Day two in Japan. Jet lag, cherry blossoms, anime, McDonald’s, gaming shops, and a surprisingly important DVD.

The one thing that wasn’t mentioned in any of the many YouTube videos, posts, blogs, chat rooms — you name it — was the first hurdle we were about to face.

Jet lag.

The time difference between North America and Japan is humongous. And I mean that in every possible sense of the word. It really cannot be understated. Our first night, we went to bed relatively early. We were absolutely exhausted after the journey, so it was pretty much lights out, head down and sleep.

Bang.

2 a.m.

Wide awake.

Not “I could probably get back to sleep” awake.

Wide. Fucking. Awake.

And this was going to become our first real introduction to travelling to the other side of the planet.

So i headed out to my now new favourite place in Japan, the now very empty at 2am smoking room. Smoke over, I decided to head down a couple of floors. The day before, when we’d gone for pizza, I’d noticed they had a 7-Eleven on site.

Those of you who’ve looked into Japan in any sort of detail will know exactly what I mean when I start talking about 7-Eleven, Lawson and Family Mart. They are absolutely huge over there and, in many ways, almost part of Japanese culture. For those of you who don’t know, forget everything you think you know about 7-Eleven in North America or Europe.

These places are actually nice.

And the food is actually edible.

They’re famous for their egg salad sandwiches, among other things, and Family Mart has those chewy little chicken things — Chiki-Chiki-Chiki Chicken — or whatever my son kept calling them which, at two o’clock in the morning, sounded like exactly the sort of thing I might actually need.

Even the coffee is good.

So I grabbed an English-muffin-type thing that needed to go in the microwave. The gentleman working there showed me how to use it. And it was ridiculously simple. Depending on the number printed on the front of the packet, you simply pressed the corresponding number on the microwave door.

One, two, three or four. Put it in, press the number, and thirty seconds later…

Bing, bing, bing. Piping hot.

Grabbed myself a large latte and headed back upstairs for one last smoke before making the executive decision to wake the son up. After that came a shower, which did absolutely nothing to convince my body that it was actually supposed to be awake.

Then there were multiple more trips down to floor seven. During one of these trips I came across another apparent Japanese tradition, people falling asleep wherever they may be. As I later found out, its not unusual (unless you are a foreigner) to see people who have worked a long shift in the office, and culture dictates they have to go out drinking straight after work sometimes with their boss, and then collapse through a mixture of alcohol and exhaustion. This is something I have experienced multiple times in my younger years minus the long shifts, the drinking with bosses and the exhaustion….. mainly due to alcohol. There was no need to check for vital signs at this point, as the extremely loud snoring could be heard almost from the elevator when i arrived on floor seven.

And, of course, a couple more visits to the 7-Eleven for more coffee. At this point, the plan for dealing with jet lag was becoming increasingly scientific:

Sleep? No.

Coffee? Absolutely.

Smoke? Obviously.

Repeat until Tokyo started making sense.

Eventually, the son was ready to wake up, shower and get himself moving.

By this point, I’d been awake for hours, consumed enough coffee to power a small village, and was finally ready to actually start the day.

Today’s agenda was a trip to Shinagawa Station, where we’d catch the train to Shinjuku. From Shinjuku Station, we’d have a nice little walk over to Gyoen Park.

Simple enough. What could possibly go wrong?

On the walk down from Shinjuku Station to Gyoen Park, we passed a very interesting-looking place for breakfast. We may have been hungry, well at least those of us who haven’t been up since 2am. But at this point in our trip we certainly weren’t brave.

It was called Eggslut.

Now, I’m sure Eggslut is perfectly lovely, and probably serves some fantastic food. But we’d been in Japan for barely five minutes, I’d been awake since two in the morning, we’d already consumed enough coffee to strip paint, and neither of us was particularly interested in gambling with breakfast.

After travelling halfway around the world, suffering through jet lag and functioning on caffeine and stubbornness, this wasn’t the moment to discover that an Eggslut breakfast was something we couldn’t live with.

