Japan

I spent 20 days in Japan this summer and here's what I wrote:

I’ve been in Japan for just over two weeks now and it is fair to say that I love this country. I’ve always wanted to come here as it to me has always been the capital of Asia. Indeed if I was to think of any kind of Asiatic influence then more or less it would stem from Japan. So much of what we see and do comes from here, nowadays via the factories of China. The Asiatic influence, for me, also comes from films such as Bladerunner and the book Neuromancer by William Gibson which as tediously presumptuous as it sounds, really is visionary. I think I would have died and gone to heaven had I been able to find a clear dome umbrella with a fluorescent stick holding it up. Alas no, I have a clear umbrella but it seems that I will have to wait for the future on that one. Then of course there’s Manga such as Akira and Ghost in the Shell, and the anime from the Ghibli studios. What I’ve attempted to find in Singapore, Shanghai and Bangkok is what ultimately can only be found in Tokyo. I’ve been looking for a mythical future city and whilst I haven’t found that, I found something infinitely better, something that we in Europe will never achieve. I’ve discovered a faultless society, a country where everything works perfectly, where the people are the friendliest and most courteous that I’ve ever met. This is the safest place that I’ve ever been to, and not the safest due to fear of punishment, but safer due to a simple code of honour. Of course I’ve also discovered a land where suddenly Mario and Pokémon make sense. That plinky-plonky music and relentless happiness is in some ways a perfect encapsulation of the craziness of Tokyo, for whilst it is by no way the mentalist cityscape I was expecting and hoping for, it is indeed crazy in a way that Singapore could never be, clean in a way Bangkok could never be, polite in a way that Shanghai is unlikely to ever be again and here’s the surprise, cheap in a way that London could never be.

For those of you who have read Judge Dredd and 2000AD, I’ve also discovered Mega City One, but unlike that warped view of an anarchic future ruled by Fascists, this is a surprisingly quiet affair, not the hectic bustling freneticism that I was expecting. That Mega City 1 is the prefecture of Tokyo. The Tokyo prefecture has a population of over 36 million. It is a massive, vast city. When I arrived in Tokyo I went to the viewing deck of a skyscraper up in a development called Roppongi Hills. From there one can look down on the Tokyo Tower, a strange red and white piece of ironwork reminiscent of the Eiffel Tower, nine metres taller but not as elegant. I was up there on a clear night on the 80^th floor and in every direction, as far as the eye could see it was city. I have never seen anything like it in my life. It was quite extraordinary. Hundreds of red lights blinking, an aeroplane landing at the airport, the bright orange neon of the docks, and then across the harbour yet more lights on the horizon.

Japan is twice the size of the UK with a population roughly twice that of the UK at 120 million, and yet this population is crammed into a quarter of the area due to the mountainous topography. This means that all the plains are intensively farmed and densely populated. One never sees empty fields as one does in the UK. There are always houses, and rice paddies, and hundreds of pylons and honestly I’ve lost count of the number of times my train has passed through another colossus of a city. Yes its not like China where 5 million population cities are ten a penny, but here these cities are so concentrated. The region encompassing Tokyo, Osaka and Kobe is one of the most the most densely populated regions on the planet.

There are so many great things about this country that its taken me two weeks just to get my head around the beauty of the place. I should start somewhere and what better place than from a Shinkansen bullet train whistling from Kyoto to Tokyo. I see that we’re cruising at 147mph. Fairly pedestrian I’d say but for the fact that these things are, on average six seconds late in a year. Think about that. The Japanese have a rail system where the trains arrive and leave on time. They’ve invented a bus network which is as accurate as their train network and that is honestly something to be really impressed by. I took a bus from a very out of season ski resort called Zao Onsen to the northern city of Yamagata. The bus was scheduled to take forty minutes, and forty minutes it did take. It left as the buzzer sounded in the bus station, wended its way down the hairpins of the mountain road, made its way through the suburbs and then through downtown and as the clock flicked to 14.40 so we pulled up at the bus stand. Astonishing.

