reflectionsonjapan

Reflections on Japan

This is some reflections I had on Japan after my trip there in 2005

Why Japan?

Why not? No, the reasons for me wanting to go to Japan were much more substantial than that. I think. I studied Japanese in year 9 & 10, and again over the last two years at Uni, because I wanted to go to Japan. I started eating meat because I wanted to go to Japan, although I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the biggest carnivore in the world. Even anime watching was initially started because I wanted to go to Japan - not the other way around, as it is often assumed. So that puts my desire to go to Japan somewhere before 1999, when I both started to watch anime (Neon Genesis Evangelion on its first airing on SBS) and I was studying Japanese with a high-school level of intensity - well above my previous primary school levels. So why Japan? I think in part because Dad went there regularly on business trips, because Mum had studied it for some 4 years, because we’d had a Japanese exchange teacher live in our house for a couple of months, because… I don’t know. It’s that deep seated.

Japan was always something different - an Asian culture, but modernised. It was both the antithesis of India and simultaneously Australia, the two cultures my young impressionable brain had been exposed to, and thus always held an aura of otherness. So obviously at the first opportunity I could grab, I wanted to go there. And when I got there…

Day 1

The aeroplane coasts in over the sea, dropping quickly from altitudes mighty to swoop through cloud and pass over seaside farms and towns quickly as it comes to land, its speed all that much clearer the closer it is to touching down. Minutes later, I am some 8 or 9 thousand kilometres from home in a country that has always held some fascination within my mind. Suddenly, it’s all real. All that training and study kicks in, and I enter a bilingual mode, one far more advanced than that which I enter upon returning to my land of birth. I reflect only momentarily on this sad fact, but then push it aside to acknowledge the environment around me. Japan! I’m here. It’s insane. Sure, within hours I shall be off again to another fabled land, but Japan has always been something special.

My first day in Japan was spent in the areas near Narita airport, Tokyo’s international airport and some 60 minutes away from the city proper by fast train. Instantly, I knew that most things which I had imagined and had been told were true about Japan, which was a crazy feeling. The trains were efficient, clean and ran right to the clock. The people were quiet, polite, self-effacing and just different in a way that cannot be described, only felt when surrounded by them. Having never encountered the Japanese culture en masse, unlike the Indian or Western cultures, it very clearly came across to me that Japan was different, and I think to some extent that was something I was unprepared for, although it didn’t hamper me.

The geography of the place was something else entirely; the environment, simply beautiful in a way that it so rarely is in Australia. We visited a temple near the airport that was quite impressive, probably one of the most impressive temples and grounds in Japan, surprisingly. Next, we headed to a cultural museum that was a replica village of Japan in the 1700s. This was another place where Japan became tacitly real, as all of these images and movies were thrown into 3D, and I was moving among it. Despite the humidity, the heat, and our weariness, it was a great day, footnoted by the return to the airport and the flight onwards to America.

Tokyo

Some two weeks later, we returned to Japan all abuzz from America and looked towards Tokyo to give us something.. special. Unfortunately, I neglected to truly take jetlag into my calculations - I have a thinking process whereby I go “That’s something old people get” and soldier on through it, and sometimes I believe my own hype. Not so in Japan. The first evening and the next day were a little hazy in my mind, and the shock of the new had worn off Japan, and travelling. Regardless, however, it was still a fresh experience to be in the city, and I slowly got to forming a more coherent image of Japan and its people in my mind…

The first thing anyone will note about the Japanese is how extremely polite they are. There is no clear way to express the way the level of politeness is conveyed, but it’s in practically everything they do. Walk into a shop or a restaurant and you’ll be greeted by a chorus of ‘Irrasshaimase!‘, and as you walk out you’re farewelled with a rousing ‘Arigatou Gozaimashita‘. Japanese basically has a whole different set of words and forms used for speaking in the politest form, and you don’t appreciate this difference until you hear it used around you. If you’re looking for people in the service industry, the Japanese are the ones to hire - they will, in their politeness, have patience when others will have much earlier lost theirs. Service in Japan is impeccable, and above and beyond standards I’m used to anywhere else in the world.

