i had a ticket to go visit an art aquarium in ginza. the first step of figuring out how to do this was attempting to make sense of this:

i need to take the ikegami line from hatanodai station to gotanda station, and then get on the JR yamanote line from gotanda station to yurakucho station. the jr yamanote line is very interesting because if you look at it on the above map (it is the grey and white dotted line), you’ll notice it does a big circle around most of tokyo. the airbnb host here told me that the yamanote line does this full lap in exactly 60 minutes. so you can use the yamanote line on a map to know roughly how far away a place is.

I left extremely early because i was confident i would get lost and take the wrong train or something. i took the train from hatanodai to gotanda, and i am not sure i actually paid for the train. buying train tickets is confusing, and i wasn’t sure if you were supposed to just tap your suica card and have that be it, or if you were supposed to buy a ticket from the machine. i tried to buy a ticket from the machine, but it was asking questions i didn’t know how to answer. i saw many people just tapping a suica card on the turnstyle and walking through so I did that. i made it to gotanda station and followed the english signs to the jr yamanote line and took that to yurakucho station. i made it. i didn’t get lost or take the wrong train (spoilers: …yet).

I walked around ginza for a couple hours taking in the sights. this area of tokyo is full of luxury stores like balenciaga, seiko, gucci, and tiffany’s, and big department stores as well. the art aquarium is on the top floor of a huge department store called mitsukoshi. but i have time to kill. i arrived in ginza at 10:30 am, and my ticket wasn’t until 2:30 pm. that is a good indicator of how confident i was that i would have trouble getting here.

while walking around, i finally found a currency conversion place. i went in there and turned all my dollars into yen. and then on my way out, i see a tiny sign in english pointing down and to the left for a ramen restaurant, called ramen ichiro. this is it - time for my first actual non-snack meal in japan. the following few images were not taken by me, as I did not want to be a weird guy barging into a restaurant with a camera. shoutout to google maps for having these pictures available.

i walk in and its just a few chairs and a guy making ramen. there are people sitting at all but one of the chairs, silently eating. the atmosphere in here was unreal. everyone sitting in perfect silence while soft piano jazz played out of a small speaker in the corner. the sound of chopsticks clinking against bowls, slurping noodles, and the chef cooking away.

i sat down, unfamiliar with ramen restaurant procedure. i waited several minutes before realizing that you are supposed to put money in a machine and get a ticket for the kind of ramen you want, seen here:

normally, i would probably be very embarrassed at the mistake i’ve just made. but i have already completely resigned myself to the fact that i will make blunders like this 100% of the time. i have no idea what i am doing, so i may as well just take it in stride and figure it out. if anyone had said a word to me about it, i probably would have been much more embarrassed.

upon looking at this machine, i realized i was in somewhat of a predicament. i can read hiragana and katakana, but not kanji. so i know that らーめん says ramen. but i don’t know the other symbols at all. i feel i am already being pretty adventurous by simply being here, and feel no push to lean further in, so i decide the cheapest one is probably basic ramen with no surprises. the prices in the above image are not what i paid, because i chose the second option on the top row, which was ¥740, which equates to $4.92.

this ramen was incredible. i had a spiritual moment in this ramen restaurant, tears in my eyes, surrounded by completely silent people enjoying their food to themselves while this beautiful piano played. I immediately pulled out my phone and started recording the sound of it. it isn’t the highest quality recording but i wanted to have it anyways.

this very well might have been the most delicious meal of my life. and it was five dollars. unbelievable.

so it was around 11:45 am and i still had several hours to kill before my 2:30 ticket to the art aquarium. I was kind of out of things to do, having eaten and converted my dollars to yen, so i headed towards the department store the art aquarium was in and walked around there for a while.

around 12:30 i realized i really did not have 2 more hours of stuff to do before this ticket. so i went early and asked if i was allowed to visit earlier than the ticket said. they told me that would be fine, so i went way early.

it was a fascinating exhibit. i did not expect much from a museum inside a department store, but i was pleasantly surprised. there are thousands of goldfish in brightly lit color changing displays all over the place.

it was a very satisfying experience, and I am glad I went. there were many things i could not get photos of because many of the features play with perspective in a very interesting way that makes it hard to take photos. many large fishbowls magnify specific parts of the tank and the fish swim through them appearing to change in size. its a very cool experience, and i highly recommend it if you are ever in tokyo.

Once i finished there, it was time to navigate the transit system once more to find a way back home. this proved to be quite difficult, and i ultimately failed to do so. the subway system in tokyo is very complicated. i needed to take the asakusa line to gotanda station, and then the ikegami line back to hatanodai station to get home. i tried very hard to find the right station to take the asakusa line, and at one point i did find it, but i could only locate the plaform headed in the wrong direction. i could not find the platform headed towards gotanda station. i walked around the area for about 2 hours really trying to find it, and never could. it then began to rain, and i did not have my rain jacket with me. so i gave up and took a $40 cab home in defeat.

10/10 would see god in a ramen restaurant and then look at cool fish again.

out of the frying pan

depths to clouds

lost in the street