by Lucy Dickens
All right, sis? Gray has come online. Yep, it’s late here, I was in bed dropping off to sleep.
As if you were, replies Mara.
You guys, I need to get going – I’m switching hotels via this shrine and want to get to Disney before the queues are huge. Text you all later?
Send pics! Benny replies.
Have a good day, adds Mara.
Later, says Gray.
… Marissa is typing …
I press on towards the shrine, a few other early-morning visitors passing me and my suitcase along the route. Reaching the font, I falter. Now I remember there was some particular etiquette for this part of the shrine too but I’d been so busy repeating the other mantra to myself this part is foggy. Do you rinse your left hand and then your right hand, or was it raise your left hand then your right hand? But why would you raise your hand? Unless it’s because you aren’t supposed to touch the water with your hands at all. But no, there was definitely instruction to bring water to your mouth to rinse it.
To be on the safe side, I do an exaggerated raise-to-rinse motion, like someone pressing a buzzer on a gameshow in slow motion, first with my left hand and then my right. I put a little water up to my mouth and rinse my hands again, do a little bow for good measure, and vow to be much more careful with swotting up on my instructions at the next spiritual site I visit.
And finally my vista opens up and I’m at the shrine itself, a large, peaceful courtyard surrounded on three sides by humble, low buildings in dark woods, with sweeping roofs and one structure taller and more prominent than the other.
The sounds of Tokyo have been tucked out of earshot by the congregation of trees, and the world is quiet. Yet I feel incredibly within Japan, centred, like my real journey starts here.
I watch no more than a handful of other visitors, a small amount, I guess, due to the time of day, as they stand noiselessly and pay their respects prior to continuing with their busy days. I, too, pay mine, just as I’d practised, and into the quiet seeps a word, soft like a whisper caught on a breeze. Matt …
I let it float away, but I help it on its way with a gentle nudge in case it comes back. I’m so tranquil that I could stay here for hours, but before my thoughts can circle back around I remember that I have a plan for today. A plan with a very kawaii mouse.
The Park Hyatt Tokyo stood tall and glinting in the morning sunshine. Three connecting towers of concrete and glass known as the Shinjuku Park Tower due to the other shops and offices that occupy the first thirty-eight floors. This district feels miles rather than minutes from the tranquil forests of the shrine, or the sequin-coloured cuteness of Harajuku.
I stride into the lower lobby and hop in the elevator. I love hotels. Always have and I expect I always will. There is just something so romantic and exciting about their promise of adventure, their temporariness. In fact, a hotel stay in Paris first gave me my chronic and incurable travel bug …
29 July 2004
Tuesday afternoon, 3.05pm
I stared down the never-ending corridor, a tunnel of quiet doorways and spotlights, a blue carpet and a series of watercolour prints of Parisian scenes at perfectly uniform placement upon the walls. I turned to face the other way and saw the exact same thing. The ice bucket felt too full and kinda heavy in my skinny, nine-year-old’s arms. Hmm.
‘MUM,’ I shouted. Silence.
What was our room number? Was it 16? I tried the door but nothing, so I tried 19 though I was pretty sure there wasn’t a nine in it because I would have remembered that, being nine (and a half) and all. ‘MUM?’ I shouted again.
I didn’t want them to go to the Eiffel Tower without me, and a little pebble formed in my chest because I wanted to cry. ‘Mummy?’ I said quietly to door 21, where I could hear the sound of a TV in another language.
And then Gray appeared, his scruffy head sticking out of door 26. ‘Told you you’d get lost,’ and then Mara shoved past him to hold the door open for me.
‘I wasn’t lost,’ I was indignant and embarrassed.
‘Were so.’
‘Shut up, idiot.’
‘Charlotte,’ Mum warned, weary from the travel and trying to do something with a room key and the light switch.
‘He started it,’ I sulked. ‘I got the ice.’
‘That’s lovely, honey,’ said Mum. Perhaps she was right that we hadn’t needed ice as soon as we arrived since we were going to head into Paris from our large hotel soon anyway.
