One mini-project I worked on while I was home was documenting as much of my surroundings as I could in photographs for my friends back in China. Kind of the reverse of what I do normally, documenting China for my friends in America. A reversing of the anthropological gaze, if you will. As expected, my pictures of home, of Christmas dinner, of Marin's park lands, of my aunt's home in the forest, attracted a lot of interest and admiration from my Chinese friends.
I routed my ticket home for the holidays with a short stopover in Seoul on the home-bound leg, and a slightly longer stopover in Tokyo on the China-bound leg. Neither stopover was long enough to absorb much in-depth understanding of these two northeastern neighbors of China, but I did gain some fleeting impressions.
SEOUL
Seoul was truly a brief visit. To fit within the airline's guidelines, my stopover had to be less than 24 hours. Factor in transit time to and from the airport (Seoul Incheon is 70 kilometers away from the city center) and my time in Seoul was truly on the timer.
I arrived in the city center at about 10:30 pm, got off the subway station nearest my hostel, and immediately got lost. My hostel didn't provide a map, just directions which were entirely subjective. "Turn left at the Baskin Robbins"? "Left" depends on where you're standing in relation to the Baskin Robbins. It was near the university and the region was buzzing with young people, eating, drinking, shopping. Bright lights, fashionable stores, cheap eateries. What struck me about the place was how pedestrian-friendly everything was. The streets were narrow, more designed for people than cars. Eventually, I found the hostel, "Bong House". I wonder how many potheads show up at Bong House not realizing the name comes from the proprietor's actual name, Mr. Bong. Grabbed dinner in a noodle house. Three 30-something Korean women invited me to their table to eat and speak in broken English. They were all married and liked cracking jokes at their husbands' expense.
Next morning, up early to take in the sights. It was a chilly but clear day, with temperatures around freezing. Patches of snow from a recent snowfall remained on the ground. I walked up the hill behind the hostel to wander around the university campus. From high, the view over the city was quite good. I was struck by the appearance of this city...nothing like Chinese cities, something much more resembling San Francisco. Smaller scale buildings, a variety of colors, the city rising and falling with the undulations of the underlying topography.
Wandered back down the hill and towards the city center. This time, wandering through the busy lit-up district of the previous night, it was totally dead. Sunday morning in Seoul. Half the population is in church.
That would be the theme all day - it was a quite, cold, Sunday morning, and a lot of businesses were closed. No matter, there's peace in silence. I wandered through several central city districts, following my Dad's advice stopping to see the recently refurbished urban river park running through the center of town, the tourist shopping district, the old town district, the national palace. I was very impressed by the overall design acumen of Seoul. A city of elegant, distinctive buildings, interesting uses of color, and varied buildings materials. You simply do not see modern buildings made of wood in China. Come afternoon, off to the airport for the flight home.
TOKYO
Three and a half weeks later, after a good visit home to California, I'm back on a plane over the Pacific, this time flying into Tokyo Narita, also a great distance from its city center. Three trains/subways and an hour and a half later I arrive in the western suburb of Shajuki-Koen, where I'm to try couchsurfing for the first time. My host is Katsumi, a 32 year old salesman who lives in a tiny apartment that costs something like $2000 a month (his company subsidizes most of the cost). I'm to sleep on a mat on the floor. I don't complain because in Tokyo this is a good deal - free accommodation, and with a friendly, willing local. Katsumi's busy in the office during the day, but during my three night stay in Tokyo I'll meet up with him each evening for dinner or drinks, along with several of his group of friends, both Japanese and foreigner.
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| Katsumi and me |
Having done a bit of preparation and studying of maps, I know that Tokyo is a huge city, the largest metropolis in the world. That in itself is quite remarkable. Most of the world's largest metropolises are in developing countries - India, Brazil, China. Japan's anything but. It was the pinnacle of development back in the 80s. Since then it seems to have been treading water. It doesn't seem poor, run-down, or even on the decline. But it seems a bit paralyzed in time, cognizant that it hit its stride early on, and ran out of places to go, and now that other places (like China) are catching up there's a quite a bit of self-doubt just below the surface. Some of this existential crisis probably serves as an impetus for some of the strange cultural phenomenon that stand out and make this place uniquely weird. I'll get into that a bit later.
But back to the layout of this huge city. Tokyo's a city without a real center. It's got many centers, most of them on the JR (Japan Rail) Yamanote Line, which encircles the core central area of the city and connects numerous huge train stations, which serve commuter rail lines which span out into the suburbs. It is the combination of these commuter lines and the JR Yamanote line (along with subway lines) which earn these stations the title of "busiest railroad stations in the world", with millions of passengers passing through daily. I got a dose of that traveling at rush hour. It's a calamitous scene, but somehow it all works. People squeeze in, but don't push and shove like they do in China. It's a society used to living in confined spaces.
