means something that is strange and unfamiliar, yet wonderful. That pretty much sums up what we're hoping for in our travels!
Let’s begin…
WEEK 1: Tokyo, January 8-14
Highlights: Successfully navigating Tokyo’s public transportation, learning Japanese etiquette, Ghibli Museum, TeamLab, Japanese shrines, food, visiting with family friends!
Caitlin:
It feels surreal to have finally started this journey, despite the fact that we’ve been preparing for it for some time. The entire experience is such a far cry from our daily lives that it’s been difficult to anticipate how we would feel and what our experiences would be once we got started! Luckily, so far things are off to a good start.
We left on Monday morning (Abby’s birthday!) but thanks to the international dateline we didn’t arrive at our hotel until Tuesday evening Tokyo time. We were wiped but the jetlag got us up and out early the next morning! January may not be the most popular time to visit Japan, but it has the advantage of being less crowded than other times of the year. It’s cold, but not freezing, so we could still enjoy walking around the city for the whole day. I’d like to say that as the only member of the family who grew up with real winters I was totally immune to the chill, but the truth is that I am always the most heavily bundled of all of us… this is why I now live in California. :)
This was my first time in Japan, and I’ve found Tokyo to be a fascinating mix of rich history and modern culture. Our days have been a mix of bustling city sites juxtaposed with ancient shrines that are still very much a part of everyday life. Businesspeople from enormous, ultramodern buildings will make a quick stop at shrines that are hundreds of years old to give a quick offering and say a prayer on their way home from work. I love that Tokyo embraces old and new alike!
Abby:
Most of my friends have marveled at me informing them that our first stop would be Japan. There are lots of wows and oohs and you’re luckys. I thought it was cool too, but by the end of the week I’m more thankful that I went here first than I thought I would be. Japan was a great first stop because it is such a contrast to California. The moment the plane’s wheels touched the ground in Japan I didn’t know what to think. It was like we hadn’t gone anywhere, for the airport was much like the one in San Francisco. But as we journeyed on through Tokyo, more and more differences were being uncovered. For example, you know how if you were to walk up to a US vending machine you’d probably find some candies or soft drinks? Well, here the vending machines are packed with things like hot chocolate, tea, and much more. And guess what? There are TONS of vending machines laid out across the city! (I counted 67 and James spotted over 100) The vending machines were a popular quick drink or snack for the people there. Of course, the vending machines weren’t the only food resource in Tokyo. There were hundreds of delicious restaurants packed around the city.
Our first full day in Tokyo was packed with activities. First we went to the Shibuya Scramble, which is the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world. After climbing up to a rooftop garden, we headed to one of the tons of shrines in Japan. Before we went into the shrine, we had to purify ourselves. First, you had to rinse your hands, then gather water and pour it into your mouth, then finally rinse your hands again. While we were at the shrine, we realized that there was a wedding being held there. After that we quickly got out of there and had some ice cream. After an exhausting day, we still wanted one more thing, so we went to the popular Tokyo Disney Sea for a few hours. Half asleep, we headed back to our hotel and passed out. And that was only the first day!
James:
This week my favorite place we visited was TeamLab, an interactive art exhibit full of all sorts of brain tricks. You walk through a series of rooms, and each one is filled with its own unique surprise. Our first area was a ramp with flowing water from a waterfall so that it felt like we were walking up a stream. In the next room the floors and walls were covered in black padding and were so soft you sank deep into them. When I stepped into this room, I wasn’t paying close attention and almost face-planted! Next was a small maze of LED strings that looked like crystals, set in an infinity room (a room totally covered in mirrors). Whenever the LEDs changed color, you could look down and see a ripple effect that appeared to go on forever. The next room was filled with water all the way up to my knees, and there were koi fish projected onto the water. It was incredible to watch them swimming everywhere, flashing their dazzling colors. If you walked up to a patch of fish, they would scatter because they were programmed to “interact” with the people in the water. Next, we went into a room filled with what looked like huge, white beach balls. The lights in the room would change color at random intervals, making it look like everything was being repainted a different color every few seconds.
The next room was my favorite! It was called “Floating in a World of Falling Flowers,” a dark space with a mirrored floor and a domed roof that was covered in projections of bright flowers. The flowers always appeared to be falling around you. It was wonderful and mesmerizing to watch. It was my favorite because it was so peaceful and relaxing. If you’re with your family, it really makes a special moment.
The last part of the exhibit was a garden area, which had only two rooms. The first was full of mist, with a stone path to see bright objects that I think looked like metallic water droplets. The final room was covered in mirrors and filled with strands of live orchids hanging from the ceiling. If you walked towards the strands they would slowly rise up to let you pass. When they’re high enough you can enter and lay down under the flowers, watching them descend all around you.
TeamLabs is a wondrous place, and if you ever go to Tokyo I highly suggest that you come by and experience it for yourself!
Sean:
Looking back on the first week of our admittedly ludacris adventure, Japan might have been a stretch for our first stop, particularly Tokyo. Though I must admit it is a stunning city that appears to go on forever in every direction (over 5000 sq miles), navigating your way through it is a daunting task at times. As Lonely Planet puts it, many of the large stations can be a maze to get through for the uninitiated.
Our first taste of public transport was our trip from the airport to the hotel via bus, but the next day, we went straight into the train system. Every station has ticket kiosks that luckily have a button to show you English. Unfortunately, they’ll only sell you three tickets at a time, so we needed to always do two transactions to get our four tickets. In addition, for quite a few of our destinations, we needed to transfer across lines, which meant we needed to buy new tickets for the next leg of the journey. Google maps was our savior, as it will actually tell you which line you need, what platform it’s on, and when the next train departs. Our very first trip through the ticket machine had a slight hiccup, as we hadn’t told Abby that she would need to keep the ticket, and she didn’t recover it from the machine in time! We had to flag down a helpful station operator, who pulled Abby’s ticket from the machine. Phew!
After a full day of buying and managing tickets, we knew we needed to upgrade to the IC cards we’d read about before coming. This required us to make our way to Shinjuku Station, which turns out to be the world's busiest transport hub (3.59 million people per day in 2019, thanks Wikipedia!). We went to an information desk, and were told to cross the street to the other side of the station. At that desk, we were told that we needed to cross back to the side we were on, but go around to the other side of the building. We found the office, but were informed that although we could get the adult cards, the child card (for Abby) would need to be acquired across the street! We crossed the street for the third time, found the other office, and got Abby’s card. Hooray! From there, we crossed the street, for the final time, and used the cards to board our trains onto Mitaka and the Ghibli Museum.
After that, we felt like professionals. Well, maybe more like less-lost foreigners, but definitely a step up. The trains are typically very clean, punctual, and there was a lot of English to help us figure out what we were doing. The kids did an incredible job of not losing their cards, so quite the victory all around. Our last hurrah was to ride the Shinkansen (Japanese bullet train) from Tokyo to Hiroshima to begin the next part of our adventure. Our week of practice should come in handy for the rest of our time here in Japan, but time will tell. おきをつけて!
