Japan Thoughts Vol. 1

Asia » Japan » Tokyo
August 10th 2005

Published: August 10th 2005

Heaven is being over 6’ tall, non-Japanese, in the middle of the Nagoya train station on a Friday afternoon, and finding yourself in the middle of 200+ high school girls that just got out of school and are deeply curious about you, and by the way, they are in their uniforms (plaid skirts, white shirt, knee highs, … you get the picture).

Hell is peeking out the bus window on your way to Narita airport and seeing half-a-dozen 8 year olds in the same uniforms; forever killing the fantasy!

A cab ride in Japan is a study in excellence. The drivers are proud of their jobs, highly educated, very technical (most have a great deal of electronic equipment to help them; one even had a wireless laptop that he would consult for “411” like information) and deeply focused on getting you from point A to B. Their cars don’t have a single spec of dirt, inside or out. When I asked them to pop the trunk (and this is a very foreign request to them, as the Japanese are completely ok with hugging their bags and packing the cab) I would be amazed at what was in it: NOTHING! Not a single item. Nothing at all. And clean beyond the imagination. Like it had never been used. Did I mention that the drivers where white gloves and a suite? With a tie? Amazing.

I tried a social experiment on the second day visiting our Tokyo office. I noticed that upon entering the building (more on our building later) the two reception ladies and the security guards would say hello to everyone. I decided that I too would say hello to random people and gauge their reaction. Here is their reaction: horror! They almost fell back a step when I would simply say “hello”. My Japanese friend smiled when I explained what I experienced. His explanation tells us something about the culture. He told me that “you were un-announced…unknown”, and that basically this is considered rude. I felt like a disgusting foreigner when I heard this, quite the opposite of what I was hoping to achieve.

When eating sushi at a serious sushi joint (read: not fancy, difficult to find, and VERY GOOD!) the chef treats local and foreigners differently in one respect only: locals don’t get Wasabi, only foreigners do. It is a sign of disrespect for a local to ask for Wasabi, akin to asking a 2-star chef for salt. I will never ask for Wasabi again, anywhere I go.

Same restaurant: don’t fuck around too much with menus. Locals sit, and the chef serves. Occasionally, by the 6th course or so, he may ask you for your input. Bottom line, this is not a place for wimpy-ass sushi eaters, or wimpy-ass eaters period. I appreciate letting those of us who enjoy the art and culture of food, and respect the chef as a trusted advisor (not a cook) have our spiritual moments in proper settings, far removed from the loud, “all you can eat”, “have it my way”, crass, over eating, hot-dog-on-a-stick shit that is mass peddled to the slobbering crowds. Hey, that’s just me.

Everything you want to know about Japan you can learn from food: what its made out of, how it is prepared, how it is consumed, and where it is consumed. Our understanding of Japanese food is pitiful. It would be akin to someone saying that all Italians eat is pasta and meatballs! Their food is as diverse as the culture is old. From a 3-hour long table side Teppenyaki meal on the 22nd floor of a prime hotel with a view of the entire city, to a street side Denny’s like joint serving piping hot noodles in a bowl of broth at 3:00 a.m., when you leave the club after a night of drinking!

If you think the number and nature of restaurants in New York is daunting and competitive, Tokyo blows that away by a factor of 5X! We were walking down Ginza, and also in Ropongi, and went down alleys that had narrow three story buildings with very simple signage. They looked like they could be small dental offices, very nondescript. Such a building, on an approximately 800 square foot pad, and there are hundreds of them, would house 4-5 restaurants! One in the basement, two on the second floor, and a last one on the third floor. I went to an amazing Korean barbeque joint in one such basement and had pigs tongue. Delicious! Interestingly, the one consistent factor amongst most of the hide-out eating joints I went to was Jazz. Serious, straight up, no nonsense Jazz. Not that Yanni buillshit, or fusion crap. Coltrane, Davis, Byrd. Blue Note stuff. Deep, and appropriate.

In Japan, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, has two items: a cell phone, and some type of bag (purse, briefcase, nylon store bag, backpack, clutch, man-purse, etc.) It was a game for me to try to find someone, anyone, without a bag of some sort. Impossible.

Here is the perhaps the most amazing thing that I DIDN'T notice: noise. The entire time I was their I heard only two cell phones ring. I am talking about hundreds of people that I personally came into contact with and yet I heard two phones actually ring. You see, just about every place you go, there is a sign telling you not to talk on the phone, and to put it on vibrate. What people are doing with their phones is SMS, text messaging, ALL FUCKING DAY! To see this in action is mind-blowing. People walking across busy intersections not looking up, banging away at their phones with their thumbs, with Kanji characters mind you! Man, women, child. Young, old. Truly amazing.