Back to the trains. I have a GPS tracker on the window sill which is telling me I’m going at 166mph, and oh look, I’m still in this massive city, essentially the same city and of the same density of buildings as of Kyoto which I left two hours ago. The trains are brilliant, but then train travel has always been my favourite way to travel. I’m listening to the soundtrack of Lost in Translation and I’m very, very happy. Trains are cheap as chips as I bought something called a Japan Rail Travel Pass. For £270 this is giving me unlimited access to the JR network hence I have experienced to the fullest the perfection of the Japanese rail network. I say unlimited. I have to pay full price to go on a Nozomi Shinkansen, the 200 mph non-stop trains. The JR Rail Pass is pure genius.

That’s trains covered then, and roads too but I haven’t been on them too much except in taxis. Taxis are great with excellent air-conditioning which is pretty much essential. They’re very quiet as they run on LPG and the rear doors open and close at the touch of a button. What a great idea. All cabbies wear a shirt and tie, and all the cabs are some kind of specialist Toyota. There are far less scooters and motorbikes than I was expecting, and loads of groovy little superminis and miniature van things made by the likes of Toyota and Honda. I’ve seen a few Mercedes and BMWs but mostly in Tokyo, two Audis, loads of Nissan Skylines but as a rule very few sports cars apart from Subarus aplenty up in the mountains. I’ve seen a few of the new Beetles but what I’ve many of are the original Minis and quite a few of new ones too. The Japanese are after all Anglophiles and what better car for them than a Mini.

Toilets. There’s a kind of technology not oft spoken about mostly because its Victorian technology and its never changed. I have had, prior to coming to Japan, the odd pub conversation along the lines that, “In Japan they have electric loos” which normally leads to discussions on how that would really work but nobody knows and we all move on. I can report with great pleasure that the Japanese do indeed have electric loos and that they are indeed pretty cool. They have a little control pad on the right, numerous warning signs and instructions, nozzles and speed controls. It’s a real smorgasbord of anonymous buttons. The best thing is working out how to flush the thing and conveniently forgetting that one is sitting on an electric device which contains a lot of water. There are an assortment of flushers. There are physical plungers that you have touch. My God the ignominy! Why push plungers when I could be pressing a button. And why should that button be on the loo when it could be on the wall. And why have the button near the loo when it could be near the door. There have been moments when I’ve been puzzled as to how to actually flush the damn thing, and mild concern at the warnings about suffering of light burns if something in Engrish goes wrong. But it’s alright, this is Japan and if something does go wrong then the helmeted and face masked emergency services will get away from their cat rescuing from trees and actually have a real emergency. You see, apart from the volcanoes and earthquakes and typhoons there isn’t any crime and people don’t seem to set themselves on fire. You see I’m segueing quite carefully into the… Emergency Services!

This country appears to be essentially free from the scourge of petty crime. Sure there’s organised crime here in the form of the Yakuza, the Chinese and Russian mafias, and all manner of corporate crimes such as bribery but to the man on the street there is nothing, and I mean nothing. I went to China in 2005 and whilst that was safe it seemed fairly apparent that crimes against foreigners would be dealt with harshly. Though I was never attacked I was ripped off on the odd occasion. Pretty tame stuff but something that I have not only never seen in Japan but also would never expect to see, and not due to a fear of punishment but an innate sense of honour and manners the Japanese hold and value. There’s no need to check your change as it is always correct. It would be a great dishonour to give the wrong change. There’s no tipping which proves that Mr Brown’s argument in Reservoir Dogs was indeed correct. Why do we tip waiters 12.5% for doing their jobs? Taxi drivers will suggest shorter routes and will never overcharge. That’s petty cash dealt with and brought down to such a level that one forgets to think about money which is a relief.

Japanese love to bow more than they handshake. This can be a little strange at first but one soon gets used to it. The only confusion is when to stop bowing and this comes from learning who is more important. Being British I naturally assume that its all my fault and that I should apologise for everything and that therefore if I get a pre-emptive bow in then that will level everything. A waiter will then bow back at which point I bow again and then we get stuck into repeat bowing until I have to walk away. Bowing is endemic in society but it provides another level of courtesy beyond that of mere good manners. Train conductors having checked a carriage will turn to face the carriage and bow as they leave. When department stores are closing the staff line the exit points and bow. Bowing is a wonderful thing not only as it is fun but it engenders a level of respect to a society which is by no means rigid but simply has better manners than those in Western countries.

