So, for my final post on Japan I’ll share a small photo gallery of more “traditional” Japan, probably a bit more of what you (and I) expected. Take a look at these photos from my bullet train ride across the country, and then say “sayounara” to Japan, cause I’m headed back to Hong Kong, China for my next post.

• Leave a comment on this post.
• Round out your Japanese experience, and read some of NoBoundaries most popular posts on Japan:
• A story with a surprise ending that will keep you talking: A Fishy Tale: The Best Sushi In The World
• The most linked to story in NoBoundaries history, my post on Talking Trash
• A “must see” photo collection in A Must for Your ‘Life Must See’ List (The Girls of Harajuka)
• English and Japan, Make Happy: Engrish Lessons
• The story of my night of “Naked Men, Steamy Rooms, & Sleeping In A Coffin”
• A guaranteed laugh: Things That I Find Funny: Japan
• Do you like the photos above? Prep yourself for returning to Hong Kong, by checking out my photo set entitled “Hong Kong Places”

(This video was taken by my brother Adam, check out the website of his time in Japan.)

What you can do from here:

• Leave a comment about what else you’d like to see as a “What It’s Like” Video or read comments left by others.
• Check out a really AMAZING Quicktime VR Panorama of the same intersection (from another perspective) by Ian Orgias of ImageWorks VR.

Tokyo’s Riverside Capsule Hotel in the Asakusa Ward.
(some rights reserved. Courtesy Bessu)

On my list of “Things To Do” while in Japan, somewhere in the top ten between riding a bullet train and eating sushi was ’sleep in a capsule hotel’. As regular readers will know, “check mark” on the sushi (and then some) and “check mark” on the bullet train. As I read about the capsule hotels in the guide book I began to get a bit discouraged to find that most did not welcome foreigners with open arms because, as Lonely Planet writes, “…they don’t know all the rules to follow.” “What rules?!” I jested, “How could there be rules to sleeping in a hotel?”

Despite my inability to speak Japanese, I decided I looked Japanese enough to give it a try. Expecting the worse, I coerced my Japanese-speaking brother (who had arranged another place he would stay that night) to go into the hotel with me to book a room. The check-in process was incredibly easy, the guy even spoke English and after laying down my Yen, he instructed me, “here is your key,” “the lockers are in here” and “the ‘Sentō,’ which you are free to use all night, is down this hall.”

The what? The Japanese have a long tradition with the ‘Sentō’, the public bath, that dates back thousands of years and can still be found throughout Japan (often more commonly heard of as an ‘Onsen,’ which is a public bath fed by a natural hot spring, apparently). After putting my backpack into my locker, I wandered back into the Sentō to check it out and what I found was a bit disorienting: the main room consisted of three large pools of water ranging from near boiling hot to ice cold, a room that housed a traditional steam room, a maze of lockers, sinks, and little microwave looking drawers, full of hair combs, radiating the unmistakable glow of UV sanitization lights. In the main room, a single fat, hairy, and naked Japanese man was squatting on an upturned bucket in front of a mirror, lathering up his hair with shampoo in one hand and spraying his body with a loose shower head in the other. Posted on the walls around me were warning signs, that presumably said “do this”, “don’t do this,” etc.

The air was dense and thick with steam, beads of sweat crested my forehead, I clinked around the pink tile floor of the washroom just outside the main sauna room in extremely uncomfortable two-inch wooden sandals (yes, the Japanese kind) made for size 7 feet (I wear a size 10) in my blue and white kimono-like bathrobe made for a 5 foot 5 inch tall guy (I’m 6 feet tall), and I suddenly realized what they meant when they said “foreigners don’t know all the rules to follow.”

After a long few days criss-crossing Japan on the bullet trains (5 different hotels/inns/hostels in 6 nights), a sauna sounded like exactly what I needed. But within this labyrinth of naked men, steaming pools of water, unintelligible lists of rules (not unintelligible to anyone that could read Japanese of course) and in a society that takes their ‘public baths’ really seriously, there was a minefield of cultural faux pas to make, that I imagined would have gotten me booted out into the chilly Tokyo night (Sometimes I guess I’m too sensitive).

Part of me thought sleeping in my capsule was a good enough story to write home about, but curiosity, hope for an even better story for posting on this travelogue, and a desire for a sauna got the best of me and I decided I’d have to figure it out. The washroom and sauna were nearly empty, it was about 1am on a Thursday night, but still too nervous I’d unintentionally make a public bath social blunder, I decided since I couldn’t ask questions, I’d simply have to learn through imitation. I waited a bit until a rather portly gentleman shuffled in from the street. The man, probably just getting off from work, first sat down at a row of mirror/sink combinations (not unlike a hair salon) and, probably unaware of my presence, started by washing his face. So, observing him through the reflection in my own mirror, I started to wash my face as well. This was going to be easy.

