Sightseeing

The rainy season has started, and I’m told it will be followed (in July) by unbearably hot and humid weather (hey–I live in Mississippi–I’m not scared!). We’ve been trying to take advantage of good weather whenever we get it. 

On Wednesday we visited Jimbocho, the book district of Tokyo which bills itself as the largest in the world.

The subway mosaic at the Jimbocho stop:

David and Daniel and I all loved browsing the stores, most of which had old and new volumes, in Japanese and English: 

Daniel was particularly taken with a first edition of “The Hunting of the Snark” by Lewis Carroll (in English). But the price was over $1000 U.S. That would be a bit tough on a 12-year-old’s allowance!

Later that day I went on my own to Roppongi (a neighborhood in Tokyo) to visit the Mori Art Museum and the Tokyo City View. The art museum had a retrospective of the Turner Prize, meaning that most of the exhibit was of Western art. I’d been hoping to see work by some of the trendy Japanese pop artists, like Takashi Murakami. There was also an exhibit of cars decorated by famous artists, sponsored by BMW. Yawn.

On the same floor (52nd) of the building was Tokyo City View, a 360 degree observatory for viewing the city. 

The red and white tower in the background is the Tokyo Tower, obviously built to mimic the Eiffel Tower, and just slightly taller than the original. There’s an observatory in the Tokyo Tower, too, which we’ve also visited. In fact, we’ve probably visited a dozen of these observatories over the last couple of months. Every single one of them promises you can see Mt. Fuji on a clear day, but we haven’t gotten a glimpse of Fuji-san (“san” means mountain) yet. Perhaps we’ll be able to spot it from our train window when we travel to Kyoto this weekend.

 

Daniel, May 28, 2008

Yesterday we went on a tour of the Supreme Court and Diet. The Diet is akin to our Congress, almost exactly in fact, and is made up of the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors. That’s about as far as I’m willing to go into it, however, as we were forced to read pamphlets (extremely dry) and watch a video (gasping for water), both of which, I’m pretty sure, are outlawed under the Geneva Convention. Most of the Diet tour (the morning tour) was boring, but the architecture of the building was amazing! Every non-carpeted floor was a colorful mosaic, the ceilings were vaulted with frescoes and stained glass skylights, and huge murals of the bucolic landscapes adorned the stone walls. Even the ventilation grates were beautiful ironwork of leaves and such (they were truly grate!). We ate lunch back at the JUSEC building with the other Fulbrighters on the tour. I drank the tea they gave us; I would have gotten a soda back at the House of Councillors, but of course, they were all Diet Sodas! *Groan*

After lunch we all went to the Supreme Court. The simple mode of architecture of the recent (1971-1974) building was a far cry from the grandeur of the Diet. In the main hall are two statues. The first is of Lady Justice with a twisted symbolism. Her scales are uneven and she wears no blindfold; rather, “she keeps her eyes wide open,” as our tour guide said. Also, she was called Themis, which is incorrect; justice among humans was personified by Themis’ daughter, Dike. Also (and this part I do not find fault with), she had the head of a Hindu Diva of justice, which was a pleasant blend. Across from Themis (Dike) was the second statue; two children, a boy and a girl, sitting on a park bech eating little cookie-filled-with-jam sweets, and feeding a collection of pigeons with them. This endearing statue (both statues were bronze) represented the Juvenile branch, which heard cases of serious Juvenile Delinquency. Wait–what? Stealing sweets? Poisoning birds, perhaps? We then went on to a variety of courtrooms, spoke with a justice (who said very little in very many words), and then went to his office. After all this, we walked home and got lunch at a make-your-own bento place.

The Japanese National Diet

Hah—fooled you! This blog posting is NOT about Japanese food. The National Diet is the name of the legislature of Japan, like our Congress. On Tuesday we joined a group of other Fulbrighters (and their families/guests) for a private tour of the Diet in the morning (including a meeting with a current Representative) and a tour of the Supreme Court in the afternoon (including a meeting with a current Supreme Court Justice). It was quite an honor, and several Fulbrighters living far outside of Tokyo came in to the city to join the tour. Apparently few Japanese are even privy to this kind of insider view of the government.