One feeling, however, that occasionally comes across is that the service is a tad impersonal. At first, I thought this might be because everyone is treated on much the same level, but in hindsight I think it may well be another aspect of the politeness, the down side - that same politeness that makes the service impeccable also demands that there be nothing to detract from the service, no personal involvement. The politeness demands the distance that exists. Again, intially this bugged me - but upon comparison to the Australian service I’ve had since I’ve been back, maybe some of that politeness wouldn’t go astray =)

Tokyo. The largest city in the developed world, and even more so when you consider it is essentially a dual city with Yokohama to the south, totalling some 20 million people (don’t quote me). It’s huge and it’s hectic. The city ‘centre’ is fairly large by itself, and you can judge this area to be the one covered by the myraid subway lines crisscrossing the centre. It’s hectic and it’s bustling and it’s not the easiest place to navigate - limitations of geography tend to do that. When contrasted with New York, it stands in sharp relief - New York has a bit of a bohemian vibe, a bit older, while Tokyo feels fresh and modern. New York is carfully laid out, but has the feeling of being multiple cities or neighbourhoods grown together. Tokyo, on the other hand, is a navigator’s nightmare and is stupefyingly regular the whole way around - it just feels like one giant, giant city. The cities are different as chalk and cheese, really. New York somehow feels like it has instant heart, somewhere, but Tokyo feels a little schizophrenic - it has multiple hearts, in Ginza, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Roppongi, and Ueno, but that could also be put down to sheer size. And yet, it was only when we headed out to meet Reiko, the woman who had stayed at our house some ten years previous, that we truly began to appreciate the sheer size of the place. It is quite simply huge.

But at the same time… space is at a premium, and Tokyo typifies the term “concrete jungle”, as much like Singapore the majority of housing near and in the city is in boxy apartments, and the Japanese being Japanese it’s absolutely tiny. It’s like the absolute minimum needed for people to get on with life comfortably has been measured out and allocated. I will make no qualms about saying I was completely oversized in Japan, as opposed to being only average in America. Tokyo is, I think, a completely different place once you’re actually living in it for a while, but I’m not entirely sure I would be comfortable with living there, simply because I love my space, and Australia really affords that to me in a comforting way. I think if I did live in Tokyo, I would make frequent trips to the countryside. Which brings me to…

Mt. Fuji

Picture this: It’s pitch black, and you’ve arrived at 2300m above sea level somewhere in the vincinity of 9:30 at night, and you’re about to start climbing a mountain on which you’ve done absolute minimal research. You figure it’s summer and it’ll stay kinda warm through the night. You’ve got a little Maglite to light your way, but not much beyond that. You’re carrying a litre and a half of water and some biscuits by way of snacks. You start walking up the side of the mountain and…

Within minutes, you’re away from the start point, and you really have no clue where you are, where you’re going and what it will be like. But overhead is probably the most beautiful night sky you’ve seen in your life. You’re completely awed by the multitude of stars, constellations completely unfamilar. It’s as though suddenly the sky has been salted vigorously, and suddenly you understand why counting the stars is a futile endeavour. You look out over the side of the mountain and you see a sea of clouds, highlighted gently by a crisp half moon in the sky, peaks of lesser mountains sticking up through the clouds - but you’re above them. You may as well have been teleported to the ends of the earth yet untouched by humans, but then you notice an unnatural glow from beneath a cloud - the cloud is below you, obviously - and you see humans aren’t too far away.

Regardless, that feeling was astonishing in a way that I as a cityslicker and young impressionable soul hadn’t witnessed previously. The cool mountain air filled my lungs, and we were alone on the side of the mountain with our thoughts for company. Totally, totally awesome.

