Tokyo and Nikko: Rotating Cakes, Arcades, Karaoke and Shrines

---

It’s about time I wrote an update on what we’ve been up to over the past few months. We’re about to leave the ski resort in Hakuba, Japan, to travel around the country for another few weeks before moving on to Hong Kong and China. So here’s what’s happened since we arrived here at the end of November.

We arrived in Tokyo dressed head to toe in jumpers and down jackets fully expecting cold weather, only to find it was 17 degrees. Sweating, we lugged our gear to the nearest station to try and negotiate the Tokyo public transport system, which with three different, but kind of linked, train providers is not as easy as you'd think it'd be!

We'd got a few days to explore Tokyo before heading up to Hakuba for the start of the ski season, and our goal was to see as much as possible, including as much weird stuff as we could. Coming here from Africa was a bit of a culture shock - with its huge billboards and flashing advertisements, Tokyo couldn’t be more at the opposite end of the consumerist spectrum to Africa if it tried. This in itself was a weird enough experience to kick the trip off!

Below the billboards and flashing lights, the salarymen all dressed in their identical dark suits, ties, and briefcases politely queue at the crossings, before scurrying into skyscrapers and underground into the subways. This metropolis of 14 million people made us feel like ants - tiny and insignificant, just another couple of people doing their thing. Nowhere is this more exacerbated than at the Shibuya Crossing (or in Shinjuku) during rush hour. We took a seat on the second floor of a Starbucks overlooking the Shibuya Crossing to witness the madness. The lights turn red and people begin to queue up at every corner in their hundreds. The clock ticks down, the red flips to green, and the pressure is released. The crowds charge at each other across the road in all directions in a mad chaos of people, but somehow retaining that ability to avoid bumping into each other at all costs. It is a spectacle well worth witnessing.

What amazes me most about all this is how such a densely populated area can be serviced so well - how can they provide enough schools, hospitals, roads and public transport for such a huge number of people in such a small area? Somehow they seem to manage it! I guess an example of this is the bus station we went to that was on the 4th floor of a building - try and work that one out! Another illustration of this was the subway station at rush hour. Just when you think they can’t cram any more people into the train carriage, another passenger will force their way in - and the way they do it is hilarious. They walk up to the door, turn their back to it, push their arse into everyone standing in the doorway, wiggle their feet onto the threshold whilst grabbing the top of the door frame with their hands. A final backwards push cements their position in the carriage - possibly with the helpful shove of a nearby conductor. Thankfully we never found ourselves needing to get in a train carriage quite as packed as one of these.

The chaos continues in the shops. The department stores contain anything you could ever need (including £70 melons in presentation gift boxes), along with the hordes of people, and some of the most annoying background music you could ever possibly imagine, played on repeat. It has amazed me throughout our time in Japan how often the shops play the most annoying beepy catchy theme tunes, that only last 30 seconds or so, but played on loop. The Japanese have an incredible resilience to it - it drives me crazy after a couple of minutes - can you imagine working in there?!

But despite the number of people and all the madness, (outside of the shops) Tokyo seemed to be a strangely quiet city. We were frequently surprised at the lack of noise, and traffic, for what is such a densely populated and busy city.

For our first evening in Tokyo, we dragged our jet-lagged bodies to the Akihabara area - possibly the most intense area on the planet, and not particularly well suited for anyone that is in a bit of a daze. We emerged from the relative darkness of the subway to all-encompassing 15-storey buildings, clad in bright, flashing multi-coloured lights. Akihabara is the ‘geek’ district of Tokyo, full of gaming arcades and, this is Japan of course, ‘maid cafés’. Every 10 metres stands another girl dressed as a maid, or in some other strange cosplay outfit, trying to lure you into their particular café. We decided to give these a miss. Instead, we ventured into the Sega gaming arcade, which was full of the usual arcade claw machines where you could win a variety of strange, sexualised cartoon character dolls. For once Amy wasn’t begging me to try and win one for her!

We then ducked into a pachinko parlour to see what this was all about, and discovered hell on earth. To explain, gambling for money is illegal in Japan, and this is their way around it. The machine is a bit like a pinball machine, with the aim being to obtain as many of the metal balls as you can. These balls can then be swapped for various prizes or tokens, which are then exchanged for money in a building outside of the parlour itself. It seems to be quite addictive - we saw lots of people in there sitting next to piles of trays containing thousands of these little balls. Apparently the Japanese pachinko market generates more revenue than the combination of Las Vegas, Macau and Singapore all together!! People sit on their stools chain smoking, the huge extractor fans screaming and groaning as they try (in vain) to expel the fog of second hand smoke, whilst the ever present beeping and cutesy noises lay harmonies over the pinging of the metal balls as they bounce around the machine, all under the omnipresent fluorescent lights. It is an assault on the senses, and one I do not wish to experience again anytime soon! We were only in there for about two minutes and we came out reeking of smoke! It was all too much for us after about an hour or two of walking around the area, so we decided to return home to try and sleep off the jet lag and take on the city with fresh eyes the next day.

