Friday
February 8th |
|
Went to
dinner with Chris's co-workers. With Ian, one of Chris's
co-workers who is very enthusiastic about life in Tokyo, we went
on a tear, hitting lots of bars. Ian seemed to know people at
every bar. At one place Ian and Chris convinced me to practice my
Russian with a group of Russian women. They asked me, "Are
you in the navy?" (Just try to imagine that with a heavy
Russian accent.) I said no. "Are you in the marines?" I
said no. "Special forces?" I managed not to laugh, and
said "No, I'm a student and my friends are investment
bankers." She looked interested now. "Which firm?"
she asked. I didn't answer, so she advised me, "Keep
studying." That was in English, but it can be translated as,
"If you're not going to pay me, please leave me the @#$%
alone." They were prostitutes. So much for practicing my
Russian!
We stayed up all night in order to go to the famed Tsukiji fish
market, the biggest in the world. Completely exhausted (especially
Chris, who actually had to work all work), we tumbled out of the
cab at 6am. We scrambled through warehouse after warehouse full of
enormous tuna, some frozen and giving off clouds of vapor, some
fresh, all being examined and picked over by tons of the Japanese
staff who would chip at them with little picks and examine the
texture of the flesh. We found a room full of 6-foot-long
swordfish (with their sword noses all cut off an discarded). We
practiced using all of the fish words we learned from sushi
restaurants. We grabbed a guy walking buy and said "Ebi! Ebi!"
("Shrimp! Shrimp!"), and he would then very politely
point us in the right direction, or in some cases actually walk us
over to the right place. We lifted a live octopus out of a holding
tank; witnessed the method of slaughter used on many fish- they
cut the tails off and then insert a wire up the spinal column and
into the brain, which they ream out until the fish stops wiggling;
saw tanks full of fugu (pufferfish, the poisonous ones), some all
puffed up; saw flounder, snapper, you name it.
It was amazing. That market must stretch on for about a quarter of
a mile along the water front. Boxes of fish are piled head-high.
We splashed through puddles of water tainted with blood and guts.
Little diesel-powered carts raced through the alleyways, almost
running us over many times. It was especially fun to see the
actual fish auctions, when all of the buyers lined up, sort of
like a chorus, on tiered stands, in front of the auctioneers who
looked a bit like the conductors. Then with lots of shouting from
the auctioneers and minimalist handing signs from the
participants, rooms full of fish were brokered in the space of
about fifteen minutes. And this was going on in probably twenty
places at once, all over the market.
Finally, dead tired, with me keeping a careful eye on my zombified
brother (whose eyelids were drooping down around his knees), we
stumbled out to find some breakfast sushi. The sushi places in the
fish market serve the fish practically right off the boat. It's
like walking up to the big tuna on the ground and just eating
them. I believe it was quite tasty, but when Chris repeatedly fell
asleep on his stool (head plunging for his soup or the floor in
turn) we decided to head for home. At 8:30am we were asleep.
|
Saturday
February 9th |
|
Chris
and I woke up very late. Walked to Shinjuku. Saw the movie From
Hell (which lived up to its name). Discovered why movie theaters
in Japan suck ($18 and awful food). My cousin Bob has for a long
time claimed that popcorn in actually styrofoam. The Japanese have
taken his dare. At the theater they serve the popcorn out of a
vending machine into a pathetically small little cup. I honestly
believe the extrude the popcorn on demand using an air compressor
and a tank of liquified chlorofluorocarbon. It was vile!
Starving, we desperately searched for a restaurant, ending up at a
"Thai Shabu Shabu" place. The menu was so scary looking
that we suffered embarrassment and possible black outs by
staggering back out into the street. Fortunately we quickly found
an italian place, where we were sated with appetizers plus three
entrees between the two of us.
Don't eat the pizza in Japan. Actually, that reminds me of a story
my friend Adam Block told me. A gaijin living in Japan couldn't
eat any of the food and desperately wanted pizza. So he called his
hotel reception and asked for the number of a pizza place. The
concierge seemed a bit confused but the gaijin wrote down what he
thought was the number of a pizza place. He calls the number. The
Japanese man on the other end clearly speaks no English, but does
seem to understand the word pizza, the gaijin's name, and the name
of the hotel. He doesn't quite seem to understand "pepperoni
with extra cheese." Still, a pizza shows up. Unfortunately
it's something wierd, like broccoli and shrimp, but the gaijin
picks them off and very happily eats the pizza. Of course now he
continues using this new service. Every time he gets his pizza,
but every time he gets some random topping, never the pepperoni
with extra cheese. Then one day a Japanese friend is dropping by
his hotel room, when the gaijin suggests he call that number so
they can have pizza. The Japanese friend has a nice chat in
Japanese, hangs up the phone and explains to the gaijin that the
man on the other end is a very polite neighborhood home owner who
has no idea why the gaijin calls him, but has always tried to help
out by passing on his order to the local pizza joint. Speaking no
English, he hasn't been able to explain the dilemma or figure out
what toppings he wants, but his Japanese upbringing compels him to
help out, and he just tries to choose interesting toppings as best
he can.
