Reprise: Japan and Me

I've decided to repost a series of articles from early 2007, when I last visited Japan. Here are the earliest ones, to be followed by others. This was a significant moment in my life. The stories I tried to tell from there seem to me now, in light of all that has happened since, as hopelessly naive.

But of course, that is when we are at our best, isn't it? When we have no idea that this moment is as good as it ever was to get.

Over the next few days, I'll try to repost the rest of this series. In retrospect, I had no idea at the time what I was getting myself into.

But that is another story altogether...



Back for my third visit to Japan but first in 20 years. It is pouring here tonight (Tuesday) even as Christmas night is ending back in San Francisco. The district where I stay, Koenji, is an old neighborhood criss-crossed with narrow brick alleyways and covered arcades, shotengai, filled with brightly lit shops open late at night. Lots of little restaurants and shops and book stores. Of course, the signiature KFC is here also, with one of the genuine Colonel Sanders statues out front. These are extremely popular in Japan, where the menu includes teriyaki chicken. A sports tradition has come to be involving throwing the Colonel into the river after a victory (or a loss). He's then retrieved, dried off, and placed back in front the franchise outlet from which he was pinched. His expression never changes.

Tokyo is a huge city where no one locks up their bicycles. People don't steal bicycles very often here and when they do, they often return them.

I'm so sleepy after my long flight, I'll close for now, and soon sleep to the sounds of rain outside the window.



It was a tremendous downpour that soaked the city as I arrived, and through most of the night. In the middle of the night, I awoke to light flashes over the city sky. Then, counting the seconds until the terrific booms of thunder, I could trace the storm's trailing edge, as it departed the city and traveled further inland, over this craggy, mountainous series of islands.

There are so many Japanese here! Hai! Tokyo has such a magnificent system of interconnecting railroads that most residents have no need for a car. If they have one, it is mainly for weekend use, and must be stored in a tiny parking place here or there for maybe $300-400US per month.

Therefore all, or much of life, is visible on the train. Only the older of the businessmen are able to be heading home at rush hour, just as I am traversing the city from Narita through Chiba to the brightly lit Shinjuku-ku, center of Tokyo nightlife. One more transfer over to Koenji, where I am staying some of the time here.

Tokyo is a city built around the main stations of the train systems ("Skyliner," and "JR," etc.) Life in the surrounding districts proceeds outward in concentric circles of apartments, shops, theatres, tiny bars, and so many small, cozy restaurants as to render home-cooking distinctly optional for employed persons. There is hardly any auto traffic in the inner circles of these tightly clustered neighborhoods.

Every district has a different flavor, but I do not know Tokyo at all well enough to describe these as yet. In this way, however, it reminds me of two other familiar places -- Paris, and Washington, D.C., the latter, of course, designed by a Frenchman.

As far as I know, the Japanese came up with this concept of circular cities within a grand city quite independent of the French, but the effect is similar. Think of Dupont Circle in D.C. and you'll picture what I mean.

Another interesting factor is that as they bisect these districts, the train lines themselves have developed distinct cultural nuances, favoring certain types of residents, restaurants, and shops. The line I ride to get here is one favored by artists, actors and writers. (Think "red line" on the Metro, or the subways that rumble to Prospect Park from Manhattan.)

Foreign investors, like Starbucks or KFC, first need to grasp these cultural nuances, of course, and the demographics that embrace and define them, in order to optimize their investments. American consumer brands, including McDonald's, have enthusiastically embraced by the Japanese, and tend to be very successful here.

Colonel Sanders himself was said to favor Japanese KFCs over all others (including Kentucky's) and the locals here hypothesize that it is because Japanese franchisees follow Colonel's formula so precisely and unerringly that one can be assured of a perfectly produced KFC meal, matching the original specifications without deviation, throughout Japan.

There are so many young women and men on the trains at rush hour and later. Like youth everywhere, they are always on the move. Japanese young people in the cities are especially stylish, from expensive torn jeans with designer labels on their butts, to sexy skirts and boots. The girls often link arms and sway together on the trains, giggling into each other's ears.

Fewer young men are about at this hour, because, as I said, this is the time when only the older executives who wish to go home, do so. By contrast, the stereotypical Japanese salary man may be in his 30s or 40s and holding down a middle-management position. These men work themselves almost literally to death. And, although they may have a wife and a child at home, when their workday finally ends later in the night, they often choose to go to bars and clubs to unwind.

There are certain clubs, I forget their name, where young female escorts await this clientele, serving them drinks, giving them companionship and conversation. The women serve as virtual dates for these hard-working salary men as they decompress from their stressful days. The drinking can go on for many hours, and if you are about in the wee hours of the night in Tokyo, you can see many men, drunkenly reeling on street corners, flagging a taxi for the ride home.

It is said that, for an extra fee, a man can purchase the affections of some of these young, flirtatious escorts after hours. This is, of course, by another name, prostitution, though distinct in type from that on display in the infamous Red Light District at Shinjuku-ku, which I hope to visit (in a strictly professional capacity as a journalist -- hai) in order to compare to the similar parts of Amsterdam and Paris, both of which alternatively sickened, fascinated, and saddened me.

