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Published: January 13th 2007
I was always under what was probably a poorly uninformed impression that Japan was a quiet, understated country. In my few (wasted) years in high school Japanese class I learnt about the culture of a quiet people, who respected tradition and weren’t amenable to the loud, disrespectful ways of us Westerners (hence the trainee Japanese teacher who came on exchange to Maclean High School for a few months and after one period of our Year Nine elective Japanese class she was so shaken by our loud and outrageous behaviour she took off the remainder of the week and steeled herself against any further aural assaults by refusing to come to any more of our classes).
Touching down in Tokyo I had prepared to present my quiet, humble self and was certain that I would be unable to communicate with anyone at all. Instead, what I experienced over the next week was one of the loudest, most outrageous and gregarious (and not least of all generous) cultures that I have come across in my year of travels.
As soon as I made my way out of the Tokyo Metro I was set upon by a Japanese girl who demanded to
Robots in Tokyo
From the manga museum The Ghibli.take me to wherever I was going because I looked “lost”. As I hadn’t even had time to pull out a map on the way to my hotel I wondered if she was referring more generally to my state of being but we’ll leave that deeper discussion for another day.
Armed with my (now extracted) map which she demanded I fish from my things she dragged me from shop to restaurant to police station (with her elderly mother in tow) asking for directions. After failing to find my hostel she found their number and gave them a ring and then escorted me all the way there, happily chatting to me about what she was up to that weekend and nearly dying of shock to discover that I was Australian - her husband was from Melbourne.
Suitably impressed, I touched base at the hostel and then headed to Harajuku to see the famed Harajuku girls. As you all are probably are aware these much hyped (a shout out to Gwen Stefani) social outcasts dress strangely and hang out at the Harajuku station entrance while locals and foreigners snap up pics of the girls in frilly maid costumes and Disney-cum-goth-cum-punk-cum-clock
work orange get-ups. After having not slept for 36 hours I have to say that it was all a bit of a dream sequence to me and the exploits of these girls seemed so put on as to leave a bad taste in your mouth - but it certainly was some kind of spectacle and surprise surprise the Christians had to come and ruin the fun by singing Xmas carols and asking bemused Japanese if they knew the “real” meaning of Christmas - strikes me as a bit (a) rude (b) naïve and (c) bloody rude, doing this at the gates to one of Tokyo’ major Shinto shrines. However, I can safely report that the Japanese have definitely discovered the real meaning of Christmas - shopping and Christmas carols. It was only in Japan that I discovered that there are no less that six covers of Wham’s “Last Christmas” floating around out there - and I believe that most of them are on high rotation in Tokyo’s shopping centres from November till the end of December each year.
This brings me to the Japanese shopping experience. Shopping in Japan is taken to whole other level. Japan is the first
Weird cakes
The filling is piped so it looks like spaghetti. I asked the lady if it was spaghetti (dumb tourist mode in full swing) - "NO!" she replied. I guess she must get that a lot. Bemused pastry chef in mask looks on. Asian country I have been to where the vast majority of the population is wealthy and has a disposable income. Like the rest of us living in the world with a lot of money to spare, the Japanese like to spend it. However, the emphases in Japan seem to be on different things. Although fashion is important in most countries (with Australia and the US being generally good exceptions) in Japan fashion and the consumption of all things fashionable is a hyper-reality that is hard to comprehend. Never before have I seen in the one shopping district three shops within 100 metres of each other solely dedicated to selling hats, nor have I seen a dedication so strong to the “experience” of shopping itself. One day a few mates and I decided to head out to Odaiba to explore. A very wise Japan expert had explained to me that Odaiba was “kind of like Darling Harbour (Sydney’s nasty harbour side shopping centre) on steroids”. Although aptly warned with this description I was still unprepared for what I found there. Any area that has Japan’s largest Ferris wheel, a miniature Statue of Liberty and a Toyota showroom that let you book
Shibuya station - the dead master dead dog entrance
There is a sad story about a dog, its master and the dog sitting outside the station waiting for its master years after the master's death. The dog got the station enetrance named after it and the statue. The master got nada ... gold!!! and test drive super futuristic cars was certainly going to be high on the tack scale. And although I had been lulled into a sense of tranquility by very nice views of Tokyo city and harbour I was still unprepared for what I was to discover in the “Venus Fort” shopping centre.