So we did what any sensible, sleep-deprived tourists would do.

We kept walking.

Now, one thing you will notice very quickly in Japan is that when they say something opens at nine o’clock, they mean nine o’clock.

It doesn’t open at five minutes to nine.

It doesn’t open at five minutes past nine.

It doesn’t even open at one minute before or one minute after.

Nine o’clock is nine o’clock.

All the staff will be there in their lovely uniforms, standing ready to go.

8:59…

Nothing.

9:00…

Open.

No messing about. No “we’ll just get the doors open when we’re ready.”

Nine o’clock means nine o’clock.

We walked through the gates, rounded the bend, and wow.

Before us was a huge, huge park.

Cherry blossom trees in full bloom everywhere you looked. Every shape, colour and variety you could imagine. It was absolutely amazing.

The sun was starting to come out, the temperature was warming up, and then it really hit us just how vast this place was.

Here we were, in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the world, surrounded by this enormous, peaceful park.

It was just crazy.

One minute you’re in the middle of Tokyo, surrounded by neon lights, electronic billboards, beeping and flashing sirens, police cars and crosswalks playing bird sounds — and the next, you’ve suddenly been dropped into a completely different world.

One off the bucket list.

The son got to see the cherry blossom trees in full bloom — and even better, sit down underneath them.

After all the planning, the flights, the jet lag and everything it took to get there, this was one of those moments that made it all worthwhile.

We spent the next few hours wandering around the park, taking in the many little lakes, crossing the little bridges, heading down one pathway, then somehow finding ourselves back up another.

There was something different around every corner.

The only thing we didn’t do in the park was stop at the really cool-looking Starbucks they had there. I think, by that point, we’d probably had enough coffee to last us the week, But seeing a Starbucks in the middle of such a unique and beautiful location was pretty cool in itself.

After we’d seen everything there was to see, and checked off every little box on the bucket list for the son, we headed off to another place that was firmly on his list:

Suga Shrine.

“What is Suga Shrine?” you may ask.

Because I know I did.

It’s famous for being a real-life anime pilgrimage site, thanks to the climactic scene in Makoto Shinkai’s 2016 hit film Your Name.

Or, if you’re Japanese and speak the language fluently like I do…

Kimi no Na wa.

Obviously.

For my son, this place meant a lot more than just another tick on a sightseeing list.

During COVID, he was homeschooling because all the schools were shut down. He couldn’t go out, couldn’t see his friends, and, like so many kids his age, he really struggled with being isolated from the world around him.

Then he found Your Name.

It became a kind of escape for him. Something he could disappear into when everything outside his bedroom felt like it had been put on hold.

There’s a scene towards the end of the movie that had a particularly deep meaning for him. Taki and Mitsuha know they’re about to be separated, and Taki tells her to write their names on each other’s hands so they won’t forget one another when they return to their separate timelines. But instead of writing his name, Taki writes three words on Mitsuha’s palm:

I love you.

Those three words stayed with my son long after the movie ended. In fact, they meant so much to him that he had them tattooed on his forearm. So as we made our way to Suga Shrine, this wasn’t just about visiting a location from an anime. This was the place connected to a story that had given my son something to hold onto during a time when so much had been taken away from him.

And now, years later, we were actually standing there.

That made this stop feel very different.

Another thing Suga Shrine is famous is its red-railed stairs. This sloping flight of steps, with the bright red handrails running down either side, became an iconic meeting spot in Your Name. And thankfully, we started at the top of the stairs. Although, of course, the son decided that wasn’t enough. He walked all the way down them…

…and then all the way back up again.

Because apparently, just seeing the stairs wasn’t enough. You had to experience the bloody things.

By now, it was getting close enough to lunchtime that the thought of Eggslut was becoming more appealing, and after the first of what would turn out to be many arguments, over which traditional Japanese cuisine we were going to try next.

Thankfully, I won that argument. And we ended up in McDonald’s.