 

The Diet has two houses, like the U.S Congress. There’s the House of Councillors and the House of Reresentatives. But the power isn’t divided quite the same, and the two houses aren’t equal. Together they’re charged with several important functions: electing the Prime Minister, formulating and approving the budget, enacting laws, approving international treaties, and initiating amendments to the Constitution.

 

Representative Tsushima came to speak to us, in nearly perfect English. He spoke a bit about the structure of the government, about taxation (I think he’s head of the taxation committee), and about the problem the Japanese are confronting with their national health care system right now. The Japanese system is community-based, and people receive their health insurance from a local organization. An estimated 99 percent of the population is covered this way. But the problem is that as the Japanese population ages (and there is a greater percentage of old people in Japan than anywhere else in the world), many are retiring from jobs in big cities and returning to their home towns. And that’s straining the community health care coverage. The question the government is facing is how much to subsidize these programs, how much to let local businesses subsidize them, and how much to make people pay in premiums. 

 

The Diet is housed in a majestic old building that has interesting quirks like a dance hall in the top of the Tower (only ever used once), and an ornate room reserved for the Emperor’s visits (once a year at the Opening Ceremony). After our tour ended, there was a break for lunch. I was crossing my fingers for lunch in the legislative cafeteria. Think about it: no matter what you choose from the menu, no matter how rich and fattening it is, it would still be “Diet food!” But no, instead we were taken back to the Fulbright office for Subway sandwiches and iced green tea.

 

After lunch our government tour continued with a visit to the Japanese Supreme Court. Again, there are strong similarities between the Japanese Supreme Court and the U.S.’s. (These similarities in government structure are no coincidence, since the Japanese Constitution was imposed by the U.S. after World War II.) But the Japanese Supreme Court has 15 Justices (including one woman) instead of 9, and they are not the celebrities or public figures they are in the States. In fact, Justice Tokuji Izumi, who met with us, said that his favorite book about the Court had a title translating as “judges with no faces, no names.” He was clearly uncomfortable with some of the more personal questions people asked, such as what books he enjoys reading, or what he plans to do after retirement. (Just imagine if he faced questions in the States, and had to deal with queries like, “Boxers or briefs?”)

 

Here’s a picture of me with Justice Izumi (I decided to give him a face on this blog):

 

 

The Supreme Court justices in Japan don’t write separate opinions, although each can do so if they have a dissenting opinion. Within the main bench are 3 smaller “petty benches,” composed of 5 justices each.

Main bench: 

 

Petty bench: 

 

According to Justice Izumi, the U.S. Supreme Court hears 80 cases a year (but must obviously evaluate many more in selecting which ones to consider), but the Japanese Supreme Court decides on 5000. (Only 80 of these cases actually involve a courtroom hearing, and even in these cases there is no “retrial,” meaning no witnesses are called, no defendant is present. The Japanese Supreme Court doesn’t retry cases, but simply decides on the constitutionality of the lower court’s decision. And by the way, there is no jury system in Japan.) Another difference is that U.S. Supreme Court justices have their own clerks for help with legal research, and there are 600 clerks (according to Justice Izumi). But Japanese Supreme Court Justices share their researchers (who are more senior than clerks; in fact some are judges themselves), and there are only 30 of them altogether. Even working 365 days a year that’s a rate of a dozen or more cases a day, which seems impossible. Perhaps that’s why the judges here face forced retirement at age 70.

 

I asked Judge Izumi (actually David asked for me) to describe some recent cases that he thought were especially interesting. He described two in which he had a dissenting opinion. In one, it was found that people in the countryside had five times more political power (because of voting/government structure) than people in Tokyo. Justice Izumi found that situation unconstitutional, but the court voted to preserve the status quo.

 

In another, the court was considering the Japanese law that awards illegitimate children only half of the inheritance awarded to the legitimate children of marriage. Apparently the United Nations has even requested that Japan change this law. But the Japanese government isn’t inclined to do anything about it, and the Supreme Court upheld the law’s constitutionality . . . although again Justice Izumi dissented. I checked him out online after our visit, and it looks like he’s had some other interesting dissenting opinions, too. But according to his online biography he’ll be turning 70 next January, and will have to retire.

 

 

Memorial Day

Memorial Day is obviously an American holiday, at least when observed the last weekend in May. But Japan honors its war dead, too. For our Memorial Day observance, Daniel and I decided to visit Yasukuni Jinja, a Shinto shrine established in the late 1800s to honor the men, women, and children who gave their lives to their country in wartime.

