Konichiwa and arigato for continuing to read this retelling of our time abroad. Ever the belated and beleaguered influencer family, we’re actually writing this from Casa Persimmon in Asheville(!), NC in the United States of America. As our trip fades into distant memory, we’re frantically jotting down recollections on spare scraps of toilet paper and newly discovered parking tickets from Italy. Our commitment is to relive the glory days via a flurry of posts over the next few weeks.
Now rewind your mind back to a radically different epoch for the BTIF, USA, world, late-October 2024…
TOKYO
After surviving, nay thriving, on a long-haul Emirates1 flight we landed in Tokyo late-night. Our luxe Toyota taxi wound through the Pac-Man alleys of urban jungle backstreets and ultimately dropped us at our destination. Or what we thought was our destination… We ended the 36-hour voyage from Georgia by hauling our enormous bags through a labyrinthine network of evening establishments of ill repute and a few blocks later arrived to our Airbnb apartment/shoebox. Gone were the days of underpriced fancy lodgings in Eurasia, we were operating on Tokyo’s terms.
Our first daytime stroll through the megacity streets blew Liz’s brains with it’s lights, sounds, sights, smells, and it later blew her digestive system with the tasty but deadly 7-11 egg salad sandwiches2. But that close encounter of a spoiled mayo kind wouldn’t take place for a few days. On day one we embraced the costumey touristy kitsch of Harajuku-land then glided one block over to a near-silent zen forest wherein we could purchase mini shrines to fertility, financial windfall, and saving cats from trees.
Much has been written about Tokyo, and given the price of the yen, there’s no shortage of instagram fodder for those curious to vicariously experience this surreal, full-throttled, trustworthy expanse. Some high and low points for the BTIF included.
HIGH: the wonders of the Japanese department store basement food court, replete with skewers, jellys, sushi, noodles, fish heads, $50 matsutake mushrooms and Chester’s favorite: jars of pitted black olives.
LOW: There being no obvious place to eat the wares procured in the Japanese department store basement food courts.
HIGH: Stretchy noodles of all shapes and sizes (tsukemen!). Chester’s slurping muscle grew ever stronger.
LOW: Monjyayaki, a dish charitably described as the burnt crusty aftermath of a muddy swill reduction on a cooktop. Stick with okonomiyaki.
HIGH: A window shoppers paradise and plenty of places for Liz to use her already dwindling credit card inventory.
LOW: Liz losing her wallet in the Shinjuku subway station. Normally Japan lives up to its reputation as incredibly safe and sanitary (people report leaving fancy gift bags on sidewalks, only to find them exactly where they left them a few days later.) Whatever happened to Liz’s wallet, it evaded redundant safeguards of the police department, the metro security, and even the most anally organized lost and found from the Takashimaya department store.
HIGH: Finding our first babysitter of the trip for a big date night!
LOW: The worst date night of the trip. We didn’t make a reservation, resulting in two hours of pin-balling around in Tokyo’s sticky steam. We landed on a neat izakaya bar with milky sake but left still hungry and proceeded to be turned down from more restaurants, including a neighborhood pizza restaurant that stopped making pizza at 8:30. Our “crazy” night ended at 9:30pm at 7/11.
HIGH: Despite our disappointing date night, our second child was (unrelatedly) conceived in Tokyo, continuing the age-old Persimmon tradition of conceiving children in environments3 that seem upside-down to conventional, upstanding Americans4.
Special shout out to our friends Christian, and Misaki for being excellent tour guides in Tokyo/Kamakura and to the old barista who put more care into the middling coffee he served than Alex has put into everything in his life combined.
MORIOKA + KYOTO
After wandering from point A to B for a week post-Tokyo on the Michinoku Coastal Trail (which we skipped in this account but will be highlighting in our next newsletter), we opted for a week of staying put in nearby Morioka, the humble city nominated by walker/writer/expat Craig Mod for the NYTimes “Best Places” list. Morioka was indeed a pleasant city and we enjoyed the multiple signature noodle styles in town, particularly when paired with the “most succulent meat I’ve ever put in my mouth” - Liz Permenter. Alex developed an odd fixation with a store called “Yoshida Life” that blasted Sum 41 on the stereo at all hours. At one point we were stuck in a rage chorus that went “we’re too old for Halloween” while he tried on t-shirt after t-shirt, always thirsty and never satisfied.
Several restaurants and shops in town boasted the signage, “haste not, rest not.” Initially we scratched our heads, finally realizing that we were really exhausted. We moved quickly on this global tour, planning spontaneously and attempting to find gratitude in the madness with a toddler in tow who cared very little for timing and ambiance. After a few days of enjoying our Dormy Inn accommodations5 and eating tiny desserts in fancy coffee shops, we had a big fight induced by decision-making fatigue resulting in a more minute mapping out of the rest of our time in Japan and beyond. We said goodbye to Morioka and ventured south to retrieve bags we’d left in Tokyo station and shinkansened onwards to the epicenter of global tourism, Kyoto.