When I was safe with my family again, I couldn’t help but think back to the corridor. How could there have been so many doors, all with rooms and people and families like us in them, all with completely different lives and even speaking completely different languages? All these people who were visiting and finding their rooms and trying out the cool ice machine. I thought: I’d like to explore some more hotels.
I bow a greeting to the friendly reception staff who don’t bat an eyelid at my less-than-immaculate appearance that some of the other guests at the Park Hyatt Tokyo are sporting. They check me in with discreet confusion: ‘Just one, Miss Charlotte? Not two guests?’
‘No, just me, the other guest couldn’t make it,’ I reply and we hold eye contact for half a second before the receptionist smiles, tinkers on her computer and then points me in the direction of a secondary set of elevators that shoot me up to my bedroom.
Not only was I not expecting to be allowed into my room this early, but inside I find she’s upgraded me! And if I didn’t expect it might be some kind of social faux pas, I’d run back down and give her a kiss. I was expecting a regular double but this is definitely what the website describes as a deluxe. I wonder … did the receptionist connect the dots?
I have a view out across the city, high above the other skyscrapers, a glittering circuit board of grey and morning yellow. I have two chairs and a squidgy foot stool in soft beige to match the curtains, walls and carpet. A big, dark-wood sideboard houses a television, some books, the minibar and a little teapot and cups. And in the bathroom there is a fat, deep, soaking tub and a standalone shower, plus two robes – two! – so maybe I’ll bloody well wear them both at the same time if the mood takes me!
My mind wanders, remembering all the times Matt rushed for the hotel-room robe the second we checked in. He had a thing about stripping off and walking around the room in the robe; it got him into vacation-mode instantly. Give him a hotel robe, a room balcony with a view, and some complimentary sparkling water and he would be in seventh heaven for at least thirty minutes until he wanted to get dressed again and go out and explore.
I shake away this memory and sit on the bed to look at the view, my eyes trailing down to the windowsill. I wonder if I can recreate that famous shot from the movie where Scarlett Johansson is sitting on the windowsill looking out across the city in her knickers. In reality, that windowsill doesn’t look very wide, unlike my bottom … Still, I expect that I’ll give it a try at some point this evening. Sneaking a look in the minibar, I see some jolly interesting cans and bottles, but although my stomach hasn’t caught up with my time zone, there’s no need to show up to Disneyland smashed so I’ll leave those for now. In fact, I’ll leave everything for now, all the unpacking and exploring and button-pushing, because there’s a mouse to say konnichiwa to.
After an eventful train journey that took me on a merry wiggle through Tokyo, I step back out into the sunshine, now higher in the sky, and am greeted by the unmistakable sweeping curves of colourful exteriors that is Disney around the world. Familiar childhood anthems tinkle out of speakers and guide me and the troop of other merrymakers across a gas lamp-lined bridge towards the entrance of the park, past eateries and coffee shops all with surprisingly English names.
I queue for my ticket, already glimpsing a vast, flowerbed Mickey just beyond the security checks and a ripple of excitement shimmies its way around me. I’m in Disneyland, bitch, I tell Matt in my head.
Distracted by a gaggle of Japanese teenage girls wearing cute Minnie-inspi
red matching dresses and carrying cuddly Winnie the Poohs, I nearly miss my place at the front of the line.
‘Konnichiwa,’ I bow to the ticket seller. ‘Chiketto ichi-mai, kudasai.’ One ticket, please. I don’t say this with confidence, because it feels like every bit of Japanese I carefully learnt has fallen on the floor like a dropped ice cream and I’m staring at the poor ticket seller like a constipated koala. The words come out slowly and apologetically, like I’ve actually said ‘one thumb in my nose, now’ or some such thing. And aren’t there two different words for ‘please’? Did I use the wrong one?
‘Ohayo,’ the ticket seller replies, kindly, and, ‘One ticket for both parks?’
I nod with the enthusiasm of a puppy and place the money on the counter rather than handing it directly to the employee, like I’d read in my guidebook. Tokyo Disneyland is made up of two parks, the main shebang and a place called Disney Sea. I don’t know what that one’s all about but I’ll find out later. I’m going to try and squeeze in as much as I can.