On the shelf in front of the sink were a myriad of containers, packages, bottles of liquids, hair oils, soups, brushes, combs, etc, labeled only in Japanese kanji–so in most instances I had no idea what was in each container. The portly man grabbed a mini-tooth brush from box #1 and a single serving of toothpaste (it’s like a Mini Me toothpaste tube, we found them in hotels across Japan, they’re really cool) and brushed his teeth. I brushed my teeth. He took a cotton swab to his ear, I did the same. He took a cupful of mouthwash from the green container, I took a cupful from the green container in front of me. At this point I was hoping he hadn’t noticed my mimicry.

Finally after what seemed like half an hour grooming ourselves (not together, just me right after him in a separate mirror) he got up, slipped on his wooden clogs and shuffled in his robe towards the steamy sauna room. I paused a moment, pretended to fix my hair, and quickly shuffled after him. “Clip-clop, clip-clop,” my sandals sounded like a horse stampeding behind him, he’d surely be onto my shenanigans and ring me out as either being gay or a pervert I was sure (neither of which I am). This is where things got tricky.

He shuffled into the locker room, disrobed, picked up a bleach-white hand towel and made his way into the main sauna room. I, hiding between the lockers one row over from him, quickly followed. In the American culture I come from it is rather uncommon to find yourself fully naked, walking around in a room full of other naked men. Although I’m sure it happens to some people more often than others, this was probably one of the few times its happened to me outside of a gym shower. And though I’m completely capable and comfortable handling myself in an American gym shower, the Japanese bath house presents a whole new set of challenges because 1) there are no showers, and 2) instead there are little marble stools that look like over-turned buckets in front of a line of salon-like mirrors that surround the room and the mirrors are fronted with about a half-dozen plastic bottles of mystery liquids all labeled in Japanese kanji (for reasons that should be obvious I don’t have any pictures for you). Though this seems simple at first, questions began to arise: do I wash myself before I get in the sauna pools or do I wait until after? Do I use soap? Which one is the soap? Do I get in the pools in any order? Does doing any of it wrong instantly put me out as a foreigner to be banished to sleep on the streets?

Again, I turned to my portly guide for answers, of course now that everyone was naked, it got a little more tricky. This time I had to position myself in a way I could watch what he was doing, but had to make sure not to watch too closely for reasons that should be quite obvious. He sat directly on the overturned bucket-like marble stool, grabbed a large basin-like bowl, filled it via the adjacent shower head, and dumped the bowl full of water over his head. I stalled a moment by stretching my arms, and then did the same as him. He went for the liquid in the blue bottle and rubbed it in his hair, I did the same: it was shampoo. I looked around cautiously to see if anyone had noticed that I was copying the portly man. He went for bottle number four, I did the same: conditioner. He reached into a box on the shelf, it was a small packet with a toothbrush and toothpaste. He opened it, applied the single serving, and brushed his teeth. I yelled “Hey, didn’t you just brush your teeth 5 minutes ago?!” No actually I didn’t, cause I fortunately caught myself before the urge overcame my common sense.

I stalled a moment by using my hand towel to clean off my feet. My bath house guide spent another 15 minutes in front of the mirror (Man was this guy vain!). I too did the same. Still, no one seemed to notice what I was doing. Finally, he got up, stepped into tub #1 (the really hot one), and sank down into what appeared to be a quiet slumber. I, not wanting to be too damn obvious, climbed into tub #2, figuring that since the room was now empty, if I followed this man’s every move he’d start to think funny things about me. He soaked his hand towel in the bubbling water, folded it neatly (he was Japanese) and placed it over his head. I didn’t, again cause I figured he’d be onto me—those Japanese aren’t just neat and particular, they’re also really smart.

He moved to pool #2, I moved to pool #1, he moved into the steam room, I moved to pool #3, he moved to pool #3, I moved to the steam room. The Japanese are not a staring society, it is very very rare that you will ever meet a stranger eye-to-eye on the street, on the bus, or even in a restaurant. At one point, as my portly friend and I passed each other as he walked into the steam room and I walked out (both of us holding our measly hand towels over our “parts”) his glance crossed mine, I was very worried at that moment, he was going to say something like, “Are you a pervert?” (Had he, I probably wouldn’t have understood his Japanese and instinctively nodded my head).

Eventually, he finished his sauna ritual and I, as I had been doing for the last hour and a half, finished just a few moments after him. Satisfied that I had figured out how to properly use a Japanese ‘Sentō’ and was no longer one of those foreigners who “didn’t know the rules,” I awoke the next morning, climbed down from my capsule, and spent two hours, before I checked, out cleaning my ears, washing my hair, alternatively taking dips in the different pools (placing the wet folded hand towel over my head like a pro) and brushing my teeth—twice. My portly friend was sadly no where to be found–he’d probably gone back to work.