That’s crime or lack thereof, the emergency services, transport and manners dealt with so what more can I say. I’m now back in England but having read through the first half of this document I so enjoyed it that I realised that I must finish it. The first half was written on a Shinkansen which I was rather frustrated to leave as I was really in mid-flow with this whole writing thing and I knew that once I returned to Tokyo I would have precious little time to sit down and do a bit more writing. The Crime section took a quick half hour and now its two weeks since I got back and Japan is still pretty fresh in the memory.

On my return I stayed in the Ginza area which is like Bond Street and Canary Wharf rolled into one. It’s the most expensive shopping district and there are all sorts of big offices and its about ten minutes away from Tokyo station, the main station in town which itself is a five minute walk from the Imperial Palace…

And here’s where it tails off, and the reason is tails off is that I did try to do some writing there but there were only two occasions when I could actually be bothered to do any, or felt like it. Partly this was because I needed to switch off and have a holiday, and partly because big foreign cities are frenetic exciting places and I need to time to digest what I’m seeing and feeling before I can put them down on paper. Arriving on Tokyo I knew that I would never finish this piece in exactly the manner I wanted to, as there was so much more that I wanted to say about Japan and the little peculiarities that one finds everyday and yet are so specific to a feeling that though they are easily remembered it is very difficult to write about them a month later with the same verve and passion than if they had happened ten minutes ago.

The other reason that I did less writing than usual is something of a paradox. I normally write lots because I'm by myself and therefore can not really share my thoughts with anyone about what I'm seeing. I mean of course I meet other people but I don't really know them and therefore they may not get my idiosyncratic take on life. As my friend Mairtin commented, it was so good to be travelling with someone who related to the absurdity of the cartoon characters in Tokyo to the same extent as he did. Take Suica for example. I haven't mentioned him yet but Suica rules Japan. Suica is the public transport penguin whose image is everywhere in the expansive Tokyo train system. Suica is a card system just like the Oyster card but whereas we have a dull London Underground logo, Tokyo has this penguin who is everywhere. He's got tv adverts and a mobile phone network. Kyoto meanwhile has Atom Boy, a robot child with rockets for feet. Other characters of note are clean-up Racoon that can be found on the floor polishers, bus frog, a frog who is the bus company's mascot and who is also on the seat covers, laughing baseball mouth aerial head... that's an incomprehensible baseball with a mouth and an aerial who for reasons best known to the Japanese represents the taxis in Tokyo. Then there was the Safety Station elephant to be found in Seven Elevens and Family Marts, ably assisted by the ubiquitous Hello Kitty and Thomas the Tank Engine at railway stations. The unceasing cheerfulness and plinky-plonky music of Mario now makes perfect sense.

I admit readily that I am an oriental junkie. It runs in the family. My brother has lived in Shanghai for the last five years, and my great uncle lived in Shanghai during the 1930s. He saw the bad side of the Japanese being, as he was, interned by them during the Second Word War. And yet there has been a sea change since the end of that war. Japan was destroyed by the fire bombing and two atom bombs. If you need to see the human cost, then watch ‘The Fog of War’ which illustrates just what the firestorms entailed. Yet Japan has risen to become this extraordinary society with this perfect, effortless fusion of good old-fashioned manners and technology.

I asked my friend Mairtin if he could, in one sentence, say what the best thing about Japan is and it is impossible to. So here’s a list:

Its faultless. I saw three things wrong:

1) There was a sign in Zao Onsen with a fluorescent tube in it that was flickering.
2) A close-door button on a lift in Nagano needed pressing twice.
3) There was a rusty lampost in Kyoto.

And the things that are good about the place:

The people are astonishingly friendly and generous, civil and polite.

The food is delicious and fresh that day.

The whole country is tidy and clean and filled with absorbing architecture.

The transport system is effortless and huge fun – those bullet trains are astonishing, and not just the sheer quantity of them but their evil, evil designs.

The countryside is beautiful.

Japan was the absolute pinnacle of all things Oriental. I love that country and it is the best place that I’ve ever been to.