The fun house mirror

Tokyo :: Japan

A bit of a quick sum up.

Places: Tokyo

Coolest thing I did: Saw a shopping centre with a zoo in it. A zoo I tell you. Are these people mad?

Coolest thing I didn´t know: In Japan Astroboy was known as Mighty Atom. I think their way is cooler.

So tomorrow I leave Japan and I have to say it's more than lived up to my expectations. I wasn't sure what to expect from the whole thing but from the mountains of snowboarding to the piles of history, I've had a ball. Of all the places I visited I have to say Tokyo is my favourite. Many people have told me they liked everything except Tokyo, but I get the feeling that this is what life is like for the vast majority of Japan's population, which is strikingly urban. I guess I feel more comfortable in big cities myself.

While I learned more than I ever wanted to know about Buddhism, Shinto, Japanese history and the like it's been the vision of the future and just watching the Japanese do their thing that I've liked the best. Watching them go about their business I get the idea that these people have childhoods that extend far longer than ours. I've seen women in their 20s walking down the street dressed as French Maids (apparently French maid is the new Schoolgirl for those who like to dress up), grown men paying $USD800 for one of those old game and watch machines, shops stuffed with comics and readers of all ages, shops that sell models of everything from Godzilla to Transformers and all the patrons are older than me. I swear these people are all kids!

From what I've read the post-War building boom has fueled an economy where everyone works hard and then has to find something to spend all their money on. I've mentioned the consumerism but there also seems to be this need for novelty, and to have a collection of something, no matter if it's vinyl records, porno comics or foot high robot models. Everyone needs a massive amount of novelty. Work and spend.

The cultural relativists will tell you that it's a shame that these people are losing the rigid culture they once had, that their national character is being replaced by a monoculture that stems from all that is evil in the US system. I tend to disagree with that. You only have to take a look around Tokyo for a day to recognise the inspiration for a fair deal of the West's popular culture, design and fashion. Thought we probably are gaining a global culture, it's not all one way traffic. I get sick of know it all guidebooks and backpackers scoffing at those who eat McDonalds here and don't experience the culture. You just have to look around to see the Japanese aren't hung up on these things, so why should we be? They are both embracing and extending the global culture of our generation so it would be foolish to go looking for "the real Japan" (as someone in the hostel put it to me) because Tokyo IS THE REAL JAPAN. The small number of people living in little farming hamlets and cultivating rice with a bullock cart are doing so because that's what the tourists want to see. I am personally more interested in what Japan is, not what it was.

I was sitting in a bar in Shibuya last night (the Insomnia Lounge, you walk around barefoot because it's all shag carpet, choice!) and a couple of guys sitting next to me at the bar stuck up a conversation with me. One of them was born only a week before me (1977 and all!) and does exactly the same kind of work as me, not only the Sun Unix geekery but the EMC and Cisco as well. So here I am, confronted with what my life would have probably been like if I was born to Japanese parents. It made me realise how lucky I am to have the life I do. These guys said they thought I was a musician because all the IT guys in Japan wear suits 6 days a week (because they work 6 days a week and often Sunday from home). They were stunned to hear I've lived in so many countries and just take time off to travel between contracts and countries. Both are barely out of Uni (that's how it works here) and should have been married 2 or 3 years ago, according to their parents. They work, then go out drinking 3 or 4 nights a week to go looking for girls. The studio the bloke my age lived in apparently has enough room for a single bed, a sink/kitchen/bathroom and a clothes rack. They also get paid about half what I do, even though this is the most expensive country I've ever seen (and I've seen a few).

Before this trip I was starting to question whether my life of drifting around is starting to wear thin and should I be thinking more about a career and becoming more settled. I think Japan has shown me just what a society based on the extreme of career and consumption looks like and it's made me more resolute that I've not wasted the last 7 or 8 years. That could have been me working 6 days a week, 50+ weeks a year with little to show for it. If nothing else this trip has given me some perspective on things and I'm much happier with life.

Right, I've enjoyed Japan but it's nearly time to fly back to Dublin. St Patricks Day awaits!

Big city, bright lights

Tokyo :: Japan

Spend, Spend, SPEND!.

Places: Tokyo, Nikko & Kamakura

Coolest thing I did: For about 30 mins I was the coolest white bloke in Tokyo. Then more white people showed up and I was no longer.

Coolest thing I didn´t know: The three wise monkeys live in Japan.

So I'm back from the country to the big city. On the Shink
I spent far more time looking out the window that on the trips down and
I found out a couple of things. One is that from Kobe to Tokyo (and I
imagine even further north) there is no end to the urbanization as it
goes from skyscrapers to suburbs to heavy industry and back again
several times. It's staggering to think just how many people they've
fit on this island. I also saw Mount Fuji and at this time of year it's
probably as close as I'm going to get as they tend to discourage people
from climbing it when it's covered in snow and avalanche prone.
Spoilsports. Now all my pictures (taken from a train moving at about
200kph) are all blurry and have telephone poles in the foreground.