It should be noted that Kyoto is a wonderful place with extraordinary history, culture, food, architecture; it is a place so singularly special it was famously spared atomic destruction by Henry Stimson. But it should also be noted that Kyoto is a hornets nest of tourists. Adding insult to injury, Alex blew through most of BTIF’s Amex points by splurging at a five star hotel in Kyoto, opting for a luxury Thai(?) brand devoid of any real reference to Japanese culture. The breakfasts were terrific, the burgers terrible, and we were scolded for attempting to wear our yakutas to dinner one evening.
The hotel redeemed itself when they helped us order bikes on-the-fly and took a pleasant family picture that they later gifted to us in a Thai-hotel-branded paper frame6. It turns out that biking is the antidote to what ails/economically props up Kyoto, and it was fun to speed through the backgrounds and public parks.
In Kyoto we also stood in long lines (twice) for one of the best bowls of ramen we ate in Japan, pictured below:
ART ISLANDS: NAOSHIMA + TESHIMA
Desiring a dose of culture minus crowds and artistic inspiration we took a train to a train to a train to a ferry to the most famous of a network of “art islands” in the Seto Inland Sea. We spent the following few days crisscrossing Naoshima and it’s lesser known island cousin, Teshima. Both were perfect playgrounds for scooting around on rusty bikes to and from museums Kanye West would love (but probably destroy), “art houses”: traditional Japanese homes turned 3D canvases, and unexpectedly tasty coffee/food shops.
Despite the art islands being sparsely populated, we had some social highs. On Naoshima we befriended an unnamed German couple with two kids who took to Chester, mentoring him in the ways of childhood and German industry. We dined adjacent to these good people two dinners in a row (and ran into them on our later bike trip!), almost becoming veritable friends before going our separate ways. And on Teshima we ate extraordinary gyoza + Japanese omelettes + other stuff from a little shop and befriended the man of the one-man-operation, learning all about his artistic pursuits and ultimately discovering he was our airbnb host!
In short, we’d give the art islands six thumbs up (Liz, Alex, Chester) and would encourage investigating the Setouchi Triennale, during which other, even smaller islands open up and share their artistic waypoints.
SHIMANI KAIDO BIKE RIDE
We capped our time in Japan with the country’s most popular bike route, Shimani Kaido, recommended by ChatGPT.
At this point in the newsletter drafting, we’re tired of writing so asked AI to author this section, feeding it the rest of this newsletter’s content for inspiration. The words are slightly or completely inaccurate in places, but it’s truthful enough to give you a sense of how things went:
“A bridge-studded dream ride through the Seto Inland Sea, the Shimanami Kaido is one of those rare experiences where cycling, scenic overload, and unexpected social encounters all collide in the best possible way. We started in Onomichi, a city with the perfect ratio of sleepy streets to noodle density, and set off across the islands on a mix of rental bikes, toddler seat precariously attached.
Each island brought something new—mandarin groves, quiet fishing villages, long stretches of coastal road with vending machines that seemed to sense when we needed a cold drink. One moment, you’re cycling through a mandarin orchard, vaguely considering whether you could just live off citrus forever. The next, you’re crossing a bridge so high that it feels like you might get drafted into the Japanese space program.Somewhere along the way, we stayed with a woman who made us shabu shabu so good it should be a UNESCO heritage site, and against all odds, convinced Chester to eat more in one sitting than he had in the previous three months combined. We also stumbled upon a food chemical company’s public park/showroom, which somehow managed to include a space-themed fermented paste shop, a root exhibit, and a petting zoo featuring exactly one dog. It was unexpectedly delightful.
The ride wasn’t without its minor disasters—most notably a slow-motion bike accident that left us shaken but Chester miraculously unscathed. But by the time we rolled into Imabari, we were exhausted, exhilarated, and already scheming how to do it all over again (possibly with e-bikes next time7).
IN CONCLUSION
A few people asked us if Japan-travel was copacetic with a baby. The short answer is yes! If you’ve got a photogenic baby, aren’t claustrophobic, and don’t mind disrupting fundamental social norms, it’s easy! Plus, the ubiquitous bidets, are basically water fountains if you’re the right height.
Congratulations you survived the first of two Japan newsletters. We’re almost on the home stretch! Stay tuned for a Michinoku Coastal Trail special edition, the himalayas, some Asian mega-metropoli, and finally Middle Earth! Plus our globally anticipated exit interviews. There’s so much for you, our wayward followers, to look forward to. (And come by our self-aggrandizing welcome home party on March 8th if you’re in Asheville.)
The Empress of the Skies, and we have the plush toy (a cheerful flight attendant named “Ben” who, per his attached tag, loves safaris and pizza) and candid Polaroids compliments of the crew to prove it.
The only food poisoning episode of the whole trip!
https://funopticon.life/
Recently one subscriber summarized the BTIF newsletter as “ it started with coitus in a van and ended with Liz’s pregnancy, that’s pretty much it”.
More on the Dormy Inn in the forthcoming Michinoku post, lets just say its the Holiday Inn of Japan but somehow much much more.
Note to readers: this was the same ingratiation tactic employed by Emirates… it works!
This was one of the AI’s hallucinations. We did rent e-bikes and would highly recommend them, especially with a child in tow.
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