A Shrine To What Is

 A week in Japan. Three days in Osaka. My twenty-seventh country and—how many cities, monuments and faces have I seen?  Yet I feel I am experiencing everything for the first time.

This has been my first trip to a place I hadn’t previously seen since I went to Greece six summers ago, a few months before COVID changed the world—and me.  (In early 2023 I went to Paris, where I lived years ago and have visited several times since.) Tokyo, Osaka and Japan certainly are different from other places I’ve seen: The qualities of light and color, and even of time and space, are as unlike others I’ve felt as takoyaki is from a jambon-beurre sandwich or a hamburger. Yet I can’t help but to feel that the real differences between what I have known and what I am learning lie within me and sometimes within my body itself.

For one thing, I notice that I am more tired at the end of a day of cycling, walking and sightseeing. Mind you, I have long realized that wanting to end a day of any journey—whether in a place I am seeing for the first time or a place to which I return nearly every day—by laying down my head is usually a good thing:  It means that I have lived that day, if not fully, then at least to the best I could.

The bike I rented in Tokyo.

Of course, some of my fatigue has to do with age: While I am in the middle of my life as long as I don’t know when it will end, I cannot pretend that my body is what it was forty years, or even minutes, ago. That, I realize, is also the reason why I could—and, I admit, do—wish I could have taken this trip earlier in my life, I am glad I am on it, and that it still lies ahead, now.

Then there is the weather: I landed in a heat wave. Or so it seems. Every day I have been here has been as hot as the steamiest days of any summer in New York.  That makes sense when one realizes that Tokyo and Osaka are on the same parallels as the American South. But it seems even hotter here than in Cambodia and Laos, which are undeniably tropical. 

I am not complaining: If everything is exactly as you expected, you aren’t traveling.

Perhaps that previous sentence seems smug or sanctimonious. Perhaps it is. For what it’s worth, it’s something that made sense to me today when I visited the Sumiyoshi Taisha shrine. (Hmm, maybe there is something to those shrines and temples after all!) Yesterday, after touring Osaka Castle, I wandered into NHK World. Not surprisingly, there were screens everywhere showing various Japanese TV programs—and Jaws with Japanese subtitles. I saw that movie the summer it was released and thought back to that movie time when I was pursuing the dreams of my father and a few other adults in my life. I thought that if I hadn’t pursued what they envisioned for me—mainly, their own unfulfilled wishes—my life would have been what it was “supposed to be.” I utterly failed in most of those pursuits because, I was told, I didn’t try or study or Jesus hard enough and that I should just “snap out of “ my “moodiness.”

But today I realize I hadn’t failed, although I couldn’t have known it all of those years ago. If nothing else, I learned that those dreams and goals—such as going to West Point or Annapolis and embarking on a military career, which my father wanted for me—simply weren’t right for me. Perhaps even the dreams I had, like being a marine biologist, were not meant to be even if I blamoed my father and a buddy of his for hijacking them.

As for what any of this has to do with cycling: It’s probably one of the few passions I’ve ever had that nobody could change or destroy.  So here I am, in midlife, cycling in my 27th country.

Anyway, I realized at the shrine that my failure—if indeed there is any—was in believing that my life was “supposed to be” a certain way, whether in line with my own or other people’s wishes. Rather, I need to acknowledge, if not embrace, what is and journey through whatever will be.

Front and side view of one of the shrine’s sanctuaries .

After leaving the shrine, I entered a cafe—“Vie de France”—for a cafe au lait and to use their internet connection. I called Callie, Sam’s significant other, who is looking after Marlee. “I miss you,” she said.

“I miss you too. And Marlee?”

I met her—and “Sam”—just over a year ago, when I moved to the place where I live now.

You Don’t Have To Be A Mischievous Turtle

Yesterday, and the day before, I explored Tokyo by bike. Now I am riding something much faster than I ever could be, or could have been, on two wheels: one of Japan’s fabled “bullet” trains, headed for Osaka.

Yesterday I met Ava, her brother Alex and their mother and grandmother in Shinjuku  Guyoen National Garden. Ava was trying to find a turtle she’d spotted in one of the Japanese formal garden’s pools. I pointed out two fish—giant carp, I believe—I saw. She had already seen them and was determined to find the turtle. “Maybe it’s playing hide-and-seek,” I said.

“He’s being mischievous!,” she exclaimed.

We watched and waited. “Do you like to draw pictures?”

She nodded. “And I like to write stories.”

“Maybe you could make a comic. “The Mischievous Turtle.That would be a great name!”

Her eyes lit up.

She’s eight years old. I think she has a great future. Forget that: I think she has a good present. 

I can’t help but to wonder whether her imagination is stoked by the trips she’s already taken, courtesy of a relative who travels for his job.  Her mother told me they were going to Osaka. “We’re flying,” she explained because of the relative whose business brought them here. I can’t imagine that it’s much faster—or any better—than this train.

For that matter, I don’t believe it beats cycling. While Tokyo is not Amsterdam or Copenhagen, I saw plenty of people pedaling to work, or wherever they were going.  In fact, this morning I saw families riding together—a Sunday morning ritual, perhaps?

One striking similarly I saw with the European havens of everyday cycling is in the bikes people ride: completely utilitarian, almost invariably equipped with fenders, lighting, racks and baskets. Some, mostly young, people were astride lightweight road bikes and I even saw a couple of randonneuses complete with canvas front and rear bags and hammered fenders. But I didn’t see (or perhaps I just didn’t notice) any high-end off-road bikes.

