Father and Son Part 1

In a rare burst of spontaneity, my dad decides to come out to visit me in Japan for a week while he has some time of work. The idea is simple enough - I advise on sights, food, transport and accomodation and he pays for it. Adults travel a bit differently to teenagers it seems, and he seems happy to pay for things that have far too many digits in the price for my budget. We both prepare to travel into an entirely different world; My dad, into the very foreign world of Japan, and me, into the equally foreign world of luxurious travel (I always thought it was an oxymoron).

We are reunited in Shinjuku station, and as Father and Son we begin our journey around Japan. Our first stop is Hotel Century South Tower. Having never stayed in a hotel expensive enough to have four words in its name, the experience is quite new to me. We walk about 300m from the station, into an air-conditioned lobby on the 20th floor of a shiny glass tower. We receive plenty of smiles, bows and other polite gestures from the well-dressed English speaking hotel staff, and then board another one of those smooth rich-people elevators where you cant tell whether you are moving or standing still. We stop off on the 34th floor, and walk into our room, which has a view every bit as good as Tokyo Tower`s. The view is characterized by tiny red lights on every tall building, which fade in and out randomly to create a very soothing nightscape.

Still, I cant sit there daydreaming for too long! Hunger calls, and I must prowl the streets to find my dad his first authentic Japanese meal. We settle for Yakitori (chicken skewers) in Shinjukus `memory lane`, a tiny maze of narrow streets with a prevailing atmosphere of economic depression. Just a block from the sushi shops and designers handbags of central Shinjuku, it serves as a reminder of `real Japan` beneath all the hype and glamour, where exhausted workers treat themselves to noodles, yakitori and beer on wooden benches.

Keen to see as many faces of Japan as possible in 7 days, my dad musters up the energy to board another train at 10pm. We only have one Saturday night here in Tokyo, and I figure there is only one place to spend it...Roppongi! He isnt much into nightclubs, but walking the length of the street is interesting enough. Here African-American men attempt to pull us into every kind of strip club imaginable, and go to great lengths to explain why going to a sleazy strip joint is an unmissable part of Japan. They are admirable for their perseverance, and annoying for the same reason, but there are a number of strategies one can use to get rid of them. You can duck into the nearest shop (none of them are willing to follow you grocery shopping), or you can just say you have a train to catch (even if you are walking in the opposite direction to the train station). After about an hour of this, we attempt to sleep whilst standing on the train back (its possible, trust me), and eventually go back to get some horizontal sleep in our 100m high hotel room. Four hours into the trip, we are both completely exhausted.