True story? OK, probably not, but a) it reflects the amusing fact
that my friend Adam travels to Japan but can't eat any of the
food, and b) it accurately reflects how helpful and dutiful the
Japanese are in dealing with foreigners; everywhere we went people
went out of their way to help us, looking very very concerned to
make sure they got us through our problems. I really appreciate
this feature of Japanese culture. (Just imagine the contrast with
New York; it makes my head spin.)
|
Sunday
February 10th |
|
Wanted
to go to Nikko but the train was sold out-apparently it's just
crazy trying to get out of Tokyo on weekends, especially on the
holidays. Instead we went instead to the National Museum, where we
saw beautiful examples of screen paintings, scroll paintings,
sculpture, ceramics, golden buddha idols, and woodblock prints. We
met a business school friend, Eric Feigenbaum, for dinner and then
stayed out on the town until late.
|
Monday
February 11th |
|
Woke up
late again. Had brunch, which included an H & H bagel flown in
from New York (Tokyo is crazy, but this was a nice touch). Then we
tried to visit the Ikebana school of avant-garde flower
arrangement, which was closed. After that we walked for quite a
while, visiting some very snooty antique stores where they scoffed
at us. We did see some very beautiful crystal ware (by Daum and
Monceau, I think), but it was from France. From the shopping
stratosphere we retreated to a merely expensive district and
bought chopsticks for all of our cousins, selecting exactly the
right pair for each one from a high-end chopstick boutique.
Then we did some more walking toward home and discovered Gaby:
Excellent Bar, which seemed like a cozy establishment right in the
neighborhood of Chris's apartment. We decided to go back and check
it out some time soon and made mental note of how to get there.
|
Tuesday
February 12th |
|
I went
to Nikko, an important religious center in the mountains near
Tokyo. The first temple was built here in 766. The Shoguns favored
the buddhist religion over shinto, which was closely linked to the
imperial family. (When the Shogunate was overthrown in the second
half of the nineteenth century the emperor outlawed buddhism,
making shinto the official state religion. Only during the
American occupation government was freedom of religion restored.)
In Nikko the first Shogun, Toyotomi Hideyasu, and two of his
descendants are enshrined in beautiful, colorful buildings
decorated with incredibly intricate carvings and set amid a
beautiful forest of tall and ancient cedar trees. Shodo-shonin
founded the first temples in Nikko in the 8th century. He was then
frozen in carbonite and planted on this rock for eternity... or
something like that.
Sanbutsu-do temple:
The temple garden:
No evil here! This famous carving is just one of the many of the
amazing carving work at Nikko.
Just one more carving photo. There's no way to do it justice on
film or on screen, but let's try!
Even the Shoguns could find room for a shinto shrine:
Yes, these temple grounds commemorate Japan's greatest warriors.
Oh, you say you want to see some war gods? Well, bring it on!
 
 
 
On my walk back to the train station I was almost decapitated by
this crane. Since I was in the middle of reading a book about how
the "construction state" was destroying the beautiful
Japanese landscape, I thought it made for an appropriate little
metaphor:
|
Wednesday
February 13th |
|
Chris
and I ate dinner together, then decided to track down that little
bar we had discovered on Monday's outing. The street system is so
crazy, it took us an hour to find it. This might be a good point
at which to relate the nature of the Tokyo street system. It is
totally insane. Most streets have no name. Buildings have numbers,
but they are in order of when the building was built. The
districts are a tangle of tiny curving streets all dead-ending
into each other. If you want to take a taxi somewhere off of the
few main thoroughfares, you have two options: a) you know
precisely how to get there, which you explain using major
landmarks and finish off by guiding the driver turn by turn, b)
you have an address and one major landmark, which the driver uses
to find a nearby police box (called a Koban-these are everywhere),
and then asks the local cop for turn-by-turn directions. How does
the mail get delivered? Please believe me; I am not exaggerating
this.
|
Thursday
February 14th |
|
Had
lunch with three business school classmates, Daisuke (for the
second time), Akira Aoki, and Hideki Obata. Had sushi. Akira
showed me cutting edge 3g cell phones with video conferencing! For
dinner met up with Akira and his fiancee, Fumi. Ate at a
traditional izakaya (as compared to the very high-end, yuppie
place we ate at with Junko earlier). Had oden, a traditional
Japanese stew, which had very subtle flavors.