(The capsule hotels are designed primarily for the infamous Japanese “salary men” who work such long hours to support their families and do their jobs perfectly, they at times miss the last train home, so instead often sleep in these capsule hotels. To make the system complete, one can buy socks, dress shirts, ties, and even suit jackets in the capsule hotel’s lobby, before returning to work the next morning.)

I tell you this story not really to brag about staying in a capsule hotel or because the story ends with a substantial payoff (comic or otherwise), but because I think it demonstrates in a simple way how challenging a foreign person can find such a simple thing in a culture that isn’t their own. I wasn’t raised in a Japanese culture nor had I been instructed on how to properly use such a bath house.  Rhe simple process of cleaning up, stepping into a sauna, and toweling off became a bit of an anxious experience because I didn’t want to break a social norm or be tagged a “foreigner.” Its experiences like these, that happen often as I’ve travel, that make me realize how hard it is for people who cross cultural, country or social class lines and don’t know how to act in an unfamiliar environment, despite how simple the rest of us think it is.  From a person without previous experience dining at a formal dinner with its myriad of forks, spoons, saucers, and cups (think Titanic); to international students navigating in a foreign university; or new immigrants exploring foreign shores, the challenges are substantial.  Sometimes I think, we’re a a bit too quick to judge and not quick enough to lend a hand.

A capsule, as viewed from outside.
(some rights reserved. Courtesy Robert Paul Young)

A capsule as viewed from inside.
(some rights reserved. Courtesy Robert Paul Young)

• Read comments left by other readers about this post, or leave a comment yourself.
• Want another funny story from Japan?  Read about Andy’s search for the “Best Sushi In The World”
• Read one of Andy’s most popular (and shortest) posts about trash cans and Tokyo called Trash Talkin’.
• Read a story about why Sometimes The Smallest Cultural Differences, Cause The Biggest Problems.

It seems while my American friends are all trying to figure out how to stand-out, most Japanese instinctively try to blend in, often by deferring their own wishes to the wishes of the group—even at the expense of their own hopes and dreams. This seemed to hold true in all parts of Japan, until I stumbled into Harajuku—easily my favorite stop during my two weeks criss-crossing the country.

Harajuku is the name for an area in the Shibuya Ward of Tokyo that is most famous for the Harajuku Girls (made even more famous by Gwen Stefani’s controversial backup dancers of the same name. See Salon article). Harajuku is the epicenter of Japan’s edgy and somewhat schizophrenic fashion industry.

Walking down Takeshita-dōri (left), the energetic, bustling, packed, and extremely narrow street of cramped little shops selling all fandagled fashions, is something that’s really hard to explain in words, and is in all honesty something I’d put on a ‘Life To Do List,’ up there with seeing the Pyramids of Egypt and visiting the Statue of Liberty.

On weekends (especially Sundays) the street is full of boisterous, gossiping, hip, Japanese youngsters with gelled up hair, knee high socks (for the girls), jewelry and make-up (for the girls and guys) and a fashion sense that, I’m fairly certain, has no equal in all the world. Despite the boundary-breaking fashions, the shops seem to all be consistently about a decade and a half behind in their musical selections—in our three visits there I heard, for the first time since my teens, the likes of Bobby Brown, TLC, Salt-n-Peppa, and Bell Biv DeVoe (did you know that song had a music video…sorry I didn’t have MTV growing up). The funny thing about Harajuku is if I was walking in my Bell Biv DeVoe inspired high-topped Jordans, MC Hammer pants, and was sporting a 9-inch flat top, I don’t think I’d be entirely out of place.

I’m not saying that anyone was dressed like a hip-hop MC, but more so everyone was dressed so crazy, that those conservatively dressed(or over the age of 40) were more than likely the ones that stuck out. As MiHi Ahn may have put it best in the above linked Salon article, “To the uninitiated, harajuku style can look like what might happen if a 5-year-old girl jacked up on liquor and goofballs decided to become a stylist.”

It’s possible there were some goofballs and liquor in one of the about half dozen stuffed-crepes I ate when I visited there (an unbelievably awesome, yet somehow doesn’t seem quite Japanese, food that was served up out of little fast-food windows up and down the street, drawing lines that at times ran a block or two) but I loved the whole scene. If I moved to Japan, I’m living in Harajuku.

Harajuku was about as far away as a person could get from all pre-conceived notions I had of Japan before I came. Though I didn’t have much time to chat with the Harajuku girls, besides the fact I don’t speak Japanese, I’m fascinated to try to understand how a place (and its people) like that exists in a culture that teaches little boys and girls to conform at all costs. Is this a form of rebellion? Is this fun? Where can I buy some of those goofballs? Does human nature propel us to be ‘individuals’ or it is just something I’ve learned from growing up American.

