June 30

As I drove us out of Fujikawaguchiko, it wasn’t long before I found myself merging onto the highway. The highway took us through the mountains that surround the towns north of Mt. Fuji. I was finally getting a glimpse of the countryside that I wasn’t able so see during our arrival a few nights before. It was quite beautiful and I was glad we were able to be there. I was however, regretting being the driver again as I saw many scenes that I would have liked to photograph but couldn’t. On the plus side, there were hardly any cars on the road which made for a very nice drive that wasn’t nearly as long as the drive to get to Fujikawaguchiko.

As the scenery gradually began to change from country side to suburban to metropolis I began to get excited. Having had a glimpse of Tokyo after leaving the airport, I couldn't wait to get out of the car and finally walk around the city. The feeling hit me again, I never thought I’d be able to visit Japan, yet here I was. Life was great.

*Overhead pumps. I'd never seen this before.*

We arrived to our rental house in Sumida, Tokyo. It was and older building in a nice neighborhood. There was a lot of wood in the house, and that, combined with the age of the house, caused a familiar odor in the air. It wasn’t anything foul, but rather something that seemed to transport my mind back in time. I can’t even place where I’ve smelled this odor before but it was very familiar, in a good way. I guess you could say it made me feel at home.

After unloading everything, we were quick to return the rental car and start exploring Tokyo. The rental car company expected us to fill the tank to full, just as we had received it. I had no problem with that, or so I thought. As we used our mobile phones to try a find a gas station, it seemed like they were all service centers without any gas pumps. And once we found a bigger station that had pumps, we couldn’t actually navigate to it because our wonderful (TERRIBLE) T-Mobile “Free Unlimited Data” was severely limited to a rate about 10 bytes per second* download speed. This caused any navigation app we used to be incredibly laggy. To the point that it was completely useless.

* Actually download speed not measured. This was just a estimate based on the time it takes paint to dry.

By this point we decided to pay whatever penalty the Toyota rental company was going to give us rather than waste any more time. It was later in the trip, although I can’t remember when exactly, that we discovered that most gas stations don’t have the tradition ground mounted gas pumps that we’d see in the U.S., but instead an overhead system which had hanging hoses. Once I saw this, I just wanted to kick myself. Oh well, live and learn I suppose.

For our next challenge we had to ride the subway from Sumida to Shibuya. Doesn’t sound too difficult, right? Well we were trying to use our mobile phones again to add a transit pass. For whatever reason, we couldn’t seem add them. I blame T-Mobile again. It seemed to me that the process would time-out before it could finish. We ended up getting tickets until we were able to setup the transit pass later.

*Shibuya Crossing* *Sunday 2024/06/30 13:36 JST -- Not very busy midday on a Sunday.*

I’ve heard of many of the wards in Tokyo, and Shibuya is one that I heard many times, and yet I forgot why it was so famous. Once we navigated our way out of Shibuya Station we found ourselves in the Shibuya Scramble Square building searching for a place to eat lunch. I remember everything was very nice and was wondering what kind of restaurant we’d end up going to. I started to notice there were a lot of tourists which wasn’t’ too surprising, however, it was a bit disappointing. I really prefer to avoid tourist areas whenever possible, however with the exchange rate at the time and the fact that it was summer time in a major city, it was pretty much impossible to avoid all the other tourists.

After lunch my wife and mother-in-law started shopping, something my son did not want to do. So my brother-in-law and I decided to find an arcade nearby for my son. It turned out, there was one very close by, which probably should have been expected given where we were. He spent a fair amount of time there playing some fighting games against another tourist that was somewhat close in age, although the other tourist seemed unaware he was competing against some one that was just four arcade machines down from him. My son eventually won, although it was pretty close. He then decided to play the coin pusher games with hopes of winning a prize. However, it wasn’t until several minutes of playing that my brother-in-law discovered there’s nothing to win and the coins can’t be exchanged for anything. As far as I can tell, the game is completely pointless other than the dopamine release once the finally start winning some worthless coins.

Once we realized how much time we’d spent at the arcade and that the coin pusher game was pointless, my brother-in-law starting feeding the machine as quickly as possible while encouraging my son to do the same. My son was reluctant as he just wanted to keep playing and enjoy his time instead of doing whatever boring things the adults had planned next.

The weather that day wasn’t the greatest. There was sudden sporadic rain with gusting winds accompanying it. But it provided me with a few photographic opportunities that I tried to take advantage of. Photographing moments on a busy city street is really difficult. Trying to look at everything all at once while at the same time trying to find and focus on those unique fleeting moments that are happening all around me at different times and locations. A lot of the time, I’d see something but my view was obscured or I was way to far away. Other times, I’d press the shutter release to late, or I’d accidentally hit the focus ring and knock the lens out of focus. Working with a manual camera while not really being prepared and lacking the experience of using this setup for street photography proved to be the real problem. However I was lucky enough to come away with a few photos that I was somewhat satisfied with.

*Sporadic rain with gusting winds that almost seemed to target some people while not affecting others.*

After several hours in Shibuya, which seemed to fly by, we eventually decided to head back to Sumida for dinner. We tried to find seating at a few small restaurants near our rental home, however we were unsuccessful and ultimately had to grab some groceries from the nearby Life Supermarket. This was our first time walking around the neighborhood. Our phones seemed to lag and provide us with inaccurate GPS data which made it quite difficult to navigate to our destination. Because the weather started to get more rainy and because we couldn’t figure out how to get to the grocery store, we eventually hired a taxi to take us.

I don’t enjoy shopping in the grocery store, however, this time it was different. The store was different, the layout was different, the items were different. It was all new to me and as such, quite interesting. The store itself had two levels separated by elevators or escalators. While I’d see some items that could be seen most anywhere, say produce for example, there were other items like premade dinners that differed from what I’m used to seeing. The store felt much more open with this layout. It was brightly lit and had a more appealing atmosphere than the stores I’m used to shopping in. If you do a search for Life Supermarket, Sumida, you can find lots of photos. I really should have taken some but I didn’t.

In my limited travels I have found that I prefer to visit the ordinary places that are a part of local people’s daily lives as opposed to some tourist location. I also prefer to walk whenever possible so that I can stop at any places that piqued my interest. The only problem is, there never seems to be enough time.