It turns out my friend Akira had already seen the Web site for Princess Leia, Pez
Dispenser, and he was a big fan! So we arranged this
one-on-one photo shoot:
And then we got the group photo:
Then Chris finished work, and he and I turned the tables on Akira
and Fumi by taking them out. We went to Gaby, which we found more
easily this time (though not without a little effort).
|
Friday
February 15th |
|
Got
sick!! Spent the day in bed. On the bright side I got to finish up
some reading. Oh, and mull over a few more notes for my photo
journal. Let's see... I forgo to mention something that's really
difficult about speaking Japanese. They pronounce their words
without accenting any of the syllables. The only exception is that
they almost complete skip over "i" and "u". As
an American the natural inclination is always to find the strong
syllable in a word, but it doesn't sound even close to correct in
Japanese. And it turns out that it takes quite a lot getting used
to before you can get the knack on the pronunciation.
The book Dogs and Demons was a real downer. It recounted
endless tales about how the bureaucracy of the Japanese government
has spun completely out of control, chewing up more and more the
the nations income to fund projects that pay off its key
constituencies: rural Japanese and retired members of the
bureaucracy who have "descended from heaven" to work in
companies that contract business from the government. Examples
include the Forest Agency that has cut down 40% of the forest in
Japan and replaced it with identical, even rows of cedar trees in
an ultimately futile attempt to achieve self-sufficiency in wood,
at great national expense both in terms of yen expended and forest
land devastated. The Construction Agency is burying the nation in
debt to build unnecessary projects, again for the purpose of
feeding those two constituencies. They're building artificial
islands that cost billions of dollars and yet remain far from
fully occupied on completion. They're building museums that house
as few as three pieces of art. And conference centers in so many
towns that they can't find anyone to use them.
This visit brought many signs of Japan's deep economic crisis. One
was the plentiful supply of taxis. During the economic bubble of
the 1980s cabs were in such high demand you could hardly find one.
Now they line up around the block. Another symptom was the
depressing conversations with investment bankers. They're just
sick at how broken down the financial system has become. Banks and
companies have trillions of yen of failed loans and investments on
their books, but because of accounting rules and corporate
cultures, they go on pretending that these investments aren't
bankrupt. This then ties up tons of capital that could be used to
start new businesses to kickstart the economy. Instead it festers.
Another thing Chris and I commented on frequently was "the
myth of Japanese employment." Everywhere we went we saw
incredibly overemployment in useless positions. Chris's office
building had a ludicrous number of security guards on duty, with
nothing to protect. We spotted a parking ramp at a department
store which had five guys to manage a single lane of outgoing
traffic. And construction sites with men on duty to direct
pedestrian traffic onto a thoroughly unconfusing walkway!
OK, enough of that, then... I was sick and grumpy.
|
Saturday
February 16th |
|
Still
sick. (Argh.) I did some more reading. OK, maybe I mostly slept
and watched the olympics on TV. I guess it's a good thing I was
planning to leave on Monday. All signs were the I was completely
touristed out.
|
Sunday
February 17th |
|
Still
sick. But Chris and I went out for dinner anyway, this time at a
Robatayaki place called Inakaya. That was super cool. Two chefs
sat on their knees on raised platforms inside a wide rectangle
surrounded by a narrow counter and stools. In between the counter
and the chefs were a selection of delicious looking foods (five
kinds of mushrooms, peppers, garlic, onions, okra, eggplant,
shallots, leeks, mysterious but tasty Japanese spring vegetables,
potatoes, taro root, prawns, flounder, red snapper, beef,
chicken), all waiting to be grilled and served on command by the
chefs. Each order was called out and repeated in chorus by every
other staff member; then the chef used a four- foot-long paddle to
reach out and pick up the food items, and also to deliver the
finish product to customers; the chefs even used the paddles to
deliver the (very large) bottles of sapporo beer. They showed off
by having us try to lift beer bottles with the paddles. It was
basically impossible with so much leverage working against you.
And, of course, they delivered not just one but two bottles at a
time! Far and away the coolest food item were whole tiny beach
crabs, fried and salted, which the chefs posed in scurrying
position (claws in the air, little googly eyes staring back at
you) before being delivered. And they were actually quite tasty.
|
Monday
February 18th |
|
Packed
up and left.
|
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