Japan Part I

I spent the last sixteen hours of my time in Japan travelling to Haneda Airport in Tokyo to catch my flight home. Three trains and a plane and for the majority of that time I was by myself for the first time in ten days. As I was waiting at Kansai Airport awaiting my connecting flight, a wave of sadness washed over me. This didn’t surprise me as my adventure was coming to an end and I was all alone in a vast cavernous airport, but it was a frustrating and unpleasant way to be feeling when I hadn’t even left Japan yet. So to battle it I sat down and began writing down notes about my favorite moments from the week. Four pages later I had written about pretty much every moment of the entire week, and I no longer felt sad. I had just let the week wash over me and jotted it down as it went along. I’ve been wanting to post about my experiences but it’s been hard because it’s all so much and I haven’t known where or how to start. So I finally said screw it, I’m just going to start. I’ll try to keep things roughly chronological.

I’ll dive in with the food. I have always been a picky eater. For most of my life I was fine with that and deathly afraid of anything unfamiliar. It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve embraced unfamiliar food, and even then I’ve been particular about WHICH food I embrace. When Jenn and I arrived at the airport at 2am (6pm our time) we immediately walked to a restaurant. As I looked over the menu I decided that while in Japan I would not shy away from any type of food, no matter what. The absolution was very important, as any exceptions could be a slippery slope right back to only eating rice. I normally practice vegetarianism but I put that on hold in the spirit of embracing the cuisine. I’m happy to say that I stuck to my decision and tried dozens of foods which just a few years ago would have left me politely requesting more bread. I even tried octopus and raw egg (not together). I didn’t love everything but there wasn’t a single thing that I didn’t enjoy. And I discovered that unfamiliar food tastes better when you try it with an open mind.

We ate at many different types of restaurants. Many of the “sit down” restaurants give you your own enclosed space rather than tables on an open floor. We were given a device that looked like a doorbell which was for summoning our server. These restaurants generally do not have entrees, instead you have many different dishes of smaller size. During a typical dinner we probably summoned our server seven or eight times to order the next round of food and drinks. The servers were always friendly and enthusiastic. In one establishment the entire serving and kitchen staff would monitor the door and whenever someone entered the staff loudly welcomed them in unison.

The positive atmosphere emanating from the staff was not unique to restaurants. Every time I entered a business of any kind, from hotels to convenience stores, I was cheerfully greeted by the staff. I couldn’t communicate verbally when Jenn wasn’t around to be my translator so shopping involved a lot of gesturing and smiling but I never felt like a pest. I felt like my business was being appreciated in a real and immediate sense. I was told that Japan has a very strong sense of loyalty and when it comes to employment and that all employees typically identify themselves by their job, regardless of what it is. This can have negative consequences as well. Apparently it is often difficult to change careers or even jobs in Japan due to the disloyalty it implies. In America people change jobs constantly and very rarely do they give a second thought to any sort of obligation unless they’ve signed a contract. For better or for worse though, the custom made for a pleasant experience every single time.

While in Tokyo we visited Akihabara, the famous “Electric Town,” which lived up to its name. Our mission was to find a special flash drive for my friend Scott (we never found it), but we also took time to check out the arcades and other types of stores. We looked at vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, rice cookers, televisions, back massagers, cameras, and pretty much anything that requires electricity. Many of the first floor establishments were selling models and figurines of anime characters, largely sexually themed. It was interesting to see how things America considers “adult” and “not for children” were not hidden from children in the way they are here (there were beer and cigarette vending machines too). The “adult” items were generally mixed in with everything else. One of the shops was a gun store which confused me until Jenn explained that they were all models, not real guns. They looked real to me. There were swords too, and I’m pretty sure those were real.

We stepped into a video game arcade that was four or five stories tall. I wasn’t interested in playing so much as just seeing what it was like in there. Every floor was unbelievably crowded. Smoking was allowed and the rooms had that haze in the air. Various ashtrays adorned the games with people staring at their screens with intense focus, pausing for the occasional puff. There was one floor entirely dedicated to a single game called Milky Blood. The room had easily forty units set up and every single one was taken. Many of them had lines of three or four people waiting. I watched over someone’s shoulder and decided I wasn’t going to bother trying. All of the machines were linked together and the players were fighting each other in a massive free for all battle royale involving samurai, kung-fu fighters and giant robots. And it was all in Japanese. I wouldn’t have stood a chance.

While I was in Tokyo I first experienced the thing I am most thankful for. I am a white guy from California and before Japan I had never experienced being a minority. Suddenly I was in a place where nobody looked like me or talked like me. I couldn’t read signs or newspapers or train maps. I wasn’t familiar with the customs and was constantly worried about acting inappropriately. I found myself closely observing other people doing things like making purchases or climbing steps so that I could copy their behavior. I was very aware of the fact that I was the anomaly. Even though I consider myself an open minded person, it was an incredibly humbling and sobering experience. I’m comfortable with the fact that the world is very large and I am very small but this experience gave me new perspective on just how big the world is and how miniscule I am. This is not a bad thing, quite the contrary. I want to have as clear a perspective as I can regarding the world and my place in it and I am grateful for the chance to briefly see things through the eyes of the minority. And getting a glimpse of just how large the world is has made me want to see more of it.

We may have started in Tokyo but our vacation involved a lot of travel. We had purchased Japan Rail Passes for the week, meaning that we could ride any train that was part of the JR line, which includes the Shinkansen bullet trains. The Shinkansen reaches speeds of 150mph and it’s smoother than a BART train. Being inside didn’t feel odd, it just felt like a smooth train, but looking out the window was disorienting at first because my body didn’t feel like it was going as fast as my eyes told me it was. I spent hours staring out the windows at the endless scenery. The three things that I remember most were houses, power stations, and rice paddies. Our destination was Osaka and I’ll save that for next time.