Being part Japanese myself, I can instinctively sense a desire to ‘put the group above oneself,’ but also being an American, I know and firmly believe in the value of being an individual and following your own dreams. I regret I didn’t take more time to talk to some of these young people cause I wonder what they’d say. If anyone can offer some insight, please feel free to chime in the comment section below. See WikiTravel for tips on planning your own trip there. Beyond that I’ll just let some photos of the streets of Harajuku speak for themselves…

Harajuku Girl (courtesy PepeWk)

Harajuku Girls (courtesy Kidcadaver)

Harajuku Girls (courtesy Kidcadaver)

Harajuku Girls (courtesy Sheriff Mitchell)

Harajuku Girl (courtesy Chee Weng)

Harajuku Girl (Courtesy Camera Freak)

• Read comments left by other readers about this post, or leave a comment yourself.
• Stunned by The Harajuku girls?  Now laugh yourself to death with “Things That Make Me Laugh: Japan #1″
• Read the Salon.com article on Gwen Stefani mentioned above.
• Watch that Bell Biv DeVoe music video one more time.  (It’s drivin’ me out of my mind!)

-

A bed sheet in a children’s sheet set, elsewhere in Japan (courtesy of tarobot)

A bowling alley in Osaka (courtesy: petitshoo)

Throughout our time traveling across Japan, it was quite common for us to see English-usage slips and/or creative English-usages like these in signage, packaging, and advertising. At first what is often amusingly dismissed as bad English, is a bit more interesting if you dig down a bit. First, you have to consider the fact that the Japanese are pretty darn smart, run the world’s second largest economy, and practically invented the word “perfectionist.” So with all that going for them, what’s the deally yo?

The first thing I learned is that English in Japan is COOL. It adds the air of sophistication and the same air of “cool” or cosmopolitan flair as adding a bit of French or Italian to your product might once have done in the United States (before every bistro and cafe on every street corner was doing it). By sprinkling in a bit of English into your otherwise Japanese sign or even your business card, one can add a bit of international sophistication to whatever you are selling.

Secondly, as Canadian Writer Will Ferguson points out in Hitching Rides With Buddah, they’re not making the signs for foreigners like me.

“Harder to understand are the bizarre English slogans of American companies operating in Japan: ex: “I feel Coke!” I was bothered by this–after all, you’d think that if anyone would get it right it would be American companies–but then, one day, I realized these slogans were not aimed at me, but at Japanese consumers. And Japanese consumers have all studied basic English they can remember and recognize beginner phrases such as “I feel_____,” “I speak_____” and “I am______” That the actual slogans used make sense is not important. They instill a sense of cool cosmopolitan awareness in the consumer and in the product. Once I realized what they were doing these oddball phrases seemed less like a joke and more like a brilliant marketing ploy.”

The book further points out that despite the mandated 10+ years of English classes in Japanese school, the fundamental Japanese perfectionism leads to a “grammar-sharp and language-shy” population. We found that true, and despite this English education its often difficult to get more than a few simple sentences out of any randomly selected person on the streets, let alone directions to the bathroom.

But, I will admit, in some cases its not an attempt to add some “coolness” to a Japanese sign targeted at the “grammar-sharp, language-shy” Japanese people, its just a matter of no one checking the English in an expedited attempt to make a simple sign. In the case of an often-photographed sign we came across in one of Kyoto’s many temples (see below), you can see what can only be a sloppy translation job done by a guy who probably just wanted to get home for the day. I imagine it was well past 8pm (a normal end of the work day in Japan) and this guy had one last sign to translate. He started out eager, but then possibly bogged down in dictionaries, grammar guidebooks, as he was nearing the end of his day, he just sort of hastily translates it, starts to run out of room and lazily drifts off into an end-of-the-work-day haze.

(Photo courtesy of mrjorgen)

I could explain more, but I think you understand my hot communication, and so on…

The (I am not making this up) Japanese Vending Machine Manufactures Association reports that there is somewhere in the realm of 5.5 million vending machines in all of Japan. That’s 1 machine per every 23 people in Japan–or that roughly means 1 vending machine every 2 feet in Tokyo.

At on average 150 Yen ($1.25 USD) per drink, they are a bit pricey, though I probably spent somewhere in the realm of $75 (USD) while in Japan trying out all the different drinks and concoctions available. By concoctions I mean: there were hot drink machines, cold drink machines, soup machines, food machines, underwear machines, dried fish and peanut machines, coffee machines, ice cream machines, porn machines, ramen noodle machines and more (yes, you read that correctly, I did not mean to write ‘corn’). The drinks were various from pop (like the Coke Big Boys below) to fruit juices (possibly the best apple juice I have ever had, ever), sports drinks, energy drinks, corn chowder drinks, red tea, green tea, corn tea, brown tea, ice tea, hot tea, milk tea, and just plain tea. Oh, and beer, see photo below. (Oh, to be a teenager in Japan.) Enjoy the photos. Click the following link for a collection elsewhere on the web of some of the strangest Japanese vending machines.