As the seller sorts out my tickets and begins stacking up some maps and leaflets for me, she says gently, ‘Konnichiwa is more for the afternoon; ohayo is how you say “good morning”.’
‘Oh!’ I blush. ‘I forgot, thank you. Arigato.’
She smiles at me and hands over my Disney swag. ‘It is no problem, have a very happy day.’
‘And you.’ Off I trot through security and into the park and yes, I know that maybe, on some level, it’s a little off-piste for me, Ms Billie-No-Mates, to have chosen to come to a theme park that caters almost exclusively for families and children. I also know that my eldest sister will be thinking that my decision indicates some unconscious desire to regress to my childhood or exist in a state of arrested development. And she may be right, but right now I’m happily having fun in a Disney park, and why the hell not? Everyone else is here to have fun, to forget the difficulties of the world, and to have their hardest decision be ‘Space Mountain next or Tower of Terror?’
It’s so familiar here, but with sprinkles of differences, and I walk through what would be ‘Main Street USA’ in the other parks I’ve been to, here I’m in the World Bazaar, a covered area (presumably in case of those naughty rainstorms I keep hearing that Tokyo has, not that I’ve seen any sign of a drop yet) with beautiful shops and cafes showcasing the best of Japanese Disney memorabilia. I’ll hit this area later, but first I think I’m ready for a ride.
En route to something called Monsters Inc. Ride and Go Seek! I stop by a popcorn stand selling soy-sauce-butter-flavour corn. Since I’ve pretty much only eaten sugar since arriving in Japan, I think it would be sensible to purchase some of this. After paying, I walk off with my scrummy, savoury popcorn inside a large, plastic Lightening McQueen from Cars bucket, which I must have agreed to accidentally. I see that others have hung these popcorn tubs around their necks like big nose bags, so when in Rome …
Shuffling along in the queue I make friends with an elderly Japanese man who is being dragged around by his large family, judging by all of their matching T-shirts. We take it in turns to ‘ooo’ and point out details to each other of interesting things on the walls and ceiling and at characters popping out behind doorways, even though we can see them for themselves. But I like this chap, and when his massive entourage fills up five of the two-seater tram cars and he’s left on his own in the back one, I’m happy to sit beside him when he beckons me in.
Once we’re seated, my friend’s face lights up and he explains to me in Japanese how the ride works, shoving one of the two big plastic flashlights in front of us into my hands, and gesturing to his forehead. I turn the torch on him thinking this was an odd way to start a ride and he laughs, his whole face crinkling with amusement, before pointing my torch for me at the characters we’re beginning to pass, and as my torch beam hits the ‘M’ on a cartoon construction hat there’s a piercing DING and a monster pops out of a fire hydrant.
My friend cheers and I cheer and now we’re all systems go. So the point seems to be that you have to find the hidden monsters as the little cars wiggle their way around a series of Monsters, Inc. scenes. I pull my phone out to take a tiny bit of video, which is probably very shaky since I’m also one-handedly still flapping my torch around, determined that me and my pal are going to find all those damn monsters. I turn the camera on him and he beams at me, holding the torch up to his forehead again and laughing, before whipping back around to a big bank of ‘M’ hats and standing up in his seat shouting, ‘Hai, hai, hai!’ until all his family members start yelling back at him from their separate carts and he sits back down.
I love that the characters are speaking Japanese throughout the ride. I mean, of course they are, but I’m still pleased, even if I don’t have the foggiest what they’re saying. I also love that there are Japanese touches scattered among the scenes we pass, including a Japanese restaurant with shoji translucent paper walls. The ride is beautiful and I could ride on it a hundred times and still not spot everything.
But alas, we’re at the end, and my friend and I climb out and bow at each other, laughing, and then I take a photo with him and all of his family and he takes one of me, and all of his family, and then I give him some of my carful of popcorn and we go our separate ways.
