My Spring 2018 Tokyo Trip (With Pictures)
When I decided I was all in, it was late January. A few times, my friend Jonathan Santiago had brought up the idea of me joining him in Tokyo, and I always said that it would be interesting but that I wasn’t ready to commit. He made it easy for me. He found cheap roundtrip flights for me to choose from. Plus, he was already going for a defined period of time, so I wouldn’t be alone. Up until this point, Israel (for Birthright) had been my only international experience outside of North America, and that was in the summer of 2011. So, I was due for a life-altering trip. More importantly, it provided a prime opportunity to combine work with leisure, given that I’m working on my first book, which focuses on an American baseball player’s (his name is Tony) exhilarating six-year journey in Japan.
After a series of train connections and a near-12-hour flight preceding those, I arrived at Shimo-Kitazawa station by early evening on Tuesday, April 17. Located in Setagaya, Tokyo, the massive city’s southwesternmost ward, the train station wasn’t a far walk from where my travel companion and I were staying. So he met me at the station. It was still light outside, although slightly overcast with a steady drizzle falling from the sky.