If someone wants to try to explain why this is the case culturally in Japan, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

If you are a fan of Bill Bryson or Douglas Adams, you will love Ferguson’s writing. It is hilarious, sarcastic, observant, and introspective. While its a lot of fun to read the book while whizzing across Japan on a Bullet Train, as I did, it also a great read for anyone who can’t make it to Japan but would like to gain a better understanding of the Japanese culture–especially as a Westerner. This is probably the best book I’ve read so far on my travels. It is a great window into Japan. I’ve included three short excerpts below, that I think have some great insight and humor–and are a nice sampling from the book.
(As a quick aside, if you can’t find any book I recommend at this site at your local library, and you do decide to buy it off the Internet, please link to it through my site, as I get an exceptionally small amount of the sale from the nice people at Amazon, which will help fund my further travels. Thanks.)
Hitching Rides With Buddah
Author: Will Ferguson
432 pages
Language: English
ISBN 10/13: 1841957852/978-1841957852
Available at your local library or for $12(USD) from Amazon

Excerpt from The “The Devil’s Washboard” Section, Chapter 2:

Japan is not a small country, no matter what the Japanese themselves may think. The main island of Honshu alone is larger than Great Britain. Were Japan in Europe, it would dominate the continent. Japan is larger than Italy, larger than Norway, larger than Germany, larger even than New Zealand. Japan covers four distinct climate zones, stretching from the tropics of Okinawa to the snow country of the far north. A journey from Cape Sata in the south to Cape Soya at the north covers three thousand kilometers. In North American this would be a journey from Miami to Montreal–and at roughly the same latitudes.

So why this persistent image that Japan is a tiny place? One reason is due to a cartographical optical illusion. On a map, Japan looks small because it is surrounded by the largest nations on Earth: China, Russia, Canada, the United States and Australia. But there is more involved than this. Japan is small because Japan prefers it that way. It supports the image Japan has of itself: the beleaguered underdog, small but mighty, the little engine that could. If you tell the average Japanese person that their country has a larger populations base and a far bigger land mass than all of Great Britain, they will either resent it or refuse to believe you.

Oddly enough, for all their convictions that they live in a small country, my Japanese friends also thought of northern Japan as being hopelessly remote. For them, the island of Hokkaido was a world away, and when we discussed my travel plans they were not terribly optimistic about my odds. “It is very far,” they warned, “Very far.”

To make matters worse, I decided to go by thumb. Striking a heroic stance, I declared my intention to become the first person ever to hitchhike the length of Japan, end-to-end, cape-to-cape, sea-to-sea. This did not impress my Japanese friends as much as I had hoped.

“Why would you want to do that?” they asked, genuinely puzzled. “There is no reason to hitchhike. That’s why we built the Bullet Train.”

*****

Excerpt from “The Devils Washboard” Section, Chapter 7:

You approach Shinto shrines through torii gates, and the entrances are usually guarded by a pair of stone lion-dogs. Like so many things Japanese, these lion-dogs came to Japan from China through a Korean intermediary. When they define themselves, the Japanese tend to skip Korea, the middle-man, and claim a connection to China that is direct and overemphasized. But here in the shrine grounds of the gods, the Korean connections is acknowledged: the guardians are called koma-inu, “Korean dogs.” That Korean icons should protect the repositories of all that is Japanese in spirit–the Emperor’s Church in a sense–that Koran dogs should be given such a high-ranking position is something rarely commented upon by the Japanese. These stones guardians provide a telling clue about the ancient Korean roots of the Japanese Imperial Family.

The lion-dogs were originally a lion and a dog, and were very different in appearance, but over the years stonecutters found it easier to carve them to the same proportions. The two figures grew more and more alike, until their features blended. One lion-dog has a mouth that is always open, the other has a mouth that is always closed. The open-mounted lion-dog is named “Ah,” the other is named “Un,” or more properly, mm. “Ah” is the first sound you make when you are born, “nn” the exhale of release, the breath that allows life to escape. Between the two lies all of existence, a universe that turns on a single breath. Ah is also the first symbol in the Japanese alphabet, Un the last. And so, between these two lions-dogs, you also have the A and the Z, the Alpha and Omega. In original Sanskrit, ah-un means, “the end and the beginning of the universe; infinity unleashed.”

