110: Japan Thoughts (was “Tokyo Impressions”)
This is another old blog which I started when I was still in Tokyo but did not finish due to lack of internet access since then.. Its not very coherent because it was partly written when I just arrived and then finished now after 2 weeks but who cares ;-0
The bottomline is Japan is a difficult pace to judge! I could not care less for Tokyo and other big cities but some of the historical sites and landscapes are very impressive indeed.
What’s good? (Lets start positive)
Traditional Japan and the country is simply wonderful.
I do love the historic sites and the “wilderness” if you like. Hiking is great and there are loads of places that I would still like to travel to including many Islands, Northern Japan and generally Japan in the other three seasons, especially Autumn and Winter. The landscapes must be simply awesome during those months..
… but …
Tokyo
There are a few nice areas in Tokyo I guess but frankly, to me this city has nothing (or at least very little) to offer. This is a personal opinion of course and no doubt many foreigners love tokyo but I find it a dull and boring place and after a few days I get pretty desperate to leave Tokyo.
Tokyo 6 Tokyorites
It’s a busy buzzing city I guess but I look around and mostly what I see is an incredibly impersonal, dull, grey place with people that look like robots – everybody the same tired, emotionless expression in their faces, dark colourless clothes everywhere and a serious lack of happyness.
Re clothes I think the country suffers from uniform contamination. Kids in school wear uniforms and I think people never really grow out of this habit so everybody seems to wear the same kind of clothes but more so it seems that refreshing, happy colours seem to be avoided.. If one person wears a bright coloured jacket that person really sticks out of of the cowd like a glowing lightbulb in the dark 😉
On average I reckon one out of 50 people wears colour (easy to estimate if you go in a subway car and count.. good pass-time occupatin if you are waiting to get to your destination;-)
One day I was walking in Ginza, a major shopping street. I was not rally noticing it at first but oversudden it hit me that I was walking on a broad shopping street filled with japanese people and all I could see was black, grey and generally dark clothes…. what amplified this realisation was that over sudden in the middle of the shopping street (it was closed to traffic so no cars) there was a little girl walking next to her dad and she was wearing a bright red coat amongst hundreds of black and grey… I still am annoyed with myself that I did not have my camera ready at that time since it would have been an awesome picture!
The colours (or rather the lack of) reflects IMHO the peoples personality to some extend. There is no life in those people it seems though I can see they try to find it by wasting their money in gambling halls, getting drunk in Karaoke Bars after work (seems very popular) and following the shopping madness (fancy trendy clothes, jewelery and expensive body care etc; electronic gadgets.. everybody uses they mobile phones constantly.. nothing compared to Europe! They are glued to the mobile phone screens;-).
I realise that this must be reverse culture shock in a way. these thoughts would not have come up if I would have travelled from Europe straight to Japan. I dont think europe is that different in the capitalistic lifestyle sense but after SE Asia where i have seen so many genuinely happy people who have no or hardly any money it makes me think… I see the people here in Japan with all their money spent on luxury items and almst literally thrown down the drain considering the amount of gambling halls here, yet despite the exensive lifestyle I dont see happiness here but rather the opposite…
I know this are strong words but they refect my current thinking. Of course I have hardly spent any time here and it’s way to early to form oppinions about the country and/or people. Still this is how I feel about Tokyo right nowand after about 2 weeks in Japan I’m inclined to apply the same to many other places.
Dont get me wrong, I like travelling here because it is a new country to explore and I would love to spend another month or two because there is plenty I have not seen but I would probably try to avoid big cities and try to stick with countryside, natur reserves and ancient sites 😉
First of all I have given up searching for a descent internet cafe here in Tokyo, I don’t think they exist! The biggest electronics heaven on earth yet there are hardly any internet cafes or at least I can’t find them.. The few I did find are rather expensive and computers are so old that they don’t support USB 2*, can you believe it.
*i.e. uploading pictures from my camera is virtually impossible due to the slow speed of the USB connection.
Anyway, Tokyo… What a strange place – IMHO anyway..
Hotel
The area where I stay is Jimbocho, the Hotel Sakura Hotel is one of the cheaper ones in Tokyo but still costs a lot in my eyes, especially after coming from SE Asia. 7000 Yen for a single room with shared shower/toilet! Shared rooms (dorms) are about 4000 yen and will have to stick with this more often while in Japan I think. Went to the tourist information the next day and asked for alternatives but it seems this is the lower end of the range in Tokyo.
Update: I moved to a Capsule hotel after the second day which was fab. Just below 5000 yen but excellent facilities including Hot Spa, Sauna, Massage Chairs and some Computers for Internet Access.. Definitely a good deal!
First and Second Impressions
My first impression of Tokyo I got when I walked around the area in the evening where my Hotel was though I talk about this further down because my second impression is beter than the first one so lets start there….
