80 Hours in Tokyo: Sushi, Shrines and Samurai Robots

A light drizzle was already falling when I was drawn to a glowing vending machine outside the terminal at Narita International. It was filled with an array of soft drinks, some of which I couldn’t pronounce. I was like a moth to a flame, and I needed something to quench my thirst after the eleven-hour flight from Los Angeles. I selected my first taste of Japan, a bottle of Pocari Sweat, a lemon-grapefruit-flavored water (think: Gatorade without the obnoxious colors and labels). It did the job as I boarded Narita’s “airport limousine,” a charter bus that would shuttle me and my friend Matt to the posh district of Ginza in downtown Tokyo.

The misty Friday night air and glistening concrete, combined with the city’s inevitable neon signage, provided a nice, neo-noir ambiance as we moved deeper into the capital city. It’s the kind of atmosphere usually associated with films like 2003’s Lost in Translation, the cherished Sofia Coppola film that conjured up for travelers a romanticized ideal of the mega metropolis, or any given yakuza saga in which danger lingers in the handshakes of shady businessmen and the tinted windows of town cars.

It had been over a decade since I last visited Japan, and I was excited to experience the Land of the Rising Sun on my own — on my own time — with less family obligations. (My last visit was spent…