Japan
Japan was like a bigger, brighter and cleaner version of Korea. That’s not to say I found it any more interesting than Korea. In fact, some things just weren’t worth seeing, like the Imperial Palace’s surroundings, which are all you’re allowed to see of the Palace, anyway. It was also annoying to have to pay to get into just about everything—that is, except the surroundings of the Imperial Palace.
I felt that some of Japan was starting to look tired and old, from once famous buildings to subway stations to tourist spots. The touristy stuff didn’t interest me all that much. No, the things that interested me most were the stuff of modern Japan—the architecture, surprising references to the rape of Nanking on television, the obsession with cuteness, the highly sexualized status of school girls, and the ubiquitous cartoon imagery, often of, well, cute sexy school girls.
Japan’s fast trains made it a pretty easy country to travel. I arranged my hotels over the net, choosing the cheapest I could find. I downloaded maps and worked out an itinerary. Basically, I did everything myself using the Internet and just followed a travel plan that was adaptable and flexible. And I walked a lot, as I was prepared to do. However, I wasn’t prepared for the blisters from cheap sneakers made soggy from thy typhoon rains that swept in for a couple of days. If my foot didn’t hurt so much I could have kicked myself for not taking my hiking boots. Nonetheless, I didn’t let it stop me from seeing all I wanted to see.
Interestingly, the book I took for nighttime reading was Doug Stanton’s In Harms Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors, which gave an extra historical dimension to my trip. Before it was torpedoed, the Indianapolis had delivered to the island of Tinian the parts of “Little Boy,” the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. These parts were assembled and the bomb was dropped a few days after the Indianapolis’s survivors were finally rescued. The book was well worth the read, and I visited Hiroshima the day after finishing it.
Sometimes the little things are what you remember best. I remember delivery men and garbage men actually jogging from place to place with what appeared to be a high level of enthusiasm. Perhaps that explains the clean streets. The bikini clad doll figure seen in game parlours and on ads was another point of interest; she has the cartoon face of an 8 year old and the body of a large breasted 18 year old nympho. I saw a life size model of her at one game parlor in a typically provocative pose. It’s one of those things you feel somewhat uneasy about but can’t look away. I wanted to take a photo but felt somewhat conflicted.
Walking through the Shibuya and Shinjuku areas of Tokyo at night, with their myriad of often bizarre sights, was great. It was too much to take in sometimes. In the end, however, it’s all pretty superficial, from the tan parlour beach girls with their blond hair to the J-pop music and it’s inane tunes. The high quotient of cute girls was always a delight, however.
Curiously, I saw a lot of groups of girls at Shibuya and elsewhere—like the tanned Barbarella dolls or just your everyday office worker—sitting around together, not really doing much. Perhaps they were just absorbed in their own little cliques. But many of them looked really bored to me. There were no guys around, and none paying much attention except for foreign tourists like me. I thought some of them were absolutely stunning (unlike the ones below).
Another thing I wasn’t expecting was the amount of homeless. They congregate in parks and live there in blue tarpaulin tents, set up in clumped groups under park trees. They were practically ‘blue tent towns’ and were for the most part always neat and tidy, their compacted earth surrounds well swept. These residents gave the impression that they were there for the long term. Many of these ‘towns’ were located at exclusive addresses, choice parkland in each city.
Did I mention that the Japanese were polite? Everyone hears about that, and it’s true. I think the best way to describe it is to say that they are very aware of when to be considerate. Even teenagers think of those around them. It’s the same in Korea, but in Japan it just seemed more noticeable or perhaps it was just more deliberately expressed.
