Found In Translation

I poked at a piece of neon-lit sushi with my chopsticks, unsure under the pulsing disco lights if it was salmon or tuna, but it didn’t really matter. The hallucinogenic quality of the show taking place a few feet away was only enhanced by the painkiller I’d washed down with my two complimentary glasses of wine in an attempt to dull the pain in my rapidly-swelling right knee. My 16 year old son Max and I had spent the day chasing after our high-energy Japanese guide, covering 11 miles of hilly terrain in a fog of jet lag, after a flight spent sandwiched between two obese women who shouted over us in Russian for most of the 14 hours. Now I was in such agony that it was difficult to focus on the bikini-clad women riding giant Transformer-style robots, sword-fighting with pandas. Max sensed my discomfort. “We can say we’ve seen Robot Cabaret. I’m ready if you are.” I dragged myself up the four flights of stairs from the depths of the club and limped the two blocks back to our hotel.

In recent years, Max had become a reluctant traveler. In his first passport photo taken at three months old, he is grinning a toothless baby grin, my arm just outside the frame propping him up. But as adolescence approached he became less adventurous and more timid. He worried a lot. About getting lost. About not understanding the language. About eating strange foods. Four passports and many far-flung vacations later, Max decided that he’d seen enough of the world and preferred the comforts of home. So when out of the blue he expressed an interest in visiting a film museum outside Tokyo, I jumped on the idea. A mother-son trip seemed like a good opportunity to bond and to remind Max of the joy of discovering a new place. Now I worried that our trip was over before it started. I pictured us spending the week in a Japanese hospital, trying to navigate health insurance, and missing the film museum altogether.

The walk across the vast hotel lobby was excruciating, the pain radiating from my shin to thigh. When the elevator reached the 32nd floor, I finally exhaled. Almost there. A few hours later, propped up with pillows in bed, a bag of ice on my knee, we were laughing at a Japanese game show and reflecting on our first 24 hours in Tokyo. We had already covered a lot of ground, from the world’s busiest intersection in Shibuyu to the cosplayers of Harajuku, with stops at an ancient temple and a modern art museum atop a skyscraper. Max reviewed the photos he’d taken on his phone. “I’m glad we did this, Mom. Japan’s really cool.”

I had booked our particular hotel because it was one of only a handful of places that met my two criteria: it was less than $300 a night and it had two beds. It wasn’t until a few days before our trip that a quick Google search revealed dozens of reviews mentioning that the place was “very clean” and “extremely safe,” despite its location in “South Asia’s largest red light district.” Now 4am, Max and I found ourselves wide awake and hungry. I swung my leg out of bed and gently put weight on the bad knee. Still painful, but the swelling had gone down. I could walk a little. It was a bit surreal stepping out into the bustling streets of Shinjuku, the 24 hour soundtrack of electronic dance music and advertisements blaring from giant screens. Salarymen stumbled out of karaoke parlors, young women in French maid’s outfits beckoned us into cafés, and groups of teenagers huddled around the tiny all-night takeout places that dotted every corner, serving up yakitori and octopus skewers.

Overwhelmed by the options outside, we ducked into a 7-11 for a snack. In addition to comic books, Godzilla merchandise, and a surprisingly comprehensive collection of sex toys, the convenience store carried pre-packaged business suits complete with shirt and tie, presumably for the man who parties all night and doesn’t want to return to the office in the same outfit. After perusing the array of foods, from cheeseburgers to sashimi, we left with a carton of what we hoped was milk and a custard-filled baguette in a package that read “delicious bread to make you happy”. And who could argue with that?