We found out that Japan does far more than just remember and honor the casualties of war. In Japan, the people who die during wartime become “divinities,” and currently almost two and a half million of  these divinities are worshipped at Yasukuni Jinja. (A monk praying at the shrine, below.)

 

 

Cynic that I am, the standards for becoming a divinity seemed a bit loose to me. Consider the following end to a long passage in an informational pamphlet from the shrine, explaining the various divinities who are worshipped there: “There were also more than 1000 people who were labeled war criminals and executed after having been tried by the Allies (the United States, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and China, etc.). We refer to these divinities as the ‘Showa martyrs.’”

Also on the grounds of the shrine is the Yushukan museum dedicated to Japanese military history. It was odd to see such glorification of the Japanese military and its battles in a Shinto religious setting ostensibly dedicated to peace. The theme of martyrdom was quite sobering. There were exhibits about the “kamikaze” or suicide pilots in World War II. These soldiers served an emperor they believed was divine, and they gave their lives freely, believing that they would become divinities after death, too. Reading about the men who crashed their planes into enemy targets, I couldn’t help comparing them to today’s Muslim jihadist suicide bombers, who seem to have very similar beliefs about their actions and the rewards in the afterlife. The museum contained notebooks with the last letters from some of these kamikaze pilots to their families. Some were translated into English, and a few can be seen at the shrine’s website: http://www.yasukuni.or.jp/english/will/index.php

 

The museum’s gift shop sold toy swords and plastic Zero fighter planes among other tchotchkes and memorabilia. A cafeteria urged visitors to “Stop to relax and have a bite.” The shrine’s “mascot” is a white cartoon dove wearing a blue bow tie. But none of these incongrous efforts at lightening the atmosphere really worked. The shrine is quite controversial, and has been accused of presenting a revisionist account of history, and of glossing over (actually, failing to mention at all) Japan’s atrocities at Nanking, use of  “comfort women,” etc. Yasukuni Jinja, by the way, was the shrine that the former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi liked to visit, so enraging the Chinese and Koreans.

 

Outside again, we noticed statues honoring the horses, dogs, and carrier pigeons that also served their country (and died) during wartime. A statue honored war widows and their children (below).

 

Another statue honored Dr. Radha binod Pal, apparently the only judge on the post-WWII International Military Tribunal for the Far East who found all of the Japanese accused of war crimes, innocent. Explains the brochure: “Dr. Pal detected that the tribunal, commonly known as the Tokyo Trial, was none other than formalized vengeance sought with arrogance by the victorious Allied Powers upon a defeated Japan.”

 

Daniel and I ended our visit as peacefully as we could, walking through the “Shinchi Telen” (Sacred Pond Garden), watching the lovely waterfall, and feeding the koi.

 

As at all shrines, there were pieces of paper, tied in knots, containing people’s prayers for the future (see below). We hope they’re for peace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

The Play’s the Thing

After sitting fairly uncomprehendingly through sumo matches and their rituals, we decided to expand our Japanese cultural repertoire with a visit to a Kabuki theater. Wisely, we decided to buy tickets for just two acts of the very long play. Those two acts lasted an hour . . . and I’m not sure we would have lasted any longer.

 

The play (or part of a play) we saw was called “Shiranai Gonin Otoko” (or, “The Five Thieves”). Written in 1862, it involves an elaborate soap opera-ish plot involving thieves, servants, and a princess. The “main” thief is named Benton Kozo, and apparently the character was inspired by an old woodblock print of a sexy young man with tattoos covering his body but with a woman’s hairstyle and kimono.

 

All the parts in Kabuki are played by male actors, in very elaborate period costume. That means that even an ingénue role, such as the princess, is played by a man in drag. I realize that’s how Shakespeare used to be performed, and I wondered if Kabuki seemed as “foreign” and difficult to understand for a Japanese audience as Shakespeare is to most Americans. But I think my analogy is a false one. Even though many Kabuki plays were written much more recently than Shakespeare’s, they are much harder to understand. The vocal intonations, impossible to describe, make the language hard to comprehend even for a native Japanese speaker. In fact, the language is as stylized as the movements, which are also fairly incomprehensible (fights look nothing like fights, for instance). While the sets and costumes were gorgeous, the whole thing looked like a moaning, mincing mess to me.

