The Wild Blue Yonder

Wednesday, June 19

We’re in Japan! We landed around 8am and got in touch with our Airbnb host, Koichi, via Line. He estimated it would take us three hours to get to Shinjuku Station and told us he’d be there to pick us up. The train ride via the Narita Express or N’EX (one of several competing shinkansen from the airport) is only an hour and a half, but sure enough it did take us that amount of time to get through Immigration and get our bearings enough to buy tickets. We purchased the “base fare” tickets as well as Suica Cards (the refillable metro/train card; see also: PASMO), but neglected to purchase an additional seat ticket because we’d planned on not reserving seats. It turns out that on trains like these, you need to pay for an additional reservation either way, which is often just as much as the base fare ticket, and “reserved seating” is only slightly more than “unreserved”! We spent the whole train ride waiting for a ticketmaster to come along and deport us, but no such person materialized.

It turns out that Shinjuku Station is the world’s busiest railway station, which both blows me away and feels about right. Koichi was waiting outside near the Central East Exit, which is one of ten exits, and it took us almost twenty minutes to get there from the platform where our train let off. (More recently, we tried to use coin luggage lockers in the station but after passing by at least 200, we couldn’t find a single available spot.)

We had heard about how compact Tokyo apartments are, but we still didn’t expect our first Airbnb to be so cute! In spite of how small it was, it didn’t feel like it was lacking any basic amenities: it had a bathroom with a shower and small tub (the sink and shower share one water hookup, which seems common here), a fridge and freezer, and a in-unit washer. We didn’t even notice that it lacked living and dining spaces or a stove; for us, it was perfect!

We picked this Airbnb for its location. Shinjuku is known for shopping, entertainment, and business, and some of Tokyo’s most famous bars are only a few blocks from where we’re staying, including the Golden Gai, which is full of tiny bars that seat 4-10 people total. In particular, we were interested in the LGBT bars nearby and the reputation of the neighborhood as being one of the queerest places in (relatively-conservative?) Tokyo.

We grabbed a snack and later dinner at the 7-11 around the corner, which was an experience unto itself: along with Lawson and Family Mart (which exists all over the place in Taiwan), convenience stores in Japan are stocked with delicious food, including maki rolls and similar delicious bites. More on this later.

Owl Cafe Mofumofu

After we’d fully washed all of the travel grossness off, we decided to stop by one of the city’s many owl cafes. Japan is awash in animal cafes of all sorts and we’d chosen three types to check out: owl cafes, cat cafes, and—to Jane’s immeasurable excitement—Shiba cafes! I love owls but was leery of the idea of keeping them in a small indoor space for tourists to pet. After reading some reviews online, it seemed like at least a few of the owl cafes in Tokyo treated their animals decently well (in particular, cycling the animals out for breaks seemed like a good sign). The one closest to us in Shinjuku (there are at least two) didn’t top the list of classiest owl cafes, but it was nearby and they responded quickly to us via email with a reservation time.

So I’ll be honest: I really enjoyed this! Owls are amazing creatures and it was really cool to see so many different types up close. It’s also the case that the owner (who didn’t speak English) seemed to really care for his birds. He had a detailed wall with facts about the breeds and the particular owls he had, and treated them with a lot of affection. BUT especially in this location in particular, I almost felt like I was contributing to abuse. The owls lived in a tiny tiny smelly room (no windows although I don’t think that matters for a lot of animals) flooded with light and didn’t seem to have another space where they could get away from tourists. Fortunately, “cafe” is a misnomer: we were given bottles of water there, but no food or drink was actually consumed in the space. The handler encouraged us to pet the owls (he told us that one was “grumpy” and shouldn’t be touched), and two of them were untethered from their posts so that he could pick them up and place them on tourists. They took the petting with sleepy resignation, and I felt bad for disturbing them.

Okay okay okay I wouldn’t go back (probably shouldn’t support buying owls as pets and preventing them from hunting and all of that) but I loooooved seeing the owls! The barn owl was incredibly well behaved and liked to fly up and perch on tourists’ heads. The snowy (the grumpy one) was gorgeous. I think owls are incredibly expressive and it’s difficult not to anthropomorphize them (many of them looked just as disgruntled as I’m sure they felt). I haven’t done the research, but I imagine that there could be a way to ethically expose tourists to owls… just not in a small unhygienic room, and probably without petting.