Before you judge me, hear me out.

I’ve had McDonald’s in France, Spain, Greece, the US, the UK and Canada. So obviously, I needed to conduct some very important international research and find out what McDonald’s was like in Japan.

And I’m not going to lie…

It was probably the freshest and nicest Big Mac I’ve ever eaten in my life.

Yes.

We’d travelled halfway around the world, and one of the culinary highlights of the day was a Big Mac.

Japan, you magnificent country.

Next was what I wouldn’t exactly call an easy walk.

It wasn’t a long walk from Suga Shrine to Yotsuya-Sanchome Station — and I think we managed to get lost a few times along the way. It was supposed to take about eleven minutes and be somewhere around 1.2 or 1.3 kilometres. I think it ended up taking us considerably longer than that — and covering a little bit more distance.

The funny thing was, we could see the road we wanted to get to. We saw that road many times. We just couldn’t work out, in the little maze of laneways and alleyways, how on earth to actually get to it. So there we were, walking around in circles, staring at the road we wanted, while somehow being completely incapable of reaching it.

By this point, the frustration was definitely starting to set in. Eventually, we made it to the station, caught the train to Akihabara, and from there decided to walk the rest of the way over to Ueno Park.

Ueno Park.

It’s another beautiful park, don’t get me wrong. Lovely lakes, and you can even rent the swan boats and go paddling around them. But the one thing I didn’t read about when doing the research was that It’s one of Japan’s most popular — if not the most popular — city parks, and you can certainly tell.

We got there around two o’clock in the afternoon, and the place was absolutely packed.

You weren’t really walking through the park so much as being funneled through it, shoulder to shoulder with everyone else, like a little army of ants.

I should probably point out at this stage that finding those elusive smoking areas was becoming a battle. For the first three or four days, we really struggled. At the hotel, it was easy enough. Outside the hotel, though? Different story. Eventually, we figured out that you could normally find a smoking area somewhere near a train station. So we’d always be on the lookout for one. There were a few times we actually went back to train stations purely so I could have a cigarette. And being put into this scenario with big crowds, no clear plan or route i really needed that cigarette.

Looking back now, in hindsight, that probably wasn’t the greatest idea wasting so much time looking for somewhere to smoke, but that was me and my life for over 35 years. Eat – Smoke. Drink – Smoke. Stress – Smoke.

Thankfully, I have now quit. But that was then, and this is now. I’m sure we’ll cover the whole quitting-smoking story in another section.

I will admit, though, it probably did spoil some of my son’s vacation. But I didn’t ask for a lot. A quick cigarette was a quick cigarette. And the strange thing was, being in Japan actually meant I was smoking considerably less. I went from probably twenty a day to, on some days, five or six. My horrible cough had disappeared, and I wasn’t really missing them. I just hadn’t quite figured the part where i really should quit out yet. However five months later when I did decide, I used my time in Japan as a positive to help me quit.

With Ueno Park done, we headed back into Akihabara.

And what a difference between the first half of our day and the next part of our journey.

We’d gone from the peace, the calm, the tranquillity, the lakes and the cherry blossoms…

…to what can only be described as absolute chaos.

And a beautiful chaos at that.

Akihabara is pretty much globally known as the centre of Japanese pop culture — anime, manga, electronics and everything in between. As we wandered around Electric City, or Electric Town — whichever one you want to call it — or, as I like to call it, Denki Gai. Which is what those of us who are fluent in Japanese and took the mandatory 115 days of intense training, call it. Or should i say Thanks to Google.

Anyway, somewhere in this district of Tokyo, my son came up with another place he wanted to visit. Super Potato.

Yes.

A place called Super Potato.

He just told me it was a gaming shop.

I like gaming.

Let’s go.

How bad could it be?

Well…

It’s on many floors.

Many, many floors.

Many, many, many floors.