 

We rented headphones with an audio feed that commented in English on what was happening on stage (although it didn’t actually translate the dialogue). With this prop, we could sort of follow along. That doesn’t mean it all made sense. There’s so much tradition associated with Kabuki that’s really almost impossible for a foreigner to digest. Here are a few definitions from the English-language pamphlet that was handed to us before the play started:

 

Aragato: The masculine “rough style” of acting associated with the Ichikawa Danjuro line of actors and typified by exaggerated movement, makeup, costumes and diction.

 

Kakegoe: Appreciative shouts by members of the audience and timed to the actors lines, poses, entrances, etc. Most often shouted are the actors’ yago (“house name”) and generation number. (Besides their stage name, all Kabuki actors have a house name which they share with other members of the same acting house, or “ya.”)

 

Mie: Poses performed by tachiyaku (actors of male roles) at climactic moments involving a rotating, nodding movement of the head and the crossing of one eye in a powerful glare.

 

Makes perfect sense, right? (And there were lots more definitions like those.)

 

The performance was packed, but most of the audience was older, with many of the women dressed in kimonos. Just as Broadway theaters are having trouble attracting younger fans, Kabuki is in danger of becoming obsolete. It’s simply not popular with younger Japanese. But I have to say, in this case I think I understand why.

Adventures in Eating

I think I’ve already mentioned that Tokyo is a world-class restaurant city, with loads of affordable healthy Japanese food, elegant gourmet French food. . . and everything inbetween. But so far I haven’t documented the stranger things we’ve eaten here, or just noticed. So here’s a brief list:

–Chicken sashimi, called tori-sashi. It’s raw chicken, sliced thin. We were served this on our third or fourth night in Tokyo. I managed one piece to be polite, and David ate the rest. Obviously there’s no salmonella problem here.

–A menu in a Korean barbecue restaurant with “Lymphatic System” and “Main Artery” listed as choices. We decided not to check them out.

–Fish preserved in its own innards. Disgusting and smelly: David actually ordered it, ate it, and enjoyed it. (I didn’t even taste.)

–Pizza with corn sprinkled on top and mayonnaise drizzled over the whole mess. Most pizza in Japan is an abomination, especially to a Jersey girl like me. There are plenty of things even stranger than corn and mayonnaise that are popular toppings (shaved bonito, dried squid, etc.). But we’ve managed to find a very good Italian pizzeria near our apartment.

–Collagen noodles. Another intriguing menu item in a Chinese restaurant; the description claimed they were good for you. Haven’t checked this one out yet either.

–Wasabi ice cream. Yep, we tried it while we were away last weekend. Surprisingly subtle. Like vanilla ice cream with a kick at the end. I guess the closest analogy is the chocolate (or hot chocolate) with chili pepper that’s popular in the States.

–Odd sandwich fillings, such as potato salad or noodles. And lots of mayonnaise on everything. I once bought a sandwich that I thought was a chicken cutlet, but turned out to be a fried potato pancake. Very mushy and bland.

–Squid on a stick. We saw this at a street fair. I know that there are lots of “on a stick” things sold in the South (Daniel once saw “pork butt on a stick” at a southern festival, and couldn’t stop laughing), but somehow this was a bit ickier. But intrepid eater David munched one and said he liked it. Here are some photos:

–Aloe yogurt. We got little containers of yogurt one morning, but couldn’t figure out what flavor they were. The katakana characters on the top seemed to read “arrow” and the kanji translated as “meaty leaf.” The yogurt was refreshing, with a flavor somewhere between lime and cucumber. Turns out it was aloe leaf, and there were pieces in the yogurt. Quite tasty.

–Fish sperm. We have NOT tried this yet, but it’s served raw (in sushi) or battered and deep fried (tempura). Don’t know if any of us will have the nerve (or the stomach) for this one. Although when you think about it, people eat fish EGGS all the time and not only aren’t grossed out by it, but call it caviar and pay big bucks for it. So it’s just a matter of cultural conditioning.

–Fried salted spaghetti sticks, served in a cardboard container like french fries. Crunchy and addictive.