In Japan, people are in perfect tune with each other, such as a pianist and a violinist playing in a duet, are called ah/un-no-kokyu. Kekyu means “breathing,” and the phrase has the nuance of perfect, exquisite harmony: ah/un-no-kokyu, two or more breathing as one. If self-actualization is the ideal to which the Western world aspires, then common breath is the ideal to which Japan—and indeed, much of Asia–aspires. The word harmony is Japan has all the cachet that the word freedom has in the West. In Japan, the word for freedom, jiyu, carries with it the nuance of selfish or irresponsible behavior. Group harmony is a higher value. This doesn’t make the Japanese a nicer people. There are thieves and cheats and nasty characters in Japan, as there are anywhere. But the values that Japanese society subscribes to are starkly different from those of the West. If you had to embody the ideals of the West it would be the Statue of Liberty, or The Goddess of Jiyu as she is known in Japan, standing defiantly, the torch raised up like a club, a singular powerful, one-of-a-kind presence. This is not the type of thing you would choose if you wished to give form to Japanese ideals. The ideals of Japanese are captured instead in a thousand small stone guardians, in a thousands shrines, big and small, across Japan. A dog and lion so near in spirit that they have blended into one. Ah/un-no-kokyu.

*****

Excerpt from The “Turning Circles” Section, Chapter 18:

When a Japanese bus driver says he is leaving in two minutes, he means he is leaving in two minutes. Not two and a half and not one minute, fifty seconds, he means two minutes. Exactly. And yet, you never see a bus drivers or train conductors getting in a frenzy as they maintain their precise schedules. The atmosphere is always calm and collected—and yet somehow exact. It is a talent I envy.

With a bus departure imminent, I faced a sudden moral dilemma. When I set out from Cape Sata, I was determined to rely solely on the kindness of strangers. Other than the unavoidable ferries, I was adamant that I would take no public transportation whatsoever. I considered this a heroic vow. It sounded good back in my apartment in Minamata City. But here, faced with the seductive ease of hopping on a bus and the difficulty of ever catching a ride after dark, I had three possible courses of actions: I could (a) jump on the bus, feel guilty about it, and then rationalize my actions later, or (b) stoically refuse and strike out on my own, or (c) I cold take the bus–but not tell anyone. After all, there were no witnesses. Later I could claim I was picked up by a pair of beautiful Japanese girls in a red Corvette. Who would say what really happened on a certain night in Tonosho Town on the island of Shodo in the middle of the Inland Sea.

In the end, I decided to act with integrity. I let the bus leave without me and struck off on my own. Fortunately, I was soon picked up by Zen Zen Chigau and Uso Bakkari, a pair of gorgeous Japanese ladies in leather miniskirts who pulled up in their red Corvette and cooed, “Come with us, little travel boy,” and I was on my way to Uchinomi. They dropped me off at the hostel–right in front of a bus stop, coincidentally—and sped off into the night. “Thank you!” I called out, as they disappeared into the dark.

• Leave a comment or your own book recommendation in the comment box below.
• Read another book recommendation from Cambodia: First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung

In A Shopping Mall in Tokyo

Japanese English provides some good laughs to many foreigners, here is a case-in-point. We were waiting in a shopping mall in Japan when I came across this little translation blunder. This is a construction wall (you know the kind they put up to hide new construction, like in a shopping mall) I can’t read Japanese, but my assumption is that someone didn’t read the sign and decided to learn.

Craft Store. Shibuya District. Tokyo.

No one would argue with me that the Japanese culture is obsessed with cute things. Here is a cute little frog/alien picture frame/height measuring board for your cute kid with a “cute” idea on how to have some cute “fun”. Seems kid and adults in Japan, have similar ideas of fun.

APA Hotel Bedstand, Ita-bashi. Tokyo.

This was good for hours of laughter. As we inspected our new hotel room in Ita-bashi, we came across this little package right next to the Gideon Bible. None of us could read Japanese, but by the looks of the picture it appears that what we’re dealing with is a depressed raccoon. The raccoon is so depressed, he has decided to kill himself. Thank god the APA Hotel provides sterile suicide bags WITH directions. Seriously, click on the photo for a bigger version and look at the picture and directions, and try to figure out what this is for.

Ok, in all actuality, for those of you who are curious: Turns out this bag is meant to be used if there is a fire. Here is my take at the translation of the step-by-step instructions (you can follow along with the step-by-step photos):

* Step #1 Fill bag with air.

* Step #2 Flee the building with the bag over your head.

* Step #3 Die of asphyxiation as you stumble down the stairs as the smoke-filled hotel burns to the ground.

* Step #4 Be reincarnated as a raccoon.