I chose to return to Tokyo for the weekend instead of going south some
more because despite all the party work our group did last time around
I felt there was more to be found. And was there ever. I'm staying in a
hostel in Asakusa
(because they are all there, because it's cheap and dodgy) so if you
want to hit the better places to go out the only option is to stay out
all night and wait for the subway to re-open at 6am. My first night I
headed out alone to Shibuya in armed with nothing but one address (from the Time Out webpage
) of a bar and some high hopes. Thank God it all worked out. After
trying a few bars around ｔｈａｔ seemed to be filled mostly with salary
men I wandered through darkened alley ways until I found the place. It
was an unnamed bar, all painted red with chandeliers on the ceilings and
most importantly, no other white people. Up until this point I'd either
been in seedy bars with all Japanese people or places haunted by Westerners
so for the half hour I sat there with some very cool looking Japanese
people I ｈａｄ no hope of communicating with I felt very hip indeed.

As
it turns out this place appears to have recently crossed over into
ex-pat land from being mostly Japanese and it wasn't long before the
other Westerners started showing up. They were a quite good mix of
Antipodeans and Europeans and the Japanese English speakers who started
showing up seemed to be happy to mix with us. I ended up with a handful
of Japanese kids, a French girl, some bloke from Brisbane and his
Japanese wife and a Dutch girl in some nightclub halfway between Shibuya and Roppongi until about 9am. Great night out but I ended up being woken up by some friendly old ladies on Asakusa because I'd obviously been snoring on the train.

Saturday
was a bit different. I met some Canadians in the hostel who took me out
when they went to meet up with a Japanese DJ who they'd befriended
earlier in the week. Like South Africans, most Japanese seem to think
they areDJs. He told us to come out to Ikebukuro to a party he was playing at and while we were waiting for him outside Ikebukuro
station to pick us up we decided to make good use of a giant Kiwi we'd
brought with us. If you think I get stared at in Japan being just over
6ft tall, you want to see the stir someone who is 6'10" causes. People
were coming up to be photographed with him, and one bloke even put his
girlfriend on his shoulders and they were still shorter than him. It
was seeing the reactions on the kids faces when they first spotted him
that was the best.

The party turned out to be in a tiny club on the 6th
floor of some back alley building and we were a little concerned that
our party (which had added a couple of random Japanese people by this
time) doubled the crowd. However, everyone was very nice, even if they
spoke about 3 words of English between them, and as the night went on
it got much closer to packed. Great night out but the back to back all nighters took their toll (I'm 30 now, after all) and it was a very long ride home at 7am.

I spent the first couple of days back in Tokyo mostly retracing my steps
through the shopping districts to join the super-consumerism that makes
Japan famous. Many acrobatic feats of design have been achieved by the
retailers of Japan and some of the shops are just cool to go and look
at, no matter what the sell. I did, however, seem to have a hangover
induced
lowering of sales resistance and ended up with far too many new
T-shirts. For those who have time you want to take a look at the shops
aroundAoyama and just gawk at all the glass and chrome, even if you don't buy anything.

In my geekier days I used to read far my sci-fi than I do now and a reoccurring theme in the 80s was this idea that in the near future the urban dwellers would all live in arcologies, giant buildings that contained work, home and play all under one roof.
Trust the Japanese to have started building them. The development of Roppongi
Hills is residential-entertainment-retail extravaganza that just has to
be seen to be believed. I've since been told there is a newer
development in Shiodome that puts RH to shame so I guess people do
really want to live, work and shop in the same place. I wonder if this
will catch on in the West at all.

I have also spent some time doing some more cultured day trips from Tokyo to balance out all the Blade Runner city scapes I'm seeing all day and night otherwise. The town of Nikko
has some temples and shrines in it so I set out to see it and despite
some screwing up of trains (the further off the beaten track you go the
less English there is) I managed to get out there in time to see the
main temples. The highlight is the one with the original carvings of
the three wise monkeys (hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil) on
it. I was kind of glad it turned out to be a half day as Nikko was way
up in the hills and it was snowing when I got off the train. I wasn't
at all prepared for that so I was bloody freezing by the time I got out
of there.

Today was spent going the other direction, to Kamakura to see　a giant bronze Buddha.
That was pretty cool. I also saw lots more shrines and temples, but to
be honest they are starting to kind of just merge into one temple in my
mind now. They were still very nice temples and shrines. I especially
liked the one with all the Shinto demons and rulers of hell in it. I
guess in all religions, like all good stories the baddies get the best lines.

Back in Tokyo for the last stretch now, as I'm flying back to London on Friday.