Have you ever had an experience where you were in a building (usually a shopping centre or the headquarters of the Australian Liberal Party) and no matter what you tried to do you couldn’t get out? The labyrinth of consumerism and evil policies seemed to point you always tantalizing to the outside but never to an actual exit? Whichever way you turned you found yourself faced with another GAP, GAP Kids, Baby GAP or some much maligned Peter Costello figure gnashing his teeth at you and screaming that the door you are desperately banging your fists on is an emergency exit only and an alarm will sound if you use it? Well how could it possible get any worse? How about if the shopping mall you are in has (in a moment of Japanese sense gone mad) painted faux blue skies and fluffy, pink tinged clouds on
the ceiling and made each shop front and the mallways represent the buildings and canals of Venice? I’m not sure why but there was a heightened sense of claustrophobia knowing that the azure blue above me was just Formica that was ready to crash on my head at the slightest moment I considered not buying something. To make matters worse (or just to mark the difference between me and the rest of those in the mall) the Japanese shoppers were loving the experience - and (I kid you not) I even happened to come across a wedding couple in full wedding gear having their wedding photos done in front of a faux-Venetian fountain that changes colours in time with the super creepy musak that plays in the background (Christmas carols no less). It was all what you would expect on board the Scientology cruise ship “Freewinds” (which by the way is the only location on earth you can receive training for Operating Thetan VIII - the highest state in Scientology. And who ever suggested that Scientology was just a money making exercise!?)
Having escaped the evil clutches of Japanese-Italy I immediately fell into the clutches of another agent of
suffocating and restrictive forces - boring lesbians. Earlier in the week I had met two girls at the hostel that I was staying at and mentioned that I was on a quest to find Tokyo’s best Okinomiyaki. As one of them spoke more than a smattering of Japanese I thought it would be to my advantage to invite them along in my culinary quest so that they could at least assist in translation and navigation around the Okinomiyaki bars of the city. The more selfish man in me hesitated - and whether it was because he knew that inviting them along would involve having to share this amazing Japanese dish or whether I have an innate sense for boring American lesbians I should have listened to that little voice inside my head saying “NO NO NO”!
Soon after leaving the hostel I knew there was going to be trouble. A casual remark about something amusing I had seen earlier in the day prompted one lesbian to say “You can’t say that - it’s disrespectful”. I can’t recall what I said but I’m sure it was insightful, but as you all know, me being told I cannot do something because
Comando Vending
Ubiquitous in Japan but rarely "hidden" like this... it is disrespectful is like a red flag to a bull and soon the 45 minute sojourn to the restaurant became a chorus of “that’s disrespectful” after every comment or action I produced. Apparently Boring Lesbian Number One (BL1) thought that my bopping along to the tunes on the train (see below) was “disrespectful”. My saying that I thought Japan was “crazy” was “disrespectful”. My saying that I was going to eat so much Okinomiyaki that I was going to puke was “disrespectful”. My taking a photo of some excellent “Engrish” example was “disrespectful. Soon there was so much “disrespecting” going on that it was like I had just called some black woman a ho during a live taping of the Rikki Lake show.
Even more annoyingly, all the while this was going on Boring Lesbian Number 2 (BL2) stood meekly by as her partner stamped her authority on all things disrespectful to the Japanese. It was clear that BL2 thought that BL1’s stern warnings were over the top but was obviously too afraid to mention anything to BL1 - I’m guessing she thought that would be “disrespectful”. By the time we reached the restaurant - an amazing Okinomiyaki
mini okinomiyaki
In this amazing food hall that Yvette sent me to. That place had EVERYTHING! bar located on the 38th floor of a tower block named Ebisu Palace that has been set up by people from Osaka, the home of Okinomiyaki, I was fed up and needing an Asahi “SUPER DRY!” to calm me.
However things started spiraling for the worse when it came to eat. After making the Okinomiyaki it was time to put the sauce on top. Usually this is done by squirting the sauce from a bottle on to the Okinomiyaki base while it is still cooking on the BBQ hotplate. On the first Okinomiyaki our waitress came and applied the tasty mayo and delicious brown sauce. By the time Okinomiyaki number two and beer number four were served I was ready to have a go at putting the sauce on.
As soon as I reached for the sauce bottles - poised to take one in each hand, cowboy style, ready for my shoot out with this tasty Japanese dish - I saw BL1’s lips curling, ready to again lay claim that what I was doing was affronting to all things Japanese. Now I am no Japanese expert but I failed to see how me applying my own condiments to
excuse me what?
Pachinko in Tokyo a dish really can be classed as disrespectful - especially as I had seen another diner do it 5 minutes earlier - but before I had even time to think BL1 and I were engaged in a epic wrestle of the Japanese mayo. Through gritted teeth I was saying (so as not to be disrespectful to those around me) “give me the fucking mayonnaise” while she was chiming “no, no, no - I’ll die if you do it. It’s so disrespectful!” (BL2 nodding warily). Wishing my lucky stars she was right I wrenched the bottle, quickly grabbed the other, stood up and proceeded to layer the Okinomiyaki in as skillful fashion as I could muster. I must have done an OK job (or made such a fuss that people had started to notice) because the table (of Japanese) next to me applauded my efforts which was missed by BL1 as she had slid down her chair so much that all I could hear being said from under the table was a muffled “disrespectful”.