Of course, by this point you all know I didn’t make it up the mountain. How I tried, oh how I tried, but how unfit I was. And how cold I felt. And how absolutely demoralising it is to admit to yourself that you’re not up to the challenge. Fuji-san is not to be trifled with, and I knew that night that I was not up to the task of challenging it. It was a succession of moments in which I felt so… broken inside. I hate to admit defeat and leave things incomplete after beginning them, so this will forever go down as a spectacular failure that I will hold for as long as memory serves me. Were I the crying and emotional type, I would be inconsolable. But I’m the silent type that internalises these things, and I will merely wheel it out on occasions dark to torture myself, and I think only years of serious psychotherepy will allow me to let it go =) That or a good couple of drinks and a soul mate to let it all flow out to ;)

Having only made it to 2700m or so of the total 3700m, I can merely claim to have made it to the hard bit, seen through the glass darkly and chosen to give up, rewarded by some 2 hours of Japanese conversation practise and the most spectacular sunrise I have had the privilege to witness yet. Sunrise is not usually my thing, being very much a sleep lover, but of the 6 or 7 that I have seen, there is none to challenge Fuji-san’s sunrise on the 15th of July, 2005. The only challenge is from those I have had the privilege to witness on a plane, most especially the one over Australia on my return flight. But having the full view as I did on Fuji was something else entirely. It is, truly, one of the best natural sights around.

While I’m on the subject of natural and nature, I will note that Japan has the most insaaane geography I’ve seen yet. Mountains are scattered everywhere, covered in verdant green forests, and between them is flat plains convered by rice fields or dwellings, crisscrossed by the electrical wires that keep the whole place buzzing. New Zealand comes close in terms of the mountains, but nothing quite compares to even ordinary countryside in Japan. And also, Ama is completely wrong when he claims you should not drive through Japan - I would like nothing better than to take a car to those delicious curves that cling to the sides of mountains or carve their way between mountains across the unbelievable plains. Rather than the blitzingly fast speed of the Shinkansen - which is great in its own way - doing it at your own pace would allow you to discover so much more, but such is life I suppose.

Kyoto

Kyoto is the ancient capital of Japan, and having been spared bombing through WWII it retains many temples and a couple of castles from its heydey, and inevitably it is probably the place to go for the “ancient Japan” experience. Of course, once you have spent some two or three days going to the beautiful temples and their lovely peaceful gardens, you’re all peace’d and temple’d out and you never want to see the sight of a zen garden again. As pretty as it is, there is a sensory overload point which most people cross within a few days, and that’s about it for Kyoto’s temples. I would still tell you all to go there because it’s something you gotta see at least once, but be careful to avoid that kind of narrow focus. Some beautiful gardens and amazingly pretty walks around the place, and Gion is an area where the night transports you back some 50 or 60 years - to stunning effect. Kyoto has a far less “modern” feel to it, and it reflects probably far more acturately the image of Japan you might draw from anime or movies or whatever. Plus the ladies are prettier.

Kyoto is diametrically opposed to Tokyo. The pace of life is far more laid back, the streets are laid out in a grid, and the people are ever so slightly warmer. Plus, it was a bit less humid in Kyoto, which brought some pleasant and unexpected relief as we had been warned it would be even hotter. Kyoto was also where me and Studds had our little “difference of opinion”, as he wanted to cycle around. In hindsight, it may well have been the smarter option to cycle around, but I enjoyed it regardless. I did have to dodge a number of bikes while walking however -_-;

Getting to Kyoto was also my first shinkansen (”bullet train”) experience. Oh, my, god, those bitches can move. Covering some 600 km in 2 and a half hours, with stops, puts the average somewhere around 300 km/h (~190 mph), and that was just the “ordinary express” Hikari that our Japan Rail passes allowed us to catch - the faster Nozomi would do in even quicker. The convenience of catching the train far outweighs catching a plane, as there’s none of the hassles of the airport. I can’t imagine the Tokyo-Osaka route to be all that popular by air simply because of the convenience of the shinkansen. To put it into perspective for the locals, a shinkansen between Melbourne and Sydney would take probably 3 and a half hours, maybe 4 hours - well worth the time and effort saved when compared to the plane. Awesome. (but at the same time, I still don’t think it’d be so bad to drive through the country, even if it’s a little less convenient or fast).