In the basement of Tokyo Plaza there is a very well trafficked fish/meat market. I accidentally took the escalator one flight down too many, and came across more fish than I had ever seen in my life. Alive, dead, almost dead. Whole. Fillets. Steaks. Sashimi cut. Heads. Bones. Bits. Pieces. My god! What an assortment of fish. And you can go to most of the stands and sample the fish right their. In spite all of this fish and meat, and boy let me tell you the meet in Japan is second to none, their were two things I didn't notice at the market: smell, and slime. I witnessed 300-500 people go through this basement in the hour I was their, yet I could not find any mud, dust, dirt, slime on the white floors. How is this possible? And smell. Where is the fish smell? No fancy air purification system. Lots and lots of fish, yet NO FISH SMELL. Wow. I went into the corner and found hidden amongst the stands a tiny sushi counter with the first women sushi chef I have ever come across in my life. For about $9 I had one of the most gratifying meals I have ever had. Fresh, generous, complete, satisfying, comforting. This was at 11:00, so essentially my breakfast. With two cups of piping hot green tea. What an experience.

Funny story number one: we are at dinner with a bunch of people, drinking beer and sake. This Japanese partner is drinking some special sake on ice, something I had never seen before. I asked him what is was and he said its “strong sake…like TEH-KEE-RUH”. I said “like what?”, and he repeated “teh-kee-ruh”. This Texan dude next to me leans over and says: TEH-KEE-LA, mother fucker, its TEH-KEE-LA!!!!!

On Japanese Porn: I don’t even know how to describe this. Let me tell you that Japanese women on the streets of Tokyo and Nagoya are beautiful. They are beautiful in an Eastern way, with some Western touches added. Beautifully manicured, groomed, and done-up. Yet, Japanese porn is NOT sexy, and quite funny. First of all, the entire porn I saw in my hotel (no, I did not go to a sleaze theatre; next time) consisted of one singular position: man on back, women facing away riding on top. What was so funny was the facial expression of these women, and the sounds they were making. I was laughing so hard that I must of lost track of the fact that I was watching strangers fuck. Their movement was un-sexy too. Rigid and contrived. Very funny, not sexy. The bigger issue was that all porn in Japan (ok, so all porn at my hotel, including non-Japanese port; yes I watched others) has this pixel-distortion on the private parts. So you are watching these people go at it and there is this large area of the screen that is pixilated and completely distorted. Big turn-off, very un-sexy. Add that to the Japanese grunts, hemming and hawing and you get one big funny un-sexy production. Not my cup of tea.

Japanese women are beautiful, yet on the streets they walk like men. I am so used to seeing Iranian women, Europeans, and some Americans use their hips, ass, thighs, calves, ankles, and feet to create poetry while moving that this had become an expectation for me. Boy, Japanese women walk like they just got pumped in the ass. Very un-sexy, but something I can learn to appreciate as a cultural difference.

Ask someone for directions and they won’t give them to you: they will walk you to your destination. I tried this at my hotel, at my office, and on the street, with complete strangers. That is a sign of genuine politeness, not touristy driven bullshit fake friendliness like you see in Hawaii or Mexico.

Our office in Tokyo is the most beautiful building I have ever stepped foot in. When I become filthy rich, I will hire the designers and have them build a home for me, almost completely inspired by this building. Let me start by telling you that it is a brand new, 35 story building carved into a 30 degree
hillside lot. The external façade is partially banded by natural bamboo, from the 2 through 4th floors only, pulling in the surrounding trees and greenery. The exterior is modern, yet warm. Steel, glass and stone come together in a very unique way, one that invites you in with grace. None of the materials are shiny or cold. The entry flooring is brushed grey limestone, which is remarkably conducive to cleaning shoes, even wet ones, prior to entering the lobby. All aspects of the lobby are functional: the central reception hub, the digital board with office postings, and the “star trek” inspired security glass partitions which swoop in a semi-circle upon presenting a badge to create an opening for you.

On to the elevators. First, the button to call the elevator is not really a button, but rather a simple softly buffed metallic arrow surface that is embedded into the porous limestone walls between the shafts. When you touch it, a soft green light flows through and around the arrow to create a suspension like effect, where you cannot seem to place the source of the light, or how the arrow is connected to the wall. Once in the elevator, you notice a strange sensation: the light around you is soft, and you notice your reflection in front of you, but you do not feel as though you are staring into a mirror, which would be far too harsh for what the designers had in mind. When you step closer, you notice that the entire back surface of the elevator has a large glass panel embedded intro the wooden enclosure. The glass has been painstakingly etched with micro-lines that run the entire width of the panel, at 1 centimeter increments. The effect is that if you want to see your hairdo, or check on your lipstick, you step closer to the mirror and it gives you a true reflection. Otherwise, for other angles and distances it simply provides a soft backdrop to this marvel of comfort. The elevator makes no noise, and it goes real fast. Side note: when a Japanese worker gets into the elevator, they almost simultaneously hit their destination button and the “close door” button (incidentally, when you hit these buttons in Japanese elevators, the doors shut right then. No gaps). When they work, they are in a hurry.