To get our fix of the cute and the weird, we headed to the Harajuku district. When you think of weird Japan, this is the place you are thinking of. Takeshita Street is one long street filled with the weird and wonderful - hedgehog cafés; puppy cafés; owl cafés (why the obsession with slightly cruel cafés is beyond me); crazy clothes shops; photo booth centres to make yourself look more cute (which Amy forced me to do - twice!!). Everything here has to be ‘kawaii’ (cute) - you can’t even buy an ice cream without them making it into some kind of cute frog! We decided to immerse ourselves in the cuteness and headed to the ‘Kawaii Monster Cafe’ for dinner and drinks. I had the rainbow pasta (exactly what you imagine) while Amy went for the ‘Druggy Cocktail’ (not exactly what you imagine). If you can try and imagine a unicorn being sick all over a room, and then filling it with dancing girls dressed in cute outfits on top of a rotating cake, then you have got the picture. It was a very weird couple of hours, but exactly what we were looking for! There is another side to Harajuku though, away from all of this, full of independent fashion shops and cool boutiques, which was well worth a look round too.

‘Kawaii’ is a bit of a general theme in Japan. Everything is illustrated with cute cartoon characters, and not just kid-related things. For example, some of the traffic cones in Shinjuku were Hello Kitty themed, and almost every shop will have some cartoon mascot. Any instructions, like evacuation procedures, will be illustrated using cartoon characters too! Seeing serious things like this illustrated with fun cartoons always seemed quite weird to me!

Walking around the city you can’t help but notice the number of people employed in seemingly superfluous jobs. To take just one example, at every building’s car park entrance there will be one or two officially dressed attendants to help you cross. Considering that the number of cars that come in and out of the car park isn’t exactly huge, and that most people are adults, it doesn’t seem like the most useful job in the world. Yet they are dressed in smart, impeccable uniforms, and take the job extremely seriously, taking great pride in what they do and who they work for. It seems to me that they are respected for the company they work for, not necessarily the job that they do, no matter how seemingly menial it may be. And I like that about Japan - they have an ultra-low unemployment rate as a result. Why use temporary traffic lights if there is someone sitting at home that needs a job?

Futuristic Tokyo presented itself to us in the form of the teamLab Borderless Digital Art Museum. This was one of the most immersive, mind blowing experiences I’ve ever had. It is set within a maze-like building in the pitch black. All of the walls and floors are interactive and touch-responsive, all illuminated by moving artwork. Animals from the jungle, made from flowers, parade around the walls moving between the rooms, stopping to roar at you if you get too close. A room full of floor to ceiling LED strips and mirrored floors cascade light down throughout the room as if you are in some kind of crazy rain shower. Waterfalls gush down the walls, with the digital water moving around your hands and body as you touch the wall. It is really something else, and has to be experienced to be understood - no description, photos or videos would ever be able to capture the feeling of it. One of our favourite rooms was the café, where flowers would begin to grow out of your bowl of tea. When you picked the bowl up, the flowers would explode from the bowl and spread out all around the room. This was futuristic Japan at its best!

I suppose we were expecting Japan to be more like this. Modern and up to date technology. But to our surprise we have found that whilst Japan is incredibly technologically advanced in some ways, a lot of the time it is lagging behind. Probably the most obvious way to a tourist is that trying to pay on card (outside of Tokyo) is pretty much impossible. And if by some miracle you can pay on card, and by an even bigger miracle it is contactless, you’ll be met with gasps of awe and delight as you just tap your card on the machine to pay. But on the other hand, if you need a toilet to play music while you poo, then Japan is the place to be. I mean the number of functions on the toilets is unbelievable. You’ve really got to exercise a bit of caution though, I almost got shot off one once when I accidentally put the bidet power onto max! The other genius toilet related invention we have come across is the sink on top of the cistern - you can wash your hands with the water that is filling up the cistern when you flush - it makes so much sense! The only thing missing here is that there is never any soap and never anything to dry your hands with afterwards - so close to being a good system!

Another weird thing we found in Tokyo was just how spotless the streets were, considering that there are no bins ANYWHERE!!! Apparently the public bins were all removed after the 1995 sarin gas attack in the subway (nice use of a sledgehammer to hit a nail there). So as a result, everyone carries around plastic bags to keep their daily rubbish in, everywhere they go. It speaks volumes about the Japanese people how despite the lack of bins, they do their duty and keep their litter on them instead of just chucking it on the street. Can you imagine the carnage back in the UK if this were to happen?! Whilst we are on slightly strange cultural differences - another quirk of life here is that people are banned from smoking outdoors, but are allowed to smoke indoors. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather someone was smoking in the street than next to me in a restaurant?!