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| west suburb commuter line map (just one small part of the overall system) |
I covered a lot of ground in the three days I was in Tokyo. I rode a lot of subways and trains to get from place to place. Tokyo's annoying in that its urban transit system is operated by several different companies. You can pass seamlessly from one system to another, but each time you do you pay the full fare. This can add up. Half my budget in Tokyo those three days was spent on transportation.
The other half, of course, on food. I certainly ate well while I was in Tokyo. Japanese food might just be the best cuisine on earth as far as I'm concerned. Of course there were the expected favorites - sushi, sashimi (the freshest I've ever tasted), udon noodles, tempura, teriyaki. But then there were so many delights that I'd never associated as Japanese before. These were mostly located in the food court basements of the large department stores. Veritable wonderlands of culinary delicacies. A feast for the eyes as well as the taste buds. The department store foodcourts spanned hundreds of stations selling everything under the moon, from meats to salads to soybean fermented vegetables, to pickled vegetables, to bakery treats. It all looked so delicious. Unfortunately, it was also all very expensive. Several stations offered free samples, which I partook of with relish. Bento boxes galore, containing hundreds of combinations of little doses of cold deli items like seaweed and pickled vegetables, along with bigger helpings of meat and rice. I did feel a pang of jealousy walking through those food halls that maybe I'd chosen the wrong Asian country to live in.
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| sashimi |
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| mochi |
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| vegetables in fermented soybean paste |
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| beef rice and udon noodles |
What else can I say about Tokyo? I covered pretty much all the main areas of interest - the "old" town and temples of Asakusa, the downtown business district of Ginza, the fish market of Tsukiji, the electronics and anime district of Akihabara, the high class residential and shopping district of Roppongi, the youth district and Tokyo's answer to Times Square, Shibuya, and the skyscraper and entertainment and red light district of Shinjuku. I don't need to describe all the sights in detail. You can get that from any tourist guidebook. I'll just describe some general impressions, instead.
The fish market was worth the visit. A habitual stop on most tourists' itineraries, it is a real live working fish market, perhaps the biggest and most valuable one in the world. Auctions of giant blue fin tuna flown in from the waters off the coast of New England have been known to fetch prices in the tens of thousands of dollars for a single fish. By the time I arrived at 9:00 the auctions were already over, and the market was winding down for the day. I did browse amongst some of the strangest sea creatures I've ever seen, though. The sushi stalls out back behind the market are known to have some of the best sushi in the world, as evidenced by the two hour long lines of people waiting for their turn for ten minutes at the standing-only sushi bar. I didn't wait in line. I went to the cheaper, less famous one down the road.
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| squid |
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| sea urchins |
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| octopus |
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| tuna |
Shibuya was probably the most interesting of the main districts. To the west is "Love Hotel Hill", where Tokyo couples go for a few hours of privacy to have sex. To the north is Harajuku, the youth fashion district. This is where you see all the kids in bizarre clothes, crazy died hair, mohwaks, you name it. Tokyo has definitely developed a youth culture unto itself. The amount of money and time some of the girls (and boys) spend to completely alter their appearances make you wonder what road Tokyo is heading down. I also couldn't help but notice the abundance of girls and women dressed in short skirts, their bare legs naked to the January chill. This you would never see in China, and probably not in the US either (at least, in colder climates). What are these Japanese girls thinking? Katsumi explained to me "they're either looking for a boyfriend, or they're trying to please their boyfriends". What a chauvinistic culture that men place such demands on women in the depths of winter.
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| youth "bizarre" fashion in Harajuku |
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| youth "princess" fashion in Harajuku |
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| youth "punk" fashion in Harakuku |
Unfortunately, short skirts are not the only sign of a chauvinistic culture. Anyone who's had any exposure to the Japanese pornography industry knows what I'm talking about it. I've seen a bit in my days, and its some peculiar, sadistic stuff. Every scenario seems to show poor, submissive, girls being taken advantage of by aggressive men, rape-like scenarios where the girl is never shown to enjoy the act of sex, but to have it inflicted upon her, the passive victim. Having read Paul Theroux's description of a seven-floor porn emporium in Tokyo I had to have a look for myself. Each floor up gets progressively weirder. I'm pretty sure there was stuff in that store that would be illegal in the United States. Frankly, the first floor was the most disturbing. This is the "loli", or "lolita" section. Clearly underage girls, 14, 12act of sex, but to have it inflicted upon her, the passive victim. Having read Paul Theroux's description of a seven-floor porn emporium in Tokyo I had to have a look for myself. Each floor up gets progressively weirder. I'm pretty sure there was stuff in that store that would be illegal in the United States. Frankly, the first floor was the most disturbing. This is the "loli", or "lolita" section. Clearly underage girls, 14, 12, 10 years old, prancing around in bikinis and lingerie. No full on nudity or sex, but clearly presented in a provocative manner. And marketed to grown men for $40 a DVD. An entire floor of this. Something's wrong here.