Once I get to the 14th floor (we have the 13th and 14th floor of this building, located in the Akisaka district, by the US Embassy) I enter a warm, cozy, clean, and yet ultra modern environment. The walls are all wood, dark, natural. The flooring is some strange carpeting that does not feel or look like carpet, yet is as comfortable to walk on. The lighting is indirect, throughout the entire office. All desks have some sort of emergency helmet underneath them, the type you would see the workers in a Godzilla flick where. The absolute best feature though is the bathroom. For this, you must walk down a narrow hallway parallel to our elevator area. When you get to the end, you notice a wall of soft light in front of you. You are actually facing frosted glass that would otherwise give you a view of the street. As you turn right, you will see a bank of 4 sinks, white ceramic, atop a cone shaped ceramic pedestal. Two snub faucet like protrusions are just about the only other things you see. When you wave your hand in front of the left opening, green foam sprays on your hands, in precisely the right amount and location. When you start to rub your hands, the water comes on. No touching, no turning. Fucking beautiful. Behind the wall of sinks is a row of urinals which poses the same sensibility. I didn't take a shit their so I cant speak about the toilets, but if it is anything like the other parts, I missed a great experience.

Funny story number two: We are on a conference call with Brussels, a group of three senior Japanese partners and me in Tokyo, 4 CXO level Japanese guys in Belgium. There is a problem with the dial in line, so for about 1 full minute, I listened to 7 grown men say “mushi-mushi” over, and over, and over again, with small pauses in between. They could not hear us, we couldn't hear them. Yet the “mushi-mushi” continued. I started to smile just a little. When they would not stop, it turned into laughter. When they would not give up, I found myself crying uncontrollably! I had to leave the room to contain myself. So fucking funny!

The mix of old and new is astonishing. You feel a sense of history that is measure in 1,000’s not 10’s as we see here. And yet you feel as though you are visiting the Jetsons. Tokyo is the most technologically advanced city I have ever visited. This mix of old and new, though, has created some generational tension. I am not a social anthropologist, but I would venture a guess that Japan, and the Japanese, have always founds themselves at such cross-roads, through the past 200 years, up through the current generation, and looking out into the future. What makes this place so amazing is that you see the competing elements side-by-side, not in opposition of one another. Case in point: the city looks and feels historic, like Paris or Rome, yet it feels modern and comfortable, like Stockholm or Newport Beach. While Europe is rotting away, Japan has modernized its infrastructure without loosing its soul. And what soul this place has. I mentioned the Jazz music earlier, and I believe that the love Japanese folks have for Jazz comes from a place deep inside of their hearts. The soul I speak of is present in their drinking rituals, where the host over-fills your sake cup (or box, as is the traditional way of service) so as to espouse abundance, and will never let you fill your own cup. The soul I speak of is present in the unassuming fabric store I visited in Tokyo Plaza, where hand made silk Kimono’s costing over $1,000 US seemed at home in their modest settings. The reverence for food, music, language, art, nature, history, craft, people and tradition makes Japan a soulful place.

The bullet-train! Wow. You are going 250kmh, which is about 150mph. you notice an absence of bumps, noise, and smell. All is quite, not cell phones, no noise, peace, and beauty. Oh my God, what beauty. Going to Nagoya, some 2 hours away by speed train, I had the countryside on my right for the entire trip. At first, while leaving Tokyo, you notice that Tokyo seemingly doesn’t end! I kept waiting to find some demarcation, natural or otherwise, signifying that we had left Tokyo proper. But no. This is a huge city, and after a long, long time, it turned into smaller cities, followed by small villages that were separated by rice fields. Beautiful rice fields. Then back to smaller cities, and villages. All of these cities and villages had 3 to 10 story apartment buildings with one thing in common: clothing hanging on the balcony wash lines. You see hundreds of thousands of waving shirts, underwear, pants, skirts, etc. over a period of 45 minutes and it is hauntingly beautiful. The absence of people was something else I noticed. “Where is everyone?” I asked myself. Not on the streets, not sitting in their balconies. They were at school, at work, or at the market getting fresh food for tonight. These people do not sit around on their asses at home. They are active, and with purpose. Now, back to the train. We are cruising at 250kmh and this lady comes by with her cart. She shows me a menu and I am amazed that her tiny little cart has over 20 drinks, 15 food items, and some other stuff I could not recognize. She gave me a freshly brewed singly shot cup of coffee that was outstanding. Price: $3. Not bad. When we were returning from Nagoya back to Tokyo (after a very successful meeting with a very powerful man, the details of which I will not share in this log) the 3 other Japanese partners became my best friend, and we had beer, sake, and dried squid together. It was great! By the way, the squid tastes like beef jerky, minus the beef, plus fish.

Japan Thoughts Vol. 1

Copyright Notice: All Rights Reserved