My day is spent queueing and riding and laughing and marvelling and I don’t feel lonely or out of place once, and I flitter back and forth between the two parks, refilling my popcorn car three times and making sure I take a turn on all the major attractions on my must-do list (I’d never get around everything in one day).
‘Ichi, kudasai!’ I say, spotting a stand selling little pots of green blobs. Pretty sure these are mochi: squidgy, chewy little dumplings filled with a flavoured bean paste, usually. The woman hands me a plastic cup filled with these green blobs, and I spot they have eyes painted on them so they look like a little cup of those aliens from Toy Story. And when I bite into one of their little heads ohhhhmygod. Japanese food is just the best and I’m never going home. In fact, I might never leave Disneyland. The filling is strawberry and creamy and I gobble it down in one and then THE NEXT ONE IS CHOCOLATE. I am definitely going to throw up on Tower of Terror, with its sudden stomach-lurching drops, but it’s worth it.
For the rest of the afternoon I walk around, capturing the sights on video, listening to the claps and the music from the parade from where I sit on a wall gobbling another cup full of mochi aliens, joining some single-rider queues and waltzing straight onto the rides, and feeling on top of the world. I need this. I need a day to be childlike and unafraid and distracted, in a place that is comfortingly familiar while laced with gentle reminders that this country is where I’m calling home for the next month.
I’m tired by the time I leave the parks, the sun having set and the lights of the Tokyo Skytree lit up and towering above the city in the distance. I splash out on a taxi to take me back to the hotel because it’ll take less than half an hour versus the hour-long train, and my eyes are drooping and my feet hurt.
The taxi ride, quiet and gentle, dark and warm, brings me back down to earth. We pass sign after sign glowing in the dark with characters I can’t identify and the odd one I can, which I whisper out loud, ‘Japan’, ‘su’, ‘kyu’, ‘forest’.’
By the time we reach the Park Hyatt and I’ve travelled the two elevators to my room, I feel wiped.
I head inside and plonk down my things, then sit for a moment gazing out of my window and let all those thoughts that keep drifting in and out and get pushed aside, come back to me for a while. What a perfect day. Matt would have loved it.
I think about how he would have laughed and laughed at me when I got a bit too into it on ‘It’s A Small World’, singing my little heart out only to find it was the Japanese version of the theme song playing and everyone wanted me to stop ruining their magic.
And Disney Sea … I know Matt hadn’t been bothered about fitting Disneyland into our trip, but he whoops as much as the next person on a theme-park ride
, and that was one of the most stunning theme parks I’ve ever been to – and I’ve been to quite a few in my time, thanks to my four siblings, Matt, and theme-park crazy Brienne. We’d have hung out, sunning ourselves on DisneySea’s beautiful glittering harbour, drinking delicious frozen pineapple beer, with nautically themed ‘ports’ housing different rides and attractions. There was definitely a more adult vibe there. Not adult in a nudey girls and excessing swearing way, but the rides are a little more for the thrill-seekers.
We could have screamed together on my favourite ride – the Tower of Terror. We could have listened to the marching band as they wove through the park. We could have eavesdropped, together, on the excited chatter in quickly spoken Japanese and quizzed each other about what was being said, showing off what we remembered from our Japanese lessons on the app. He could have helped me eat the popcorn so I didn’t make myself feel quite so sick.
It hits me like a come-down from a sugar high, melancholy washing over me, and I feel sad again, which makes me annoyed at myself for being such a spoiled brat. But from my darkened hotel room as I gaze out of my window at the city where over 9 million people are doing their thing, I feel alone. Matt should be here, we should be drinking a glass of wine and wearing our hotel robes, wondering what our friends and family were doing back home, chatting about how we should spend tomorrow, laughing over funny wedding stories that would keep us chuckling for months.
Matt would probably be itching to try out the hotel pool, even if he’d just had a bath. He’d be making up stories about all the people in the building across the road, and what they were doing and talking about. He’d have cracked open three of the mystery cans in the minibar for us to do a taste test on. He was a fun travel partner, entertaining to be around with his silly playful ways.