And then there’s the one “adventure in eating” that was so traumatic that neither Daniel nor I could bring ourselves to blog about it. . . until now:

About a month ago, David’s cousin Alexis was visiting Tokyo on business, and we all went out to dinner together. We chose what looked like a very good fish restaurant near our apartment. Instead of ordering from the menu, David requested that the chef just bring us an assortment of both raw and cooked fish.

The raw fish arrived first, beautifully arranged on a tiered platter of ice. The sashimi glittered like jewels, and everything looked marvelously fresh and tasty. Unfortunately, there was a fish head in the middle of the platter, put there as decoration. That was bad enough. . .

But then the fish’s eyes blinked and its gills moved!

Alexis screamed. Daniel yelled, “Ewwwww!” I turned my head away and tried not to feel sick. The manager rushed over to see what was wrong, and David apologized for our crassness. . . and asked him to please remove the fish head. A waitress hurried over with a pair of tongs and grabbed the head. But it turned out that the head was still connected to a body, only it wasn’t really a body but a skeleton that had been stripped of its flesh. The “body” had been hidden under the ice so it wasn’t visible. We realized that the fish’s flesh had been sliced up and was probably part of the sashimi on the platter. So yes, the fish was obviously VERY fresh, but also very disgusting. And it’s taken me this long to be able to write about it without getting nauseous again.

A Weekend in the Country

After more than a month and a half in one of the world’s biggest cities, we were ready for some fresh air and country scenery. Our solution: A weekend on the Izu peninsula southwest of Tokyo. Many wealthy Tokyo-ites keep weekend homes in Hakone, a touristy town with lots of “onsen” (hot springs resorts) at the start of the peninsula. Others keep beach houses further down the peninsula on the coast. We decided to visit Shimoda, a beach town on the very tip of the peninsula with a slightly more laid-back atmosphere.

The train ride took about two and a half hours, and we traveled through dramatic mountain passes, terraced rice fields, lush mikan (a type of citrus fruit) orchards, and scenic harbor towns. Train stations in Japan are full of gift shops, because it’s assumed that travelers will need to bring presents to whatever family and friends they are visiting. In Tokyo the shops are filled with expensive and elaborately wrapped cookies, candies, pastries. In the Shimoda station the offerings were fish (fresh, frozen, dried, and preserved versions of a type of red snapper), wasabi (grown on the peninsula and used in every product imaginable: wasabi ice cream anyone?), and fruit.

Shimoda’s biggest claim to fame, besides its surfer beaches and food offerings, is that in 1854 the “Black Ship” (as the Japanese called the U.S. Navy fleet led by Commodore Perry) arrived there to open up an almost completely isolated Japan to the world. The next year Japan and America signed a peace treaty, and then in 1856 the first Consulate General of the United States to Japan was established in Shimoda. By coincidence we were in Shimoda for the 69th annual “Black Ship Festival” to celebrate the momentous event. What must have been seen as an enormous national catastrophe at the time (local residents thought the Americans were blue-eyed monsters and barbarians, and were terrified of the ships and their weaponry) is now cause for an annual “matsuri” (folk festival). American and Japanese flags fluttered from every lamp post and store front, and a U.S. Navy ship was anchored in the harbor to participate in the festival. There were parades, pageants re-enacting the historic event, street fairs, and general merriment.

Yes, there is a dark side to this historic tale. Shimoda has a tragic heroine named Okichi, a local geisha who was ordered by the local Shogunate (government) to keep house for Townsend Harris, America’s first consul to Japan. I assume “keep house” is a euphemism and Okichi was really sent to be Harris’ mistress, because according to the local story her tragedy is that she was forced to part from her own beloved to serve the foreigner. When Harris returned to America, Okichi was left a broken woman (although I think she opened up a local restaurant). As the tourist brochure says, “We find the bright side of Shimoda in its glorious history as the turning point in the modernization of Japan. But behind that scene we find the dark side, that is the tragic drama of a woman whose life was shattered and ruined for the sake of history.” A small museum in town is devoted to her story.

