初めて: First Impressions

Written Sunday, September 6th,

So I’ve arrived in Japan, and I suppose it is about time that I fill you in on what exactly I’m doing. Right now I’m in Tokyo, but soon I’ll be heading to Osaka to work for D****** corp., which henceforth I’ll call DA, for 6 weeks. Then I’m going to work for DA for another 6 weeks in Tokyo. Then I’m free to do as I will.

So as of now, I’ve only recently arrived in Tokyo, and am preparing to head out on Monday. I’ve been in the country for less than 48 hours, but being the judgmental person I am I’m going to go ahead and take a crack at a few observations and some general, utterly baseless conclusions.

The trip to Tokyo is long, as you might imagine. Even with a direct flight from the States you’re not going to be looking at anything less than a 12 hour flight, and if you’re as fortunate as me you’ll end up having a connection on top of that. Still, I found it very doable. 20 hours of travel after waking up at 4AM was not tremendously enjoyable, but it wasn’t unbearably unpleasant either. Watch some movies, do some crosswords, and listen to some music and you’ll be fine. If you can, sleep when it’s night in Japan; if you can’t, stay awake the whole time, tough it out.

So I traveled 20 hours to Tokyo, on 4 hours of sleep, and therefore looked like a very poorly disguised terrorist. Immigration was appropriately concerned. Nevertheless they let me in anyway after taking a few extra fingerprints and asking me if I was really sure that I was not planning to blow something up. I guess they liked my smile.

I was initially planning to crash in Narita for the night before heading into Tokyo and finding a real hotel, but I couldn’t find appropriate accommodations at the airport. This meant I had to pull out one of my travel books and scrounge up a place to rest my head. I picked some cheap, nice looking places outside central Tokyo and made a few calls (which of course was a pain as the instructions on what combinations of numbers to use i.e. country code, city code, 0’s etc. were entirely in Kanji). I managed to track down a place that had a room left for the night, kimi ryokan over in Ikebukuro. This worked out nicely as there was a JR Narita Express train just about to leave for Ikebukuro. After a few more ordeals I came to the place, visually a hole in the wall with a small, low, recessed entrance. The place was quite nice; seemed to be somewhere between a standard ryokan and a hostel. Fairly large tatami rooms, a bath and some showers, and a common area with a kitchen and wifi (I got lucky with a first floor room that picked up the wifi). The front door is closed from 1AM to 7AM, so it wouldn’t be great for a normal visit to Tokyo, but it is perfect for a rest and stopover. The reception was nice but I think tired with foreigners, they appear to have been having a recent influx. If you are polite and observe standard customs though, they become extremely friendly and polite. Just showing that you are aware of common courtesies like taking off your shoes at the door, not letting your feet touch the outdoor flooring, not handing money directly to the receptionist, and handing things over with an appropriate bow, seems to instantly generate reciprocation.

(Edit 9/9: for the record, Let’s Go’s travel guide is far more useful than Lonely Planet. The LG just simply has more of the elusive information that one might need, the stuff that normally you would have to ask someone living in Japan about e.g. long-term stay options, work options, travel insurance and health considerations, even more on where to get solid maps and what transportation options are the best deal. It’s not as descriptive in the site explanations as Lonely Planet, but on the whole it’s much more useful)

Crashing at the hotel in the evening, I found myself waking early in the morning, which I can only assume is rooted in jetlag. The one advantage of getting up early on a Sunday was getting the opportunity to explore Ikebukuro at first light, a chance to see some of the host girls heading home, delivery boys bringing goods to convenience stores, a few stragglers from the night before making their way back, and a few families dandied up for Sunday trips. The weather, by the way, is phenomenal, a very even 70-75 from the evening to the morning, very pleasant to be outside with just the lightest breeze.

An observation on foreigners in Tokyo. They are certainly there, I saw them from time to time, but there aren’t that many. Even in Tokyo I was the only non-Japanese in a train car of maybe 50, and I didn’t see anyone white on the rest of the train either. Once I realized it was a bit surreal, to be foreign in an extremely homogeneous environment.

(edit 9/9: In Osaka for a couple days now, working in Shin-Osaka, and there are zero white people. I’m sure you’ll get tourists near the appropriate attractions, especially in Kyoto, but of the hundreds of people I’ve seen in the last 3 days, not one was white. Zero. It’s something of a novelty, and so far being white has been extremely useful in getting me some leeway for my extremely poor Japanese)

I also noticed how stunningly clean Tokyo is. Everyone always says that but until you see it it is hard to realize the scale. I think the reason is twofold. One, there appears to be a huge investment in the service industry in public and private sectors at all levels. For example, at each stop people were assigned, one every 30m or so, to guide and aid passengers. Second, the evolved customs lend themselves to prohibiting the generation of filth. For example, it is rude, at least among the older generation, to eat or drink in public, to chew gum, or to blow your nose in public. There is a general sense of waste-not that I imagine greatly reduces litter. I think the combination of these effects results in a general public cleanliness. Thing is, this may have a large number of significant, positive, indirect consequences on life in Tokyo. All of this is conjecture now, I’ve only been on the ground a short while, but taking the train through Tokyo (which is always a telling experience in cities, above ground metros) I found that a huge number of properties would, by US standards, be considered tenements or shitholes due to their size, design, and homogeneity. They don’t strike the viewer as rundown or dirty in the way we imagine tenements, but structurally they don’t differ much from projects in the States. Perhaps the cleanliness of the city somehow makes such living situations bearable, or even enjoyable. I’ll try to keep it mind as I further observe.