The world's oldest profession, as an exchange of services for cash, strips sex of all romance, and therefore has never held even the slightest glimmer of attraction to me, as a male. Though I may be interested in female prostitutes as chaaracters for my novel, what I always desire for myself is more complex -- romance.

These tightly woven little neighborhoods strike me as nice places for a Romantic to live. The sounds and lights are stimulating at all hours of night and day. A foreign writer like me can easily rent a room or apartment on a weekly basis, set up a computer connection or visit a wireless cafe, and write happily for hours, drinking coffee, and eating the incomparable ramen, not the frozen Chinese variety, but a rich, spicy dish of noodles served pipingly hot in pork or chicken broth -- or vegetarian, if you prefer.

Soba places also abound. You can find somewhat more authentic soba in New York, Seattle and San Francisco than ramen places.

One never need step inside a car here, all needs are satisfied on foot or via a train ride. At night, if you wish, the tiny local bars accommodate perhaps ten patrons each, serving Japanese beers, sakes, and whisky.

Walking through the winding alleyways, I find my eyes seeking out English, naturally, as I can read no Japanese whatsoever. One sign is "Hot Hands" and pictures a young man and a young woman. This is a professional massage business, non-sexual, although it is said that for an extra fee, additional services may be procured. Again, this has a name, but I find it remarkable how unconcerned the typical Japanese person seems to be what in the Christian U.S. are considered the "sin crimes."

For instance, cigarettes are sold in the arcades in machines. There is little way to regulate underage smoking, which is frowned upon, but only in symbolic ways. What I mean by this is that during the daylight hours, teenagers cannot easily purchase smokes at this vending machines, because they are still wearing their school uniforms, and some adult will spot them, and come to shoo them away, shaming them.

At night, however, wearing their sexy clothes, makeup, and hats, the youth masquerade as adults, and many of them pursue their smoking habits by making after-hour purchases. This must be a source of tremendous upside market developments for the many American brands on display here. I have not done any solid research, but much like the Catholic Church, the tobacco industry's philosophy has always been to "get them when they are young."

I'm curious about the marketing campaigns these companies use here, whether the scandalous "Joe Camel" images, which originally targeted American youths, have proved effective here as well. Of, if, as I suspect, smoking is mainly sold for its supposed sex appeal. (Personally, I find tobacco breath offensive, but maybe that's only me. And it breaks my heart to see a beautiful young woman smoking; or a middle-aged man, hollow-eyed and hollow-chested, tied to his fag as to a ball and chain.)

One thing that has accelerated here since the early 80s, I believe, is female drinking. It was at least my impression at that time that while women shared beers and sake with men in the bars, that they rarely became as openly inebriated. But today, I am told, if you travel late at night, you can see so many young women passed out or sick on the trains or street corners.

Since most other people out at those hours are older men, it is said that many of these choose to act in a gentlemanly way, and help these inebriated young women get safely home.

That job is often left to taxi drivers, however, almost all of who in Japan also are men.

They say that drunken young women are the worst customers, because it is forbidden to touch them at any time, thus they cannot do as they do with drunken men, i.e., grab them by the shoulders and shake them awake.

The image of dozens of taxi drivers, helplessly yelling and waving their arms at the oblivious young women safely passed out in their backseats, their sexy tops and miniskirts awry, their makeup smudged, their long black hair spread like a wreath, all over Tokyo is somehow, I don't know, so Japanese!


Japan is like a painting in the following way. An artist arranges the elements, just so, and tries to bring out beauty from the shadows. The Japanese landscape somehow naturally arranges itself into a series of sensuous hills, green terraced rice fields, and wide rushing rivers filled with rounded stones of many colors.



As you ride in the sweetly named Romance Car out of Tokyo southwest to the mountains above Hakone, the air turns colder and wetter, and the stomach begins anticipating the area's dried fish and fish cakes; the rest of one's body is aching for the area's legendary hot springs. One's eyes will long for parquetry, the uniquely constructed wood patterning work done here that my father would have appreciated.



This district has long been a weekend retreat for Tokyo's large population. For over 100 years, ryokan, the small traditional Japanese inns, have hosted travelers.



Here, you can just look around and see tiny maple leaves still hanging on to their branches, denying winter’s arrival; or, once they fall, ever so delicately complicating the rock paths that serve as sidewalks in this ancient tourist crossroads.



This is a place the Japanese come to have fun, including illicit fun. So, if you look carefully at the couples who arrive here (which locals do), you may spot powerful politicians and wealthy businessmen with their mistresses, but, of course, given this is Japan, nobody ever speaks, nothing is revealed, and no price is ever paid, except, of course, that of the cheating heart.

Further up the mountain from Hakone, you ride on a train that has to switchback its way up the steep cliff. The recorder voice piped throughout the train explains this is second-steepest mountain scaled by any train in the world.

I wish my photos could do it justice. But they cannot. Next, I promise to take you on a visual tour of one of the world's greatest open-air sculpture museums.

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