We opted to stay a couple of miles outside of town, at a funky little beach hotel with a strange part-Japanese, part-American, part-Hawaiian vibe. At the next-door Paradise Cafe, an odd assortment of ex-pats (mostly Irish, Australian, and British) mingled to drink with the locals and visitors. We met an Irish computer expert who married a Japanese woman and now runs a summerhouse maintenance business in Shimoda. We also met a pregnant American naval wife in town to visit her husband who she hadn’t seen in three months. And Daniel found two playmates, the sons of a technology consultant and his wife living in Yokohama and visiting Shimoda for the weekend like us. The nearby beach welcomed surfers, families, and beachcombers.

On Saturday, David, Daniel, and I crossed the mountains that run along the coast to visit the inland area of the peninsula. Our destination there was the Japan Cycle Center: an amusement park with a bicycling theme. There were monorail rides (that you had to pedal), pedal boats, an area with strange funky cycles (that you ride sideways, that wobble, that have square tires, that you have to hop on to propel, etc.) and riding paths for cyclists of any skill level. The place was fairly empty, which meant no wait for rides, so we did a lot in the few hours we had. David and I will be writing the cycle center trip up for Kansai Time Out, an English-language Japanese magazine published in Osaka. 

On Sunday we spent the morning on the beach and the afternoon in town at the Black Ship Festival. Purple and white jasmine flowers bloomed everywhere, filling the air with a heavy, intoxicating scent. People in period costume wandered all over town being photographed by Japanese and foreigners. There were street musicians entertaining the crowds, including an all-Japanese Dixieland band, and an all-girl band dressed in kimonos but wailing away on saxophones and drums. There was a performing monkey. Stalls sold snacks and souvenirs. A very funny play re-enacting the Black Ships story (Admiral Perry was played by a young Japanese girl!) was performed. 

The parade concluded with dancing in a large plaza, and a woman dressed as a geisha grabbed me, David, and Daniel to join in the dancing. We did, reluctantly, in the spirit of Japanese-American relations. There was a news crew there with video cameras that seemed trained on us . . . but that’s one video/photo you WON’T see posted on this blog!

The weekend away was incredibly relaxing, and we had a fabulous time. For one thing, there were no earthquakes to worry about. But that doesn’t mean life in the country is completely risk-free (see below):

And now city life resumes for the next two weeks, until we leave for Kyoto and Osaka on May 30.

 

 

 

Tokyo and the Livin’ is Easy

 

Even though I speak almost no Japanese (and it seems as if few people here speak English), this is a very easy city to live in. It seems to anticipate and cater to every basic human need (sorry, this is a family blog, so we won’t go into all of them).

 

Need a bathroom? Chances are there’s a public restroom within a few steps. Best of all, it’s almost certainly extremely clean. (Interestingly, though, most restrooms don’t provide paper towels for hand drying, and most Tokyo-ites carry little pocket towels with them all the time.)

 

Need a snack? There are 400,000 vending machines in Tokyo: one for every 20 residents. They sell hot and cold beverages, cups of noodles, ice cream cones. There may be as many as 20 million vending machines in the whole country.

 

 

If you want more substantial food, there’s probably a convenience store on the block, wherever you happen to be. There are so many 7-11’s, Lawson’s, Family Marts, AM/PMs, and other convenience chains, that there are often more than one on each block. These stores sell cheap, healthy meals at any hour—a bowl of rice and chicken, for example, can cost as little as $3. The same for a bento box with broiled fish and salad. One of my favorite snacks is an “onigiri”—a rice ball wrapped in seaweed, with something (salmon, pickled plum, meat) in the middle. These can cost as little as $1.

 

Have a craving for something more international? Tokyo has more eating establishments than New York or Paris, and they include an astonishing international array: Irish pubs, French patisseries and bistros, Italian pizzerias and gelaterias, Indian and Chinese restaurants, even bagel stands. And they’re good! We’ve seen Dean & Deluca, Nathan’s hot dogs, Seattle’s Best Coffee, and Cold Stone Creamery ice cream, too. So far there’s absolutely nothing I miss from home. . . because there’s nothing I can’t find here.

 

Need a taxi? They’re not hard to find. Since the industry was deregulated in 2002, the number of cabs in the city has more than doubled, and there are now more than 58,000 licensed taxis. That number, plus the state of the Japanese economy, means that there are cabs cruising all over town looking for fares . . . even in the rain. And by the way, when it does rain it’s easy to find a nice big umbrella on sale for a few dollars.