Behind that outwardly obedient layer of suits, ties, and briefcases lies another side, one that is more exposed once the sun goes down in the dimly lit tiny backstreet bars. We met up with some friends and ventured into the Golden Gai - a warren of tiny old houses that serve as bars in the evening. Although it’s a bit of a tourist trap, there are still plenty of the stereotypical Japanese businessmen sinking beer after beer at the bar. One salaryman we got chatting with was constantly being interrupted by stressful phone calls, all the while making notes in his notepad. ‘We lost the shipment in Chile!’ he half cried and half laughed as he sunk the rest of his beer. ‘Never mind, one more beer!’ And before he knew it he had missed the last train home. A classic story, and couldn’t be more stereotypical of a night in a Japanese bar! The night ended for us with some mad all-night karaoke, and a long ride home on the first train of the morning.

Of course we visited some of the other tourist spots. Senseo-ji temple, whilst pretty spectacular with its vermillion Thunder Gate, pagodas and statues, loses its spiritual appeal with the throngs of tourists and selfie sticks. What I love about temples is the peace and quiet - there is something mystical about a temple up in the mountains with no one else around - Senseo-ji was a bit of a disappointment in this respect. We visited again at night time which was a much better experience. The area in which it is situated, Asakusa, is the old downtown, and as such there are plenty of more traditional small places to eat and drink. I made the mistake of ordering the ‘white hormone’ in one of them, which turned out to be beef intestine and was basically inedible (I gave up chewing after about 10 minutes…).

After a few days we needed to get out of the city, so headed a few hours north up to Nikko. Up in the mountains, it is well known for its shrines and temples - after a few days of being swallowed up by the endless flow of concrete and tarmac of the city, a trip to the countryside was a welcome reprieve. To get there we had to change train three times, with a couple of one minute transfers. Having grown up in the UK, this was a concern - surely there would be no way that we would make the connecting trains? But what you hear about public transport efficiency in Japan is all true, I can confirm it! Our train would roll into the platform dead on time, the doors would open, our next train would be waiting on the opposite side with its doors open, we would walk across, the doors close behind us, and off we would go. And this happened on several occasions. Now that is efficiency! It is the same on the buses - as the departure time approaches the driver watches the clock, snapping on their white gloves and adjusting their hats the minute before, then smoothly rolling out as the clock ticks over.

We spent a day or two exploring the temples of Nikko, although a few were under renovation and unfortunately covered up. The most famous shrine is Toshogu, which is covered in gold leaf and intricate carvings, and is one of the most impressive shrines I have seen. However, once again it is slightly marred by the huge numbers of people that come to see it - if you get a view without a selfie stick in sight you are doing well! So to avoid the crowds we ventured to some of the smaller shrines, such as Futurasan. Perfectly straight lines of towering cypress trees surround the temples, and walking through the forests away from the crowds was much more peaceful. There are thousands of small Shinto shrines in Japan, and as we walked through the forest we would catch glimpses of stone torii gates and decorative stone lanterns in front of small wooden buildings enshrining the sacred objects. I used to love going into the mountains in Korea and seeing all of the remote temples, and this brought back fond memories of that.

Whilst in Nikko we also visited the Tamozawa Imperial Villa, which was once the residence of the Imperial family. Surrounded by manicured gardens, it is a huge wooden building, with a mix of Western and Japanese styles (there was even a carpet in there from Axminster near where Amy’s parents live!). But for the most part the Japanese styles prevail - latticed wooden frames covered in translucent paper forming the sliding doors and windows (shoji) divide the rooms and beautifully temper the natural light - a refreshing break from the modern Japanese obsession of obliterating all shadows with fluorescent lighting. I love these shoji - not only do they look beautiful but the whole sliding door idea is genius. The villa was a great example of how rooms could be divided in different ways just by reconfiguring the layout of the sliding doors. Obviously not great for sound or heat insulation, but a great way to keep a building flexible for future uses.

We continued our tour through Nikko by strolling through the Kanmangafuchi Abyss. Although less dramatic than it sounds, it is a peaceful stroll along a river lined by 70 stone statues of the Bodhisattva Jizo. The statues all have red hats and bibs - something that we have seen frequently throughout Japan. Apparently these are put on the statues by grieving parents, who put their child’s bib on the statue in order to protect the child in the other world, or offered as thanks for saving their children from a life-threatening illness.

We headed back to Tokyo and for our final night we decided to stay in a capsule hotel. Essentially these are dorm rooms, but treated with the typical Japanese efficiency. We found a very modern and sleek one, and it was a great experience. You get given everything you need (pjamas, toothbrush, slippers etc.) and a key to a capsule just big enough to squeeze into, with USB chargers etc. inside. I think it must be where the businessmen that miss the last train home go to stay as they are so convenient!

And with that we jumped on a bus up to Hakuba to start the ski season (it left dead on time...) - I’ll leave that for the next post as once again I’ve rambled on for far too long!

Till next time.

---