Aichi World Expo

The World Expo was a nice day trip from Kyoto, situated near Nagoya about an hour or so away from Kyoto. It’s the first world expo in a while, and what with us being in the vincinity, why not? Basically it was countries and companies from around the world showing off, ostensibly to the theme “Nature’s Wisdom”, although a large number of them didn’t actually correspond to the theme at all.

I have a whole list of ratings I gave countries as soon as I walked out of the halls of their exhibits, but I’m not going to bother listing them here as I’m sure I’ll cop abuse :P Suffice to say, India and Australia probably had the two most impressive stands that I went to, having actually thought about the theme, while China was a huge disappointment as an electronic exhibit was broken and the remainder was “here’s some computers, touch the screens!” and didn’t really have much to say. Other notable exhibits were the Italian, the UK, and the Singaporean. The most popular stands, such as the whole corporate block, the Japan exhibit, the French and Germans, and the more popular holiday locations had huuuuge lines in front of them, and I honestly could not be bothered waiting an hour to see it, regardless of how good it may have been.

I also went to the Robot hall and saw the future. It is scary.

The world expo was probably one of the most expensive days out I’ve had in a while, and while I wouldn’t be willing to spend that amount again anytime soon (or able, for that matter), it was worth the experience.

Hiroshima

Ah, Hiroshima. It’s a name that you don’t mistake easily, and you all know it. It’s something of a pilgrimage if you’ve studied Japan through the years, as it is a name that always crops up in some way or another. I went there knowing that it was a bustling city and that there was no real visible scar on the city, but being there… is totally another experience. Around ‘ground zero’ there is the memorial park, and at the edge the “Atomic Bomb dome”, the only major structure nearby to survive the explosion - it’s been carefully maintained to keep it in a state similar to the original. From the moment you get off the tram and wander over to the dome, a cone of silence descendes and you talk only softly, as though this is truly scared ground.

But then memorials are but memorials, and you can’t really connect the images of the aftermath with the location that surrounds you - until you go into the Peace Museum, anyway. The Peace Museum has a nicely structured though overwhelming history of Hiroshima up to the bombing, and then demonstrates clearly with models devestating effect of the bombing. We unfortunately didn’t get there until about an hour before closing time, and hardly had enough time to absorb it all - but even so, you truly appreciate the tragedy of the bombing and the unprecendented scale of destruction and havoc wreaked by the bomb. There is no comparison, and in all honesty the Japanese have a right to be far more indignant and hurt by it (and its twin in Nagasaki) than they appear to be. After a while of wandering through the museum, you simply want to go up to the Japanese and apologise, despite not having any involvement in it.

You truly appreciate that there is no place in this world for nuclear weapons to exsist, and you can do naught but fear that it may arise once more. The bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are puny in comparison to those that exist in stockpiles today, and one can only imagine what kind of destruction they would bring - 3000 people lost on 9/11 would be nothing. The 140,000 who lost their lives immediately in Hiroshima would pale in comparison. If anything, all community leaders of the level where nuclear weapons are an issue need to be educated in the devestating effects of the bomb.

In Conclusion

It was a long trip, and Japan being so different really brought it home towards the end. I missed all of my friends a whole lot over there. It was also a myth dispelling trip for me, as suddenly the place became real and it no longer carried an aura of mystery and otherness. Japan is without doubt different to the western culture, but it is a modern society and there are so many similarities too. I think 12 or 13 days is far too short to truly appreciate any country, and will have to be back there to properly live at some point. That’s when I think a real Japanese adventure would start.