Seek the Locals' Favorites
— an excerpt from Chapter 13 —
I believe the best gift you can give yourself, and to others, is travel. Not the typical trip. Not comfortable travel. But a trip that instills a feeling of "teetering in the unknown." Adventure travel can have an enormous impact on a young person.
Dr. Margot Sunderland, the Director of Education and Training at The Centre for Child Mental Health in London, has said, “An enriched environment offers new experiences that are strong in combined social, physical, cognitive and sensory interaction. If you are choosing between buying your child a tablet or taking them on a family holiday, consider the profound effects on bonding and brain development–there is no competition.” The amount of enrichment from the purchase of a new thing wanes over time, whereas the experiences that travel provides, create memories that can last a lifetime.
In giving one of my nephews the gift of travel, I began taking him on trips each March during his school spring break, beginning when he was eight years old. The first spring break trip was to Chicago, my hometown, a terrific place to explore with children. The next year, we went to St. Louis. Then, when my nephew was ten, I figured he was old enough to answer the question: “Where would you like to go?” He said, “New York . . . or Tokyo.” So, when he was ten, we went to New York, and when he was twelve, we went to Tokyo.
While I had visited Japan many times for my work, my trip with my nephew was my first as a tourist. A woman by the name of Natsuko had been assigned to be my host on a couple of my business trips. She offered to be our guide when I came to Japan with my nephew. As having the right guide can make a day of travel unlike any other, I accepted her invitation without hesitation for the first day my nephew and I were in Tokyo.
The first place she took us on a beautiful spring day was Meiji Shrine, built between 1915 and 1926 and rebuilt after being destroyed in World War II. It is dedicated to Emperor Meiji and Empress Shōken. The shrine is amid a 175-acre forest that includes the wishing tree, where visitors write and hang their wishes. The Emperor Meiji, who is also called Meiji the Good, led Japan through a rapid period of economic, social, and political modernization from an isolated feudal country. In the first days of a new year, the shrine welcomes more than three million visitors for the first prayers of the year.
The second stop on our tour was to Sensō-ji Temple, the oldest temple in Tokyo. The pathway to the Temple is through the Thunder Gate, which stands forty-feet tall with a massive red paper lantern hanging from its center. The original gate was built in the year 941. It has burned down on multiple occasions, but always rebuilt.
The street from the Thunder Gate to the temple runs three hundred yards, and it is lined with scores of shops. The shops have operated since the seventeenth century, run by generations of the same families who cater to pilgrims coming to the shrine. You can buy kimonos, chop sticks, samurai swords, Buddhist scrolls, Godzilla toys, and maneki-neko, the “beckoning cats.” They are statuettes, usually ceramic, of a seated cat with one paw raised. A cat with its left paw raised brings customers to a business. A right paw raised brings good fortune and wealth.
Natsuko had promised we would go to her favorite lunch place. We rode the train, and got off in an indistinct neighborhood, walked down indistinct streets, and came to a small, indistinct restaurant doorway. The greeting we received, even though in a language I did not understand, made it obvious that she was a regular there.
If you had given me the address for this restaurant, I am sure I could never have found it, given the little doorway and the lack of any distinction. We sat upstairs with the kitchen adjoining, and had a simple, but splendid Japanese meal of soba noodles and rice. Natsuko instructed my nephew on the proper etiquette of using chopsticks, including never sticking them standing straight up in the rice. It is bad luck, as it is only done in a funeral ritual.
Natsuko had emailed diligently prior to our trip to Japan to ask where we wanted to go and what we wanted to see. I wrote her to tell her the only thing on my nephew’s list was that he wanted to buy original Japanese Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards. The trading card game launched in Japan in 1999 and in 2002 in North America. My nephew had a large collection of the cards, which he had purchased at Target stores in Minnesota. The game had sold more than thirty-five billion cards worldwide. Thanks to having Natsuko as our guide, we fulfilled my nephew’s wish at one of the Kiddy Land stores in Tokyo. He became the first kid in his school to show up with Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards—all in Japanese.