I can’t help but to think that there is so much transportation and recreational cycling in a city as bustling as Tokyo because there is real support for it. While a few bike parking facilities have opened in New York, they are only in “prime” locations. Tokyo, on the other hand, has placed them not only in such spots, but also in underused spaces like those under bridges and overpasses. Moreover, they are convenient for people who, say, want to shop or go to a cafe: Parking is free for one to three hours, depending on the location. 

When the bike is wheeled into the spot, the front wheel is locked in automatically: If you have ever returned a Citibike or other shared bike to its portal, you’ve seen something similar. Each slot is numbered, and to retrieve the bike, you tap in the number. If you have left your bike for more than the allotted time, you will have to pay,100 yen (about $1 at current exchange rates) per hour.

Even where such facilities aren’t available, you can leave a bike and be relatively certain it will be there when you return for it. At the entrances to the Meiji-jingu shrine and Shinjuku, there are designated bike parking areas. The bikes, except for a Cannondale racing machine at Shinjuku, were unlocked. And that bike had only a minimum-security cable wrapped around its top tube.

Perhaps most important of all, I haven’t sensed the same animosity toward cyclists I have experienced in New York and other American locales. Drivers don’t double-park in unprotected bike lanes and where pedestrians and cyclists share sidewalks, each is almost deferential to the other. Perhaps this attitude has to do with the fact that most cyclists are riding practical bikes and wearing their work or everyday clothes. There is also, I believe, simply more of a communal sense: People don’t feel as entitled to, and are therefore less likely to battle for, space.

You don’t have to be a mischievous turtle to cycle here. I have felt comfortable while riding from the moment I went out with Sho and the group on our tour. I only had to remind myself that drivers—and cyclists—travel on the left, like the British.

Taking In Tokyo On Two Wheels

 I have claimed this city for myself.

That is a bold, even bombastic statement, I know. But that is how I feel any time I’ve taken a bike ride after arriving for the first time in some place. That city, town or even country, even if I have experienced only a small part of it, becomes a part of me.

Tokyo is new to me. It doesn’t, however, feel as strange as it did last night when, the closer I came to my hotel, the more lost I became. Is it my imagination, or do Google Maps directions become more vague the closer you come to your destination? 

I had a similar experience this morning when I went to meet a group for a bike tour. When I got off the Metro at Daimon station, I was across the street from the meetup spot. That street is wide—like a “stroad”—and the point of reference wasn’t easy to spot. So I wandered away from it and missed the ride. Fortunately, the folks at Tokyo Rental Bicycle allowed me to join their afternoon tour. In the meantime I wandered around Shiba Park, which includes everything from traditional Japanese gardens and memorials to a modern playground, and fronts this:

Who knew that a flight across the Pacific would land me in Paris? Or that instead of the Champ de Mars and Invalides, I would see it from the Shoguns’ burial site?

Anyway, after seeing that, I entered the Zojoji Temple just as a ceremony was about to begin. I had just enough time to photograph the interior: Although I am not religious, I have enough respect to honor the request not to take pictures during the ritual. I thought it looked new for such an ancient temple. Turns out, it was reconstructed, using both ancient and modern techniques, half a century ago on the site of the Tokugawa Shogun’s family temple. That building stood on the site for centuries before bombing raids leveled it in 1945.

After spending time there, and in the Treasures Gallery, I figured out where the bike tours met and took a ride with Sho,  a young Tokyo native tour guide, a woman and her son from Strasbourg, France (I can’t leave wFrance, can I? and another woman, originally from Spain but living ini Belgium and speaking French (!) as her everyday language.

The first stop on our tour was the Zoiji Temple and the shrines, which I had just visited. I didn’t mind: Sho explained, among other things, the differences between a shrine and a temple (A shrine is usually for Shinto and has a gate delineating it from the rest of the world; the latter is more commonly associated with Buddhism.)and how the role of the royal family has changed. He told us to park our bikes right outside the temple’s entrance—without locking them. As a New Yorker, it amazes me that people leave their bikes unsecured in public places of such a large city!

From there, we rode to the Imperial Palace. Like the Zojoji Temple, it’s a reconstruction of a building destroyed by Allied bombing raids near the end of World War II. The Palace itself isn’t open to the public except on special occasions, but the grounds, which include a moat and fortifications, are nice—and a short from Tokyo Station.

Then we cycled to what Show half-jokingly called “the most expensive Air BnB: Akasaka Palace, where visiting dignitaries stay. From there, we made one of two climbs included in the ride (You have to get your money’s worth, right?) to the National Stadium, built for the “2020” Olympics held a year later due to COVID and, much to the dismay of taxpayers, hasn’t been used and to a Hachiko’s grave. (Yes, there’s also a tombstone for the dog who waited for him!) Sho mentioned that all of the trees in that graveyard, where some of Japan’s wealthiest and most famous people are interred, are cherry blossoms. It made me wish I could have come early in the spring!

As if to show us what a city of contrasts Tokyo is, Show took us to the Aoyama Fashion District and Shibuya Crossing, which makes Times Square seem like an intersection in one of those town’s where there’s only one traffic light. Aoyama and Shibuya epitomize everything you’ve heard about hyper-modern Tokyo.

Now that I’ve taken the Tour, with Show guiding us, I feel more confident and ready to explore a city that I feel is now mine, if in a small way. A bike ride always seems to do that for me.

Our group. Please try not to notice the weight I gained this winter!

I rode this.