(edit 9/9: on the service point: the business hotel I stayed in Sunday night was practically brimming with waitstaff, and the several sidewalk construction sites I passed all had 3-6 people whose sole job it was to direct people onto the designated, labeled path circumscribing the construction, however small the site. Nothing in Japan thusfar has been weirder than have 5 people shepherd me and only me the 15 feet down a flat, cordoned-off path)

(edit 9/9: on the eating in public: yes this observation is now verified. Even though when I asked someone they said that it’s fine to eat in public and people do it, it is quite obvious at any office building, train station, walking or shopping street, or any other pedestrian area that only perhaps one in every couple hundred or so people is eating or drinking. I asked a coworker and he said it used to be rude but now it’s acceptable)

On another note, Tokyo appears to be a city of alcoholics (don’t take that as judgment, it’s kind of endearing to me). Men and women of every age can be spotted truly stumbling around streets or just barely managing to hang on to an accompanying party. There seems to be a generally very jovial atmosphere as well. Service at restaurants, supermarkets, and stores ranges from bright smiles and pleasant greetings to outright shouted exuberations and jokes at the slightest call of attention. Coming to Japan, I feared that I would find a quiet, reserved society. Instead, I’ve stumbled into one of the most pervasively friendly environments I’ve ever seen, on par with Turkey and Portugal. It’s not just in service situations either; although I’ve seen few cases of people interacting in any meaningful way with strangers, people with friends or acquaintances are more frequently more lively than you’re likely to see any sober person in the US. Again, these are gross generalizations based on a small set of experiences, but what fun is life without baseless judgement?

(edit 9/9: even at company meetings and in the office, people joke around more than in the professional environment’s I’ve experienced in the States. This may be specific to my company, but it does tie in with the overall atmosphere I’ve seen. The one exception to the light mood is when people are smoking (a frequent occurrence in japan). Smoking seems to be more of a quiet, individual activity here. The times I see people smoking, and almost exclusively men, are when they step aside from the dinner table for a smoke, even just a foot or two away, when they go outside the office building to smoke in silence, despite being surrounded by others performing a similar ritual, or when they are enjoying dinner alone at a restaurant. The times I’ve seen men smoking together, such as over a meal, the atmosphere has been quieter. This may all be coincidence though, I’m drawing from a small sample size as with all of these observations)

Finally, I have been pleasantly surprised by pricing in Tokyo. I was fearful that everything would be exorbitant, or at least significantly more expensive than even the more expensive US cities like NYC, Boston, and San Francisco. What I’ve found is that if you look carefully you’ll find prices equal to most well-populated US cities. A sushi dinner for only $9, a room in what is the Japanese equivalent of a very nice B&B for $50/night, a solid meal from a supermarket for only 5 bucks; these aren’t the best deals on the planet, but it is hardly the soul crushing expense I was fearing as a traveler.

Oh, and one very last note. Tokyoites dress VERY well. The bohemian equivalent to the States dresses much the same, with jeans and flannel shirts or graphic tees or what have you, but the standard fair is black pants and belted collared shirts, with suits common, age regardless. Women wear a lot of heels and a lot of dresses, not just on Saturday nights but Sunday afternoon, and not just in Ginza but in Ikebukuro and Ueno. It’s kind of a pain in the ass, because when you need to haul over a hundred pounds of luggage 12 blocks and onto the metro you don’t really want to dress nicely, but if its possible to feel more out of place than being a white person, its a white person in beat-up jeans and a T-shirt. Sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and wear the grunge, but this is most certainly not the northeast. This is not like Western Europe was ten years ago either, when people of all ages wore suits and dresses, it is somewhat different. People aren’t dressing in a manner that is formal in intent, rather people are dressing fashionably and nicely, which involves proper clothes that tend to be cut young, far from the French or Italian neighborhood tailor and cobbler who cut a young man his first proper suit and wingtips before confirmation day. As I said, the standard can be annoying, but I think it is also freeing in that, much like in New York, you can look nice whenever you want, and in fact should do your best to look proper, without being considered showy.

(edit 9/9: In Tokyo when I dressed appropriately I did not get a single wayward stare [in Osaka I get some anyway], but when I wore dingy jeans and a T I got the full-on from a good 50% of people in my general vicinity. Dressing acceptably in Tokyo at least is a must. Osaka may be looser on weekends perhaps, we’ll see)

Oh and last but not least, if you come to Japan, bring a handkerchief. Paper towels and tissue paper aren’t big here.