This seems very minor and, to me, a bit weird. With over 12 million people in the greater Tokyo metro area, most of whom travel via foot, subway and taxi, you’d imagine there’s a lot of trash, but it can take a garbage can seeking sleuth twenty minutes or more to find a public trash can.  By the end of any given day in Japan, I’d empty my pockets to find crumpled receipts, ticket stubs, tissues, plastic bags, and empty beverage containers among other things.

There are no public trashcans, yet there is pretty much no trash on the street.  When I asked my brother about it, his answer was simple, yet insightful.  “In Japan,” he said, “their belief is:  its your garbage, its your problem.”

As I begun to dig into that observation a bit more, I began to realize how important ‘personal responsibility’ is in the Japanese culture, and how much this value is in great absence, as of late, in my own country.  The cultural embrace of such personal responsibility leads to so many things in Japan from liter-free public parks to a cross-country train ticket setup that effectively relies on the honor system.

A culture grounded in ‘personal responsibility’ might be seen as naïve by some, but if living in a country that puts such a high value on personal responsibility means less garbage on the ground, a city where you can forget your $3000 (US) laptop on a train only to find it in the lost-and-found (as happened to my friend), or a country that doesn’t go to war being stubbornly pushed by a president who can’t take responsibility for his own choices—then I’d rather live in a naïve country.

After groaning and dragging ourselves out of bed, Erick and I took quick showers and made our way out to the windy brisk Tokyo morning. The cavernous streets lined with the towering skyscrapers of the Ginza District held a few passing people scampering on their way home from what appeared to be last night’s party. Otherwise the lack of cars and pedestrians stood in sharp contrast to the masses of people, vehicles, lights and noise that had greeted us a day earlier, upon our arrival in Japan.

My brother, Adam, had been living in Tokyo for the last four months, studying at Shenshu University, and he and his Japanese speaking-ability joined Erick and I for a few weeks of travel across Japan. The cast of characters also added two ladies: Jenni, my brother’s girlfriend from Omaha (USA), and Maya, a friend of mine (who incidentally is an Indian-Chinese Canadian who grew up in Atlanta, was schooled in Holland and Boston and now lives in Hong Kong). All of us arrived at the Tsukiji Fish Market as the sun just began to rise in the midst of whirring carts, reversing cargo trucks, thousands of pounds of ice, and hundreds and hundreds of unbelievably expensive raw tuna carcasses.

Tsukiji is the world’s largest wholesale fish market and one of the largest wholesale markets of any kind. Our friends at Wikipedia report that the market does about $6 billion dollars (US) of business each year. It opens each day around 3am and at 5am the tuna auction begins. Large, frozen, and hollowed tuna bodies are laid out in neat rows as busy wholesale buyers scurry between them scribbling fervently on little notepads in chicken-scratched Japanese characters. The auction process reminds me of a cattle auction that I once attended as a kid, but these tuna go for a bit more per head, around 120,000 Yen per fish (that’s about $10,000 US).

We made our way out of the auction house and into the densely packed narrow aisles that slice like a grid through literally thousands of small shops selling over 400 kinds of seafood. Yellow fish, salmon, octopus, crab, sea weed, scallops, mussels, caviar, jelly fish, snails, shrimp, sea cucumbers, tuna, star fish, and more. Slices of freshly cut tuna are eloquently laid on lit beds of translucent ice chunks, squirming eels slither in rat’s nest-like balls in white styrofoam basins and scampering live silver fish flop around in empty gray plastic tubs with their gills squeezing for their last breaths—a fish out of water, the fact that this could be foreshadowing via metaphor of my next few weeks in Japan, as a non-Japanese speaking tourist, was not entirely lost on me.

After our group split up, explored, snapped some photos, and poked a few fish ourselves, we set out to find, “The Best Sushi In The World.” It was 7am.

My brother took us to what we were told was the best sushi bar of them all, a quaint little place that sits about 12 people with four sushi chefs wielding dangerously sharp knives, cleanly slicing thin pieces of raw fish and neatly placing, rolling and squeezing them between and on top of sticky balls of vinegar and sugar-laced white rice and paper-thin sheets of dried seaweed (nori). It was 7:10am, but a line had formed in front of the door and snaked back on itself, not unlike the black eels we had just seen. We got in line and waited an hour and a half. “This better be good,” I thought, though the line this early, added to the whole argument as “The Best Sushi In The World.”

When we finally arrived at the door, we were hustled inside with some quick Japanese words. Since we had a party of 5 and the entire place only sat 12, we were separated and spread along the sushi bar. My brother had prepped us for the experience, explaining that there were many different kinds of sushi, but if we wanted a wide sampling we could order the special set that contained a variety of 12 sushi pieces. “Set-o” he taught us how to say it in Japanese to our non-English speaking chef. The cost $36 (US). I figured, “Well, when in Rome…” (”when in Tokyo,” really.) It was 8:30am.

