Over new years, we spent a week in Tokyo. We’ve been pretty delinquent at writing about our life experiments there - Tokyo was full of experimental opportunities. This post is the first of a few we’ll write about this trip.

One of our goals in Tokyo was to get our hands on some miracle fruit - basically, a berry that makes everything taste sweet - so lemons actually taste like lemonade. It’s pretty hard to come by in the U.S. but we had heard that it was readily available in Tokyo, where it’s marketed as one of many weight control innovations. Our quest for miracle fruit brought us to Namjatown - an amusement park of sorts on the outskirts of the city (note: we’re using the amusement park term lightly here - it’s definitely not a Disneyworld or Six Flags equivalent). Namjatown was reported to have its own miracle fruit cafe - so one sunny day, we embarked on our journey, not entirely sure what to expect but knowing that an adventure was in store. This is one of the experiences that made us decide that Lost in Translation, while an amazing movie, hardly captured how different Tokyo is from every other world city.

When we debarked the subway, I think we somewhat expected to be put out into a relatively open part of Tokyo - after all, it was the last subway stop on the line. Instead, the neighborhood was chock full of people and had even fewer tourists than in the center of town. We eventually found our way to an indoor mall where we were told that Namjatown was located.

Upon entering Namjatown, we were struck by how confused we were. Even though this amusement park was aimed at children, we had such a lack of cultural understanding that we couldn’t figure out what the games the children were playing were about. It was somewhat like a large arcade, but people were walking around with handheld machines and shooting at things on the wall.

We eventually made our way to Gyoza Stadium, a part of the park that was dedicated to those wonderful dumplings. Some of the “best chefs” of Tokyo had supposedly been asked to create their own gyoza - the result was about 15-20 little restaurants that served up gyoza and beer. We couldn’t resist. We ended up going on our own private gyoza pub crawl. We got a bit tipsy - incongruous with the families around us - and after several rounds we had to call it quits. We didn’t even come close to making it to every restaurant.

Afterwards, we made our way up to the miracle fruit cafe. For a few dollars, we each got a couple of miracle fruit berries and a plate of fruit (lemons, oranges, blueberries). We weren’t entirely sure how to proceed, but the waitress provided a helpful demonstration. After sucking the miracle fruit for a couple minutes, we went straight for the lemons. And it worked! These lemons tasted pretty sweet. We learned an important lesson though - there’s a reason that lemons taste really sour - if you eat too many of them, the sides of your mouth get really sore from all the acid. In the end, we enjoyed the miracle fruit - it was definitely a fun experience - but it wasn’t as mind blowing as we expected. We felt like the effects wore off pretty quickly.

We continued our eating frenzy in the dessert area - similar to Gyoza Stadium but with all kinds of desserts. We hesitated to try the ice cream, afraid that it might be too sweet after the miracle fruit - but we gave in and got some. The ice cream was incredible. Whether that was because of the miracle fruit or not, we’ll never know.

This ended up being one of our favorite days in Tokyo. This affirmed our tendency to try to go “off the grid” and eschew traditional tourist activities (we didn’t spend any time in temples during this trip). This day enabled us to experience a uniquely Tokyo place, and it was really energizing.