They do have an elevator, which fills up remarkably quickly with about three people. So, naturally, we ended up walking up the narrow stairs. I believe it’s five floors in total, with Super Potato itself spread across the third, fourth and fifth floors. Different sections on different floors, although i never did quite work out the method behind that madness.

So we went all the way to the top because, let’s face it, I’m only walking upstairs once. And gravity helps with walking back down.

My son was looking for some retro games for one of his systems. I’m not exactly sure which one.

But then something suddenly dawned on me.

One of us was considerably older than pretty much everyone else in the shop.

And the moment it really hit me was when I started noticing people pointing at the games and consoles. There were Americans, Canadians, Europeans, English speakers from all over the place.

“Oh wow, it’s a PS2!”

“Oh wow, a PS1!”

“Oh, it’s a Sega Mega Drive!”

“Oh wow, an Atari!, i don’t think i have ever seen one of those”

And they’re getting all excited about these old gaming systems.

Meanwhile, I’m standing there thinking…

I had that one.

I had that one.

I had that one.

I had that one.

Oh, I used to love playing this on that.

Ding, ding, ding.

Yeah. You’re old.

And nobody else in here was.

He did eventually manage to find one of the many items on his mysterious shopping list. The others? Nope. Couldn’t find them. So, naturally, I was dragged into multiple other stores. And these weren’t exactly your little corner shops or the type of gaming boutique you would find in a Mall back home.

Some of them were six, eight, even ten stories high.

Up we went.

Floor after floor on mile and miles of escalators .

Walking around looking at every possible bit of gaming history imaginable. All because the son had a mysterious shopping list that apparently needed completing. But this was his trip and I was just a rather large GPS system to stop him getting lost.

And then, after being dragged around the Umpteenth store… It finally dawned on me, I actually had no idea what we were looking for, what was so important in a city with hundreds of Shrines, Temples and amazing places to visit, that were put on hold to find this mystery item on a shopping list that is only written in his own head. And what was that item we were actually looking for was.

A DVD

Yep. Here I am in 2026 – not 1996, not 2006 looking for a bloody DVD in the biggest city in the world. After travelling halfway around the world, walking through ten-storey buildings and climbing enough stairs to qualify as exercise…

we were looking for a DVD.

But it wasn’t just any DVD.

It was Your Name.

Apparently, it was no longer being streamed in Canada. You couldn’t get it online, couldn’t order it from Amazon, couldn’t find it at Best Buy… You couldn’t seem to get it anywhere.

And this was the movie that had meant so much to my son.

So while I was wandering around Tokyo wondering why on earth we were visiting what felt like every electronics and gaming store in the city, he had a very specific mission.

Find Your Name.

And apparently, Japan was the place to do it.

And as soon as he told me what he was actually looking for, something changed. It was like a flashback, yes he may be 21, but in that moment all I could see and feel was the little boy he once was, a tiny 2 year old, holding my had at the Mall, to scared to talk to people and just needing the security a dad can offer. It suddenly wasn’t just his number one goal anymore.

It became mine too.

For the next ten days, I don’t think I walked into a shop without looking for that DVD. And this became a multi city search too, Tokyo… No, Osaka…. No and eventually in Kyoto in another one of these 10 storey Mega stores, i was wondering around down one of the many aisles in the electronic section. For some reason, and i still don’t know why, I wandered away from where he was looking and went up to the counter, where I tried to explain what we were looking for to the gentleman behind it using my best combination of English, Japanese and pointy-pointy language.

And then…

He pointed behind him.

There it was.

Not just the Your Name DVD.

The Your Name Blu-ray.

The Your Name box set.

Pretty much every version of Your Name ever committed to a disc.

I stood there thinking…

Are you kidding me?

After all those shops.

All those floors.

All those stairs.

All those times I’d thought, Surely the bloody thing has to be somewhere.

And now we’d found it.

The Oracle.

The Golden Chalice.

The Holy Grail.

Except this wasn’t some ancient mystical artefact.

It was a DVD.

And after ten days of searching…

I had never been so happy to see a piece of plastic in my life.