Taking on Tokyo in your 70s is no easy feat. Ash Jurberg plays volunteer city guide for his elderly parents, navigating the city via tea stops and seated sightseeing
At 10am on a Saturday, my parents step out of the lift at their Tokyo hotel to meet the guide I’ve booked for them.
They have no idea the guide is me. Dad takes a few seconds to process it.
“Oh, it’s you. What the hell are you doing here?”
Mum slaps my outstretched hand, then hugs me and starts crying.
They’ve just finished a 16-day cruise around Japan, with four nights in Tokyo before they fly home. Before they left, I told them I’d found them a guide through a volunteer programme.
They were dubious but agreed. The programme doesn’t exist.
I flew in the night before and checked into a hotel five minutes from theirs, a much cheaper one. Volunteer guides don’t get paid much.
They’re both 78. Mum can no longer read or see a step going down.
Dad’s heart condition and vertigo ruin his balance and stop him from walking far. After more than two weeks of travel, they’re tired and almost ready to go home. So we take Ubers instead of tackling Tokyo’s train stations and their stairs, and stop for coffee or tea every few hours.
Mum wants to see Takeshita Street in Harajuku, a narrow lane packed with young people in kawaii (cute) fashion and stalls selling viral snacks. Even by Tokyo standards, it’s busy, but my clients insist.
I shepherd them through the crowd as Mum stops at every stall.
One shop sells spiral fries on a stick under a sign that reads LONG! LONGER!! LONGEST!!! (Their exclamation marks. My editor would kill me if I used that many.)
Mum goes inside to see how they’re made. She’s short, and the 52cm LONGEST!!! seems as big as she is.
Outside, she stops in front of a girl in platform shoes so high she looks like she’s on stilts.
“How do they walk on those shoes? They look ridiculous. I’d fall over.”
I point out she struggles enough in flat shoes. She shakes her head and keeps walking.
Nearby, Meiji Jingu, Tokyo’s best-known shrine, sits at the end of a long forest walk. We stop so often they start apologising, and I tell them I’m glad they want to keep going.
At the shrine, they wash their hands, bow and clap.
Then I show them two camphor trees joined by a sacred rope, a symbol of a happy marriage, and they pose for photos. It’s the most romantic thing I’ve seen from them in my life.
They could easily retreat to their hotel for a nanna nap, which would suit Mum, since she is one. They never do. They want to see everything.
So I find them a way to sightsee sitting down. The Hotaluna is a river boat designed by Leiji Matsumoto, one of Japan’s best-known manga artists, and it looks like a glass spaceship.
All the way up the Sumida River to Asakusa, they sit back and photograph Tokyo from the water. Just before we dock, I point out the Asahi beer hall and the giant golden flame on its roof.
“What does that look like?” I ask.
“Like someone has been to the toilet,” Mum says.
I tell her that’s why everyone calls it the Golden Turd.
“Yep,” Dad says. “It’s a big dump.”
In Asakusa, our first stop is Hokkaido Milk Bar, whose soft serve is made with milk from Japan’s cool northern island. The shop leaves a pair of cow ears out for customers to wear in photos.
Dad has a sweet tooth. I use this to my advantage and pick up the ears.
“If you want dessert before dinner, you’ll need to do something for me.”
Before I can say anything else, the ears are on his head. “Do I look like an influencer now?” Dad asks. He’ll do anything for ice cream.
On our last morning, we go to Kappabashi, the street where Tokyo’s chefs buy their equipment. Mum has always wanted a good kitchen knife and loves to browse. Dad doesn’t. We work through so many stores I lose count while he waits outside on his phone.
“Take your time,” he says. “I’m glad it’s you, not me.”
After a couple of hours, we each find the right knife.
I ask if they can engrave our names, and the assistant tells us to come back in 30 minutes. When we return, our first names are on the blades in Japanese. At least I hope they’re our names.
Later, a staff member at my hotel confirms the names are correct. Some people get a tattoo to remember a trip. At 78, this is a far better option for my mum.
As I put them in their taxi to the airport, they hug me and thank me for making the trip so much fun.
I’m staying an extra day. Even volunteer guides need a day off.
The writer travelled - and volunteered - at their own expense.