Akihabiara is the anime/manga center of Tokyo. The young folks, and adults too, it seems, are very into this stuff. Judging by the distribution of the crowds in the bookshops, they read more of these cartoonish graphic novels than they do real books. Also maybe not such a good sign for the future of Japan. A number of young people have taken to dressing up like the characters in these graphic novels. There are whole stores in Akihabara selling the makeup, fake eyelashes, wigs, maid uniforms, schoolgirl uniforms, and whatnot needed to turn oneself into a cartoon character.
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| uniforms in Akihabara |
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| accoutrement of anime fans - everything a young Japanese girl needs to turn herself into a big-eyed, blonde-haired zombie |
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| schoolgirl uniforms |
And then there are the 7 floor manga emporiums. In one of them, floors one through three were set aside for the family-friendly manga, flours four through seven for the "adults only" manga. You can guess which floors were most packed with customers. Noon on a weekday in Tokyo and floors four through seven were jam-packed with adult men, and a few women, buying pornographic comic books. Based on the covers, the whole lolita child pornography theme seems to run through the comic book industry as well. Next door to this manga emporium was another, this one with four floors of women-only cartoon porn. My oh my, the most peculiar markets exist in Tokyo!
Also filling Akihabara are the so-called "maid cafes", coffees shops where the waitresses wear french maid outfits, and coffee costs $10 a cup. I saw a map guide to the district that indicated at least 30 different maid cafes. Jeez!
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| advertisements for "maid cafes" |
North of Shinjuku is the Kabukicho red light district. Having heard its a very seedy place at night, I took a stroll through during the day when most of the strip clubs and sex clubs were still closed, gleaning what I could from the signs outside instead. What I gleaned was that they have a sex club for every fetish, every taste. They have clubs with Japanese women, clubs with Chinese and Korean women, clubs with Filipina and Thai women, clubs with British and American women. Clubs with fat women. Clubs with pregnant women. They also have clubs with men, for women customers.
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| "fat" hostess club |
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| male host club |
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| "american and british honky tonk ladies" |
Alright, enough of that. Sorry to dwell so much on of the seedy side of Tokyo. I have to admit though, its very much part of the Tokyo aura, the infamous seedy perverted vein that runs under this culture. Fortunately, not all of Tokyo is like this.
My host Katsumi seemed a nice enough chap. He comes from a smaller city and lives alone in Tokyo in a company that buys and sells raw ingredients used for animal feed. I honestly wasn't sure why such a company needed to be in downtown Tokyo, but who am I to ask? He makes $60,000 a year, many times over what anyone in China would make in a similar job. His housing is mostly subsidized, as is his subway pass. That leaves food and entertainment as his biggest expenses. Indeed, this seems a common trend. I went out with him and some other foreigners one night to a Mexican restaurant. A burrito there costs the equivalent of $20, I kid you not!
His Japanese friends were nice people, too. Various white collar workers, none of them rich, but able to enjoy the nightlife and youth culture of this metropolis. Most of them spoke at least some broken English. Not to different from China. I was particularly curious though about the foreigners living in Japan, and comparing them to the ones I know in China. Who were these people? Why did they choose Japan of all places? Didn't they know Japan was yesterday's news? One admitted specifically that he had considered both Japan and China, and chose Japan because it was more developed and internationalized. Okay. He was doing pretty much the same thing in Japan that many foreigners do in China - studying the language, and teaching English. He made more money doing the latter than his counterpart in China would, but given the cost of living, I doubt he saved as much. A few of the expats had been in Japan for many years. I guess they just had made enough of an investment that they were going to keep making a go of it, even if the Japanese economy continues to sputter down a downward spiral.
I met a couple of middle-aged Japanese people who wanted to speak English with me. One, a man in his 60s on a subway train, very gregarious, in the textile industry. One, a woman also in her 60s, at a shrine tucked in between two skyscrapers in the central business district. She was an English major in college back in the 70s, and she told me how she works to keep up her English even now, listening to books on tape, and speaking to foreigners like me.