On that note, there is certainly something to be respected about a country that has the level of attention to detail as Japan does. Whether it
is the post-sale wrapping - do I really need that third bag for my purchase of a single orange? - or the most perfect of sushi presentation, Japan has to have it just right. My favourite example of the Japanese going that extra step further than most is on the JR (Japan Rail) Yamanote line. This line conveniently does a ring around most of the major hubs of Tokyo and if you ever spend time in the capital you (and the rest of Tokyo’s population) will board one of these immaculately clean trains bound for Shibuya, Shinjuku, Ueno o Harajuku. On my first trip on the loop I was impressed how at each train station the melody announcing that the train was due to depart was different. That’s right, at all twenty odd stations there is a different high-pitched, partially annoying but oh-so-happy ring-tone-like tune that is played. I was very impressed - but what was even better was when we went through Takadanobaba station the tune they played was the theme from Astroboy!!! Now if that’s not cool then I do not know what is. Apparently, they play it there because the creator of Astroboy lived there at some
point. Forget naming streets, parks or building after you - when you’re famous in Japan you get the “Stand Clear Doors Closing / Mind the Gap” announcement re-worked in your honour. Now THAT is cool. (For an example of each of the melodies and a description of the train line check out the following, scarily detailed website. What I did learn from this site is they appear to have the tune played at different pitches depending on the direction you are going in. Did I mention attention to detail anyone? http://hisaai-hp.hp.infoseek.co.jp/JREast/Yamanote/Yt_s_eg.html).
The only disappointment from my trip to Tokyo was my one experience with a Pachinko parlor. I’ve had a long held belief that Pachinko was this crazy, fun and almost poppy game that would be hours of entertainment - I think it’s another misapprehension from Year Nine Japanese class.On my last day in Japan I figured I would finally pop into one of those huge, brightly lit Pachinko mega-plexes. When I walked in from the busy street I stepped into a wall of sound that I was unprepared for. I never realized how much noise millions of ball bearings could make as they simultaneously bounced their way down
shopping on speed
They dress their shops up well too. what is practically a pinball machine stood upright. What greeted me in Ueno was a nasty, smoke laced display of boring gambling which gave me the feeling I was back in the pokies section in any old pub in Sydney. As the noise washed over me all I could see was bored and sad old people pouring their time and shiny little balls into Pachinko machines. I got shivers as it reminded me of all those pensioners stuck on the slot machines at 6AM in Las Vegas I had seen at the start of the year.
So Japan was an adventure and a half. I’ve never been to a more vibrant and exhilarating city and Tokyo has rocketed to the top of my favourite cities listed. Auf Wiedersehen Berlin! The people were friendly and so hospitable. Outside a bar in the old Golden Gai district (for a fuller, better description see http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Tokyo/Shinjuku/blog-37180.html) there was a sign that read in English “You are welcome in this bar if you speak Japanese”. Reading between the lines we quickly understood that we perhaps were not welcome at the bar. However, as our group was milling about the entrance a patron came outside,
Gaudi in Tokyo
Felt like I was in Barcelona, but again just The Ghibli. dragged us in and then proceeded to buy us our drinks and food for the rest of the night. He spoke about 20 words of English but together with him and the waitress (a cool girl who spoke some English as she had been to Australia once - only to Coffs Harbour (?!?) mind you) we had a great time discussing our respective homes. Not speaking Japanese was not a problem at all and there was certainly no anti-Gajin feeling on that night (which was surprising because the four of us big western lads took up half the seats in the tiny, tiny bar).
I still have lots to tell about Tokyo but this blog is way too long already. Instead I’ll just leave you with three more of my favourite things about a stunning time in a special city:
1) Looking out over a Tokyo cityscape as I sang “Hollaback Girl” during a 6 hour karaoke marathon;
2) The gyoza I ate every day from this tiny little restaurant round the corner from where I lived;
3) Having people tap me on the shoulder in the subway and say “Welcome to Japan!”
Wow.
Special thanks
Karaoke Tower
Yep, the whole building is dedicated for it. Was a good way to spends 6 hours one night! must go to Yvette for my holiday in Japan. She put in so much time and effort (while already on her own trip) in recommending where to go it was as though I had her walking behind me the whole way saying “Hurry up Gatland, there’s more to see!” What a champion. And also thanks to my mate Kohtaro who pointed out some great eating spots. He truly is the Okinomiyaki specialist!
And as an interesting post script. I have just finished reading an article in this week's Economist which explains how a lot of Pachinko parlours are owned by Korean organised crime groups who siphon the gambling funds from the parlours directly to the awful regieme in North Korea. One more reason to dislike the bounce of the silver ball.
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Amy
non-member comment
Berlin
Wow, better than Berlin, big call! Can't wait to visit Japan, new years eve... xx