That One Time in Japan

I was in Japan with my mom and my son. The country had recently opened up again to tourism and I took the opportunity to take my son on a trip we were supposed to take pre-pandemic that was cancelled due to a typhoon. My mom tagging along this time was a bonus.

It is nice to be in a place that isn’t overrun with tourists. Which, like, I get it: I am a tourist. I am the very thing I’m complaining about. It’s like complaining about traffic while being traffic. Just learn how to zipper merge, would ya?!

Anyway… we’re in Japan. We did Shinjuku, and Shibuya, and Harajuku, and bought our KitKats. We took in some fancy restaurants and some fancy coffee shops but most of all—especially my son and I—we had ramen. Specifically, we’d go to Ichiran almost on the daily. We fine-tuned our orders for the right amount of spice and noodles and accoutrements.

One of these days, at one of its many locations, we’re in line at Ichiran and I recognize a forehead. Seems like a weird thing to recognize of all things but it’s true. Everybody at the time was still masking. Japan is very courteous and we followed suit by making sure we were masked up every time we left the hotel room, just like everybody else, and just like the person in line behind us with the forehead I recognized.

Did I actually recognize that forehead? Only one way to find out. I asked. “Are you Tom Scott, by any chance?” It was indeed. He was visiting Tokyo after having been in New Zealand recently. I told him I enjoyed his content and then politely returned to waiting awkwardly in front of him for my seat inside Ichiran.

I guess I did recognize that forehead.