A couple blocks away from that shrine I happened upon something called the "urban farm". Inside a skyscraper in downtown Tokyo were rice paddies, vegetable gardens, all interspersed in an office building settings. It was all open to the public, with fliers explaining the company's philosophy and products in English. The company is in the business of selling hydroponic equipment, stuff to turn any office into an "urban garden". It was a pretty cool environment so I stayed for a while and had a cup of coffee in the attached cafe. Cheapest coffee in the whole city, just a dollar. The salad (made from vegetables grown in the building of course) was free. Background music was provided by a woman playing the grand piano. A random discovery, this urban farm, but one of the highlights of my visit. Something totally unexpected, but also seemingly very Japanese - using high technology to make the best use out of limited space.
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| rice paddy in the urban farm |
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| meeting space in the urban farm |
And that's another theme that runs throughout Tokyo. Its a very efficient city. Excellent transportation. Tall, narrow buildings. Parking garages where cars are lifted up by automated elevators. And yet for all its density, it still retains a very pedestrian-friendly ambiance, not unlike Seoul. Apart from a handful of skyscraper districts, the majority of the buildings in Tokyo are not that big. They are human-scaled. The streets, too, are human-scaled. There are few wide boulevards cutting through the city like in Chinese and American cities. There is not even much automobile traffic on the streets, as almost everyone rides the subway. From a design perspective, Tokyo is still cutting-edge, and a very attractive city. In these aspects, it is very different than China, whose cities, aesthetically at least, are pretty ugly.
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| small scale streetscapes in urban Tokyo |
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| small scale streetscapes in urban Tokyo |
When I ask my Chinese friends what they think of Japan, they aren't likely to point to its efficiency or its urban design. They're likely to say that Japanese girls are, alternately, sexy, or "open" (a Chinese euphemism for "slutty"). And they're likely to mention the war, which they still haven't forgiven the Japanese for. One reason they haven't forgiven the Japanese for the war is the Yasakuni Shrine, which I visited on my last day in Tokyo.
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| controversial Yasakuni Shrine |
There are thousands of Shinto shrines in Tokyo, but the Yasakuni is particularly controversial as the resting place of the souls of Japan's millions of war dead, including hundreds of which are convicted war criminals. If the shrine were merely a monument to the fallen soldiers, the pawns if you will, that might be one thing. But the fact that the masterminds of the Japanese war of aggression, the people behind such injustices as the Nanjing Massacre, as the inhuman medical testing that Japanese doctors performed on Chinese victims, that these evil-doers are enshrined, by name, in this sacred site in downtown Tokyo, that just rubs the Chinese and the Koreans and all the other victims of the war in the wrong way. As does the fact that until very recently, the Japanese prime minister made annual visits to the shrine to pay his respects. Being drawn to politics and intrigue I had to see the shrine for myself. If I hadn't known what the shrine was infamous for, had I simply wandered into its grounds while exploring the city, I never would have known. It looks like any other shrine, a peaceful garden, and traditional Shinto buildings. Some antique dealers sell their wares outside the entrance, and a snack stand sells fried octopus balls and coffee. There were no signs in English so I couldn't decipher what exactly was said about the souls resting inside. On that cold January morning a handful of visitors made their way around the grounds. I couldn't help but wonder if the Chinese indignation was slightly blown out of proportion. Is the prime ministers' visit here any different than a US presidents' visit to the Vietnam War Memorial? Paying one's respects to the dead doesn't necessarily condone the war itself, does it? And though the souls of a few hundred war criminals, the really evil ones, do rest here, so do the souls of millions of soldiers who were just following orders. Later, on the internet, I came across a documentary film about this shrine. Directed by a Chinese filmmaker, but with the support and even funding of the Japanese government, it looks very interesting.
Three days is enough to see most of the major sites in Tokyo, but not enough to get any firm grasp on Japan. I would have liked to see some of Japan outside of Tokyo. Maybe that will wait until another trip. Japan is presented in Western culture and media as one of the most different places in the world. Think of Lost in Translation, in which Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray drift through Tokyo like lost souls, totally disconnected from their surroundings. After living in China for two years, I didn't feel that same disconnectedness in Tokyo. Of course, there was the language barrier. But I didn't feel like Japan is any more different from America than China, or Hong Kong, or Thailand. And those places, I feel, have a lot of similarities with the West these days. But I was happy to be heading back to China, heading back to my friends, back to a country where the cost of living is so low, and where the people are, I think its fair to say, more humble, more down to earth. A place where girls dress appropriately in the winter, and pornography is outlawed. Where the sushi is tasteless because Kunming lies a thousand miles from the sea and the fish is frozen. After Japan, I may never be able to eat Chinese sushi again!
Links to two photo albums of Tokyo on flickr:
Tokyo "cool"/Tokyo "weird"
Tokyo architecture and streetscapes
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