Eastern Exploration

Initial thoughts

San Francisco to Narita. The ten hours I spent in the air were quite possibly the best I’ve ever spent on an international flight. United served us food that was more palatable than any other airline barring Air France (who really impressed me with wine, cheese & fresh baguettes) and more of it than anyone. They didn’t even charge us for it. We watched Ice Age (rather cute and funny) and The Island (you gotta love sci-fi, even when it’s bad). I had a vague ambition of taking that time to teach myself the katakana, but that disappeared in favor of practicing phrases and getting started on “The Tale of Murasaki”—a wonderful piece of historical fiction about the woman who wrote the world’s first novel, the Tale of Genji. The hours flew by. One of them disappeared altogether, since we arrived a full hour ahead of schedule.

Disembarking. We all cheered when the plane hit the ground. Anja was irrepressibly excited. Walking through Narita Airport, we were all on the hunt for hints of Japan, and we found plenty: moving walkways that stopped moving when nobody was on them, giant TV screens in the waiting areas, men hired specifically for the task of welcoming you to the downstairs escalator (I’m not kidding), intelligent baggage carousels that laid bags in a neat little row (and still had a white-gloved assistant to perfect the job), adorably uniformed women working the service counters… and the fashion. Within five minutes of leaving the plane, I could already tell that I was in a world where the way you composed your appearance mattered about ten times what it does in the States. Not even New York can compare for the sheer quantity of stylish attire that these people wear. London and Barcelona were better than New York, but they’ve got nothing on Tokyo. I hardly understand most of it—only Anja could even begin tell you why they wear what they do, and what it stands for. But there’s a clearly a language to their clothing, and it’s spoken with great fluency.

Arriving in the city. We took a “limousine bus” into the city, which roughly translates as “airporter.” The views out the window started out pretty normal: a toll-road expressway with lots of energy-efficient cars like station wagons and minivans, a few interchanges here and there, some industrial areas and office buildings… and then came the city. Oh. My. God. For comparison, I’m trying to think through the other big cities I’ve been to: New York, London, Mexico City, Tel Aviv. Montreal. They’ve all got roughly the same profile, just variations on a shared theme: low-lying buildings for most of the area, surrounding a concentrated zone packed with skyscrapers. The low-lying buildings are usually no more than four stories or so, and the big aesthetic question as you approach is whether there are any skyscrapers that actually justify their prominent position in the skyline. The answer is usually yes, for one or two, but no more. Mexico City was probably the least impressive of all those I listed, since the city center itself is mostly populated by four-story buildings. Well, as we got into the urban area, it was clear that Tokyo was an entirely different story. Same theme, perhaps, but magnified at least three times. Instead of four or five-story outlying buildings, Tokyo’s are fifteen or twenty. Each takes up about half a block. We went through a sea of them, gawking, occasionally craning our necks to check out one or another whose architect really earned his keep. None were run down. 90% had external stairways, which was kind of odd. Mostly very functional, but built in such impossible numbers—in the course of fifteen minutes’ drive, I think I saw more physically engineered human space than exists in the entire lovely city of San Francisco.

Walking the streets. There was a bit of a distance to cover between the airporter and our intended ryokan, so we got an immediate first taste of Tokyo street navigation. First lesson: while some ads are in English, as are many store signs, forget trying to figure out the street signs. It’s just impossible. Second lesson: don’t get depressed about the first lesson, or worried in the least about losing your way, because Tokyoites are helpful beyond belief. We asked a policeman in broken Japanese whether we were on the right street, and he happily confirmed it for us. We later asked two random girls whether we’d passed our turn, and they fussed over us with what little English they had for easily twice as long as was necessary, making extra sure that we knew exactly where to go. (I’ve since heard that some people will even take you where you need to go, just so you get there safely.) We made it to our ryokan, got checked in, realized that what counts as a room for three is what an American would call a walk-in closet, and took off for more streetwalking. Third lesson: small streets that are lit up like Christmas trees with lights and signs and flashing neon are, in fact, for four things—cheap eats, pachinko parlors, porn and love hotels. Oh, and Yakuza: I spotted a rather distinctive looking young man wearing long hair that sort of exploded out from his head, a black suit, white shirt and no tie; Anja informed me that this was fairly standard thugwear. I found myself curiously unable to fear the guy, since to me he looked like just another twentysomething out with his friends for a good night on the town. (Just… a little overdressed.) After sampling a pachinko parlor full of cigarette smoke and overwhelmingly chaotic noise, we decided to go for the cheap eats. There were no end of places to choose from, so we found one with a pictorial menu and made our way upstairs. We tried to order green tea, but the waiter did his best to explain that they only had Chinese tea. Confused, we accepted the offer, and it was only a few minutes later that it dawned on us that we’d found the single restaurant in the district serving Chinese food. The meal was delicious, entirely different from anything I’d eaten stateside, and cost about half again as much as I would have expected to pay at home. In other words: just as I expected.

Losing seventeen hours. My laptop hasn’t quite caught on to the local time, and it’s actually quite helpful to know that my body is still clinging to the belief that it’s 10:47AM on Friday. I’m sure it’ll come around. After all, it’s not a fair fight: my stubborn circadian rhythm versus all of Tokyo trying to convince it that it is in fact Saturday morning at 3:47AM. (My circadian took its first punch from the fact that we didn’t crawl into bed until 6:30AM PST.) When I woke up, I had the unmistakable feeling that there was no way in the world that I was going to get back to sleep—the same feeling I’ve had many times after going out dancing til dawn, only to be reminded that I’m entirely without the ability to sleep far beyond my usual wakeup time. God knows how long it’ll take to adjust entirely, but since today holds a solid 20 hours of wakefulness in store, I’m sure my rhythms will succumb to the shock therapy sooner rather than later.

Random observations. Cold coffee with a Starbucks-like logo, called Mt. Rainier. Coffee right next to it called Maxim. Pornographic manga right by the entrance of the corner store. A panoply of mysterious vitamin and herb-packed energy drinks that we daren’t sample. Engrish everywhere, some of it just hilarious. An establishment called “Violence.” (Not quite clear what kind of service they were selling.) Finding a sign with psychedelic swirly colors that was, in fact, a head shop that carried fliers for techno parties. No garbage cans anywhere. No homeless people anywhere. Many, many bicycles. Almost as many motorcycles. No open space.

posted by Noah Flower @ 10:05 PM