 

Need a tissue? The people who hand out advertising pamphlets on street corners often hand out packs of tissues with advertising on them as incentive to take the ads. I’ve amassed an impressive amount so far, but still can’t resist adding another one to the collection when it’s handed to me.

 

Need a bed for the night? Commuters who miss the last train home (which happens a lot because subways stop running at 10:00) can stay in a cheap capsule hotel. These bed-only hotels, located in most business districts, cater to salarymen and office workers who’ve gone out drinking after work and lost track of time. Those same guys can go out before work the next morning and get themselves a cheap new shirt and tie at one of those ubiquitous convenience stores, or even at a subway stall. (Unfortunately, if you’re a woman you’re out of luck on this one. Capsule hotels are for men only. And I haven’t seen women’s clothing for sale at any convenience stores yet.)

 

Subway trains run on time to the minute, and the stations have floors cleaner than my kitchen’s.

 

The crime rate is incredibly low: so low that little kids walk around city streets and take the subway by themselves. Policemen are so polite I’ve seen them bow to homeless men sleeping on park benches (yes, there are some) as they ask them to please sit up (which the homeless men invariably do, with no voices raised on either side). I’ve had to get over my American inhibitions and allow Daniel a lot more freedom here than he’d have at home.

 

If you get lost, ask any fellow pedestrian for directions, and chances are he or she will whip out a state-of-the-art cellphone (which make the U.S.’s look primitive), call up the GPS function, show you a map of where you want to go. . . and then take you there.

 

Day-to-day life is very, very easy here, especially if you’re a foreigner who doesn’t have to conform to societal expectations or hold a boring office job. It’s no wonder that so many “gaijin” (foreigners) enjoy living and working here.

 

Speaking of our adopted city, we’re going to be leaving it for a few days. We’re spending the weekend in Shimoda, a city on the tip of the Izu Peninsula. So the next post probably won’t be for a few days. Have a great weekend!

 

 

 

 

 

Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On

The Chinese President’s recent visit, followed by the horrific earthquake in China, have all of us here thinking a lot more seriously about earthquake preparedness. One of the first things we were told when we arrived was that Tokyo is overdue for a really big quake, and we should have a plan for what to do if it happens while we’re here. Japan occupies the most seismically active real estate in the world, and Tokyo itself sits at the junction of three tectonic plates. At some points, the fault line is only two and a half miles beneath the city.

Tokyo had a devastating earthquake in 1855 (when people thought that either giant subterranean catfish or giant mochi-pounding rabbits caused quakes), and again in 1923. That year the Great Kanto Earthquake registered 7.9 on the Richter scale, was followed by horrendous fires, and claimed more than 100,000 lives. Scientists seem to feel another big one is imminent, and the Tokyo metropolitan government estimates that an earthquake of 7.3 would cause 5,600 hundred deaths, 160,000 injuries, and $1 trillion in damage.

Of course, we didn’t pay much attention. Just as we sometimes ignore the tornado sirens in Mississippi, or don’t think too seriously about terrorism anymore when we’re flying, earthquakes just seemed like another abstract threat that wouldn’t touch us. Besides, we’re only going to be here for four months.

But then we started feeling the tremors. We’ve felt them about once a week now, just as people said we would. And then last week there was a bigger one that woke us up in the middle of the night. I thought David was trying to shake me awake, but the bed was shaking by itself. It turned out to be a 6.8 on the Richter scale, centered in the ocean 100 miles from Tokyo. Fortunately there was no damage and no serious casualties in the city. But just days after that, of course, the devastating Chinese earthquake occured.

So now we’re taking things a bit more seriously. We’ve got bottled water available. Know what to do immediately after a quake starts (open the door, don’t leave the apartment, make sure you’re not near any heavy furniture that could fall on you, turn off the gas, deal with any fires immediately, etc.). We also know the local evacuation areas and centers, and have (finally) registered ourselves with the American Embassy. And we’re only going to be here for another two and a half months. . .

On a lighter note (okay, maybe a heavier note) there was a different kind of shaking going on today. The sumo matches are in Tokyo until the 25th, and we decided to check them out for ourselves.