The morning after my arrival (itwas Sunday then) I had a little walk from my hotel towards another Tokyo district to find a cash machine and it is this walk which left a much more interesting impression.. It’s a tiny little detail but I’m still amazed when I think about this now. It’s the strangest thing! I left the Hotel late morning (10/11ish I guess) and walked along a main road towards the Imperial Palace. This Imperial Palace is in or at least near a Business District of Tokyo but really just 20-30 minutes walk away from my hotel. There are very few ATMs in Tokyo that accept foreign cards but near the Palace is a Citibank Branch which does accept them, hence my walk there.
So I followed a main road towards the palace, traffic was fairly busy especially for a Sunday morning but as I walked along the road I had a strange feeling of something not being “right”. I couldn’t figure it out at first. It was very peculiar. I realised that something was different but for a few minutes I was trying to figure out what it was…
The area was like any other business area with lots of highrise buildings, broad roads. Sure I had not been to such a “developed” area for a while, it felt very much like being in some Office District in Germany. Very clean and “sterile” architecture. If you have ever been to frankfurt (even just the Airport in Frankfurt) you know what I mean. So this was new and certainly added to the experience but it was not the reason for this “strange” feeling.
It took a few minutes of walking along that road until it hit me. No Noise! There is No Noise!
It’s almost whisper quiet and that despite all the traffic! It’s such a strange thing to walk beside the road with all the cars and not hear noisy engines and more importantly no constant *beep* *beep* *beep* from mopets, cars and most definitely taxi and songthaew (pickup truck taxi) drivers who use their horns to get pedestrians attention in case they want a ride.. I must have gotten so used to this traffic noise in SE Asia that my brain seems to expect it now… as I said it’s a tiny detail but it was quite a revelation when I realised what was different here in Tokyo.
I was going to ay you can call it “more civilised” but that does not seem quite right..
Going back tho the day of arrival ..
Jimbocho
In the evening I walked around Jimbocho, the area where my hotal was. I got to the hotel around 5pm and by the time I had checked in it already got dark. I left the hotel to find a spot to eat and picked a Sushi place eventually (one with the rotating conveyor belt that moves the sushi plates around the “bar” at which people sit and eat. Rather nice, you get free Green Tea (I love this stuff) and the pickled Ginger is just to die for. Sushi was about 100-200 yen (50p-#1) per plate of 2 sushi pieces but this was quite a cheap place as I found out later. Most sushi places charge up to 4 times that much depending on the kind of fish, some charge by piece, others by plate (there are always 2 pieces per plate).
First Impression – All I saw was books books books 😉
Loads of little book shops everywhere and about half of them and manga/anime (japanese comics).. Unbelievable.. Everybody here seems to read these comics and there are even shops that seem to have nothing but those comic books.. Also there are lots of adult magazines everywhere and you would not believe the amount of adult video shops.. one could think this is the red-light district but after a few days of walking around Tokyo I come to the conclusion they are almost as common as the 7/eleven supermaket chains if not more so 😉
Anyway, I read that Jimbocho is the book store districs and sure enough there are lots of litle books shops one after another so that makes sense then I guess.
Other Areas
Since I wrote the Jimocho part above I have been visiting many other areas in Tokyo..
I explored Tokyo a bit the next few days and went to several other districts such as Asakusa, Rappongi, Ueno, Shinjuku, Harbor.. (need to look up all names from guide book). Some areas have a few nice stretches with older buildings etc but the vast majority is just a big city with little character. Buildings are mostly highrise or ugly 60/70style blocks. There is hardly anything traditional left in tokyo (most destroyed during WWII) and due to the lack of space a lot of the buildings are characterless highrise buildings.
It seems (and has sadly been confirmed over the past 2 weeks that I travelled around) that Japan does care very little about the aestetic aspects of they buildings. They are functional but hardly pleasing to the eye. It’s almost worse in the smaller cities since there are not many highrise buikdings but instead more of the ugly 60s/70s concrete block buildings which are so painful to look at. Few places still have traditional house desins.
In a way this makes me appreciate much more the traditional houses when I find them though 😉
Food
Yes I have been seriously spoiled in SE Asia reagrding food and I struggle in Japan…
No doubt there is excellent food here but as a budget traveller it is very difficult to eat nice and more so healthy food in Japan. Yes there is sushi and shashimi and miso soup etc and I love to eat that but it is not always a good low-cost option. I find the food that is on offer for relatively little money (we are talking around 1000-1500 yen) is mostly very poor quality and IMOH rather unhealthy (Fat, salt, sugar and lack of vitamins etc). I certaily lack the insight into Japanese food and the lack of english menus and inability to read kanjii certainly makes it difficult to make this trip a great culinary experience.
So food is probably one of the disappointments that I had travelling here though I think the awfull architecture throughout modern Japan is somethingI struggle with even more.
Still… I’m glad I travelled here and I have seen some amazing places.Definitely would come back and travel more because there are plenty of hidden gems that are worth seeing and after all there’s no pleasure without a little bit of pain i guess;-)
Tags: Japan, RTW 2005/2006
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