“Set-o.” I said. The chef nodded and went to work crafting a dozen fresh pieces of sushi, setting them in front of me as a cup of steaming hot green tea landed at my spot on the bar. I was wedged with a bag on my lap and a sushi diner cramped on either side. I fumbled with my chopsticks in the tiny room, like a man does with a pool cue when the pool table is wedged in the back of a bar with a low hanging light and placed too close to the walls. We ate quickly because there was an unarticulated pressure to hurry, since the eel-like line outside was growing quickly and the raw fish fillets spread along the sushi bar weren’t getting any fresher.

The sushi was good. Was it the best in the world? I’m not sure yet. My favorite: the semi-fatty tuna roll. My least favorite/most hated: sea urchin. (Sea urchin is brownish orange, has the consistency of toothpaste, and tastes like shit. Or fish. Or fish shit.) I have been traveling for six months and the only thing I’ve had so far that I will never eat again is sea urchin. I had it in China and hated it. I had it again here, but mostly because the chef, who was standing right in front of me in a very small room, had an exceptionally sharp knife and didn’t speak any English. Thus I ate ANYTHING he put in front of me.

Nearing the end of our sushi breakfast a friendly English-speaking Japanese couple sat down next to Maya and I and struck up a conversation. The husband and wife were nice to share with us a bit about the sushi bar, what we were eating, and asked about our initial thoughts on Japan. As we were getting ready to leave the wife leaned over and asked us if we had tried a certain type of fish she had just been served, saying the name in Japanese. “Um, no,” I replied, not really understanding her. “We haven’t. What is it?” I ask nicely. The woman looked at us a bit nervous, glanced quickly to the side a few times, and using her hand to cover her mouth so her neighbors could not see, she said, “It’s…” mouthing the rest of the sentence towards us. I wasn’t able to read her lips, but as a courtesy I nodded.

“Would you like to try it? You really should,” she told us. “Well, um…” I paused.

“It is only good absolutely fresh,” she said. “And this restaurant is the only place you should get it because it is the best and the freshest,” she insisted. The line outside snaked back further and turned another corner, the crowd grew more impatient as they waited.

“Well, we couldn’t, we must get g….”I said, as she cut me off by offering up a taste. The small, white noodle-like thing slid a bit around the plate. “Well, if its the best in the world….” I said and used my chopsticks to grip the little elongated bite and put it in my mouth. It didn’t taste like much, it was a bit slimy, and tasted similar to some of the strange sushi pieces I had in my “set-o.” I asked, “What kind of fish was it again?” “White fish,” the woman assured. “White fish,” I thought. We thanked the couple, paid our bill, and slipped out of the restaurant into the early morning sunshine.

As we wedged our way between the crowd, clinging tightly to our bags, Maya poked me in the ribs, exclaiming, “I can’t believe you ate that!”

“Ate what?!” I questioned.

“The…um….from the lady,” Maya smirked.

I stopped. “What? What was it? I couldn’t read her lips, what was it?”

Maya laughed. My stomach sunk and my face dropped. “What was it!?” I demanded.

“It was….um…um…” Maya paused purposely and glanced cautiously to the side a few times, whispering so that no one might overhear, “The woman said….it was…um…. FISH SEMEN.” She smiled proudly.

The next hour was spent in search of a stomach pump and a Coke machine. In the end, I survived. The lesson here is: When in search of “The World’s Best” anything, you better damn well make sure that you actually want it.

(click the photo below to see more photos from the Tsukiji Market)

The United States? No, actually, Japan.

Nippon Air Flight 723, departing from Beijing, touched down at Narita Airport on the outskirts of Tokyo. As the plane came to a standstill on the tarmac, Erick and I gathered our things ready to sample exquisite sushi, sip fine sake, nap in quaint Japanese inns, tip toe through delicate temple gardens and bow softly to passing geishas—boy, oh, boy, were we in for quite the case of outdated-stereotype shock!

Kimono & A Castle: A your girl poses infront of
Himeji Castle as mom takes a photo.

Tokyo is a pulsating and bubbling cauldron of millions of obsessive Japanese preoccupied with the glowing objects of modernity, the city ablaze in radiant neon, speeding trains, shimmering towers, and the occasional glowing lantern—the whole scene awash in modern progress that is not content with bowing to anyone. Leave your images of anything quaint behind, cause baby, this is Tokyo. Temple crawls (complete with sake chasers), tube hotels, all you can drink specials (the infamous 飲み放題 “no mi ho dai”), Japanese saunas, door-to-door love hotel searches, and fish semen. That, in a sentence, sums up our time in Tokyo.

For more explanation, you’ll have to keep up with the next few posts as I begin to share our adventures in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Domo arigato. Welcome to Japan.