    

Yep, it’s just as we imagined it. Really big guys in really skimpy loincloths grappling with each other in a sandy circle lined with straw rice bags. Each match takes mere seconds, ending when one big body hits the ground or one fleshy foot steps outside the ring. The matches are short, but they’re preceded and followed by a lot of ceremonial chanting, fan waving, and salt sprinkling.

The stadium was offering a special 200 yen (about $2) lunch of “chanko nabe,” a thick stew that the sumo wrestlers train on, that supposedly make them so big. David wanted to try it, but I was a bit leery. Who wants to look like a sumo wrestler? I mean, if fashion models trained on it, it would be one thing. But half-ton man-mountains? I finally gave in, hoping that one lunch couldn’t have really serious consequences. What we got was a relatively small bowl of watery vegetable soup with a little piece of tofu and fish floating in it. All I can say is that these guys would have to eat bathtubs full of the stuff to maintain their size. In fact, David says that the stuff they eat is much thicker, full of lots of meat and fish, and that they do eat tons of it, with lots of rice. I’m happy to have had a watered down version!

Almost as much fun as watching the matches was wandering around Ryogoku, the neighborhood containing the sumo stadium and stables (where the wrestlers train). It’s weird to see these guys just walking on the streets:

                    

The matches we saw were early in the day when the amateurs and up-and-coming wrestlers have their bouts. We had to leave before the really big (literally) champions competed later in the day. But honestly, these guys looked plenty big to us!

Guess Hu’s Been Here?

Well, my parents were here for two weeks, and we had a fabulous time with them . . . but that’s not Hu I’m referring to.

Chinese President Hu Jintao just recently left after a five-day trip to Japan, and three of those days were spent right across the street from us at the New Otani Hotel. Since we haven’t been reading the Japanese papers, we didn’t know this was happening until one day walking home we noticed there were policemen stationed several feet apart for blocks in every direction from our apartment. Roads were cordoned off. Police were stopping cars to check license plates and drivers’ licenses. And men in dark suits with ear pieces, who must have been the Japanese version of Secret Service, were scurrying around everywhere.

President Hu was here for a Japan-China Summit, which is always a historic event given the bad blood between the two countries. In this case, Hu was meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda on several issues, including CO2 emissions/greenhouse gases. China agreed to contain its growing volume of CO2 emissions which is causing alarm around the world. There was a joint statement to combat global warming, with (I think) Japan agreeing to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. And there was some kind of agreement over six disputed natural gas fields in the East China Sea. As Hu said, “Asia’s two biggest energy consumers have no choice other than to improve relations.” Amen.

Since Chinese relations with the previous Japanese Prime Minister were a bit frosty due to his militaristic predilection for visiting war shrines, the current meetings are seen as part of a continuing thaw. There were the usual symbolic events: President Hu played ping pong with a Japanese Olympic table tennis team member who gracefully allowed the leader a few points. President Hu said that China would “lend” Tokyo two new giant pandas, since the Ueno Zoo’s Ling Ling died a few weeks ago (and was the last giant panda here).

Topics like Tibet were glossed over. And rather than continuing to demand an apology for Japanese war crimes, President Hu pointedly commended Japan for its committment to peace over the last 60 years. Japanese consumers wanted more of a promise of new food safety laws from China (since they’re still upset over an incident of tainted frozen gyoza from China in January in which several people got sick but no one died), but Hu just made some vague statements without promising anything concrete. There were a few demonstrations, but nothing violent. Overall the visit was considered a success.

On Hu’s last day in Tokyo, Daniel and I were out on our balcony watching the elaborate preparations and motorcade across the street.  There were police motorcycles in formation. Hundreds of people in dark suits running around. Black vans and limousines. Scores of reporters and photographers. It was so elaborately choreographed that I grabbed my camera to see if I could capture any of it. But before I took even one shot, it occurred to me that a flash of light coming from a balcony right across the street might not be a good idea. The last thing I wanted was to be mistaken for a sniper and picked off by an overly nervous policeman. So Daniel and I just kept watching and making bad Abbott and Costello “Who’s on First” jokes:

–”Who’s there?”

–”Hu.”

–”That’s what I’m asking you: who’s there?”

–”And that’s what I’m telling you. Hu is there.” Etc.

   We cracked ourselves up that way until the motorcade had left. And then we went back inside to re-adjust to NOT living across the street from the leader of one of the most powerful countries in the world.